It’s always nice to find a new place to drink beer. Not that we have any lack of beer up here in Mount Vernon, but when you’re in need of a place to hang out in the Ballard/Greenwood/Fremont area of Seattle it’s handy to find a good casual beer joint. The Dray on 65th Street is that sort of place – lots of regulars, warm wood walls and fixtures, soccer on the TV at all times, a short sandwich menu, and a really fine selection of beers on draft. The first time we stopped in they had Pliny the Elder, a hard-to-find IPA from Russian River that tends to disappear fast wherever it crops up, despite its slightly high price tag. Last time I was there I had a Green Flash Hop Head Red, an extremely excellent beer for those of us with a taste for the bitter. And they also had the Weed IPA, which I haven’t ever seen outside of the Weed Alehouse. The kegs change pretty briskly, from what I’ve seen, so you never know what you might be able to get there.

Also, there’s a squirrel on the wall of the bathroom. You might want to see it first while sober, so it doesn’t take you by surprise later.

I live in Mount Vernon. It’s a small town in a rural county in northwestern Washington State, built at the site of an old log jam on the Skagit River back in the 1800s. People in Seattle have heard of it, either because they’ve come up here for the annual Tulip Festival or because they’ve driven by on I-5, but most of them never stop in town. Which means that it’s still rather a well-kept secret that our small downtown is one of the best places to drink beer of, well, pretty much anywhere.

We have two breweries, Skagit River and North Sound. Then there are the pubs: the Empire Alehouse, the Trumpeter Public House, and the Porterhouse. All have multiple rotating taps, as many as twenty-one at a time, almost entirely West Coast microbrews. From our house we can walk to four of these pubs and drink some of the best beers available. It’s pretty sweet.

Last year, wanting to raise awareness of the local beer possibilities, encourage responsible drinking and promote downtown businesses, our friends Lyra and Ryan Morrison attempted something they dubbed the 30 Day Beer Challenge. The idea was to drink a different beer every day in March, staying within the downtown area of Mount Vernon. Given the options, it was extremely easy. So this year they’re doing it again, with a twist – they can’t repeat any of the beers tasted last year. And they’re bringing in some help, including us.

Every day this month, at a predetermined pub, representatives of the Beer Challenge will show up and drink their chosen beer. A brief review will be submitted to the team leader for online publication and discussions will be held on the beer’s merits (or just beer in general), with public participation encouraged. You can follow along on Facebook, Twitter or by text. Or you can just come out and have a beer with us. Jon and I will be at the Empire tomorrow night, March 3rd, and at Skagit Brewery on the 24th (not to mention our band playing at the Empire on St. Patrick’s Day – and there’s a special local beer release that night, too). What beers will we be tasting? You’ll have to wait and see.

I tend to make pretty chunky borsch – I like the smooth kind served cold with a bit of vinegar stirred in, but I also like a big hearty soup with pieces of beet and potato and beef and plenty of cabbage, and that’s the sort we usually have at home. I usually use beef or lamb broth for the base, if I have any, and dill as the main seasoning. And sour cream on top, of course.

This particular batch had a slightly different flavor than usual, as I braised the beef in beer before assembling the rest of the soup, instead of using broth. A friend brought a growler of excellent locally-brewed stout to our holiday party this weekend, and I wanted to use some of it up. I seared the beef stew meat with onions, added a cup of stout, and let it simmer covered for an hour and a half while I roasted the beets and sliced the cabbage. I topped up the soup pot with a little water and added everything else, then let it cook another half hour or so. It was a really good borsch, and the beer made it less sweet and a bit earthier. A slice of buttered rye bread would have been the only thing to make it better.

Our soccer team got thoroughly stomped in Bellingham last weekend, so we went to two of our favorite places to cheer ourselves up.

Boundary Bay Brewery came first. These folks make some of the best beer in the Northwest, and I’m thankful that the IPA has become pretty common on taps around the area. Jon’s partial to the Scotch, which is rich and smooth. On this visit we both got the Best Bitter, which isn’t normally available anywhere but this brewpub. Back when we were playing Irish music here every Sunday I drank quite a lot of the bitter, and I rather missed it.

It was happy hour, so we picked up a couple of barbecue pork sliders to go with our beer. The food here is always solid (we really like their lamb burger and the fish tacos) but we didn’t feel like getting dinner this time. For that we went to La Fiamma.

