Very Fresh

Stevo came by with some beautiful Sea Urchins, seaweed is delicious as well.

Fresh Troll caught King Salmon from Westport, Washington, super nice.

Coppa

Mangalitsa Coppa ready to role, fantastic rich flavor.  Great marbling, cured and flavored with fennel seed.

Kartoffel the Mangalitsa

Much larger now and still cute?

Link goes to Lopez

After a ferry ride and short drive, here is Link as we were introducing her to Horsedrawn Farm on Lopez Island.    Her new home is all clean straw, and she has a group of 8 or 9 young hogs to mingle with next to her.  She has really filled out and looks like a Swallow Belly Mangalitsa, she probably is about 350#, live weight.  After settling in for a day or two, she will meet Angus, who is all Berkshire, he is young, but still around 500 # or so and growing.

So with any luck, they will do what pigs do and we will be expecting piglets in the fall sometime.  It will be interesting to see first hand what the F 1 hybrids will look like, as we have raised pigs of various color, body type, all with various degrees of Mangalitsa.  All of the pork was excellent, well marbled, very fatty and consistently better than any pork we have tasted.  The big dark Mangalitsas that were most recently slaughtered were truely fantastic, very dark, rich, flavorful meat (see below) with excellent marbling, just a shade or two lighter than beef.  We also did a good job finishing them with a no corn, high protein feed.  No lard shortage here.

Truely Local

We realized recently that all of our meats and poultry were produced either by ourselves, or someone we know, in the San Juan Islands, or only as far away as Ephrata,  in Eastern Washington.  The Mangalitsa Pork was raised here at the Inn.  The beef was raised down the road at Coffelt Farm, Lamb from Horse Drawn Farm on Lopez ( yes they mostly use horses instead of tractors), Eggs from Ruthie at Brightmeadow farm here on Orcas Island, poultry ( chicken, squab, quail, quail eggs from Bernie Nash, otherwise known as the Mad Hatcher.  All the shellfish is from either Buck Bay Shellfish or Judd Cove.  Mark Hoffman caught the Black Cod we are serving and the troll caught King Salmon came from Ecluelet on Vancouver Island.
While we always do our best to source local, quality products, it does not always fall into place, so it is very gratifying to have it all work out this way. 

The first 30 or so tomato plants are in the greenhouse.  It has warmed up a bit, finally getting day time temperatures into the 60's.  It may be too late for some of the fruit trees to be pollinated, but the bees are now officially flying.

Here is a shot of our newly planted garden outside of the kitchen.  Now that the area is fenced in, we are deer proof, everything is starting to take off, we have a mix of perennials and lots of culinary herbs, like various basils, thyme, sage, rosemary, lavender, chives, Bay, Artichoke, Nasturtiums, parsley, etc...

One of our spring favorite combinations, Local Morels and Ramps, served today with Troll Caught King Salmon from Ucluelet, British Columbia, not far at all from Orcas Island.

Tomorrow our little female Mangalitsa, Link, goes to Lopez Island for some piggy love.   She will be bred with Angus, a rather good looking young Berkshire boar.  So with any luck we will have some half Bershire - half Mangalitsa piglets.  Most likely we will only raise three of them here at the Inn.

Wood Fired Pizza

 

A nice Sunday afternoon pizza.  The plan is to have casual outside pizza, salads, beer, wine and dessert every Sunday, 12 - pm,  throughout the summer at the Inn, weather permitting.  This week with Mangalitsa Salami & Basil.  Also asparagus & sweet herb flatbread.

More Mangalitsa on it's way.  Two hogs hit the scales at 220# & 229#, finished on Bruce Dunlops corn free formula.  They will be on premise tomorrow.