Excellent Cioppino Meal at Captain's Choice

Aloha Everyone,

Cioppino is an Italian seafood dish that could either be served like a soup or as a stew. Basic stock recipe calls for beef stock with red wine, tomatoes, chopped green and red peppers, chopped onion, garlic, thyme, black pepper and oregano. Once the soup base is ready then you can add scallops, fish pieces, clams, shrimps, oysters, etc. Just before serving, add freshly squeezed lemon juice plus parsley flakes. Today J.J. and I went back to Captain's Choice to try their Cioppino. The dish was enough for two as I concentrated on the soup while J.J enjoyed the seafood part of the dish. The taste was excellent.

Onion rings as appetizer was an excellent choice.

Tracy, the waitress 

It is always delightful for us to meet people with a Hawaiian connection. When we walked into the North Bend AT&T retail store, Lily was assigned to help us. Lily recognized our Hawaii phone number and she told us that she was born on the Big Island but grew up in Kauai. She is married and Lily and her husband have been living in this part of Oregon for the past 3 1/2 years. She also mentioned that having worked at AT&T in Kauai, it was easy for her to find a job with AT&T in Oregon.

We are not kidding when we say that everyday we come out of the woods to have lunch and look around and then go back into the woods in the evenings. Oregon has acres and acres or forestland. Here are some facts:

1)  Oregon is the 9th largest U.S. State with more than 63 million acres.  Nearly half of the state or over 30 million acres is forestland.

2)  Oregon is the number one lumber producer in the nation.

3)  Oregon produces approximately 18% of total US. softwood lumber.

4)  Oregon's forest sector employs approximately 57,000 Oregonians. Annual payroll comes out to $2.1 billion.

5)  Oregon's 60% of forestland is owned by the federal government. However its contribution is only 12% of state's total timber harvest.

6)  In comparison, 35% or Oregon's forests owned by private hands account for 76% of the state's timber harvest.

Driving along Coos Bay, we saw end production of the timber industry where saw chips are shipped to China for making pressed boards.

Until tomorrow when J.J. and I will be out of the woods at least for a couple of days and we should have phone connection.

Aloha -- Cathi