Madeleine

The Eagle Has Landed Part Deux: Tom & Connie Make a Marvelous Recovery

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

For those of you who know me personally or have been following this blog for the past year, you invariably have heard about the saga of Tom & Connie Odegard, two of the dearest souls on this planet, my adopted west coast parents & mentors. Read on, the news is good!

For those of you who do not, let me introduce you to these two outrageously loving and wise beings who have helped me through thick & thin...

The tale began with a surreal call one morning last April from Tom's niece in Mt. Shasta--there had been an accident, near-fatal,  & the prospects were not good. A semi-truck plowed into them from behind & smashed their Jeep into the median. Oh, god. Both were in the ICU, but in separate hospitals due to the extreme severity of Connie's injuries. The wording at the end of the conversation was, "We don't think they're going to make it."

I don't think my hand has ever shaken as much as it did as I placed our phone back on the cradle. We'd expected Tom & Connie the night before as we're one of their pit-stops back to San Juan Island from Oakland, but thought perhaps that they were tired from the long drive and made an extra stop-over somewhere in Oregon, or maybe they decided to stay an extra day in Shasta. Tom is as old-fashioned as me, but bought a cell phone last year, not knowing how to work half the buttons. (We're two peas in a pod, that way.) I'd thought it odd that we hadn't heard from him, but I wasn't too concerned... How wrong I was.

Over the next weeks I talked to Tom daily in the ICU as he was slightly better off, at least conscious. He faced difficult questions about Connie--what surgeries to approve or not--all under the influence of morphine & who knows what else. How far do you go to save the one you love? Is it for you, or for them?  And what will their quality of life be like if they pull through? 

During those terrible months of uncertainty last spring, Madeleine became a message post for all the friends of the Odegards--and there are many. Poets sent odes, strangers became family as they expressed their love & admiration for these two, prayers went out throughout the globe, a benefit was organized by the San Juan Fire Department to help pay for Connie's physical therapy... The outpouring of love was overwhelming and I am eternally thankful & anxious to report that their recovery has been nothing short of astonishing. Much of this is due to sheer tenacity on the part of both T & C, but I have to believe that the tremendous outcry of hope & support helped mend their broken wings. Thank you all for believing this could happen !!!

For Connie, it's been a long haul to find her way back to us. Months of painful rehabilitation, a loss of mobility & independence took its toll in the form of a deep depression that left her without appetite which seemed unfathomable considering her love of the culinary arts. For Tom, his role became full-time caretaker & nursemaid, a job he dutifully took up but which took a great toll on himself. They were alive, back on San Juan, but everything was much much different now.

And then--through the combined miracle of pharmaceutical pills, herbal concoctions, & TLC, something happened. Consuela Odegard woke up one morning, looked at her husband and said in plain English, "I want a steak."   

I've honestly been wanting to update you all on their progress for months, so I asked Tom to send a picture, any picture of Connie which you see at the beginning of this blog... But having seen this miraculous transformation I hardly felt it expressed the here & the now. So with great joy, I unveil a photo of Connie, one year later.

Tah-dah! This is Connie at her finest, cooking  meatballs ala Lidia Bastianich for us last week after I had tired of sweating over a pot of "long-cooking sugo" that just wouldn't seem to thicken despite hours on the stove. I gave up & sat down to a glass of Pinot Grigio while Connie took over. Umm, she's in her early-70's, I'm in my late-30's... Something's wrong here.

We all have been through a lot of changes over the last year, & none of them have been easy. But what matters most is that we lived to tell the tale and it has a very happy ending indeed. I love you with all my heart T & C! It's so good to have you back...

Take Me Home, Country Roads: The Skagit Valley is a Bounty of Beauty & Killer Cukes!

I love to travel, but would rather crawl behind a rusting tractor instead of looking for the nearest interstate ramp when there's stretches of countryside basted with a glorious gallery of daffodils painted from one side of the road to another.

It pays to go slow.

One of my favorite back road drives is that from Anacortes to Silvana, & now's the time to do it. The pastures are filled with new offspring nudging their mothers alongside the Pioneer Highway, and the tulips should be in glorious bloom (hope all those hail storms & snow didn't inhibit their beauty.) I took this photo a few weeks ago & can't even imagine how beautiful the fields look now...

Many years ago, I was forced to visit a hypnotist to cure my fear of flying after a particularly hairy landing into the crosswinds of the Denver airport, as it's completely impractical to swear off air travel when half you family lives in the Midwest & the other half, in New York.

As a part of therapy, my soft-spoken hypnotist asked me to recall a place of tranquility that I could go to after counting back from one hundred-- perhaps a desert island, a sunset on the beach? After taking the back roads from San Juan Island a few weeks ago, I think I'll place my thoughts here when I fly off to San Fran next Friday for a mega-tasting of vino. Turbulence will be met with blue mountains topped with snow, poplars dusting the clouds, a field of petals below me...

