Marmalade photo by Lenore M. Edman, www.evilmadscientist.com, via Flickr/Creative Commons.
Interested in food preservation? Canning Connections is a group who meet monthly on North Beacon Hill to can and preserve different foods. (Most recently, they made cranberry mustard and cranberry conserve.) This year Canning Connections is offering holiday gift certificates for $15. Certificates can be used at the January 22 beginner/refresher session, covering required equipment and the latest techniques for safe canning. The January session is suitable for those who have never tried preserving, as well as those who just need a refresher.
All sessions are held at the Garden House, 2336 15th Ave. S. Everything you need is supplied except your apron! For more information about sessions or certificates, contact Canning Connections at gaspari5@msn.com.
Vintage postcard image courtesy of Ewan Traveler via Flickr/Creative Commons.
Happy Thanksgiving (a day early) and thank you for reading the Beacon Hill Blog! I am thankful for our many wonderful readers.
As has become traditional here at the BHB, here is a recipe for a Thanksgiving treat: my grandma’s pumpkin pie recipe. I’ve used this recipe many times and it is very good. If you forgot to get evaporated milk, this recipe will save the day for you—–it doesn’t use it, and you won’t miss it.
Pumpkin Pie
Start with 1 recipe pie crust. Set the uncooked shell aside. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Put 2 cups pumpkin (or one small can) into mixing bowl.
add: 2 eggs beaten slightly (Egg Beaters work just fine if you want it to be lower-fat)
add:
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla
then add:
1 c. scalded milk (skim milk works fine if you wish to use it, and so does soy milk)
Mix all together. Pour into pie shell. Bake at 450 degrees for 12-15 minutes, turn the heat down to 350, bake 45 minutes. It’s done when you can stick a knife in the middle and it comes out clean.
Makes 1 pie. For two pies, use a large can of pumpkin and double everything else exactly.
Enjoy!
As always, I hope some of you will try this with a Seattle tradition: Emmett Watson’s famous Thompson Turkey, the recipe for which he used to publish every Thanksgiving in his Seattle Post-Intelligencer column (and later, in the Seattle Times). After reading it every Thanksgiving for years, I can never forget the final lines: “You do not have to be a carver to eat this turkey. Speak harshly to it and it will fall apart.”
(If you do try the Thompson Turkey, by all means let me know how it is!)
Photo by Dapper Lad Cycles in the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr.Bar del Corso on Beacon Avenue South is featured in the annual Seattle Met Best Restaurants list for 2012. Writer Kathryn Robinson says “[Seattle’s] soul resides in the mom-and-pop neighborhood restaurants that dot the city like a starry constellation. Jerry Corso’s Beacon Hill pizzeria provides the blueprint for how it’s done.”
The only other Southeast Seattle restaurant mentioned is Columbia City’s Full Tilt Ice Cream.
This morning, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn will visit Beacon Hill’s Dearborn Park Elementary (2820 S. Orcas St) to honor its staff with a Super School award as part of the Fuel Up First with Breakfast Challenge. The Challenge is a joint initiative of Dorn, the Washington State Dairy Council, Share Our Strength, and Children’s Alliance.
In the Fuel Up First with Breakfast Challenge, all of Washington’s schools were challenged to change their breakfast programs to increase school breakfast participation by 50% during the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 school years. Schools that have made the greatest improvements will be awarded cash prizes.
During today’s event, parents and students will have breakfast with Superintendent Dorn at 9:30 a.m., followed by a ceremony at 10 a.m. in which Dorn will present the Super School award to Principal Angela Sheffey Bogan and the students of Dearborn Park. Dorn will also announce additional winners of the contest.
Quinces photographed by Franca Piccione, via Creative Commons/Flickr.This month’s Canning Connections workshop at North Beacon Hill’s Garden House on Tuesday, October 23, will feature a fruit that may be unfamiliar to some: quince. According to the Canning Connections folks, “A fruit prized in many cultures, quince is a relative of apples and pears (and roses). When cooked it turns a lovely shade of pink. It can be put up as jam, jelly, added to applesauce, preserved as slices in syrup and made into quince paste or “cheeseâ€. Persian and Moroccan cooks use quince in aromatic stews. It is a fruit that can be hard to find in stores and markets.”
