Weekly Update: June 22 - 28 — The Wine in the Pines

I have this flaw where there are times I get too comfortable with my environment - during the quarantine I realized that I experience the opposite of cabin fever and instead became mildly agoraphobic. I’m not scared to leave my home but I’ve embraced the joys of staying indoors to the point where I refuse to leave even for the most simplest of tasks. Not wanting to make a habit out of this, I made an effort to get out at least three times this week.

My first venture outside this past week was a journey to a specialty grocery store in Bellevue. My kitchen has been filled with exotic ingredients lately and the best resource in the Puget Sound area for all things rare and unique (to an average american) is the famous asian grocery store, Uwajimaya. Unfortunately the store isn’t particularly close to us so I elected to take the bus there to see how public transportation has been doing since the quarantine.

The first thing that shocked me when getting on the bus was passengers can now only enter/exit from the backdoors, not the front. The second thing was that all bus fares have been suspended until further notice so all trips are free. Third, every other seat was blocked off to help with social distancing. Finally, the fourth thing that shocked me - I was the only person on the bus. For the nearly 45 minutes ride to the store, I was the only passenger so it was like I had a giant Uber to myself.

Despite the bus being completely empty, the store certainly wasn’t. Masks are required when inside but it was hard to do ‘social distancing’ as people darted through aisles and hastily pushed their carts past people at uncomfortably close distances. I arrived earlier than planned so I took my sweet time browsing down the aisles but perhaps with COVID, I should have quickened my pace like everyone else but I can’t help it, I love this store. I primarily like to frequent Uwajimaya because of the wild game meats they have in stock like wild boar, duck and bison but I also feel they have the best selection in seafood as well. All the seafood offered here is extremely fresh and affordable where they even have live crabs, shellfish and smaller fish in tanks for you to pick and choose. I was tempted to buy a pound of fresh clams but instead opted for a cut of salmon and halibut (the butcher gave me a deal where I only paid $16 for 2lbs of halibut).

Later in the week I had to do another wine run in Seattle and my pickup location was two blocks away from the now famous CHAZ/CHOP in Capitol Hill so I made time to swing by and check it out. I can say from my own personal experience walking through CHAZ, the Fox News hype about this place is 100% overplayed and exaggerated. CHAZ/CHOP is more of a larger, unregulated farmers market/art fair than anything. Stalls cluttered the area of people selling jewelry, shirts, food, and I would guess that over 80% of the people were spectators like me. A large majority of the people roaming through CHAZ were taking videos or photos of the area and then leaving - like me. There is actually a lot of security there too - not in the form of police or military but an old school village style of neighbors taking shifts observing the crowd and keeping watch.

After my brief detour to an ungoverned part of Seattle, I stopped by both Lark and Travolta to pick up wine then headed back home. At current count, Mr. Mustang and I now have over 150 bottles of wine in our collection but lets see how it takes until we need to make another wine run.

Saturday/Sunday

The third venture we were supposed to have outside of our condo was a boat rental I booked nearly two weeks ago but the weather has a mean sense of humor. Friday was a spectacular beautiful sunny day reaching the low 80s, Saturday and Sunday however were two cold, rainy days in the low 60s. It is common knowledge to all locals that June in Seattle is considered a false summer and the sunny weather doesn’t really start until July 5th however I keep forgetting this little known fact. Since our planned lake cruise was cancelled, we spent the 17th weekend in a row indoors where Mr. Mustang started to build his brand new computer and wrote up several recipes and excursion guides for the sister blog I run, Cascadia Native.

Due to the dreary weekend, I tried to brighten our evening by making a classic NY style cheese pizza for dinner. I quickly found that same with my lack of talent in baking bread, I don’t have the natural ability to make pizzas either. Every attempt ends up being flatbread instead of actual pizza with a puffy crust. One of my biggest flaws I feel is not using a pizza stone and instead I still use a relic from the past in the form of a pizza pan. The end result when using a pizza pan is a crust that is pale and wimpy compared to the ideal qualities of a bottom crust with ‘leoparding’ spots. Wanting to cook like a pro, I immediately put in an order for a real pizza stole and peel where I hope to retry this recipe later next week.