Hood River Harvest Festival -- Rob, Tory, Dawn & I

t’s been months since I wrote a full sized entry in this blog. I’ve had different priorities lately and it hasn’t been to update this area. This morning, however, I was updating my Facebook page and the entry for yesterday’s adventure was just too many darn characters for the format no matter how much I paraphrased. So here I am returning to the format that lets me tell the tale in full and share just how much FUN we had yesterday in North Central Oregon.

5 AM. Breakfast

Tory & Dawn (hard fast fabulous friend duo) arrived at the house at O’dark early. Tory had worked til well after midnight the night before and here he was with his best gal after only half a night of sleep. My Man-O got right on pouring a couple cups of strong rich dark coffee all around while I prepared a hearty bit of breakfast. While we ate and loaded up on caffeine, we that days trip was discussed in general, with very few specifics named, only that as a group we were going up to the Gorge, explore, eat, laugh and have fun. The guys planned a trip to the Brewery, the gals planned a walk up and down Oak St to see the shops, the group planned to visit a few orchards for some fruit to bring home and to stop in at the Harvest Festival on the waterfront to see even more farm fresh goods and artisan products.

7 AM. Leaving Central Oregon

We were off, the sky was overcast and the day called for some pretty good rain showers, but not a drop fell from the dawn sky. The drive from Bend through Madras is something we’ve all done so very often that I can’t claim the scenery was much paid attention too – the sky was amazing and the mountains painted in white, pink and blue were a sight to behold - - but good conversation took over the majority of our attention. Our chosen route was to go up thru Madras, up to Government Camp (on Hood) and hook a right on to Highway 35 and go up through Odell. I hadn’t been this way in more years than I care to recall, if ever, and the country-side was attention grabbing. It seems to me that there is a distinct line between the high desert and the green lush land that you cross into when you head up to Odell, from the sage & bitterbrush to ferns & bramble thorn, High Desert Sage Rat that I am, the dive into a green world is a geo-shock that I particularly enjoy. I love my desert. There is truly no place like home, but to dip into that lush greenery is a treat that just can’t be described by me into words that would sound as sensorially sensuous as it really is.

9 AM. Rasmussen Farms

Rasmussen Farms in Odell is back off the main highway a few miles and is deep-deep-deep back into orchards of so many varieties that I lost count just a mile in. The rain had started to fall in a soft mist, and the pumpkins were brilliant spots of color against the grey-green orchards. A pair of Newfoundland’s, the size of small ponies, thought briefly about trying to eat the truck as we made our way first past the farm entrance and then again on our way back when we finally figure out that yes, that one little hand painted sign really was the only hint on how to enter the farm proper.

The farm was a fun place, filled with more harvested produce than I regularly see at the local grocery store. 15 apple varietals, 6 or 8 pear varietals, cauliflower, cabbages, kale, Brussels sprouts, pumpkins, acorn squash, butternut squash, gourds and mini pumpkins of all shapes and sizes (ever seen grown men make faces that indicate they remember what it was to be evil 10 yr old boys with a big fat desire to make obscene suggestions with vegetables???); filberts by the hundred weight, chestnuts, walnuts, almonds – onions, garlic, corn . . . oh honey the list just goes on and on. It was a FUN place to wander and touch and taste and smell and see.

I loaded up on Apples and Pears oh my! I’ll be making apple chutney and pear chutney and spiced fried apples and apply pie very very soon!

10 AM. Oak St. Harvest Fest on Frontage. Full Sail Brewery on Columbia

Hood River and the sun was shining down on Oak Street. The Harvest Festival also included a 10k run, The Providence Harvest Dash, and we were dodging many tired sweaty runners as we got another cuppa coffee. As a group we are people watchers. It’s a nifty pastime, easy to practice and frequently yields something interesting about humanity that you hadn’t considered in quite that light before. Be it how someone dresses, walks, speaks, interacts with the world around them. We has talked about walking around town and indulging in good conversation and a observing our fellow inhabitants & tourists. With a couple of exceptions, I can state honestly I didn’t pay much attention to people yesterday. I was seeing a LOT of dogs. More newfies, mastiffs, malamutes, bull dogs, pugs, boxers, golden retrievers, schnauzers, terriers, labs, poodles and more. It was a day for canine companionship. We moseyed and meandered and wandered down to the waterfront. Several runners in rather nifty costumes provided Halloween preview – everything from Bumblebees to a Violent Purple Pimped-out Joker. There is a good sized park right down on the river and there were pavilions spread across a few acres of grass holding perhaps 200 artisan and food vendors hawking their wares. More orchard farms were represented at the festival and we saw even more varieties of fruit and vegetables that made us stop and scratch our heads in wonder. Apples as large as a toddlers head. I held a single apple in my hand that weighed in at 5 lbs and could have been a pie all on its own. There were apples and pears of extreme size and pumpkins too. There were garlic vendors that make so many different types of pickled garlic that I wondered at the imagination that came up with some these recipes. I saw sweet peppers in a rainbow of colors and fat poblanos that begged to be tomorrow night’s supper.

