Tag: Washington

Cheese Zombies: the Yakima Valley’s beloved school lunch that takes grilled cheese to the next level.

Nathan

In the late 1950s, a school district in Washington’s Yakima Valley received an excess of subsidized cheese. Faced with this unexpected abundance, not wanting it to go to waste, the food services supervisor (or, according to other stories, a local cafeteria cook) invented a new sandwich that soon appeared on menus: the so-called Cheese Zombie, essentially a grilled cheese cake that’s baked with fresh dough. Needless to say, it was an instant hit. “Zombie”-makers begin by placing cheese slices between rolled-out sheets of dough. Before placing the huge sandwich into…

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Old Olympia Beer Brewery of Tumwater Falls – Washington

Nathan

While this famous Tumwater, Washington company owned other breweries prior to Prohibition, it gained prominence with a single brand produced in this plant. The excellence of its beer has been attributed to the excellent quality of the water – hence their slogan “It’s the Water” – but full credit should be given to Olympia’s founder, Leopold F. Schmidt who’s business model was “Quality First – Quantity Next.” The original brewery for Olympia beer is across from the Tumwater Historical Park and along the Deschutes River at Capitol Boulevard South East,…

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Georgetown Castle: an allegedly haunted mansion with a tragic, tawdry past.

Leo S

Victorian house in Georgetown looked like a dream home to me at first. But after the stories I heard, I probably wouldn’t even spend a night alone in the “Georgetown Castle.” In fact, it seems that the house is home to a healthy population of ghosts! In the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle, most of the buildings are single story homes and, of course, house shaped. But if you’re searching for something different wherever you go, look no further than this building, located in the old, industrial area of Seattle, WA,…

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History, Haunting and Secrets of Seattle’s Pike Place Market~

Leo S

The Pike Place Market in Seattle is, of course, a good place to shop, but also the most haunted place in Seattle, if not throughout the Washington state. The upstairs of Pike Place Market in Seattle bustles with tourists buying fresh produce and crafts, but the downstairs is something stranger: its walls are filled with shops that seem to belong to another time. Its story started when rumors of price fixing began to circulate and, as a result, eight farmers determined to cut out greedy middleman and sell their wares…

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Lakewood, Washington: Historic Thornewood Castle and its ghosts

Leo S

This magnificent three story manor home was built by Chester Thorne, who was one of the founders of the Port of Tacoma (a major seaport and top 10 U.S. container port), as a gift to his bride, Anna. After almost four years of works, the 2.500 square meters manor was finally ready in 1911 and only the very best went into its building, including 400-year-old bricks from an original English castle. Designed by a famous architect, Kirkland Cutter, this English Tudor/Gothic mansion, having 54 rooms, including 28 bedrooms and 22…

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Okanogan Highland ghost towns: undisturbed relics from the Old West.

Leo S

These former mining estabilishments hold a surprising abundance of undisturbed relics from the Old West. Scattered on the desolate plateaus of the Okanogan Highlands, a few kilometers south of the Canadian border, stand the quietly abandoned memories of pioneer homesteads: here some of gold rush townsites persist as historic monuments from a bygone era of boom then bust mineral exploration that brought intrepid Chinese miners and later white settlers to this corner of the Old West. Frontier towns like Bodie, Chesaw, and Molson briefly prospered during the late Victorian era…

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The American Revolution, fueled by a portuguese wine.

Adam

In summer 1775, while General George Washington outfitted his first mobile headquarters for the Continental Army, he seems to have intuited the importance of his people comforts. His personal expense accounts between 1775 and 1776 described lot of purchases for a privileged man like himself, to remain comfortable as he superintended a volunteer army: trunks, table linen, other things, and most important of all, copious liters of wine. For everybody, the life in an 18th-century war camp was not easy, and there were lot of moments of incredible boredom, in…

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