Eating local: Bellingham's Fall Harvest Dinner

[Jenise]

Yesterday evening we attended a Fall Harvest Dinner, a Slow-Food-Movement-Meets-Mayberry kind of sit-down dinner for about 400 staged in the old railroad depot downtown and designed to celebrate the bounty of food produced by local farmers. Various local caterers, food purveyors, farmers, ranchers and even manufacturers (nationally known Wood/Stone wood-fired ovens are a local product, and they sent their chef and mobile unit).

The cocktail hour consisted of local wines and these passed hors d'ouvres: fresh Puget Sound oysters on the halfshell from Taylor Shellfish Farms who provide to restaurants nationwide, two different fresh vegetables pizettas, bison sliders, and cups of a very delicious gazpacho. There was live music, and the smells of many good things baking and grilling. The tables were set communally as befit the occasion with large baskets of fabulous raw produce for snacking and fresh breads from several local artisanal bakeries.

We then sat down to the rest of the meal which was served in six mini-courses. They were: various lightly pickled vegetables; a salad of fall greens with raspberries (our county is the largest raspberry producer in the nation); a wonderfully messy vegetable lasagna of butternut and banana squashes with cauliflower, chanterelles and a thick ricotta layer; fresh peaches, beets and basil tossed with white wine (I would have been completely happy to eat nothing but these peaches); roast pork with fingerling potatoes, and finally huge slabs of king salmon, wood-fire roasted, with a hot sauteed fresh corn relish.

For dessert, Mallard's ice cream was served on waffle squares with fresh blackberries.

For all that Bellingham lacks skillful high end restaurant dining--well, high end dining period, and that's compounded by there being a lack of locals who know what that is--every single thing we ate last night was grown, raised, farmed, caught or made right here in our county by people who are our extended family, friends and neighbors, and we lack for nothing when it comes to our determination to provide for our own needs and take pride in what we accomplish.

This, THIS, is why we moved to a small town. I hope if something like this happens where you live, you take part.

Thanks Jenise for this report.....I only wish something like this would come to Redding. We have olive oil, wine, almonds, organic beef, chickens, organic farms - too many to mention, and the most important part, people willing to help put this on. It is indeed a "Slow Movement", but I see it coming.
Glad you had a good time and appreciated the effort!

Brava, Jenise.

[Jenise]

Thanks Jenise for this report.....I only wish something like this would come to Redding. We have olive oil, wine, almonds, organic beef, chickens, organic farms - too many to mention, and the most important part, people willing to help put this on. It is indeed a "Slow Movement", but I see it coming.
Glad you had a good time and appreciated the effort!

Redding is the perfect place for such a thing. Like Bellingham, it's kind off of on it's own, so far from the next big town that it has had to be totally self-sufficient, and it's the hub of a larger area with excellent agricultural resources from which to get contributions. From what I understand, this is the second year for this dinner, and the first year when they were feeling their way through it, everything was donated. This year they doubled the size of the event and were able to pay the farmers for about half. Next year, they hope to double it again and pay for everything. All it will take for Redding is someone with an idea (nudge nudge) and the will to pull it off.