It was a bit of a climb from Frontage back up to Columbia Street. Hood River is a very hilly place. Not as steep as Astoria by-gory, but the residents do all have wonderfully strong calves, today as I walk to and from the coffee pot I can tell you by way of the ache in my calves just how steep a climb those streets near the river are. Columbia Street is the home of the Full Sail Brewery, our lunch destination. We started out on the patio to eat but the clouds came rolling in swiftly, black and heavy with fat, cold rain. The populated and popular patio emptied out 10 minutes before the rain started and there was a dining room wide sigh when the water started pelting the windows while we watched.

The food was fabulous. I had the Cuban Panini – the guys went for the Rogue River Blue Cheese burgers and Dawn had Chicken Skewers, we at largely and enjoyed it very much. Another walk back to the truck, up a few more steep streets and we split off into pairs, the guys to head back to the brewery for the tour and we gals to window shop.

12 PM. Oak St.

The rain wasn’t pouring down as hard as it had during our lunch but the water still falling from the sky and the air was warm pretty soon there was a blonde and a red-head from drier climes complaining about hair frizzies. I made Knot Another Hat my priority first stop and fell in love. The shop is on the second floor of an old building at #16 Oak St. the shopkeeper has a large picture glass window looking out at the Columbia with a couple of couches and overstuffed chairs positioned for yarnsters to sit and watch the water and ply our fingers at our craft. She also has very nice selection of fibers. It’s not as large a selection as say, Juniper Fiberworks & Gossamer, here in Bend, but it definitely rivals Bend shops prices, in many cases by up to 2 dollars a skein. That is significant in yarn. I’ll make another quick plug for this shop, she has a website and orders over $50 are free shipping. I do believe I have a new source for fiber. (insert blissful sigh here) I picked up a few more skeins for my stash and also was finally and happily able to purchase the Brittany Birch cable needles that I’ve wanted since I first found out about them this summer up in Sisters.

I also purchased another nifty wood crochet hook (size H) for my growing collection of artisan wood hooks. I had taught Dawn to crochet a year or two ago but she had found it not to her liking, the nature of the hand motions exacerbating a not fun bit of tendonitis, but knitting, with large needles, and the scrumptious variety of yarns called to her and she found a nifty fiber to make a scarf from. We planned to do a spot of knitting on the drive up to Multnomah Falls. We headed back out into the rain and crowded sidewalks, (‘Rain? What rain?) into the presses of people with wet dogs and umbrellas or rain slickers or shirt sleeves. I couldn’t tell you which were the locals and which were day trippers like us. We poked into a Doggie Shop, browsed through my favorite little bead shop and yakked a bit with the owner, talked about gelato but finally decided on hitting the candy shoppe when we met back up with the guys.

Tory & I bought licorice and found a new variety in that heavenly genre to enjoy and Dawn and Rob found peanut butter fudge w/ double chocolate is indeed worth writing home about. Back into the pickup we all loaded to head on down I-84 to see even more water falling out of the sky – the 3 waterfalls along the scenic highway.

2:30 PM Horsetail Falls

The rain got heavier and came down harder as we made our way west down the interstate, the traffic was racing, way to close for my comfort, so I ignored it utterly and turned to Dawn and we got down to the business of casting on. I had my current project in my basket and relaxed into it while she practiced this first skill. In nearly no time at all we were off the freeway and onto the scenic highway and it’s treasury of natural wonders. Dawn got out her camera rig and oohh baby is that some?! Woman is serious about her pictures and set off to snap about a zillion. The guys strolled around the base of Horsetail falls, being good and impressed by the rushing weight of water from a 150 ft drop and I looked at the leaves, and moss and lichen and ferns and the people I love having a great time. I brought home a significant lump of moss that was lying in the road --- I have to believe that the winds and heavy rains knocked this bit loose from a tree, much of the bark it had anchored itself to is still attached to the root system --- and I plan to make a terrarium or two from this fun find.

