!

During the trips in the 1950's and 1960's to visit my aunt and grandmother on Vashon, I pretended to be a native Northwesterner to anyone who would listen. The summer drive from the Midwest to Washington was by car, through western Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, arriving five or six days later at the Fauntleroy ferry dock. Ahead of us were nights spent sleeping on the screened-in porch, using the outhouse, frigid water skiing, making driftwood mobiles, picking strawberries and currents, reading Reader's Digest Condensed Books, and taking Harlan's bus to the Pike Place Market to spend our hard-earned money. Seattle's reputation as a culturally hip spot was still decades away and the Market's gradual drop in popularity had yet to bring it close to becoming a high rise shopping mall.

Pike Place Market—July, 2007






Pike Place Market, 1911 Photo courtesy of U. of Washington Library





After Mom and Daddy moved from Sioux  City to Vashon in 1969, Bridget, Jon and I visited in the summer—usually for four to six weeks. As an adult, Puget Sound re-opened the door of visual beauty and  unspoken possibilities for me. A mountain—a postcard, white-capped, Swiss Alps mountain in the back yard! Music in the streets, overheard conversations in a foreign language, digging clams, grilling fresh fish on the beach, eating Bing cherries in backyard trees, good coffee, Lavender's corner grocery store, drinking Market Spice tea, buying inexpensive Oriental china at Pier One, lunch at the Spaghetti Factory—all mind-spinning adventures to a suburban dweller from the Midwest. Another exotic constant during our annual visits was at least one Dutch Baby production. (Here is a link to a recent Seattle Times article about and recipe for Dutch Babies.)

Claimed by local lore as originating at Manca’s, a Seattle restaurant, Dutch babies are oven-baked puffed pancakes. There is an unconfirmed story that Mr. Manca would prepare these puffed up pancakes in individual sizes, and that his children gave them the nickname Dutch babies to differentiate them from the larger pan-sized German pancake. So anyone out there who is making brunch on Mother's Day—give a Dutch Baby a chance.


Dutch Babies

Remove pan with butter from oven and pour batter into hot melted butter.

Return to oven and bake until well-browned—15-20 minutes. Divine with powdered sugar, fresh fruit, maple syrup, blackberry syrup, or strawberry jam.