Just up the block from the brewery is our favorite pizza place, La Fiamma Wood Fire Pizza. We developed our standard order here years ago: a small salad, a half-carafe of the house red, and a medium Grecian Formula pizza. Sometimes we break out and get a Diablo instead, but it’s usually the Grecian.

What’s on the Grecian? Thin pieces of steak. Peppers. Spinach. Olives. Feta. Tomatoes. And a wonderful herbed white sauce that, depending on the night, either bubbles up around everything else or provides a quiet background accompaniment. We’ve tried reproducing this pizza at home but it’s never quite the same. And I love the crust on the pizzas here (not burnt, as they say, but “kissed by the flames”).

This is one of those dinners that always makes us happy, is always the right amount of food, and always keeps us coming back, even though we live half an hour away. We love La Fiamma.

We got out of town last week and took the train down to Portland for a little vacation, just in time for a massive heat wave. Despite broken-down buses (one overheated and died on the Burnside Bridge – fun!), blisters, short tempers and heat exhaustion, we managed to have a great time and eat quite a lot of food. Also, it was an excellent weekend for sitting in the shade drinking beer, so we made sure to do plenty of that. We started at the Hedge House.

And we had to go to Pok Pok, of course. We have occasionally considered eating here every single night we spend in Portland. One of these trips…

The next day, after working up a thirst at the art museum (currently exhibiting R. Crumb’s illustrated Book of Genesis), we stopped at Henry’s 12th St. Tavern for some lunch. And, most importantly, Walking Man beer.

Henry’s is a bigger place than I usually like, but they really do have a smashing beer list. It’s also a good place to watch World Cup matches – or just watch other people watching World Cup matches.

Later that day we made sure to stop in to Clyde Common for happy hour. And what a happy hour! I got one of the drinks on special, the Nasturtium, spicy and delicious with ginger liqueur. Jon couldn’t resist getting the aged Trident off the regular menu. We also ordered the fried chickpeas, which turned out to be so dangerously addictive I may never dare get them again.

For dinner that night we walked the half mile or so down Division to a little neighborhood bistro we had spied from the bus, Bar Avignon. The strangest thing about it was the absence of tattoos on the staff – I kept wondering if I was really in Portland.

The food was excellent, and perfect for summer: duck rillettes with pickled vegetables, crostini topped with smashed fresh peas and sardines, and roasted chicken with yogurt sauce and a rice pilaf with currants (they left out the almonds for me). There was a nice wine list. It was peaceful and cool. I would definitely come back here.

The next day we went running and had Pok Pok leftovers for breakfast (whoo! spicy), eventually rolling back down the block to the Hedge House for sandwiches. I had the P.A.B.S.T., which is a great way to eat a salad for those of us that don’t really like salads. Jon had a cheesesteak sandwich, which I believe is what he got there last year as well. Hmm.

After lunch we took the bus over to House Spirits Distillery for a tour and tasting.

We admired the copper kettle, and learned many things about the distilling process which I have already forgotten.

After the tour we crammed into the small (and quite warm) tasting room along with a bunch of people doing the whole “distillery row” tour. House Spirits makes a great variety of stuff, Aviation Gin being one of the more well-known, but we were excited to try some of their “apothecary line” of limited edition spirits as well.

As it turned out, we loved the Oregon Ouzo, liked the whiskey, and rather disliked the Japanese spirit (I just can’t get the hang of sake, which this was made of), but we absolutely adored the Krogstad Aquavit, one of their regular line. It’s amazing – star anise light on the tongue, followed by a clean caraway trail as you swallow. We have a bottle of this now.

Later in the afternoon, we headed up to the Laurelhurst neighborhood. We drank glasses of chilled Gascogne wine in a nice pub called Spints and watched hot Portlanders stroll and bicycle (and unicycle) by.

We ate dinner at Tabla. It was lovely.

They’re doing some really nice work at this restaurant, especially with their fish and pasta. I’m not showing you half of what we ate there, because our table was dark and most of the the pictures are awful, so you’ll have to take my word for it. We really needed the long walk to the bus stop to recover from this meal.

And finally it was time to go home. On our way to the train station the next morning we stopped at Kenny & Zuke’s for a takeout lunch. They made us a pastrami sandwich of epic proportions and quality, wrapping it nicely for travel along with a baggy of excellent pickles and some good sour coleslaw. It made an excellent last taste of Portland.

