Things Could Always Be Worse -- a Foodie Prepping Primer?

It seems like every time I start canning season, I also begin thinking of emergency preparedness. I'm not a Collapse of Western Civilization kind of gal, but I am most certainly a 7.0 Earthquake kind of gal, having lived through two of those suckers in my lifetime.

And so I reasonably ask myself at times like these if I'd be happy eating the stores I've canned and/or put up on my shelves. If the power was off for, say, two weeks or so due to a large quake, assuming we are well enough to have an appetite, the question then becomes 1) do we have enough food to survive, and 2) exactly how much fun would it be to eat what we've put up? 

Relishing (left) the apocalypse.

These are the only two questions that matter if you and your loved ones are in a disaster and are already safe, with a good source of water and shelter from the weather. It will come down to food. Doesn't it always? Whether it's a housewarming party or the End of The World As We Know It, that's what you will remember about the party when it's all said and done. So even at the conclusion of the future Earthquake Party, the question will be: What did we have to eat?

If you remember Jim Bakker, the preacher involved in some juicy evangelical sex scandal in the 1980s (with a wife who could not keep her mascara from fleeing the scene of her badly made-up eyes), he basically disappeared. Or so I thought. The other day I was channel surfing and found him, now hawking survival food supply kits on QVC. "It's our $99.99 Special 20-year Survivalist Package featuring MEXICAN food!" he extols. 

While I find him strangely amusing, there's one thing he and I agree on....just because the world ends, it doesn't mean Taco Tuesdays have to.

Anyway, I don't count what's in my chest freezer at all in my accounting of foodstuffs, since chances are it would be warm enough that within a few days anything we cannot consume immediately will spoil. This means for the first three days we'll be eating nothing but steak, ham and chicken. (Note to self: stock up on emergency, End Of The World-strength laxatives.) But ultimately, the safest and longest-lasting emergency source of food lies not in the freezer, but rather in the canning cupboard and the pantry selves.

I can make this delicious.

Rice, beans, quinoa,  various pastas and grains would probably become our staples, along with flour for making bread.  Beans would be especially important since lacking refrigeration, we'd also probably be lacking in animal protein after our chest freezer binge-feast (belch), except for fresh eggs. Since I'm mostly vegetarian, I would be OK here, and everyone else would have to be too. 

But the issue then becomes how to dress up all those beans and grains so that they are tasty, or at least interesting, since they'll probably be eaten two or even three times daily (perhaps with some canned salmon or tuna, which I've also put by). People in this situation always say something like well, things could always be worse, but really, I can't think of anything much worse than having to eat rice, beans and quinoa for two weeks straight. 

Of course having a good stock of wine, beer and other alcohol could help immensely, so that should also be at the top of any emergency preparedness food list in my opinion. Everything tastes better with expensive alcohol to wash it down.

But I think having a good stock of spices, jams/chutneys, relishes, and little gourmet items will ultimately make your family's life livable during times of crisis, as much as warm blankets and shelter do. You need to be able to dress up your staple ingredients with flavors, textures and surprises to keep those Lord of The Flies instincts at bay and keep civilization afloat. Sauces, sprinkles, marinades, aoli and other spreads (we have chickens and oil and therefore eggs and therefore aoli -- yum!). 

For me, I would plan on cooking everything in the solar oven (which even works on cloudy days, things just take longer to cook) or on the grill, and so that gives me lots of options for different tastes and textures as well.

Everyone should have one.

I do not plan on eating squirrel or gopher in stews, or insects, or nearby neighbors. That is not my kind of disaster. But vegetarian paella with canned mushrooms, peas and asparagus with some hard-boiled deviled eggs on the side, a fruit galette for dessert and some '10 Cabernet to accompany it all? I could live with that. 

I am sure there is a survivalist cookbook out there, but I like to see myself as a kind of a "San Andreas meets Ina Garten"-type heroine, creating lovely meals for my family spontaneously and cheerily, while the tremors rumble through, the stucco falls off in sheets and the National Guard personnel carriers pass by the road.

It's Bon Appetite at the end of the world, baby. And I feel fine.

The View from The Other Side

Another day at the office.