3:00 PM – Multnomah Falls

On down the road just a couple of miles are Multnomah Falls. Of all the waterfalls in the northwest this is probably the most iconic. Neither Tory nor Dawn had ever been and while Rob and I had been, many times, it was fun to experience it again through eyes that had never stood in the mist of that most wonderful double fall of cascading water. Out came Dawn’s camera and Rob and I exchanged a look, knowing full well that those two would make the hike up to bridge that spans the cleft right at the bottom of the larger, more impressive Upper Falls. We looked back at the lodge, and looked up at the rain falling down and felt the chill in the air that had finally come to make the rain more autumnal and less Indian summer and found that the best way to spend such an afternoon is indoors, before a nice fire in a 90 yr old lodge, sipping cream heavy dark coffee and sharing a huckleberry topped buttery shortbread. We had a very lovely, quiet visit, my best friend and I, drying our jackets by the fire, looking up 2 foot thick solid beams and thinking of the time when the lodge was built . . . daydreaming away the afternoon.

4:30 PM – Vista House Observatory

The last stop on the Scenic highway was the Observatory @ Crown Point. That too is a unique site that affords views of the Columbia that, no matter the weather, make awesome postcard fodder. Vista House was open for visitors and Rob was tickled pink, he’d never been inside as the first and last time we had ventured up the Observatory had been close for renovation. Inside the rotunda around each section of the observatory is a bust of a different native face. There are 12 of them in gold gilt, each a different man, looking out on days long gone. Grave faces. It’s a melancholy thing to look on for me. The stained glass sections above the window panes are in greens and golds and seemed to me to be the perfect colours for a autumn afternoon. The sun had come back out and was shining through the remaining shreds of black clouds and I was warm again. Rob and I perched upon the stone wall and watched the river and looked out across to Washington, and the farms on the high tops of the gorge, their leaves turning in rich reds and cheery oranges and yellows. Sadly we did not get to mount to the second story and appreciate the views from the heights, the Gallery was closed again however as the fall storms had exposed a nasty leak that needed repair. We may just have to venture back up there next weekend for another look.

6 PM -- Dinner 3 Rivers Grill

Back to Hood River as the sun sank down behind us – the rain was gone and the stars could be spotted in cloud breaks – and we as a whole were quite ready for a good meal and a little more good conversation before the trip home. We had initially planned to head over to Brian’s Pourhouse for dinner. On arrival, we found that Saturday nights really do recommend a reservation but the hostess was sure she could seat us in an half hour if we would care to wait down stairs in the bar and have a drink first. I really don’t know how the other three felt but I have to tell you that when I looked around that very crowded dark little dining room I wasn’t thrilled. Downstairs in the ‘Bar’ wasn’t much better. There was a crowd of perhaps 15 women pushing the only three tables in the place together and also pulling out all the chairs to seat around the tables . . . we did manage find 4 chairs to push back to the bar a but as we were sitting down the bartender let us know it would be quite a while as he had the ladies party to tend to first. Yup. I was done. Small renovated basement room-cum-bar loaded with 20-somethings being very loud before they had even been served their first round and a bartender that looks like he’d rather be home than there serving said gaggle of women much less our small party and I was ready to find another place to dine.

We left.

Across the street and on the corner sits a tall mosaic retaining wall. Atop that wall is a very nice outdoor patio with fairy lights strung to and fro across the outdoor dining area and inside was the lovely soft light of many candles. That is the place of scrumptious dining known as 3 Rivers Grill. Rob and I had eaten a wonderful lunch there last spring and as a group we were going to enjoy that lovely ambience and great food for dinner. We again had a great meal, they guys choosing their Rib Eye and we gals choosing tuna & bourbon chicken respectively. We talked, we laughed, we shared bites of this and that, we looked at the night and listened to the hum of the dining room full of people enjoying a very good dinner and we laughed and ate and drank some more. 3 Rivers Grill is cozy tables but plenty of room between you and your neighbors that you have your own conversations without hearing theirs. I deeply appreciate that. The tables are covered in white linen clothes with a big square of butcher paper across the top, as white and crisp as the linens. The beer was Deschutes, our fella’s favorite go-to beer, especially with good steak, and the pinot gris was cold and crisp on my tongue; perfect with grilled chicken and summer squash and zucchini. Rosemary bread and a fat merry little pot of butter made its way around the table a few times and very well cleaned plates met our waitress when she brought our check. Excellent price for the meal. Excellent.