The last time we visited my brother-in-law, we had to drive to get to the local wineries. Up into the hills, usually, on windy roads designed to get the casual tourist completely lost. And many of the Central Coast wineries weren’t open to the public, anyway. This has all changed with the advent of the Swift Street Courtyard complex, now home to at least six different wine tasting rooms and a brewery. Part of the same complex that houses Kelly’s French Bakery (and a number of other shops), this is a wildly accessible arrangement for a person wanting to taste as much Santa Cruz wine as possible. Which we did.

And thanks to everything being so close together, it can all be done on foot even in a pouring rain. Which it was.

Our first stop was Bonny Doon. Their new space is very spiffy, with a long curving bar and tables set into gigantic barrels, with melted wine bottles for lamps. They had two tasting flights on offer, a regular and a reserve, so we bought one each and figured we’d share. The woman pouring for us took it upon herself to switch around the order of the wines so our two flights would overlap in the most enjoyable manner. We ended up with an exciting spread of bottles in front of us.

There really wasn’t anything here we didn’t like. The stars were the Cigar Volante, always a winner no matter the vintage, the Syrah, the Nebbiolo, and – a surprise – the Pommeau, a mix of apple cider and apple brandy. Jon took a sip and said “I can do things with this.” Can’t wait until our bottle arrives!

After Bonny Doon we wandered several doors down to Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard. After being heavily leaned on by their slender but highly energetic greeter dog, we tasted through some lovely Spanish varietals: Tempranillo, Durif, Graciano, etc. These are very rich but elegant wines, I liked them very much. We picked up a bottle of Durif, but would have loved to get more.

Beer sounded like a good change of pace after that, so we stopped by the taproom for Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery and got their sampler.

The beers here weren’t all to my taste, particularly the IPA, which surprised me. But their brown and amber ales were very good, and they make a very solid porter as well. We came back here the next day to kick off another round of tastings, and ordered lunch in from Kelly’s (the brewpub doesn’t have their own kitchen, but they feature Kelly’s full menu. It’s awesome).

Then we made a beeline for Sones Cellars. We’ve been drinking Sones wines for years, ever since their first release. We never have as much of it as we want, but I think we’ve managed to have at least one bottle of each vintage.

When we went in the winemakers were out, but there was a gentleman minding the store who was occupying himself working on a large colorful painting back in the barrel storage area. There was a dog keeping him company, as there should be in a winery, but it was a very mellow dog indeed.

Just as we were getting started, Lois Sones came in and took over our tasting. We began with a Sauvignon Blanc which was really delightful.

After that was a Zinfandel, followed by a Petite Sirah from the French Camp vineyard. This, as usual, was our absolute favorite – such a rich, smooth, comforting wine. The final taste was of one that they’re calling “Fashionably Late” Zinfandel, as the grapes were picked late and held on to their sweetness through the winemaking process. It’s not quite a table wine, not quite a dessert wine. It made us think longingly of gorgonzola cheesecake.

What was particularly swell was that, when we were trying to decide how much to buy, Lois offered to package up our purchases in a shipping box and bring it to the house a few days later so we could check it as baggage. We figured the Alaska Airlines luggage fee was still cheaper than shipping, so we went for it. Lois really went above and beyond the call of duty, getting the box to us early Sunday morning just before we left for the airport. That’s dedication.

Finally, we walked around the corner and checked out the brand new tasting room for MJA Vineyards, whose two labels are DaVine and Serene. The owner was there, and told us about his experiences growing coffee in Kona and wine in Napa. I believe they’re still growing grapes in Napa, but are adding a vineyard in the Santa Cruz area, particularly for Pinot. The wines were very nice, perhaps not as much to my taste as the other wineries we tried on this trip, but good. They had two Sauvignon Blancs done in different styles, and the New Zealand-style one was particularly crisp and delicious. We bought one of those, and look forward to the day when the freezing wind and hail stop and we can pull it out and drink it in the sun.

I know it’s taken me all week to get this post up, but our Labor Day weekend wasn’t the kind you recover from quickly. As usual, my band (comprised of me, my husband and my parents) went on its annual pilgrimage to the Tumbleweed Music Festival by way of a lot of wineries. Not to mention two brewpubs and a truly fantastic diner.

We visited the dogs at Two Mountain, Chinook and Hightower - all just as cute as ever. I highly recommend all three wineries for their juice as well. We also visited Portteus, Bookwalter, Tefft, and Blackwood Canyon.

Amid all the winery visits, though, we needed food. And really, when you’re overloaded with high quality red wine, what you really need is a burger, or pizza. And a beer.

Fortunately for us, the Whitstran Brewpub just opened in Prosser last year. Apparently the brewery’s been there for some time, but the restaurant side is new. Hurrah, somewhere to eat lunch in Prosser!