These last couple of days I've felt an immense sense of satisfaction with my life. My surgery is over and the hip/back problem I went into hospital to have fixed does, in fact, appear to be repaired. My scheduled tasting room shifts are done with and I am pretty much setting my own schedule at the garden at the winery, planting squash, herbs and tomatoes and enjoying the cool mornings down there where the California quail, jackrabbits and lizards are my company in the quiet of the early day.

(And the grapevines of course, which are budded out and growing happily. I have nothing if not a beautiful "office" to work in.)

And last weekend, for the first time in I don't know how long, I took a Sabbath day and rested. Well, what passes as rest for me, anyway. I hung a couple of loads of laundry out on the line in the sunshine, puttered in the garden, and observed some God time in study and conversation. But I enjoyed it all -- my pace was slow, the work was easy, and there was lots of down time in between what little work I did.

Plus the house was quiet. The television was not going on all day, the computer did not beckon, and we received no invitations which took us out of the house. 

I guess that's one good thing about recovering from surgery...folks assume you're down for the count and leave you off the guest list. 

My garden sent me this beautiful get well bouquet. Thanks Mother Nature!

And the result is peace and quiet. I think there's an emotional dividend that pays off big when we prioritize our life where we put peace first. For me, it's a sweet spot I can feel -- putting the things that give me peace at the top of the priority list and removing things that distract/stress/hyper-activate me. You can't do it forever, those bills need paying, those phone calls need to be made and decisions need to happen -- but maybe for just one day, sundown to sundown, we can leave those things be.

Why do I only do this when something takes me out of the game enough that I have to call a time out? Why did it take a surgery for me to unhook myself from the yoke of scheduled socializing and work and just sit still for awhile?

Today I was back to work, and when I went into the winery my favorite chef was there, experimenting and making fruit chutneys with our late harvest wine. Since the chef's garden I manage is not a customer-service oriented position where I need to be johnny-on-the-spot, I can now be in a position to spend a few moments in the kitchen or behind the bar talking to the coworkers I love to be around. Anyway, Chef let me sample the chutney and it was absolutely divine. So this afternoon I'm making a small batch here at the house, which I'll use as a sauce for some barbecued meat I'm grilling for dinner.   

Steak with grilled fruit chutney -- yum.

Cooking is a signpost for me, I have noticed; if it's happening, life is proceeding at a decent pace -- when it stops, I've become too busy. I think for many of us, we stop cooking when we lack the time and  motivation to create good food.  It's kind of like being in a rowboat in a survival situation...it's interesting to see what gets thrown overboard when we're just paddling to save ourselves. Hobbies, rest, household chores, or even family? Interesting to think about what we get rid of and what we keep "on board."

And so, with the craziness of traveling out of town for surgery behind me, healing in the works, and a job change in progress, I've decided this is a great time to do some rearranging; perhaps pulling some things back into the lifeboat that I left to dog-paddle in the water for awhile.  

Peace will come first, followed by work of course. But peace first.

It occurs to me that if you place peace and quiet last on your priority list, by the time you get to enjoy it you will probably be asleep. Work will always be there (in some form or another) but peace is fleeting and best captured through planning and foresight. 

So my advice is this: Take a look in your lifeboat and pull those things you threw into the water back into the boat with you while they're still floating beside you, whether that's time to converse with people you enjoy, cooking, prayer time, or even just hanging some wash in the sunshine. 

What good is a lifeboat if your life isn't even in it? 

Wandered far afield

That's a term one of my old bosses used in management meetings when he and the two under-managers he supervised (one of whom was me) would find some topic related to work, but not actually pertaining to work directly, and happily chat about it for a half-hour or so before finding our way back to business.

"Well, we've wandered far afield..." he would say, and that was our cue that we needed to get back to the real business at hand.

And it's a term I've rediscovered in these first days of 2016, as it applies to myself and the life I've been living.

One of the ways hit home yesterday, when there was a power outage at about 8 a.m. The house was cold and dark, and because we chose an electrically-driven pellet stove instead of a wood stove the house hadn't warmed up yet, and now would have no chance of doing so. We have a central heating system we use for back-up, but of course it doesn't work without electricity either. 