8 PM – Headed home

A two hour drive back home, being quiet, being talkative, watching Dawn sleep, her head lolling gently with the bumps in the road, Rob leaning back against my hand when I touched his curls, thick and riled from the humid Gorge weather, Tory driving fast and sure down the road, as ready to be home as he was eager to head out 15 hours ago. Me, watching the stars and feeling how heavy my eye lids were and counting back over all the fun we had and we had seen and tasted and touched . . . it was a damn good day.

Hobo Taters w/ Country Ham

12 baby red potatoes, sliced ¼ thick

1 red onion, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

2 thick ham steaks cubed

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon rubbed sage

Salt & Pepper to taste

Heat oil in large (12 inch) skillet and add potatoes. Season. After four or so minutes turn potatoes for first time and toss in onions. Another 4-5 minutes and the next turn of skillet contents, toss in peppers, and on the next turn (also 4-5 minutes in) add the ham. An addition 2-3 turns (again of 4 or so minutes each) and your taters are done! Serve with eggs over-easy and caraway rye toast and good dark Sumatra roast coffee with lots of fresh cream.

Still on Hiatus . . .

Look for me after the equinox . . .

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Ripe Red Strawberries on top of Grizzly Mountain

We hopped in the Scooby yesterday and took off for parts generally unknown for a day. We sorta planned to end up in Prineville, have lunch then decide what direction to head off in after lunch.

It was hot early yesterday; almost hot enough to make it worth burning the gasoline to run the A/C in the car. Kate and I sucked it up, put our hair in pony-ties and went with 4/55 (or 65) A/C. Rob, looked at us askance and with tongue in cheek occasionally asked if his hair was mussed.

About 5 or so years ago ODOT cut a new length of road between Millican and Prineville. I hadn’t driven it before. It wasn’t too bad, a nice scenic trip around the backside of Powell Butte. It’s only advantage that I could see is the ease of access it allows Crook County to the OHV trails over by Millican and down into Christmas Valley. I don’t necessarily agree that this is a good thing.

Prineville was Prineville on a hot Sunday afternoon. We toodled around the town looking for someplace cool to eat that wasn’t fast food or too big a meal. I finally gave up and said, “Let’s just go to Graff’s, it may be fattening but the ice tea will be cold and perfect and the place is comfy” Rob reminded me that Barr’s had closed sometime ago and that was not an option. Kate and I both wondered what had taken its place and decided to head that way anyway. We came around the corner onto Main St and looked at the building that had once housed Barr Graff’s Café and found a building remade with a Mexican façade and painted adobe orange. We all started laughing but it was Rob who said, “Mazatlan! Of course it is!” In case you were unaware, Mazatlan is our favorite go-to restaurant in Central Oregon.

We had an excellent lunch, as always.

When we walked back out into the noon day sun it was blistering hot. We longed for cool air and decided a drive up into the mountains was the answer. The drive was long and slow and sweetly spent. We chatted, we teased, we laughed; we wondered at the sights and smells and the things we saw.

From the top you could see both East and West – the Cascades, white crowned even in July but through the heat haze appearing distant and pale; the Ochoco’s, darkest blues and deepest greens, rolling down and down, undulating across the horizon, old-old rock that from a distance to me seems a sleeping giant. Gorgeous.

We stopped several times to snap photos and to stretch our legs. We saw summer range cattle lazing away the day in the sun and shade. We saw butterflies walking daintily across bright purple flowers. We saw young brook trout in a creek covered with shade and wild flowers. Columbine, lupine, monkshood, daisies, yarrow, larkspur, deer horn, oyster, old man thistles and common purple thistle, mullein, skunk cabbage, nettles, sage brush, rabbit brush and so much more. I could spend a blog or three on wild flowers!

The treat of treats was after I turned back from taking shots of the monkshood. There at my feet was a tangle of wild strawberry vines, not so unusual, but the hints of bright red peeking out from under the leaves was a nice surprise. We enjoyed several of the sweet little darlings, enjoyed watching the birds swoop in and out of the little sunny hollow where the strawberries grew; it was the desert on top.

So far this summer . . .

 . . . I worked in the office, in a completely different department, learning their rhyme & reason, for 6 1/2 weeks.

. . . I've been to the doctor, twice!, for infections. Blech!