The place is very simple inside, decorated with framed quotations concerning the virtues of beer. I liked this one:

Service was a tad slow, since all the lunch orders came in at once, but we weren’t in much of a hurry. We tasted a few samples and ended up with some very decent pints – I liked the dry-hopped pale ale, Jon had stout, and my parents went for the Highlander. Most of the beers were a bit light-bodied and very low alcohol, but they seemed to be on the right track.

We were impressed by the food. Basic pub fare, but prepared with attention. The fries, battered and very crispy, were the star, but the coleslaw was also notable. Burgers and fried fish were perfectly acceptable. We ate way too many fries.

That night we were in Richland, which isn’t exactly a foodie mecca. We decided to play it safe and go back to an old favorite, the Atomic Ale Brewpub. It’s in an old drive-in building right in downtown Richland, with a heavily tongue-in-cheek theme in honor of nearby Hanford Nuclear Reservation. They have Plutonium Porter and Half-Life Hefeweizen, Atomic Potato Soup, and so on. As far as I know none of it is actually radioactive, but you never know in Richland.

They also have the best collection of pint glasses and coasters from other pubs I have ever seen. I seem to recall from an earlier visit that if you bring a coaster that they don’t have already, you get a free pint. You’d want to check that with the owner, though.

Not all the beer here is to our taste, but there’s usually something good. On this visit they had Chinook IPA on tap, which I liked very much.

And the real reason to go to the Atomic: pizza. In fact, I’m not sure we’ve eaten anything else there. We usually get the Wanderer, which has Canadian bacon, jalapeños, sausage and olives on a garlic and olive oil-brushed crust. This time we also tried the Godfather, which was a fine pile of meat and olives on tomato sauce, with mushrooms and hot pepper. Nothing too unusual, but very good. The place was absolutely packed (a rainstorm hit while we were waiting for our table, flooding out the outdoor concert going on a few blocks away), but our server was calm and helpful.

And then: it may not be beer-related, but I have to mention the place we found for breakfast the next morning. Located out on the Columbia River trail, the Sage Port Grill is a classic biker hangout/diner, open every day from 7 until 3, and serving the biggest pancakes I have ever seen (possibly excepting the ones in Waimea, Hawaii). I want to go back here and try everything on the menu, preferably after having run several miles along the river. Light it was not, but the food was well flavored and completely ungreasy (as ungreasy as chicken fried steak gets, that is). And the decor is worth spending some quality time with. If you’re in the Tri-Cities and are hungry for breakfast, go there.

See why it’s taken me a few days to recover?

As you may or may not know, April is a time of great confusion and rejoicing in the Skagit Valley, being the time of the Skagit Tulip Festival. What this means is that there are a few weeks of blissful quiet while the daffodil fields bloom (why does everyone ignore the daffodils?), then a weekend or two of complete mayhem when the tulips finally deign to show their colors and the tourists flock in, getting lost in downtown Mount Vernon in need of bathrooms and maps.

This particular weekend features the Tulip Festival Street Fair. They were setting up for it as I walked home today, and for the next three days we will continue to be very very glad that we live walking distance from downtown – because god help anyone who’s trying to park down there. We can also be grateful that the weather forecast is looking promising – a few years ago there was a howling windstorm that swept away the craft tents, and last year it hailed. A lot. We’re all hoping this year will be better.

If any of you are planning to come up and join in the festivities, you might wonder where there is to eat. We do have a few good places here in town, and it’s an interesting fact that most of them are pubs. Within just a few short blocks we have The Porterhouse, Trumpeter Public House, Empire Ale House, Draft Pics Sports Bar and Skagit River Brewery. Apparently you can never have too many places to drink beer.

It is nice having a selection. If we want pizza or barbecue, we go to Skagit Brewery. If we want a glass of Scotch or a plate of fried artichokes, the Trumpeter. The Porterhouse is a regular stop for fried calamari, while we wait for takeout from the excellent Thai place next door. We don’t go to Draft Pics – they spend way too much time cleaning their sidewalks in the morning. But our current all-around favorite is the Empire.

Bruce, the owner, was the original owner of the Porterhouse, then sold it and started this new, smaller, more intimate place just up the street. It doesn’t have the daylight or the spaciousness (or the fireplace) of the other pub, but it has a cozy comfort to it, and a lot more bar to sit at and shmooz with the staff (who are well worth shmoozing with). They have 17 beers on tap at any given time, always changing, plus a selection of wines. Samples are freely given; always a good thing, since I can never remember which beers I’ve tried before.

