Spanakopita and the Olympic Peninsula

I made some spanakopita on Friday as a snack for an all day Sunday exploration of the Olympic Peninsula. I was a little worried that after making them, and then freezing them, and then defrosting them in the car they would deteriorate into something less than edible. They did taste and smell great right out of the oven, but the real test would be the road trip on Sunday.

On some Saturday mornings I make a brunch meal for some friends of mine, this past Saturday was one such day. I wanted to make french toast using brioche bread, but being the consummate procrastinator, I ended up using some fresh baked french bread from a local grocery instead.

I made a caramel sauce from scratch, using 2 cups sugar, 2tbs butter, a shot of cacao liqueur, about a half cup of brown sugar, and some heavy whipping cream. The stove I happened to be using that day was of the electric variety, and it has two available cooking temperatures: off and supernova.
Melting the sugar into liquid without burning it was challenging, and even though it did not burn it had many hard crystal hunks in it. For a very brief moment I thought about throwing it out and starting over, but then I decided to put it in a blender and blend those crystal hunks out. It worked out fairly well, leaving only very small pieces left over that acted as little intense flavor crystals in the caramel sauce. It was delicious!

For the french toast frying dip, I used eggs, cultured butter milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder and soda, and a little sugar. I whipped it all together in the blender, put it in a bowl and set it aside until I was ready to use it.

I toasted some walnuts in a dry pan, sliced fresh bananas and made fresh whipped cream to top it with.

As a side dish, I sauteed onions and garlic in butter and then made scrambled eggs. I had some coffee with mine.



Later that day, after some drinking and karaoke, I added some salt to the left over caramel sauce and dipped some left over walnuts in as a late night snake. If you have ever had salted caramel, this was just like that (but in my very humble and biased opinion, way better! Well, except maybe for this).

Sunday came, and it was a rainy day in Washington, well at least on the peninsula. I got to be the driver, which is a rare treat for me these days, while the owner of the car got to have a very nice lazy Sunday nap ride on a overcast day, all warm wrapped up in a blanket. It was supposed to be a sight seeing day, but the overcast weather was hardly cooperating. We took a lunch break in Port Angeles at a Mexican place, it was rather nice even if the place had very over sanitized restrooms. There was also a store, Curtis Interiors, that had a large golden elephant as the mascot. That makes two recent times out I have seen this mythical magical beast in some form, sort of a trend don't you think? What in the world could this possibly mean?

The Golden Elephant

While I did have a rough plan of visiting the Sol Duc mineral hot springs, the cold rain was not having any of that. So I had to audible to another plan, which was just go to the coast. However, on the way I saw a turn for Cape Flattery and thought that would be a nice alternative. So I took it.

A view of what Cape Flattery may look like on a clear day

The road ran through a few small towns, a few stinky bays, and hugged the north coast of the peninsula and reminded me of the road to hana on Maui. Painfully slow and curvy, but very intense in cinematic scenary at the same time.

It was a very poor audible on my part. The end of the road still had a 3/4 mile trail to hike to get to the actual view. The trail was very muddy from the copious amounts of recent rain, I was wearing flipy flopies, and my co-pilot was on doctors orders to refrain from hiking. So we had the spanakopita as a snack.

This was it, the moment of truth and dread I was waiting for. Would they be plain tasting spinach wrapped in soggy phyllo? Or would they be edible? After the first bite we knew, they were still tasty and somewhat flaky; completely and totally edible. Success!

The trip back home was just as good if not better. Lots of Neil Diamond on the playlist, and I got to become reacquainted with the Thompson Twins (which oddly enough came on right after we spotted a double rainbow in the sky that was for the moment clear.)

We made our way to Port Townsend, where after a momentary lapse of recollection, we made our way to the Water Street Ale House for a drink and dinner.

We orderd dinner (I had the seafood chowder while my co-pilot had the mac and cheese) and we both ordered the in house brewed beer called Swag light (which was much more like non-light disgusting blah). The food was at least passable; my chowder was more like thin flavored sea broth than anything else. The mac and cheese was redeemable only in the fact the elbow pasta was done to perfection and was in a very thin but great tasting garlic sauce.

We set course for the ferry at Kingston, to take us back to our homes. After a long day, the gentle rocking of the speeding ferry cross the water at night was the perfect background for the story of "The Miserable Withering Richard the Wretched and the Kingdom of Happiness". But that is a story for another time (like after I edit it a few good times).

Pretty Lanterns at the Water Street Pub.