So, if you've got the Tulip Fest on your itinerary these next few weeks or you're thinking of a vacation anytime on the San Juan's, here's three solid reasons to extend your island vibe and take the slow roads home:

1. Silvana Meats- I've heard gushing reviews of this place from customers for years & finally decided to stop in--they were right. With friendly old-fashioned service & great prices for naturally grazed meat, Silvana Meats' owner, John Karlberg, keeps to the three rules his father taught him: "Honesty, quality and giving the customer something they couldn't get at the grocery store." Dry-cured hams, braunswieger (the foie gras of sausage), & true slab bacon are just a few of the temptations here. The best plan is to pack an ice chest for your booty of hormone-free, cut-to-order Northwest meat home fresh from their coolers (wish I'd had one.) Their smokehouse list is simply overwhelming.

2. Snow Goose Produce- Worth the stop as they stock Gothberg Farm Chevre, the best I've tasted in WA state, and their freshly made waffle cones served up with dreamy Lopez Creamery ice cream--a combo that will bring you to your knees. And for other fellow New Yorkers & locavores, don't leave without some of the Glacier Deli-Dills from Pleasant Valley Farms--a discovery I made lunching at Seeds in La Conner--these local picklers have brought the flavor & crunch I crave to the west. Fourth-generation farmer, Mike Youngquist, is trying to keep Skagit growers & migrant workers in business after Bay Valley Foods (owners of Nalley, Farman's and Steinfeld's) just announced their plan to ditch local cukes in favor of those from other states, even outsourcing to India. Ask your local grocer to buy these pickles & support Skagit farmers!!!

3. Slough Food- Okay, so if you've got a little extra time on your hands, start heading for the highway from Anacortes & jog north on Farm to Market road (great name isn't it?) to visit my friend R. John DeGloria. Slough Food is a fabulous gourmand shop at the crook of eclectic Edison, a rural outpost where locals, tourists, and bikers (both Harley & Schwinn) patronize the one saloon & a couple of off-the-wall galleries, respectively. Look for cheese, honey, eggs from Skagitonians, plus artisan wines, Salumi meats, exotic chocolates & the like.

By all means, ask for a taste of whatever looks interesting, put your elbow on the counter and listen to R. John spin stories--it's just plain fun to stock up for a picnic here or a nosh for the ride home. But make sure to visit his buddies at the Breadfarm next door--after you taste their black olive baguette, it's hard to resist going the few extra miles for an experience like this.

Consider the ever-increasing Euro to dollar ratio, a trip to our own Skagit Valley is a relative bargain... We can make a difference by shopping locally-- & you get to tip-toe through the tulips along the way!   

Silvana Meats 1229 Pioneer Hwy, Silvana,  WA, 360.652.7188

Snow Goose Produce 15170 Fir Island Rd, Mt Vernon, WA 360.445.6908

Slough Food 5766 Cain's Court, Suite B, Edison, WA 360.766.4458

Breadfarm 5766 Cain's Court, Edison, WA 360.766.4065

 

Sweet, Sweet Sunday: Punjab Sweets & Valley Harvest Bring Nirvana to Kent!

                                                                                         

Why is it that our days off can so easily be lumped in with the rest of the working week...

I guess someone understood that fleeting feeling when they coined the term, "Weekend Warrior". Before you know it, you're not really sure where the hours went & that's when a co-worker inevitably asks you on Monday, "So how was your weekend?" To which my internal reply has too often been, "Did I have one?"

At some pivotal point after Ken & I met, my now-husband bestowed upon me the wisdom of his five-fold way to achieve a fulfilling day off & I hold it to be true. While I had to date him for years to glean this zen formula, if you're reading this blog, I dare you to try it out for yourself:

1. Read something
2. Clean something
3. Make something
4. Exercise something
5. Learn something

So what does this have to do with this sumptuous drool-inducing photo above? Absolutely everything!

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As well as the five-fold plan works, I think there's one extra element for each of us--a bonus-bonanza so to speak--for an ultimately joyous weekend. For Ken, it might be some completely domestic project like aerating the lawn; for me, it involves hunting down crazy ingredients for an exotic dinner I've dreamed up. It takes two to tango.

So this Sunday morning my husband jumped out of bed nine-ish, while I spent a few more blissful hours dozing in & out of NPR, then read a few more chapters from "Heat" by Bill Buford (the tales of a writer/critic/wanna-be-chef adventures duking it out behind the scenes at Babbo. Good stuff.) For breakfast, we warmed up a couple of tamales from my friends at Villa Victoria in Columbia City (por que no? that's standard fare for desayuno at any bus station in Mexico I've ever waited at), & in between bites we hashed out our plans for the day.

