CAMANO ISLAND — The bright days of summer bring iced lattes, sailboats and fresh-caught crab to the rocky shores of the Pacific Northwest. On Camano Island, Dick and Sole Switzer are bringing Northwest summers into people’s dining rooms.
They organize the U-Catch Crab Feast, a do-it-yourself crab fishing and cooking excursion, and Camano Culinary Creations, an in-home chef business that provides small dinner parties with a multiple-course meal.
“We do the work, while they enjoy the guests,” Dick Switzer said.
This summer he and his wife are taking customers off the coast of Camano Island, where they catch live Dungeness crabs and return to the Switzers’ home for lunch in Sole Switzer’s meticulously cultivated garden.
The U-Catch Crab Feast, he said, marries his two favorite pastimes — crabbing and cooking. Though he is not a chef by training, he has been doing both for years. He worked as a skipper in the San Juans and British Columbia’s Gulf Islands before his retirement.
What the Switzers don’t catch on their own, they buy locally. Their popular Pacific Northwest menu includes baked salmon, crab cakes and other local delicacies.
When Leslie Hughs threw a summer dinner party for her mother last month, she and her family dined on barbecued oysters, crab and a dessert made with fresh berries. She said Sole Switzer adorned the celebration with flowers and ornate place cards.
“She’s very much a hostess,” Hughs said. “They make a fantastic team.”
Camano Culinary Creations is not a catering company, Dick Switzer said. Rather, he and his wife prepare dinners for small celebrations such as graduation parties and family gatherings. They typically cook a meal for six guests.
“We have done one birthday party where they had 25 guests, but that’s really beyond the scope of what we do,” he said. “Our focus is primarily small family get-togethers.”
While Dick Switzer prepares the meal, Sole Switzer decorates the table, place settings and individual menus, often using flowers from her own garden.
“My job is to make sure that the guests are comfortable and I’m the one that greets them,” Sole Switzer said. “I set up a table that is elegant and that the guests would feel is really, really special.”
For an East Indian meal, she said, she used small silver elephants as table decorations. For an Easter celebration last April, she used an actual bird’s nest filled with chocolate eggs as a centerpiece.
“Sole sets a very elegant table, and so she’ll do different things with flowers, nametags (and) silverware,” said Camano Island resident Chris Richards.
Richards and his wife have used Camano Culinary Creations for dinners with friends several times, he said.
“(The meals) are well prepared, well presented,” Richards said. “The food is excellent. It’s good times.”
Rather than a business venture, Camano Culinary Creations is more of a way to stay active in retirement, Dick Switzer said. The Switzers used to donate these dinners to charity, offering them at auctions. They have held dinners to profit local libraries, the animal shelter and the senior center.
“And that sort of morphed into the business,” Dick Switzer said.
They offer recipes for almost all their dishes on their website, and Dick Switzer also teaches cooking classes in Stanwood.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