The food is pretty straightforward pub grub – French fries, calamari, burgers, salads, pasta, panini. The steamed clams are excellent, and the crab cakes are some of the best in town. Of late I have become completely enamored of a sandwich composed of mixed steamed vegetables and a hell of a lot of cheese. There’s something about seeing green beans and broccoli sticking out of your sandwich…I just love it. The salads are very well done, too, especially with the wasabi vinaigrette alongside.

Mostly, though, it’s just what every town – every neighborhood, really – needs: a local watering hole with reliable, comforting food, good stuff to drink, and people who know your name when you walk in the door. A place like that makes me happy. I hope if you stop by and try it out, you’ll be happy too.

St. Patrick’s Day is coming right up! For us, this week generally means playing several musical gigs in a row, driving across a variety of high mountain passes in snowstorms, and drinking a lot of wine, but I realize that this isn’t most people’s idea of the holiday. However, to get in the mood in advance this year (and to provide photos for an article I was writing), I made up a batch of Irish soda bread and some beef stew to go with it. And damn if that wasn’t the best beef stew I have ever made! The bread wasn’t bad, either.

I wasn’t expecting much from the stew, so I didn’t really document it, but here’s how I built it: I started with a pan of bacon fat left over from breakfast. I seared some beef stew meat, then removed it from the pan and put in carrots, celery and sliced garlic. Once those had softened, I put the meat back in and added a quart of lamb stock from the freezer, salt and pepper, a fresh bay leaf and a spoonful of Dijon mustard. This simmered, covered, for over an hour and a half (whilst I made the soda bread), then I added rather a lot of diced potato and some water and let it all boil down for half an hour.

The resulting broth was not very thick, since I didn’t use flour, but it had a deep savoriness, and the potatoes had absorbed a great deal of flavor. The meat fell apart when poked with a spoon, but still had some good beefy taste. I had meant to sprinkle in some fresh parsley, but the stew didn’t really need anything to improve it.

The soda bread was a recipe more or less of my own devising, part whole wheat with buttermilk, baked in a cast iron Dutch oven. It was beautifully crunchy and was a fantastic vehicle for butter. We poured ourselves glasses of Guinness and sat down to a lovely pre-St. Paddy’s Day feast.

Afterwards, we sank deeply into a carb-induced coma. Mmmm.

Irish Soda Bread

• 3 cups all-purpose white flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 400°. Thoroughly butter a cast iron pot with a lid.

Mix the dry ingredients together in bowl, then rub in the butter. Add the buttermilk all at once, stir briefly until just combined, then knead 8-12 strokes so the dough comes together but is not yet smooth. Pat the dough into the pan and cut a cross into the top. Cover.

Bake 30 minutes with the lid on, then remove and bake another 10-15, until the bread is crunchy and golden on top. Remove from the pan and let cool before cutting (if you can wait until it’s really cool then you’re a better man than I – I like it hot enough to melt butter, even if it makes the bread dense). Eat within two days or so.

There was a fantastic tasting down at our local wine shop the other night. Instead of wine, we tasted several varieties of beer from Belgium, Poland and Germany. It was great for us, because our beer drinking tends to center heavily on the Pacific Northwest and we just haven’t experimented much with Belgian ales. Too bad there weren’t more tasters in attendance, but hey – more for us.

We ended up going home with a bottle of St Bernardus Abt 12, which was my favorite from the tasting (we also really, really liked Piraat Triple IPA – yum). We took care of it immediately with the help of some remarkably successful cheeseburgers and yam fries, which turned out to be an almost perfect pairing with the beer.

We’re not sure why the burgers turned out so well, but for future reference, here’s what we did: we used a pound of ground beef from our cow, completely thawed in the fridge. Jon mixed it with salt, pepper and the last few drops of our Worcestershire sauce, and formed it into two patties about an inch thick. He seared the patties in a very hot, dry cast iron skillet, about 4 ½ minutes on each side, and very very carefully not poking at them while they cooked (it was difficult for him). I had thawed a couple Breadfarm multigrain hamburger buns, toasted them and buttered them lightly. Then we just melted some cheddar on the burgers and added Bibb lettuce, thinly sliced tomato, ketchup and mayo (I don’t care what anyone thinks, I like mayo on a burger). Nothing fancy, but oh yum.

The yam fries were just a lazy variant of these, dusted with salt and spices and roasted in a hot oven until they were creamy inside and caramelized outside. Delish.