. . . I've been to the doctor once to be assured I'm still cancer-free. Yay!

. . . I've been on one vacation to the coast with my best friend and will return soon to share the adventure with our kids.

. . . I've delved into the top layer of family history and decided that this is a project best left for winter and less distractions.

. . . I've watched an egg hatch and an eaglet growing from an awkward grey fluff to a large stout-brown-black youth who is equally awkward.

. . . I've gladly turned over navigating government agencies for the welfare of my kiddo and his future to my loving man.

. . . I've watched my veggie starts become plants and nearly killed them several times because work has eaten SO much of my time.

. . . I've gotten glasses for the first time in my life.

. . . I haven't put away the crochet basket, instead making even more amigurumi's and bits.

. . . I've jumped back on the path to good health & exercise for the 3rd? time. I'm strapped down to it and holding on tight.

. . . I'm not in the mood to write about happenings as much at the moment, I'd rather just savor it to myself for a while longer.

An honest to goodness Treasure Chest

My parents have slowly been going through my grandfather’s things. My last living connection to the ‘old west’ passed away on Yule, 2007. It’s been hard for my dad and his brothers to empty out the house and divvy up the history. Finally they decided to give most of it to me, the oldest granddaughter, the oldest grandchild, to document, make copies where applicable and pass it on to the others.

I was a pretty lucky kid when it comes to knowing my extended and generational family. When I was born both sets of grandparents were very much here and present in my life. We spent every weekend going back and forth between my mother’s folks and my father’s folks. I also got to know and spend a great deal of time with my dad’s mother’s parents – my great-grandparents. My folks come from a very small town in eastern Oregon called Mitchell. It’s about 70 miles further east of Prineville, just on the other side of the Ochoco’s. Mitchell and the towns/communities around it sprung up in the mid 1800’s as ranching communities with some agriculture and mining, but the area did a small ‘boom’ in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s for lumber as well. By the time my folks were born the communities were doing a slow die off, the children growing up, going away to school and not returning.

When I was born the town still had a population of 350, by the time I was 5 in 1974 that number had dropped to 300 and by the time I was 10 it was down to 250. It held steady at about 250 for most of my teen years and then began another decline in numbers as I myself went off to school. I never knew Mitchell as a boom town filled with hustle and bustle.

I heard stories of course, but it was very hard for me to imagine when the town I knew had more abandoned buildings than functional and filled ones and many of those buildings were simply gone, torn down or burned down and no longer part of the towns skeleton. The stories when they when they were told by great aunts and great-great-uncles with querulous voices and eyes faded to soft greys and light blues behind thick bifocal glasses made the itchy-to-move-to-keep-playing little girl long to escape to the apricot trees and the cherry trees to climb and get into mischief. A quarter in my pocket would burn through to my skin if I didn't run down the boardwalk right away and spend it on licorice at Nortons'!

I wish I had listened more and been impatient less. Now that I want to know, now that I need to know, I have to learn from what is here, in my hands. At last I can imagine it very clearly. I have my great-grandmothers letters and her brothers and sisters post cards and the catalogs she ordered from, the receipts she kept, the pictures she treasured and the school lessons and childhood mementoes she cherished from her own babes. I also have her mother’s things.

I have my great grandfather’s trunk, his letters and receipts and memories. I have a wealth of history and so many stories to tell that I’ll likely spend the next several years doing so. Each piece I pull out of the trunk, each picture, each memento, has a story to tell. I don’t know them all yet, but I’m going to find out.

What we saw there . . .

Pelicans flying in a tight formation just above the breaking surf, scooping little fish and critters out of the crest of the waves; a bald eagle fishing in the bay where the seals were sunning themselves on the beach. A flock of herons, standing in a pond covered so deeply in lily-pads that their legs must have seemed another tendril from the plants; an egret walking the banks of the river, oh so slowly, oh so carefully placing each foot carefully into the water so as not to disturb his prey.

Cormorants perched on top of a huge craggy rock in the sea, the top so white from generations of bird excrement that their black bodies were easy to see, even several hundred yards out on a bright shining day; a waterfall, tucked into a crag of rock on a sea cliff, spilling down into the surging water below.

Another bald eagle, in a nest built on top of a trestle bridge above a busy highway; three bull elk grazing in the high grass on the protected side of the mouth of the Columbia River, the Jetty in the back ground with huge ships passing into the river and fishing boats making their way to and fro to the sea.

