24 Hours in Ferndale

OK, so it’s not Italy! But what the heck, it’s a trip out of town!  The story began last year before our trip to Italy, when I had become FB friends with Timothy. Tim was planning on travelling around Italy then returning home via Rome and as luck would have it, we would be in Rome at that time . Soooo…we should meet up, right???

As it turned out, Tim was not in Rome that long at the end of his journey, so our worlds did not collide at that time! That was last October, fast forward to May and we finally made that meeting happen at the beginning of June.

Ferndale, Washington, is a drive that takes anywhere between 1 ½ to 2 hours from Vancouver. Now…this is a small, farming oriented community so we weren’t expecting to find the holy grail of food but thanks to a recommendation from Tim we headed to Drizzle, an olive oil and vinegar tasting room and café, in Lynden, Washington, for their website, click here. What a find! Both our lunch choices were fantastic! For me a soy caramel braised pork banh mi (Birchridge Farms pork) with pickled veggies, aioli, Thai basil, cilantro, mint, jalapeno and cucumber on a focaccia bun. Joe ordered the Front St. Grinder with mortadella (from Jack Mountain Meats), ham (from Small City), olive relish that took the sandwich up a bunch of notches, Ferndale Farmstead Asiago (more about them in a minute), lettuce, tomato and onion. I was hard pressed to trade half of my banh mi but that half of Joe’s grinder was well worth the trade! Both sandwiches were accompanied by house-made chunky potato salad. You probably know that if there’s a dessert that leaps off the page, we go for it (to share of course)…no guilt that way! This time around it was the semi-freddo made with goats milk and kefir served with poached local rhubarb, Moon Valley wildflower honey and fresh thyme…an outstanding combination of flavours…almost licked the plate clean, it was that good!

Our host cooked up a wonderful Italian dinner; we toasted each other with Prosecco, ate, drank more wine and had a great time sharing our stories and getting to know each other for real!

The next morning, we met up with Tim for a trip to Ferndale Farmstead to tour their cheese making facility, click here for their website. The milk is from their own herd and the cheeses are made using traditional Italian cheese making methods. We learned a lot, tasted cheese and before leaving were given cheese to take home to try! How wonderful is that?

Onward to lunch in Bellingham at another of Tim’s likes, Old World Deli, for their website, click here  for a “how am I supposed to be able to choose” from such a great sounding selection of sandwiches, panini, soups and more. In the end, I went for the special, porchetta on a baguette…tasty, spicy and very good, Joe ordered the chicken, pesto panino… again we swapped halves back and forth. Good choice Joe!

Facebook came through once again, by making it possible to meet like-minded people who we would never be able to meet otherwise!