So as the temperature dropped inside and I bundled up, I reviewed that choice. Did I ever.

So I sat in the cold and read my Kindle, played music on my iPod and checked Facebook and email on my phone until those devices all died. At that point I decided to head into town to run some errands (thank God I had gas), where at least I'd be in some warm buildings and I could use the car to charge all my devices and run the heater while driving around, which felt SO delicious after being in a cold house for several hours, let me tell you.

Where I feel like I am.

One ironic thing is that the book I was reading before my Kindle died was one called "Patient Heal Thyself" about a young man who discovers healing of his Crone's disease through eating a diet identical to what our biblical ancestors would have eaten 2,000 years or more ago. Yes, I was reading a book about the diet of the 20 BC man on a 21st century Kindle. Boggles the mind, no? If it had been on papyrus I could have at least kept reading without fear of a battery dying.

Anyway, the book reminded me of a time when I adhered to a similar diet just through making healthy food choices and refusing to buy into the industrial food system of feedlot beef, trans-fats, refined sugar, and over-processed bleached white flour. While I haven't backslid all the way (you will not find me in line at McDonald's when McRib returns, for instance) I have cut corners as life got more busy and complex and food still needed to be served. 

So to review, I cut corners by getting a pellet stove instead of a wood stove and I cut corners by just accepting what the regular supermarket thought I should be eating. It's an uncomfortable truth that sometimes we know what the right thing is to do and still do something else anyway. And when we do that, we wander far afield from the selves we want to be.

The solution for the pellet stove is a simple one -- we can buy a small generator for the house or a back-up battery for the stove itself. And the solution to the food issue is there as well. We're already growing a lot of what we eat, but the fact is, even if we had 10 times as many acres we would probably still not grow everything we consume. And so the choice then becomes to purchase those things at the health food store, expensively, or drive an hour's south to the local Whole Foods Market and get it there.

And since I've committed to getting back to those things that matter most to me in 2016, perhaps you'll notice something of a course correction as we get farther into the year. It will be a homecoming of sorts. I've wandered far afield, and it's time to get back on the road I most want to be on -- gardening, planting, conscious food-buying, and healthy living.  It doesn't so much mean giving up on any good things as much as taking the time for different good things that aren't necessarily as easy to come by. 

One thing is for sure: When you wander far afield, eventually the road that leads home will call you back to it, if you're willing to listen. I'm listening, road. I'm listening.

Where I want to be.

Dig In

Item of Holiday Death #1

So most of us who are the designated cooks for our family have requests we must honor during this season of food -- time-honored recipes we've served to our family as long as we've had one -- and sometimes before. 

I have a Heath Bar/chocolate chip cookie bar recipe that I've been making since the 1980s (college for me, which means I ate them at least once and chased them down with tequila) that I must make at least once during the season if I want to stay in everyone's good graces.

 The other food item that is more or less demanded of me is Yorkshire puddings at Christmas Dinner or Thanksgiving, which means from November - January 1, my kitchen menu features hearty portions of 1) sweets, 2) processed candy, and 3) lard. It's like the homestead kitchen I'm so proud of temporarily relocates to a trailer park somewhere and all I need is a bag of Doritos and Velveeta on the counter to make the transition complete.

It just always seems like it sends the wrong message to those I love most. It's like, "I love you yet I will nonetheless try and kill you with unhealthy food over these next few weeks." But in my defense, I only acquiesce to these requests at this time of year. The other 11 months of the year  I tend to make quinoa and flax-inspired food which makes Big Ag and the kids go "blech." Victory for me. Eat bland and enjoy the healthy blood values now, people. December's comin'.

#2

Because I make these two items, everyone loves me more during the holidays, no question. And I'm -- obviously -- willing to buy their love with deliciously bad food. If I lived in the trailer park, I'd no doubt be the most loved 500-pound woman there. Loved by my 700-pound family, that is.

Anyway, I found the cookie bar recipe where all cookie bar recipes are all invented -- some trashy women's magazine -- long before I became a convert to the natural foods movement. The Yorkshire puddings are a carryover tradition from my godmother's house. They are unhealthy but at least contain all natural ingredients -- bacon fat, flour and milk.  And they both have historical significance to those I love, and so I will continue making them for as long as they request them, even though I feel guilty about it.

