Port Gamble
Port Gamble is always a great place to stop, stretch your legs a little, walk around the beautifully maintained old company town, snap a few photos . . . .and have some delicious locally made ice cream. (I had raspberry sherbet, sorry, it disappeared before I could photograph it for you.)
God blessed us with a gorgeous, cloud free day in the Pacific Northwest for my Mother’s birthday, and a great road trip, alhamd’allah!
(Yes, we can make a birthday spread out over a week or two in our family!)
Health Teams Close Kuwait Restaurants
Following hard on the heels of io81.com‘s recent post on Ma63am’estan comes a report from today’s Arab Times:
KUWAIT CITY: Inspection teams affiliated to the Capital branch of Kuwait Municipality launched a surprise inspection campaign in Al-Sabah Health Zone and sealed several illegal restaurants and groceries operating from within the premises of various health centers affiliated to the Ministry of Health, reports Al-Watan daily. Reportedly, a grocery was operating at the Center for Allergies without a license and none of its employees had health certificates to prove that they are free of diseases. Head of the inspection team Fadel Al-Sharhan said another illegal grocery was found operating from within the Psychiatric Hospital and its employees too did not have health certificates.
“It is ironical that the Ministry of Health is not doing its supervision duties within its own premises,” he said, adding “these health centers are visited by several people every day and we do not know what kind of food these groceries were selling and the workers could have been suffering from infectious diseases too.” Indicating that the inspections were ordered by Director General of Kuwait Municipality Ahmed Al-Sabih, Al-Sharhan said the inspections will continue till Wednesday.
3 Crabs in Sequim
In every country I have ever lived (there have been a few!) people have some way of saying “they must not be from around here.” In my home town, one of the ways is obeying the law – there is a very high value on conformance to a widely held value that the law is THE LAW.
Another way you can tell who is from around here and who isn’t is how words are pronounced. The town above looks like it would be pronounced See-qwee- im, but it’s not. It’s one syllable – Sqwim.
We took Mom to Sequim for her birthday, and out to the old 3 Crabs restaurant. The 3 Crabs has been there as long as I can remember, out at the end of the Sequim-Dungeness Road, and right on the Dungeness Beach. When we got there, the fog was just beginning to lift.
When you go to the 3 Crabs, if you are smart, you will eat CRAB! Dungeness crab is sweet, and very very pungent. Delicious!
Seafood Chowder:
Crabcake:
Crab Louis:
Open face crab sandwich:
And save room! They are also famous for their desserts, especially their pies:
You can read more about the 3 Crabs and see their menu here.
Ivar’s Acres of Clams
In Seattle, there are three restaurants, Ivar’s Acres of Clams (the original, established in 1938), Ivar’s Salmon House and Ivar’s Landing in Mukilteo, and several smaller, more casual, fast-food kind of Ivars, famous for fish and chips.
This was one very smart man. The first Ivar’s Acre of Clams was built next to the ferry terminal in Seattle and provided both oceanfront dining and a quick place to grab some fish and chips coming to and from the ferries. It was a Seattle landmark; everyone knew Ivar’s Acres of Clams.
He also did a lot of promotions, appearing on TV in his own ads, often singing. The ads were very very bad, so bad that everyone remembered them, so in fact . . . they were so bad that they were good.
(Photo courtesy Paul Dorpat from the HistoryLink.org collection of Pacific Northwest History.)
(Kuwait needs this Wikipedia kind of historical page, gathering data and stories before the old Kuwaitis are all gone, and their stories with them. This would be a great thesis program, getting this set up and running.)
Some of my earliest memories are meals at Ivar’s. As a child, visiting from Alaska, the whole of my father’s clan, aunts, uncles, cousins, would all gather at Ivar’s for a grand dinner. Later, as a starving college student, from time to time a kind aunt would invite us to dinner or lunch there, taking us out of the university environment. As a young married, it was the restaurant where my husband-to-be met my extended family for the first time. Ivar’s is full of memories, as well as good food!
To this day, I often meet my old friends at Ivar’s. The food standards remain high – good Pacific Northwest Seafood, prepared so that their flavors come through. Dungeness crab Louis, salmon and chips, prawns and chips, halibut and chips – even plain old fish and chips, fresh out of the deep fryer. Even Ivar’s fast food is delicious, and as well as the fish and chips you can get their great clam chowder, also smoked salmon chowder, and a salmon ceasar salad, or a shrimp or crab cocktail – at the fast food Ivars. Great quality food, not the supersize me kind of food.
These are photos of the original Ivar’s Acre of Clams:
This is what their seafood cocktails look like (YUMMMMMMM!)
This is one of their dine-in fast food places; there is a long line of people ordering!:
This is the Ivar’s motto:
The Mukilteo Landing Ivars suffered so much damage in a recent storm that they were closed for over a year as they remodeled to be able to seat more people:
This big fish is part of the interior:
You sit in this beautiful restaurant, inside or outside, and watch the Mukilteo ferry come in and out of the dock. The restaurant is right next to the dock, and also has a fast-food Ivars outside to sell fish and chips or chowder to all the people in line waiting for the next ferry.
Ivar Hagland isn’t alive anymore, but his restaurants live on, thriving, after all these years. The concept holds true – have a great product in a great location and the profits will follow. You can read more about his restaurants, and even look at their menus by clicking Ivar’s.