All neighbors are welcome to drop by Tuesday’s workshop between 7:30-8:30 p.m. to sample previous canning efforts, pick up recipe sheets, and buy organic quince for $3 per pound.
Canning Connections comes to the Garden House, 2336 15th Ave. S., on the fourth Tuesday of each month. For more information, see the website.
As of earlier this month, the “Grand Opening” sign was still up in front of the former Luisa Taqueria — now being remodeled into Beacon Ave Sandwiches. Photo by Wendi Dunlap.
The space at the intersection of 15th and Beacon, where Luisa Taqueria opened for business but then closed for good only a few months ago, will soon reopen — this time, as a sandwich shop/deli: “Beacon Ave Sandwiches.”
Luis and Leona, owners of The Station coffee shop, will be opening the new shop later this year. Luis told the Beacon Hill Blog that the store will be “like something that would have been on Beacon Hill in the 1920s,” a place where customers can purchase sandwiches but also meats and cheeses by the pound.
Luis told the BHB he has a lot of ideas in mind for Beacon Ave Sandwiches, including sandwich names based on local landmarks and references. In a post on the Beacon Hill Blog Facebook page, he asks for “serious” suggestions from the community.
In just a bit over a year, North Beacon Hill has acquired an Italian restaurant, an Indian restaurant, two pubs (you can now get a burger without leaving the Hill!), and a taco trailer. Soon, these will be joined by the new sandwich shop. Things are changing rapidly in the neighborhood, aren’t they? After all these changes, what do you think we still need here on the Hill? Tell us in the comments.
Get your votes in for Southeast Seattle! Seattle Weekly‘s Voracious food blog is running their annual Snackdown, in which regions of Seattle compete for the Snackdown title as “Seattle’s best eating district.” This week, Southeast Seattle is up against West Seattle and White Center. You can vote on the website.
In this year’s competition, the suburbs are included, and some Seattle neighborhoods are lumped in with others. So, Beacon Hill is part of the “Southeast Super Region” along with the Central District, Madrona, Mount Baker, Georgetown, Columbia City, and Rainier Valley. Last year’s champion, White Center, gets paired with West Seattle. The Southeast wiped out the Northeast Super Region in a pre-competition qualifying round last week.
Of course, we know all about the great food that can be found on Beacon Hill and elsewhere in the great Southeast. Surely we can defeat the Westerners this week. The winner of this week’s competition will then face the winner of the competition between Downtown/Belltown/Pioneer Square/Sodo and the International District.
This is what the Oak building looked like in May. There have been more improvements since; tonight you can see the inside of the place, too. Photo by Wendi Dunlap.It’s been a long wait, with a few bumps on the road, but one more eating and drinking establishment is opening tonight at 8 p.m. on Beacon Hill: The Oak.
Owner Lisa tells us that the Oak (3019 Beacon Ave. S.) passed its health and fire inspections on Friday and after a weekend of “running around like mad doing last minute things,” the owners decided tonight would be the night.
The Oak is the second of two restaurant/bars to open recently after lengthy delays; the Tippe and Drague opened a few weeks ago further south on Beacon Avenue.
Photo by Maya83 via Creative Commons/Flickr.The Tippe and Drague Alehouse at 3315 Beacon Ave. S., which opened last weekend to a throng of thirsty Beaconians, recently filed a new liquor license application, adding an new endorsement that wasn’t on their earlier license application. The previous license applied for was “direct shipment receiver — in Washington only†(which allows them to buy beer and/or wine from federally certified wineries or breweries), “restaurant – beer and wine†(which allows them to sell beer and wine for on-premises consumption in conjunction with food sales). They are now applying to add an off-premises endorsement (which will allow them to sell beer and/or wine for off-premises consumption in original containers, as well as allowing them to sell tap beer to purchasers who provide their own containers, subject to certain restrictions.
The applicants are Tippe and Drague LLC, Melissa Cabal and Robert McConaughy, and the license number is 407765. As with all liquor license applications, if you wish to comment on the application to the Liquor Control Board, you can e-mail customerservice@liq.wa.gov.