So the cookie bars are done, I have all the ingredients on hand for Yorkshires tomorrow, and all we need are the Doritos and Velveeta to really knock everyone's trans-fat, salt and sugar intake out of the park. 

Merry Christmas from Yours Truly, known better by my other name this time of year, which is The Angel of Dietary Death.  

Makin' space!

I am in the midst of attempting to use up food. Luckily the weather has turned cold and rainy, which gives me a great opportunity to make some hearty dishes that use the items I need to get rid of. Those are:

Probably 25 percent of what's in my freezer right now, in order to make room for the Thanksgiving turkey, which we'll buy in another town and bring home to the freezer for a week or so. So the frozen 2014-15 harvest of carrots, chicken broth, onions and other items that I can use to make dinners now will get used quickly, to pick up a little freezer space in the chest freezer out in the garage. I won't completely decimate my stores of the above-mentioned items, just use enough up to create some space for a turkey.

And speaking of turkey, I actually got a summons for Jury Duty the week of Thanksgiving. This could throw such a wrench in the works I'm refusing to even think about it at this point. Keep your fingers crossed for going on stand-by, with no trips to the courthouse necessary.

I also have a LOT of tomatoes hanging around the pantry at this time (I know, "hanging around" makes it sound like they are loitering on a  street corner, smoking cigarettes and harassing passers-by). But the truth is, I actually still have canned tomatoes on hand from 2013. Those, obviously, need to be used NOW....and ideally should have been used last year . That's because your water-bath canned goods should be used within 12 months of the canning date, but since I was the canner and know how careful I was, I'm comfortable doubling that time. But no more than double.  As 2013 was a banner year for tomatoes, we'll be having quite a bit of tomato-based recipes in the days to come, like this goulash (above) I am making for tonight. 

To riff, in a very respectful way,  on The Book of Ecclesiastes, there's a time to can and a time to eat; a time to store and a time to draw down your stores. A time to raid the freezer and a time to fill it. 

It's eating and drawing-down-the-stores time here at the homestead. Yum.

Moving On -- Deliciously

Compared to yesterday, this smells like heaven.

So how do you get the awful smell of burned hard-boiled eggs out of, literally, the entire house?  The answer is lots of window fans and something else in the oven to stink up the joint.

I bought The Jerusalem Cookbook awhile back but had not tried any of the recipes until recently, when I saw it featured on another blog I read.  So now we are living like biblical kings and eating some unbelievably delicious, healthy and, thankfully, highly odorous food.  Yes, the hard-boiled egg smell is gradually being replaced with that of broiled onions and red peppers, feta cheese, and pastry. Yum.

Absolutely delicious: red pepper, onion, feta and egg galettes

It's also feels good to get back into the kitchen and cook again, proving to myself that I don't necessarily destroy things on a regular basis in there.  Sometimes you can really use a victory, and The Jerusalem Cookbook is allowing me to have sequential successes, dinner after dinner.  In related news, today and tomorrow is the holiday of Purim, a very silly and fun day filled with comedy, drinking and great food. And so tomorrow I will be making some special cookies to honor the event.  

Hopefully they will also smell wonderful and I can put the whole egg-burning episode behind me.  The chickens are laying again and so soon we will have a dozen eggs in the fridge, proving that you screw something up and life goes on regardless. Eventually you get back at least some of what was lost. 

I take a fair amount of comfort in that, and in comfort food as well, in whatever culture happens to be serving it.

Ginger-Carrot Soup

Maybe should have added a dollop of sour cream for embellishment -- but why mess with perfection?

Ah, the simple pleasures of one's own carrot harvest.  Some to freeze, some to eat now.  On the menu this last week we've had roasted carrots with broccoli and chicken, carrot cake, and this new recipe for ginger-carrot soup I found online.

It was so good I ate a bowl, poured Big Ag a bowl for later (he was still working around the property  at dinnertime) and then used a rubber spatula to consume every last drop from the saucepan I'd made it in. It was that good.

