BellyHamster Bellingham Food Blog

Crab Cakes

Bellyhamster — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:53:17 +0000

It’s dungeness crab season here in the Pacific Northwest. Who makes the best local crab cakes? I’ve yet to find them on the menu of the places I eat (which are not the fanciest places in town). I always thought crab cakes were a wonderful easy local food for restaurants o make with local resources.

Anyone eaten any local crab cakes?I’d hate to have to drive all the way to Dungeness.

Eating Late Dinner in Bellingham

Bellyhamster — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:34:51 +0000

I’m a night owl. I get up late, eat late, and work late. Sometimes by the time I pause for lunch it’s already almost 4pm. So I eat lunch at 4, starving. And that leaves me around 9pm looking for dinner. What to do?

It seems Bellingham is not a late diner town.

For a single diner looking for dinner after 9pm, what are the options? Most places look like date-night at that hour. Many are closing their kitchens. Any suggestions? Horshoe cafe is not my idea of clean, and the highway Dennies-like places don’t serve what i consider to be food.I wish this place was for real, we need a good old style diner in Bellingham. I never tried La Fiamma at that late an hour… is the ful kitchen open? They have awesome food…

Bite of Bellingham

Bellyhamster — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 23:14:05 +0000

Stopped by the booths for Bite of Bellingham (how could I avoid them?). They had closed several blocks in town for this event.

Opinion? Too many vendors considered it a chance to sell stuff on the street, as opposed to the stated mission of exposing local cuisine to the public. Not all, but too many. It was sort of like the Farmer’s Market extended through town, even though the farmer’s market was going on at the same time.

Tickets were $1 each, sold through a central booth (so someone has a full accounting of the day’s profits). Vendors set their prices in tickets. A coffee was 1 ticket (one dollar) BUT it was a mini-cup.. probably 4 oz. That’s not a special opportunity to try their coffee. In fact, the store is right there on Railroad (one block away) and a 16oz coffee would have been under $2 freshly made.

Also Nimbus should be told that not-thin-enough sliced prosciutto, out on a warm summer day, does not make for a good impression. Other notables were shaved ice for $3 (with non-local blue/yellow/red food dyes, naturally), 1/3 pizza slizes from Cicitti’s for $1, Boundary Bay did not have any homemade root beer despite it being in the brochure. Most things were mini, and $3 to $5 was common. A really small desert from Mt. Bakery, for example, for $3.

I’m sure there are plenty of reports of what was good, so read other reports not just mine. Next year I’ll probably pass on the chance to participate, unless it changes to be more of a chef’s presentation (which is what it sounded like to me in the brochure) and less of a street vendor opportunity.

Bellyhamster Food Blog

Bellyhamster — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 23:26:24 +0000

It’s just started but it will be my food blog. I live in Bellingham, Washington, just south of the Canadian border but 90 miles north of Seattle. We live along the bay, looking out at islands and overshadowed by little and big mountains, which send streams and rivers our way as the glaciers melt and the rain falls on the western slopes. Books call this area “the temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest” and that is apparently a very good description.

But I don’t live off the land eating snails and mushrooms, so this won’t be that kind of blog.