Blue and gold sparrows, nesting in the Battery, the empty rooms that held cannon shot and powder now home to brave parents defending their mud waddle nests stuck to the white washed walls from the invasive humans sight-seeing through their home. Brown squirrels eating barely ripe goose berries from bushes on the grounds of Fort Stevens, a military encampment built to protect the Oregon/Washington people from invasion from the British in the 1800’s.

Buildings erected before this territory was a state and shortly after. Glorious old facades that are kept freshly painted and in grand condition. Three herbal-crystal-belly-dance-pagan-hippy-nag champa-and-patchouli smelling shops in a row in one of the oldest towns in Oregon less than a block from six churches with graceful steeples and stained glass saints.

I tossed one star fish back into the sea, one crab that hadn’t yet become gull food; Rob skipped a flat stone 30 or so yards across the smooth flat sand to land back on the edge of the turning tide. I felt the sand between my toes, cold and wet and smooth. I felt the sand on the soles of my feet, hot and rough and scalding. I smelled the rain, and the salt, and the green verdant valley. I saw families laughing and carefree; moms and dads swinging babies between them as they walked on the beach; a homeless man walking carefully down the beach, dressed in beat up denim, carefully combing his hair and beard as he made his way to the back of a restaurant on the shore.

I stood in the shadow of two separate light houses in two different states that looked nearly the same and stood on the same sort of points, looking ever out to the sea; one is a gift shop, the other a truck full of Coast Guardsmen were taking readings and measurements of the horizon while the wind whipped around me and the ships went about their day.

I spent sweet time, timeless time, clockless time, uncounted and precious with my best friend.

You either love it or hate it.

As I type this the beagle is at my feet saying “please, please, please” to me. When Pippin was puppy he had the unfortunate habit of whining to beg for something. Food, toy, walk – whatever it was, he’d do a loud whine and then a puppy yip if was really serious about it. I trained him to give a soft ‘whoof’ of air instead. If you ask him to mind his manners (typically when he’s very excited about something) he’ll sit down and ask please very sweetly. A soft whoof through his beagle lips is ever so much more appealing than a whining yipyip.

The reason he’s on his best behavior and asking mom so sweetly for attention is two-fold. First, I went off and left him with those rotten kids for 3 whole days! How could I?! Don’t I know that he’s the sweetest most loving boy in the world and no one –but no one—could ever care for him as well as mom?! And then the second reason; I brought home licorice from the coast. Beagle shaped black licorice candies. The rest of my family can’t stand the odor of black licorice much less the taste of it; so it’s rather a selfish and lovely treat for me to get. I get it all to myself. Mostly. Begging beagle eyes and soft whoofs and the long tendrils of dog drool leaking out the side of his lips testify quite clearly that my Pippin is as in love with the black-as-tar confection as I am.

We went into a shop on Broadway in Seaside Oregon called Palapa Beach, just a block down from the hotel. The proprietress – a lovely dimpled lady named Ginger – shared her wares with us for the better part of an hour. She sold a great many things you’d expect to find in a gift shop at the beach; lotions, jewelry, postcards, collectables but the eye catcher is a 30 foot long candy counter. Nearly every gift oriented shop on the beach sells salt water taffy. Go to the beach, you buy salt water taffy. The ocean and this traditional confection go hand in hand to most tourists. Not so of Ginger’s shop. That’s not to say she didn’t have taffy, she most certainly did, in a little stand with maybe 25 flavors. Ppphhht. Nothing to write home about. She sells it, one supposes, because it’s expected. It is not her specialty.

She has over 60, yes m’dears you read correctly, sixty (!) varieties of licorice. Salt licorice, strawberry licorice, caramel coated licorice, hard licorice, soft licorice, chewy tar licorice, Scottie dog licorice, bat licorice, chalk licorice, cinnamon and black licorice, big fat squares of oily strong licorice and of course the beagle shaped licorice. I nearly lost my mind sampling (she is quite the candy pusher, is Ginger, handing over bits and pieces of everything she has with a smile and “if you like this, you’ll just loooovee this”) and gave over to the special pleasure that is had from that minty first bite and then the rich, saliva inducing unique flavor that is licorice, whether it’s from licorice root, star anise, fennel – I don’t care, gimme black licorice!!

So I came home with a pound and a half of black licorice. It’ll likely take me months to get through it all, even sharing with Pippin. No one else will eat it (oh darn!) but even with my strong desire for that black gold I’ll go very lightly, tip toeing through the stash, make it last and savor every evil bite.