Combine it with some fresh sourdough bread, some mellow jazz, a nice sunset, and you have a perfect recipe for a great Sunday night in Central Coast Wine Country. The Tijuana Mule I had earlier (I was on a ginger kick -- what can I say?) didn't hurt the mood either.

Here's a link to the recipe -- for the soup.  The rest you'll have to provide for yourself.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ginger-carrot-soup-recipe.html

Snap peas and generation gaps

I walked into the staff meeting at the winery last night with a large bag of snap peas, and immediately became the most popular lady in the room. Three of the girls I work with and a couple of the guys came right up and started taking handfuls of peas out of the bag as if it was a cookie jar, oohing and aahing as they bit into the crunchy pods.  After the feeding frenzy I noticed one of my friends tucking what was left in the bag into her purse to take home and eat later.

 I find it heartening that so many 20-somethings are fans of healthy food.  In fact, I love taking excess produce to the winery for that exact reason.

My grandparents' generation ate healthy food which they grew themselves.  The ones who were not land-owning farmers turned parts of their city gardens into growing spaces, whenever possible. My parents' generation, on the other hand, entered adulthood at the exact time large supermarkets came into being, complete with frozen food on Aisle 5, where you could pick up a boxed TV dinner, bring it home, and heat up individual and unique meals for everyone in your family in minutes. 

It was a convenience that took hold, and the result is that many of us born in the 1960's grew up eating that way.

This was, I should add, a purely American phenomenon back then.  When I visited London in the late 1960's as a child, I was amazed when we went shopping with my grandmother.  We visited the butcher, the baker, and the fishmonger.  Paper goods we bought at a local general store. Milk, cream and butter was delivered to the front door every morning. Nowadays of course London has the same giant supermarkets we do, but back then they lagged a good 20 years behind the states.  And they were probably healthier for it.

Anyway, post-war London was the environment my mother grew up in, and so I can somewhat understand her wonderment and willingness to plunge into American Supermarket Life when she moved here and married my American father. We ate hot dogs, fish sticks, TV Dinners and Stouffer's Lasagna on a regular basis.  Our next door neighbors did the same and, in another nod to convenience, ate nothing that was not served on a paper plate, thereby eliminating dishwashing.

And so my generation grew up expecting that kind of convenience, and you'd expect that most of us would simply have passed that onto our own children when we came of age.  And most of us did ... for awhile.  Sometime after the Good Times With No Social Responsibility ended (also known as the 1980's), food became important again.  Trend forecaster Faith Popcorn called it "Nesting."  Staying home more, learning the art of cooking again, and even keeping an herb garden or small veggie patch in your suburban backyard.

"Nesting" took hold with the financial uncertainties of the 1990s, along with a swing back towards natural ingredients. My generation discovered a lot of the food we'd grown up with in the 1960's was, to speak frankly, crap. Kool-Aid contained Red Dye #3, which caused cancer.  Saccharine, which was supposed to deliver us from the weight-gain of eating real sugar, also was found to cause a variety of health issues. In short, my generation realized that if they continued on the path that our naive but well-meaning parents had put is on, we'd be dead or at least in chemotherapy by age 50.

But if we started the "natural foods" trend, the next generation ran with it and made it the norm.  No longer was eating at McDonalds seen as a healthy dinner option.  No longer would Diet Coke and a can of Pringles be an acceptable lunch. If my generation went back to the land for our food ( while sometimes wistfully remembering the soft, spongy texture of Wonder Bread or the extreme sugary sweetness of a Cherry Coke), my kids' generation turned their back on all that tasty but deadly garbage completely and made endamame, quinoa, pomegranates and locally raised-and-butchered animals the new cool food. And kudos to them for it.

The new "supermarket" in town.

As I sat on the counter of the winery watching this new generation of 20-somethings and young parents fighting over a bunch of fresh snap peas from the garden, I realized that Mother Nature always has a reset button -- a generational one.  My generation pushed it, the next one furthered it along, and now we just have to make sure the new generation -- the toddlers growing up now -- understand the reasons why their grandparents and parents turned their backs on food that wasn't real, and opted for a crisp snap pea over the stale snap of a processed supermarket cookie.

I hope they understand why. I really do.

