With 2013 closing, the kitchen remains in peak form prepping for Topical Thursdays – a special wine dinner, and New Year’s Eve. All intermingled with the four weekends of year-end holiday season dining.
Starting Wednesday, Jan. 1, we close the dining room (but not the Inn) until March. Before that, given that New Year’s falls in mid-week, we’ve added an extra seating for dinner – Monday, Dec. 30, to close the year without disruption from Thursday, Dec. 26 forward.
During December much more goes on for the kitchen and dining room outside of the seatings and celebrations, as we constantly seek improvement to earn your trust.
Chef Blaine and his staff have begun preparations for their annual travels. Each winter they criss-cross the U.S., and some cross oceans, to visit and dine, and often to cook as volunteers in different environs. Sharing techniques, acquiring new tastes.
And, Gardener Mary tours other farms and attend workshops, which she says inspire her to grow and advance our Loganita Farm that supplies only our dining rooms at The Willows Inn, Beach Store Café, and Taproot.
But even before we close the main dining room, much happens behind the scenes to prepare for re-opening in March. And, to keep the two cafes replenished for guests of the inn and other island visitors. Most notably, Chef Blaine Wetzel and Gardener Mary von Krusenstiern confer carefully and take action accordingly to start afresh in 2014.
Mary planted a cover crop of winter rye in the in-ground plot at our dedicated Loganita Garden that would be the envy of any golf course. An imbedded cover crop will provide nitrogen and organic matter when tilled into the soil next spring. A liberal layer of compost braced the raised beds for winter.
Purple sprouting broccoli
Researching/planning for 2014 takes place before everybody splits. The team considers crops for next year after reflecting on what worked well this year, and on how ongoing experimentation fared. They continually grow trials of unique crops, such as the radicchio, a burgundy-leafed chicory, the purple sprouting broccoli that will withstand winter and stand ready for harvest once the days lengthen and warmth sets in, and claytonia (or miner’s) lettuce.
Meanwhile, the December menu offers the usual broad array – our way of continuing to strive for the excellence you deserve. Variety is the byword. Loganita provides ample Toscano kale (which, for you trivia experts, also goes by the names Lacinato, Italian, black, and dinosaur kale).
radicchio
The menu changes in nuances, sometimes in seasonal servings. For fun, check this out – a recent dinner menu, broken down. It showed under Snacks eight items featuring 14 different ingredients, under Dinner nine servings featuring 23 ingredients.
On the snack plates: Samish Bay mussels, salmon roe, halibut skin, kale chip, sunflower, sweet onion, shittake and yellowfoot chanterelle, and hearth bread w/fat dripping, and flax bites.
Many dinner items consisted of staples that the chefs build on – venison tartar, weather vane scallops, smoked sockeye, black cod, wild-harvested seaweed, Dungeness crabmeat. Chef Wetzel and his crew find wondrous ways to prepare those with the likes of wild sorrel and rye and parsley and dill and dried beets and lingonberries and winter squash, quince, chestnuts, hazelnuts, and local black truffles.
Chef Blaine guides the team in searching, day by day, ways to perfect your dining experience with us. A quest, to be sure, that never ends today, and inspires us tomorrow. As we dive headlong into the great cheer of holidays, we wish you good will and good times ahead, and we will love having you visit us during 2014.
Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Joyous Kwanzaa, and Happy New Year from each and all of us at The Beach Store Café, the Taproot, and The Willows Inn on Lummi Island!