I know, I know. It’s been about two months since my last post – many apologies! For about half of July, we’ve been on the road, seeing family & out camping – for the remaining half of the month, we’d been vastly occupied packing up our apartment and experienced the throes of moving!
My husband & I had a short layover in Seattle before meeting up with my family. Luckily it overlapped with Il Corvo‘s weekday lunch service (the times that we have stopped in Seattle, would coincide on the weekend)! We were in for a treat.
What is Il Corvo, might you ask? This establishment serves the most life-changing handmade fresh pasta in all of Seattle/possibly the West Coast. My husband & I would frequent the pasta shop in its early days of inception (co-existing inside a gelateria behind Pike Place Market) so much that Mike (the chef/owner) would come to be recognise us wherever we may be in the city (i.e. browsing the specialty food items in Pike Place’s DeLaurenti’s, etc.). Since we’ve moved to SoCal; we hadn’t been able to see their new permanent location until this most recent trip.
Pictured above are the beautiful pasta-making tools on display, the marble work bench that doubles as communal dining/seating during service, the wonderfully sunlit space (thanks to the gorgeous Pacific Northwest summertime) & my dish: mafalda with white beans, boquerones, parsley, lemon & garlic. Heavenly. All I have to say is, if you truly appreciate amazing pasta – this place is worth going to.. Hands down one of the top 5 incredible food places in Seattle (in my opinion). If you’re into pizza, I’ll have you know – Mike has opened another establishment – Pizza Gabbiano – Roman-style pizza by the kilogram. I, for one, am looking forward to checking it out – & am curious if any of you guys have ventured to Corvo or Gabbiano (which, can I take a moment to appreciate the names of these places?? Corvo means crow in Italian & gabbiano means seagull – love it!).
If this post were a complete food documentation of our trip; it would be absurdly long. However, here are some highlights:
My mother went to her local orchard & picked 30+ pounds of Bing cherries for me to bring to my in-laws (I know, what a sweetie my mom is, albeit a wee bit overboard in generosity!) – in which a cherry pitting party ensued. The four of us hunkered down and filled 7 gallon ziplock bags of pitted cherries! As the upcoming days coincided with the Fourth of July & a family birthday (in which the birthday patron had a strong penchant for cherries), I could not resist making a pie.. or three (maybe I do take after my mother afterall)! Pictured above is a gluten-free blueberry peach pie that is looking quite patriotic & tastes like sweet sweet freedom (;
Many a day was spent visiting, playing games (namely Carcassone & Nertz) and also taking some Northwest beach walks – pictured above is en route to Glass Beach in Port Townsend, WA. Glass Beach gets its name because it’s where remnants of Victorian glass shards (back when they used to dump glass-trash into the port) tumbled up & down the beach over the past century turning into sea glass. Little known fact: I adore beachcombing for sea glass.. I could do it for hours. Pictured above is my sea glass haul which is my biggest load yet! I must concede that I did have some help from my husband & his parents with the sea glass collecting. I even found some thick lavender-slate-coloured glass that we suspect that’s come from a shipwreck – fascinating to speculate upon. I think what attracts me to sea glass collecting, is that these little pieces of human-manipulated silica-turned-trash, have tumbled away daily for decades – in a sense, eroding away back into the beach and sea. Not any two pieces are the same : the composition of glass, the hues and tints, the way that the piece has originally broken, has yielded a unique piece of glass. A lot occurs on any given beach aside from the obvious tides coming in & going out: beach frequenters of all ages, dogs, maybe even a landslide, beached sea mammals, etc etc. How long does a single piece of sea glass lay undetected next to other pebbles and rocks before being picked up? Where and how did it migrate along the way? Kind of a metaphor for life.
Admittedly, I don’t have a lot of photos of our camping adventures – my phone/camera was often on the verge of being completely out of battery and also, wouldn’t you say that constantly being on your phone while out in nature detracts from the experience? I certainly think so. Pictured above is the morning tide out, exposing these small islands enveloped in a glorious sea fog in Salt Creek Recreation Area in Clallam County, WA out on the Olympic Peninsula. This was a really neat campground – our campsite was close to the beach (you could hear waves crashing into the shore at night), there were some fun trails (even encounters with deer trampling through trails and empty campsites!), interesting bluffs & a sweet stretch of tidal pools – but prominently on Tongue Point. You could even see British Columbia from the shore (which is why this was a strategically-placed WWII fort site called Camp Hayden). Also pictured, are some interesting wild mushrooms that I came across on a hike which only makes me nostalgic for foraging for golden chanterelles (they show up during autumn)! I love walking through forests, there’s so much to see when you take the time to pay attention. Lastly, I’ll leave you a picture of some adorable baby crabs that we’ve found while exploring tidal pools. Summer adventures at their finest.
crumb & steep 