BLUE MOON VEGETARIAN LAUNCH WEEK PHOTOS

I live in a remote area of southeast Washington State near where Idaho, Washington, and Oregon intersect, and where people are passionate about many things our region has to offer, particularly our great and dramatic landscapes, and a myriad of outdoor activities ranging from skiing to boating to fishing to hunting to whitewater rafting to gem hunting to ballooning to backpacking, and on and on. We live the romantic western lifestyle that is the focus of so many books and films and which many people in other parts of the world only dream of or must partake of in vacation-sized increments.

What we also love is our art and literature. With 2 universities, 2 colleges, and a very highly-ranked community college right here in a thirty mile radius, we have a perhaps surprising number of very well-known artists, poets, writers, musicians, and visual artists, and any number of very talented BFA and MFA students and post-grads in a very tight forty-mile radius.

And what we also have is a cadre of media outlets, including The Lewiston Morning Tribune, The Moscow-Pullman Daily News, TV station KLEW, and many radio stations—-KRLC, KRFP, and KATW, to mention the handful I’ve worked with—-all of which are very supportive of the region’s creative force and are happy to help us get the word out whenever one of us has is has created something new to share with our world.

We are also lucky enough to have a great array of event venues associated with our local institutions of higher learning, but also, we have two amazing indie bookstores–Book People of Moscow and . . . and BOOKS, Too! of Clarkston, both of which hosted me and Blue Moon Vegetarian for booksignings and recipe samplings this past weekend–alongside a couple of pretty incredible coffee houses, one of which is called, coincidentally enough, the Blue Lantern Coffee House, which was the site of Blue Moon Vegetarian’s big launch party and reading this past Friday night.

The fare? Pumpkin Pudding, Banana-Peach Crunch, Agave Caramel Corn, Elegant Dessert Gorp, and–everyone’s favorite–Spicy Chili Bean Stew.