Industry Night

Working in a tasting room is a job with a lot of perks, and being able to attend Industry Nights is one of them.  Wineries around the area take turns hosting the staffs at other wineries during Industry Night, in order to showcase their wine and food offerings, venue space, etc.  

The whole point is to impress the other professionals enough that we recommend them once our customers are done visiting us.  That's not a pie-in-the-sky business plan; at least half my customers ask me about what wineries I'd recommend, so a positive recommendation can mean a lot of business for a winery.

Last night was such a party; we gathered in the late afternoon to visit a winery on the west side of Paso Robles to enjoy their wonderful wines, their food, and good fellowship with the staffs from other wineries around here. We ate, we drank and we watched the sun set over the Santa Lucia mountains from the hilltop site where the winery stages weddings and other special events.  Not surprisingly, when a customer next asks about what wineries I would recommend they visit, I will be adding this one to the list.

We went home happy and full, relaxed and feeling like we'd had a mini-vacation. 

Every day when I come home from the tasting room with red wine spilled on my shirt and sore feet I will try and remember events like these, as they remind me why I love wine and why I love this area.

Waste not, want not

A few months ago, I purchased a bag of dove and quail feed for my pigeon and two doves.  Inside the bag were some pea seeds, which were uneaten by any of the birds, and therefore fell onto the floor of the flight cage, where they remained until I cleaned it out. What a waste.

After being collected and mixed in with the chicken waste and a bunch of straw, I spread the mixture over one of our raised beds to sit and compost for a few months.  I covered the bed with a black tarp, and in a few weeks when I removed it, lo and behold, the peas had sprouted. Not a waste at all.

At that point I decided I could use a good nitrogen fixer in the soil as well as a good cover crop, so the peas got to stay.  They grew and eventually blossomed into gorgeous colors of all kinds -- white, pink, red and salmon.  Definitely not a waste.

They formed pea pods, but the pod casings themselves were too tough for them to be eaten as snap peas.  What a waste.

 But instead I let them ripen and picked them with the goal of shelling them. Not a waste after all.

Tonight I had green peas with dinner, cooked lightly and covered in butter.  Perfect. Now the peas are in my belly and the pods are back in the compost pile, where they will break down and become soil for new plants.  No waste here. Once the peas are broken down by my digestive system, they'll end up being eliminated by my body and head through the septic tank out into the leach field to return to the earth that way, while the pods will stay stay topside and grow some new plants as they decompose.

In the next couple of weeks, I will plow down the pea plants remaining and they will return to the soil to provide nitrogen for the next thing that's going to be planted there.  Perhaps if I'm lucky, a few ripe peas will go to seed and give me another crop of peas. 

Compost, plants, flowers, food, compost.  What a lovely cycle, and not a bit of waste in it, if you just relax and let nature take its own course.

Some more about Spanish wines

As promised, I'm going to do a little write-up on the wines we had at our Spanish Varietals tasting party last week, and provide some brief descriptors on each.  ALL of these wines are relatively inexpensive, and ALL were outstanding.  Honestly.  Usually when we have these parties there is at least one wine where I will seriously say "hmm...not my favorite," (being kind) but this time each wine was a hit for both me and Big Ag.

Spain is a country known for its wide variety of climate and therefore the quality of their wines varies widely from region to region.  In general, the central tablelands and southeast areas of Spain are known for making the best wine, although due to the hilly terrain, great microclimates for growing can be found throughout the country. 

The first wine we sampled was a Cava, or Spanish Sparkling White Wine.  Unfortunately, I did not see the bottle, but I was impressed with Cava if what we had was typical.  Not overly sweet OR dry, it was balanced, bubbly and exactly what you want out of a sparkling wine.

Our first red wine was Garnacha, made by Tapena, 2010.  Although this is a grenache (despite the spelling being slightly different), it was actually a heavier wine and therefore should probably have been served further down on the list with the bigger reds, but no matter.  Garnet colored, smooth, with strong notes of blackberries, it is a full-bodied wine with a lovely finish.

