Discover Walla Walla

I just returned to Walla Walla from New York City. I was there for several days and-as I always do when visiting the Big Apple-I ate my share of bagels at iconic delicatessens.

But never again!

My wife makes bagels that are way better than NYC bagels. And she's just started teaching a bagel baking class at out farm! That means that she's always tweaking her recipes. And that means I'm always sampling great bagels. (It's the least I can do to be supportive.) And that means I'm stepping up my exercise program.

It's all worth it.

My wife makes the best bagels on the planet-no joke.

Check out her classes at out farm website www.detourfarm.com and click on the "Baking by Hand" tab. You'll be glad you did!

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My father was a doctor. Not a kid doctor-an old people doctor. So he didn't doctor us, but insisted that my mom, Coco, haul my brothers and me to the pediatrician for annual physicals.

Every year, Coco dutifully tricked us into her station wagon under some false promise. "We're all going to the movies, yippee!" Then she'd cheerfully lie to us as she drove, until one of us smelled a rat and screamed, "We're not going to the movies! We're going to the doctor!"

Oh, the injustice of it all.

We pleaded. We cried. Boy, did we cry! Red puffy eyes, wet salty cheeks, snot bubbling from our noses-the whole deal. We'd been to the doctor. We had experience. We had good reason to be scared witless.

At the doctor's office, we sat nervously in the waiting room pretending to read Highlights Magazine, trying to control our sobs. We watched innocent and mostly good little children emerge from the examining room with tears streaming down their cheeks.

"McLeod boys," Nurse Curtis called, summoning us into the examining room.

I dove for the carpet and put a death grip on the leg of my chair. While my younger brothers watched, Coco tugged me loose, threatening to dock my allowance.

In the examining room, Nurse Curtis instructed us to strip down to our Fruit-of-the-Looms. The doctor will be in shortly, she said. Nurse Curtis left the room while Coco arranged us in birth order. As the oldest, I was to "go first."

"Sammy," Coco begged. "You're the oldest and I expect you to set a good example for your brothers. Remember last time we came to the doctor? When you fainted out there in the waiting room? We're not having fainting this year. You got that?"

"Yes'm, but..."

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Do you remember back in school when the first essay of the new year in English Comp was themed, "How I Spent My Summer Vacation?" For me, 2010 was the first summer I have had off in over 12 years and also one of the first where I didn't travel too far from the area.

It was a summer of taking in many local events, as well as working a wine bottling line, attending winemaker dinners featuring the skills of our local chef's and their favorite food and wine pairings. I took in a geology "terroir" tour, went out wine tasting and even hung with my siblings at our tri-annual family reunion camp-out. The Summer of 2010 will be marked as one of the most memorable events for me as 200 of my wine blogging peers arrived in Walla Walla. Finally, my blogging buds now understand what I have been blogging about now for years - Walla Walla.

I even took in non-wine events, such as the hometown Walla Walla Sweets baseball games (a fine example of why baseball is one of America's favorite pastimes) and an evening of Shakespeare Uncork'd at the Fort Walla Walla Amphitheater. Uncork'd was an evening of an adapted classic, but with fresh air and a view of the stars. Even if wine isn't your forte, there is still plenty to do in the Walla Walla Valley. If you want to see my "feathers ruffled" all I have to hear is the phrase, "There is nothing to do in Walla Walla" and I will figuratively stomp of the perp's tiny little head.

Summer is now just a memory, but the autumn crush is here. Wineries around the valley have prepared their cellars for their annual harvest. The year 2010 will go down in Eastern Washington vineyard history as one of the coolest years since the crush of 1999 - meaning a late start for many of the wineries. However, last week many of the area wineries were finally able to start bringing in their fruit such as Amavi, Gramercy Cellars, L'Ecole #41, Long Shadows, Three Rivers, and Woodward Canyon to name a few. The word on the street, I mean the word in the vineyard is "The 2010 vintage will either be the best or the worst in Washington State history." All bets are on it will be one of the best. Cheers!

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