PORT TOWNSEND — Aldrich’s may be gone, but an Aldrich tradition — the annual gingerbread contest — continued this year, attracting 21 entries in three categories.
The 11th annual contest, held across the street from the former grocery at Naturals Health and Beauty, drew no recreations of the store. Aldrich, destroyed by fire, served as the hub of the uptown business district for more than a century. But the grand prize winner in this year’s contest was a reproduction of another uptown business, Annapurna. Antares Diekow and Robin Sharan created a model of the healing center using only organic products, including flax seeds, bananas, ginger dough, cashews and poppy seed.
Ray Grier’s entry, which took first place in the 12-and-over category, also had a natural touch — a goddess riding au natural on a shark in front of the Temple of Atlantis. Grier said he modeled the small figure, made of marzipan, after a friend who suggested the theme to him. Around the temple was a gingerbread coral reef with waving fronds of carmelized sugar kelp, icing anemones and a marzipan octopus.
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The rest of the story appears in the Monday Peninsula Daily News.