The Endive Chronicles

The first thing I need to tell you is that Steven Spielberg fueled my young imagination through a certain character by the name of Indiana Jones. Many a Friday night in elementary school my dear friend Kim and I would stay up much later than our parents would have liked, incessantly watching Indy retrieve the lost ark and solve clues in the grail diary. We turned our Barbie dolls from plastic sexpot into rough and tumble adventurers, pretending her flowered hat was instead a dusty fedora. I harbored dreams of studying archeology even after I learned that skimming under speeding trucks in pursuit of the lost ark was not part of the job.

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I was still attempting to convince my brain it was morning (think giant cup of coffee), when the phone rang last Monday. On the other end of the line was Phil with the happy news that would change our lives; after four years, we are moving back to Washington this May.

We have spent the last four years living in the Hamptons on the eastern end of Long Island and have never quite managed to make it feel like home. A northwest cliche through and through; I was a flannel clad teen who started mainlining espresso at the age of twelve (she types while chugging a giant cup of Italian Roast) . Like many northwesterners I have salmon in my blood, Hendrix on the brain and drizzling rain in my soul. With such strong feelings you may be surprised to find that for most of my life I took it all for granted. It took leaving to make me realize just how much I love my home.

For this weeks post, I have compiled an extremely paired down list of my favorite markets, restaurants and treats in the Puget Sound area to share with you. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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I would like to start off today by apologizing for the tardiness of this post. I have had a bit of a set back. As some of you may have gathered from the title, I had intended to thrill you with my recipe for Thai Style Ceviche. You may also have noticed that the featured photo is entirely devoid of actual fish, which leads us to today’s post. You see, I went to the fish market, purchased sole and brought it home. That is the moment when this weeks original post went terribly wrong.

First off, I should tell you that for the first two years I lived on this island I needed no fishmonger. Three doors down lived a family of fisherman who, oddly enough, could not stand to eat fish. Every few weeks or so we’d look out the window to see their mop topped children delivering bass, striper, flounder, tuna and clams to the neighborhood. The greatest part about their generous gift was that they were cleaned and filletted so impeccably that only the best fishmongers and chefs could compete. Sadly a year and a half ago they moved to Maryland, leaving me to drift aimlessly in a sea of substandard fish markets.

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