The second wine was the one we brought, Encanto (Charm) Seleccion 2008. (It was a steal at $20!)  This wine was made from 100% Mencia varietal grapes. A clear, ruby coloring, medium bodied wine which would pair well with almost anything you'd normally have a Pinot, Zin, or Grenache with, it had an awesome bouquet of fruit blossoms, and lots of black cherry notes on the palate.  We will be buying this again.

Third up was the Bodegas Vaca Rojo, 2009.  It had a more orange tint to it, a lot of soft lemon in the bouquet, and some nice lemon and orange notes on the palate.  Of all the wines, this was probably my favorite, and I'm thrilled that it is made right here in Paso Robles and on sale at the winery's tasting room downtown. I can't wait to go in and try their other Spanish varietals as well.  And gorgeous label artwork, don't you think?

The last was Romanico, Bodega Teso la Monja.  Made from Tinto del Toro grapes, this had a strong bouquet of cloves, tobacco and french bread.  Lots of oak and smoky notes on the palate, with a lovely, strong finish.  This would be great with pasta,  paella or just a great loaf of bread and some cheese. It's a big red wine.

I should note that at least 4 out of 5 of these are available at BevMo, even though I'm loathe to recommend them because I think it's better to buy direct (but know that's not always possible).  And the Bodegas Vaca Rojo is probably available on Bodegas' website, so you could buy it there since it's from a small boutique winery and probably not in BevMo's huge system.

Either way, Cheers, or as they say in Spain, Te Brindo!

Spanish wines and strawberry jam

Last week was a social whirlwind, so this week will be a homesteading one.  

Bodegas "Vaca Rojo." Yum. Just Yum.

We had two parties to attend this last week, the first being a full paella dinner with wine tasting, featuring Spanish varietal wines.  We all bought a wine, no one knowing much about Spanish wine beyond Tempranillo, all of us hoping for the best.  The results were amazing.  From Cava to Mencia to Monastrell, each wine was amazing, complex and delicious, capable of pairing with foods far beyond just Spanish dishes.  We will be buying more, especially since a couple of local wineries actually produce great wines from Spanish vines.

The second was the pick-up party at the winery, where we were again wined and dined and where I get to take off my "employee" hat and put on my "wine club member" one. Lots of friends, lots of wine and great food. 

So as you can imagine, between preparing for parties and working, not much got done on the homesteading front other than planting some lettuce transplants.  This week, I will be hitting the ground running.  I have horticultural vinegar to spray on weeds, chickens to attend to, strawberry jam to make and banana buckwheat pancakes to serve. I even have a container of shea butter so I can make some lotions, to soothe my hands, which have become a little dried out from digging in the dirt. 

I may even make some hot cross buns, because, well, hot cross buns. (They need no other reason.)

Sometimes being out and about actually inspires me to get back to this good and simple work I do here, proving the theory that we're better at whatever we're doing when we take a break and do other things for awhile.

I'm happy to be heading back to the kitchen, the chicken coop and the pasture, full of paella and wine, grateful for spring and the good life on the land we have here.

My inner homesteader's idea of a shopping spree

Success

The dinner party for 10 last night went off without a hitch, which was no mean feat, considering my relative inexperience hosting large groups for sit-down dinners and wine tastings.

At each place setting were wine analysis sheets, rating the wines' appearance, bouquet, and taste/texture.  We do our wine tasting first, and then share a meal, and since the theme for this tasting was "Big Reds," I served a Prime Rib with Yorkshire Puddings, mapled yams, a large salad, and chocolate mousse for dessert.

One of my neighbors is an enologist for a westside winery, and since he's in our winery's Wine Club, I invited him and his partner to join us for the festivities.  There were some interesting discussions on corks, winemaking, and Old World vs. New World wines, which I found fascinating. The great thing about wine is that, when the conversation turns to "industry talk, " it's still always happy and enjoyable conversation, filled with laughter and learning.

In order to keep strong smells out of the house (essential when doing sensory analysis of wine) I used the propane barbecue outside to cook the prime rib, and luckily was about to get it to a steady 325 degrees and cook it perfectly.  The Yorkshire Puddings were the big hit of the night, I think mainly because people were pleasantly surprised to learn they were not going to be forced to eat actual pudding at dinner.

