Flutie Flakes. Wikipedia Image.

Last weekend, a friend invited me to tag along with her on a food writer’s retreat.

….      ….

“Oh, what the heck,” I figured. I needed to get away, the idyllic island location appealed, and I reckoned the food would be good. As one might gather from my rather sporadic posting frequency on this blog, I tend to vacillate in my level of effort and interest with writing. I remember all but hearing my high school English teacher’s heart breaking when I told her I was entering college as an engineer. I later became a geology major, but it’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax as to how I came to own a yoga business. Another time.

Not ten bites into my meal, I became acutely aware of just how much of a Northwest moment I was having. There I was, sipping a schooner of Anacortes-brewed red ale, enjoying my basket of fluffy halibut with accompanying fries browned to crispy perfection, looking out onto foggy Penn Cove, and discussing a Twitter-spawned, short-lived boycott of Amazon.com.

Although the ceiling in Toby’s Tavern was dominated by the 40-ish foot crewboat that literally spanned the length of the Coupeville joint, a few things leapt out at me from the sea of kitsch that engulfed us: the faded box of Flutie Flakes that I truly hoped was empty, the custom-embroidered Carhartt jacket available for sale hanging above the pool table, and the bumper sticker that hung above the restroom alcove reminding you that “No body is ugly after 2:AM”.

As we waited in what turned out was more-than-justified anticipation for our freshly baked chocolate chocolate chip nut brownie, I savored my surprisingly crisp coleslaw and reflected on our waitress’ charmingly earnest response when I asked her how she was today: “Oh you know, living the dream.”