Anthony’s Beach Cafe, Edmonds, WA
These are the bathroom doors at Anthony’s Beach Cafe, in Edmonds, Washington. I am not going to show you any of their delicious food – they already have too many customers, and a long line of people waiting to get in and eat there, especially in this gorgeous summertime weather. Even in winter, Anthony’s is packed.
You would never see bathroom doors like this in Kuwait. But it would be fun to see a door with an abaya, and another with a dishdasha and gutra. 🙂
BBQ in Memphis
I love the Memphis airport. We sometimes arrive from Kuwait via Amsterdam at o-dark-thirty and the BBQ places are already open. Even if we are running for our next flight, there is usually one on the way where we can buy a quick BBQ sandwich to eat on the plane.
The Memphis airport is sometimes a scramble, our flight out leaving from the farthest gate from our flight in; we always get enough exercise to work off that sandwich in a heartbeat. And, for some reason, we often get upgrades out of Memphis, upgrades we haven’t even asked for. The flights are overbooked, and they just bump us up. No wonder I love Memphis! They treat us like old friends!
I just had to share the photo above with you – it’s taken at 7:30 in the morning, they already have customers lined up for BBQ and there are guys in the bar drinking beer. Memphis.
Cactus Flower in Pensacola
The Cactus Flower in Pensacola is usually the first place we go when we get to Pensacola. They have some of the best Mexican food you can find, freshly prepared, and you better get there early or you’ll have to wait a while for a table – the secret is out!
Located in a small strip mall undergoing some serious renovation, the Cactus Flower serves lunch and dinner. You’ll see all your friends there – we can’t go there without running into someone we know.
This is the chicken quesadilla. It is more than one person can eat! We took the rest home for another meal.
This is the three taco dinner; you can choose chicken, beef or pulled pork, or any combination of the above. It comes with a choice of beans (these are the smashed beans) and rice, too. Usually, I order this a la carte, because I can eat the three tacos, but not all the beans and rice, too, and I hate to waste.
This is the tostada dinner, which also comes with beans and rice. Delicious!
As for gaining weight, so far so good. Haven’t done a scale check, but the clothes still seem to fit and the waists aren’t too tight, so I guess I am keeping it off by lugging my baggage here and there, and keeping moving.
McGuire’s for Steak
“I just have a yearning for a steak,” I said to my son’s wife, as we sat in the kitchen chatting and thinking about what to do for dinner. “I know you want to go for a run tonight, but maybe tomorrow night.”
Here is what I have loved about staying with them. Five minutes later she came back to me and said she had talked with her husband and they thought going out for steak tonight would be a very GOOD idea, and they could run tomorrow night.
And the best steaks, they both recommended, were at McGuire’s.
When we got there, the huge parking lot was already full. The street parking all around McGuire’s was full. We dropped off my son and his wife and I went to park in one of the few places they have heard cars are never towed from: Sammy’s Club for Gentlemen. It was still early, and we didn’t get towed.
Because it was their weekly fun-run night, we had to wait for a table. As we waited, runners finishing the run were running past us. Run six runs and you are eligible for the McGuire’s coveted green fun run shirt, with a shamrock on it. Woo hoooooo! I have heard there is a Hash House Harrier group in Kuwait that does something similar, but they change locations every run, whereas the McGuire sponsored runs all end up at – Maguire’s! They have free eats for the runners, who have to rehydrate in the McGuire’s bar.
There is another tradition at McGuires; customer write their name in felt pen on a dollar bill and staple it to the ceiling. The bar has an estimated $500,000 in dollar bills stapled to it’s ceilings, walls, pass throughs, etc. It is an amazing sight.
The steaks were magnificent. I had the peppercorn steak, and it was so big I took half of it home for the next day. It came with sides – your choice – garlic mashed potatoes, grilled vegetables, asparagas (my choice) and several others. The steaks were perfect, and the entire meal was worth every penny. They also have a good variety of seafood selections, and Irish selections, and a great selection of beer and wines.
Hurricane Risks
I wanted you to see a very scary photo, taken at The Oyster Barn. No, not the sign for the “Buoy’s” room (the other one is, of course, the “Gulls” room) but the marks on the wall from the floods resulting from the various hurricanes.
At the top is Hurricane Ivan, the most recent biggest, baddest hurricane to hit Pensacola. It caused billions of dollars in damage. People are still trying to fix damages to house and property caused by that hurricane, three years ago.
It’s a gamble, living near a sea coast. Hurricanes are an increasing worry in the gulf, and hurricane season lasts from the end of June to the end of November. Insurers, hit hard by both Ivan and Katrina, and by new legislation, are pulling out of Florida, fleeing like rats.
Tuscan Oven – Pensacola
We have food prejudices in my family, and one of our prejudices is against thick crusted pizzas. We like thin crust pizzas, and we like them baked in a wood burning oven. So when my son and his wife recommended we go to the Tuscan Oven, I knew we were in for a treat.
The pizzas were fine. We all ordered them with a minimum of cheese, and that’s the way they came. I had the Pizza Putanesca, all vegetables, with capers and artichokes and oh, it was totally delicious. My son and his wife had a much larger specialty pizza, and they, too, ate every bite. The Tuscan oven is a WOW in my book.
And here was the starter – Yes, I know it looks like chopsticks, but those are tiny little breadsticks:
This place is worth a trip to Pensacola all on it’s own!
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