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Ever since finishing the last chapter of "Eat, Pray, Love" on San Juan island, I've had an insistent craving for turmeric, garam masala & chana dal, so we decided to make the trek down the East Valley Highway to Kent for a little Punjabi lunch. The rest of the day's menu would be left up to fate.

Punjab Sweets is not off the foodie-radar by any means, but its geographic obscurity adds to the thrill of the chase for destination dining--you feel like someone whispered a cardamom-scented secret in your ear & you took them up on it.

In fact, the first time we found Punjab Sweets, it was by complete happenstance. I'd planned for us to take an alternative Sunday stroll at Kent's Mill Creek Earthworks Park, but fat raindrops lobbed at our windshield minutes before we hit the parking lot. What else to do then, but look for lunch? And while the many fine taquerias caught our attention, we held out on our grumbling stomachs, scanning the strip malls for the makings of a memorable meal. Fate took good care of us that day.

Ken is a tough critic when it comes to south Asian food after all his years cheffing at the Mandalay, where Microsoft transplants would bring their mums straight off the plane from Bombay for dinner. Imagine their astonishment to find that my Irish/Czech/Ukranian American husband made their Sri Lankan lamb chops when they came back to give their compliments to the kitchen...

I took the photos for this blog while Ken's job was to help decode dishes, like this mysterious rosy condiment ( "Hmmm. Tamarind pulp.") that appeared beside our Dahi Bhalay, a saucy Indian rendition of falafel, only made with lentils & served with a spoon. We've both weighed-in on the soul-food rating scale & this place definitely has a unanimous thumbs up. A thali plate--three entrees of your choice served up in pint-sized bowls along with steaming roti's off the griddle, rice, pickled vegetables & a glistening doughnut of gulab jamun christened in a sugary syrup--will set you back $12.50. Order this & an appetizer, & you're as good as gold for a party of two.

Favorites so far include Baingain Bhurtha, meltingly slow-cooked eggplant with baubles of peas & tomatoes; Aloo Gobi, cauliflower & potatoes melded together with dig-down-to-the-roots flavors of roasted cumin & coriander; their house Daal, urad beans cooked with such love that I could easily substitute it for mac n' cheese as my new favorite comfort food. That's saying *a lot*.

Proprietor Iqbal Dha made a choice not to become another Indian all-you-can-eat buffet, but to create an oasis of made-to-order authentic regional food gleaned from recipes handed down from family in addition to studying under chefs formally in her native land. Everything resonates with freshness, & from reading deeper into Punjab's website, I see that they support Washington farmers by buying their green veg locally--Oh my gosh! An Indian restaurant for locavores! No wonder this food pulls my heartstrings.

And yes, I didn't even wax poetic about their namesake. Fudgey confections imbued with rosewater, cream, pistachios--I highly recommend a sampling from their jewel-like case. We were too dang full this time around to think about dessert, but let me tell you they are worth the trip alone, especially if you have an exotic sweet tooth.

But the soul-boosting-bonus-bonanza doesn't end at PJ's... You need only to look across the street to find a whole other world of ethnic delights: Valley Harvest International Market.

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You like to cook Mexican food? You're in luck. Thai, Vietnamese, Polish food on your menu? Look no further. Wanna make a little African Fufu? These guys have you covered. Valley Harvest is like Viet Wah meets SAARS Market meets Lenny's in Renton (the craziest grocery store of all) with everything under the sun except that they didn't carry candle nuts for the sambal bajak Ken was yearning to whip up.  Well you can't have everything...

Every time I spun to the next shelf, palpable flavors ran through my mind & raced back to cookbooks for hard-to-find ingredients--are we stocked up on amchoor, mole, pierogi & kimchee? Frankly, it's a little overwhelming, but unlike when we spend an hour perusing the wares at "Whole Paycheck", we spent $40 on close to forty items, rather than four.

Kent may bring up notions of hygienic 'burbs, but Valley Harvest is the single-most diverse grocery store I've ever visited. The conversations I overheard from aisle to aisle were like a jazz arrangement of bass-thrums, high-notes, percussion & rhythm layered upon one another in a linguistic ensemble.   

And while I don't recommend traversing the muddy trails at the Earthworks Park which originally prompted our first visit  to Kent (at least this time of year), I whole-heartedly encourage making this foodie pilgrimage that criss-crosses the globe. You don't need a passport, only a quarter tank of gas & a willingness to hit the open road. Do it.

Punjab Sweets:  
23617 104th Ave SE C   Kent, WA 253.859.3236

Valley Harvest International Market:
23636 104th Ave SE   Kent, WA  253.856.8462