Hello---!! Here I am again and this time I want to say a little bit
about POULSBO.
They call it a town and it is rich in facilities—it has a
library, a fire station, a post office and all the things that a good town
should have. But it feels more like a
village. And that’s part of what is
great about it.
Before I go further I have to tell you that when I visited
the library recently the “greeter” was sitting behind the front desk wearing a
headband with two delightful pink fluffy butterflies dancing on stalks six
inches above it. This lady (who is a
mature citizen) has a whole drawer full of these topknots apparently. I didn’t
have the camera—why take a camera to the library—because you’re now in POULSBO
that’s why! She says she does it for the
children; I think she is one in fact and loved her for her headband and the
fact that she followed me around the library being helpful. I am finding that people are kinder here and
much more laid back. Everybody here
loves LIVING here and it softens their outlook it seems to me? The guy in the
fire station came out to our car to take a good look at the bloody thumb before
directing me to the hospital. (When you move, you don’t
know where the emergency room is until you damn well need it now!)
Back to Poulsbo: Recently
I chatted with an Insurance Agent, (I won’t even bother to document that saga
but suffice it to say it took six weeks of work), and he told me that the town
was SUPPOSED to be called PAULBO. BO is apparently the Viking name for town and
presumably the guy naming the new encampment PAUL? Who knows if that is true? Rumor
(rumour- we have UK readers you know,) also has it that someone screwed up and
got the spelling wrong converting it to POULSBO. I have no idea if any of that is true, and I
don’t really give a hoot anyway. I’m just not going to tell Paul otherwise he
might get all proprietary over it.
So—VIKING – yes—the town has definitely a connection to
these warriors and I haven’t researched yet as to why… frankly I’ve been too
busy trying to find affordable faucets and sinks!
As I drive down into the town from the little yellow house,
I come across this big thumping statue and its welcome in some Germanic
language.
Splendid guy huh? I
hope he didn’t wear all that gear to go raping and pillaging, as it would
definitely cramp his style methinks! So
I drive along “Viking way” frequently and muse on all these things.
Poulsbo village itself is small and quaint and
folksy and clustered around one main street which is most unoriginally called FRONT STREET. (There is no BACK STREET-- ???)
Sadly it was late in the afternoon and the fall sun was
already lengthening the shadows.
It sits on the
waterfront and of course has a small harbor which bristles with boats.
Apart from the organizations
I mentioned at the top of this blurb, the main hub of activity in Poulsbo is on
“front street” including more eateries than the town can support. We are excited to note that a new INDIAN
eatery is opening up next week on “front street” and we hope they’re good and
can survive. Needless to say, Poulsbo is
a tourist destination and therefore much quieter in the colder months, making
it challenging for some businesses to survive during those periods. We even have a farmer’s market for about
eight months of the year where people gather to sell hand-made art, (bird
feeders and stuff like that) baked
stuff, cheeses and of course local produce.
I chatted with a lady last weekend who makes delicious goat cheese and
who wants to learn how to make Stilton, which
I do with some degree of success! (I
miss cheese-making but simply don’t have the room or time for it at present.)
One of the most famous
locations in Poulsbo is SLUY’s bakery. I
don’t know how long SLUY’s has been in business but it operates on
old-fashioned principles and produces pretty delicious stuff. It is always so busy that it’s hard to take a
photo of the counters inside.
Here is Paul gazing into the
window; as you may know Paul is a chocaholic, (registered and should attend meetings
regularly-not sure if even a 12 step would fix him). If he can’t get chocolate, sugar acts as a
mildly soothing substitute. So doesn’t he look happy?
Inside
there are about four filled counters of sugar-high materials.
If you look closely you’ll
see that the yellow cookies are in fact topped with happy faces, the blue ones
are yucky faces. Who buys cookies with yucky faces on them? “I am
sorry you broke your leg, have some yucky-faced cookies, it will make you feel
better?” The mind boggles. Happily
one of the newest businesses on Front Street is a jeweler (jeweller) and he’s
busy working on a favorite bracelet which I broke. SEE, tiny village it may be but it has
everything we need.
The main road into the town
from the ferry service (the ferry is about 17 miles from the village), is a
fast moving highway and you know you’ve reached Poulsbo when you hit Central Market.
Now I have NO IDEA how a
fiddly little town like Poulsbo came to have a grocery store like Central
Market but it’s one of the reasons we moved here, so I am in a total state of
acceptance about it. Why would a market
be so important? Well I like to cook a
lot and that means I want to buy all kinds of things to cook WITH as it
were.
Central Market is frankly AY
MAY ZING!
Here are two thirds of the
produce department. I can’t get it all into one photo or even two!
The market is very large and
open 24 hours a day. Within the portals
of the market you can find:
- · A coffee shop that sells freshly made biscuits and gravy…(I’m going to have ‘splain that to UK folks. Think scone with béchamel sauce heavily laced with sausage pieces.)
- · A British section with the Brit answer to chocolate chip cookies, i.e Digestive biscuits (that’s a cookie in USA) and Marmite!
- · An Asian section with freshly made tofu, and every kind of ingredient, many of which I am still unfamiliar with. That sentence ends with a preposition and Mrs. Saunders, erstwhile English teacher is turning over in her – well you know!
- · A machine that produces fresh tortillas every day
- · The biggest salad bar you’ve ever seen
- · Artizan bread galore
- · Herbs and spices by the pound
- · Teas by the pound
- · A deli counter with 20 types of olives and four kinds of capers
- · A cheese counter where there are a dozen different kinds of goat, and sheep cheeses by the pound in brine. (Actually shown on the other side of the olive bar)
- · A regular cheese counter with cheese from all over the world.
- · About 10 freshly made soups, (Thai chicken curry -- num!)
- · A kitchen with two Japanese ladies making fresh sushi
- · A sandwich bar
- · A hamburger grill
- · A Mexican food bar
- · Other items like pre-made lasagna that you can purchase and heat to eat
- · A pizza shop
- · Seafood (like calalamari and shrimp) that you can buy by the shovel full
- · A barbecue outfit with pulled pork and ribs and stuff
- · A counter where you can buy hand-made soap by the pound ! (There's a special guillotine on the counter!.)
- · And a little kitchen where you can take what you buy, heat it up and eat it!
It’s almost Halloween. I know you’ve seen orange pumpkins. I had never seen white and peach colored pumpkins but they’ve got them at the market. And by the way have they GOT pumpkins!
That sign in the middle of
the pile says Please DO NOT CLIMB! A
veritable mountain of pumpkins.
I myself am not a pumpkin
carver and I don’t eat pumpkin pie but there will be many of these carved into
macabre faces with candles lit inside them come Halloween, and a million little hungry kids looking for
candy from the neighbors. Hmmm, how come
Paul isn’t wandering around doing that?
I guess he’s a bit too tall?
And the status on Cooper’s Folly-----
The wrecking machines are now on-site the as I write, and the lovely Josh, who has a business called KAT TRAX (I sense a story there) is cutting down 100 trees, demolishing that moldy old shed (it took six runs in Paul’s truck to empty it) and dig trenches for a geothermal heating system. Amongst other things! (He has felled 60+ trees in two days.. talk about productive!) Tomorrow some trucks arrive to take away all the stumps. Later on some big lumber(ing) guys will come with more trucks to take away all the logs for which I am supposed to get a nice fat check-- (er cheque!)
By the way, the thumb is an
ugly mess, is still sore but I’ll live to fight another avocado pit.
And so it goes.
Thanks for reading!
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