An the chocolate mousses were devoured as well, including the vegan ones I made for my guests with dietary restrictions (who bought an incredible grains and mushroom casserole as their main course, which was absolutely delicious -- I snuck a bite!).  I actually enjoyed the vegan mousse as well, especially with the coconut milk whipped cream I used as a topping.

And the big wine winner for the night was this beauty:

Unbelievably soft and full-bodied, full of lovely fruit notes but with enough tannins to perfectly balance the wine.  I am not exaggerating when I say this is absolutely, hands-down, the best Pinot I've ever had the pleasure to taste.  Ever.

The goodness of summer

The best days of summer are when we can enjoy a meal like this, grown from our garden.  Beans, potatoes, and a big salad.  And a glass of port wine, chilled with sparkling water added to it to make a kind of fruit soda with a kick.

Bon Appetite!

Crazy

No, I don't think so.

Short photo series in Modern Farmer today hit a chord with me. (http://modernfarmer.com/2013/06/chicken-cannibals/ ) 

Somehow it seems totally creepy to spin livestock's story to where it's a tale of creatures who really enjoy being served as food and simply cannot wait to land on our plate. Doesn't it to you?

The other end of this story is the homesteaders who will butcher animals and then say things like "we did this with a hushed, serious reverence,"as if the animal somehow appreciated their taking the whole thing so seriously, or "we feel (enter the name of said animal here) would be so proud to have graced our holiday table and fed so many people," or something equally stupid.  No matter what you are eating, it's a pretty good guess that it didn't really want to die and be consumed, whether you were somber as you killed it or not.

Both mindsets stem from a fundamental need for modern people to delude themselves about their food, in my opinion.

Listen, if you have to die in order to feed something else, which most creatures on the planet do (excepting large carnivores) you probably 1) Do NOT want to die in the first place, as I said. Healthy, young, living creatures generally don't. 

Which leads us to 2) If you do have to die, as painless and stress-free (read: quick) a dispatch as possible is a kindness, even though you are not given a choice or preference.  The last one is just a guess on my part, due to biases about my own eventual demise.  If I had a choice I'd rather die quickly and painlessly than in a drawn out, uncomfortable manner.  So I also am transferring my own thoughts to the animals, but it seems like if it shortens pain and suffering, that is not necessarily a bad thing.  But I don't go further than that into my food's thoughts and mindset.

Because to start interjecting emotions into it -- animals gratefully climbing onto our dinner plate, or understanding and agreeing with the whole predator/prey cycle because their butchers are so freaking reverent about it, all those things seem both delusional and stupid.

Like my gopher post said yesterday, death in the food cycle is inescapable, but how we deal with that death says a great deal about how in touch with reality we are. 

Salad Days

Finally, after a seeming eternity, the crops in the raised beds are producing what would normally have been their late fall crop. Carrots, scallions, spinach, onions and....lettuce.  Yes, here in this part of California, salad days are in fall, winter and spring.  But an unusually freeze-filled winter held up the lettuces until now.


As there's nothing better than fresh lettuce, we're now in a wonderful time of abundance for it, which will probably last until late spring.  It may be late this year, but it was worth waiting for.


As far as our house sale goes, the realtor is coming by to take some pictures now that we're almost finished sprucing up, and our lender in Paso has given us the pre-qual green light to start looking.  Yesterday we saw a lovely old farmhouse there that suited my needs nicely but Big Ag thought was too much of a fixer.  He was right, the house did have some issues, but it also had a panoramic view of the northern hills and an absolutely magical garden. Whether or not that trumps dry rot and a rodent issue is a matter of opinion.  But since I'm feeling patient and have plenty of faith, I'm going to agree with taking a pass on it and waiting to see what's further up around the bend.  Hopefully something with less mouse turds in the attic.  Funny how sometimes the smallest things in a house can sometimes signal the most trouble.

Not for Martinis

I don't care for martinis, but that has not stopped me from acquiring an interesting and unique collection of thrift-store martini glasses, a portion of which you see here.  I have re-purposed them and use them for desserts -- chocolate mousse, mini-lemon cream pies, puddings of all sorts, even trifle.  They serve a perfect-sized portion, and certainly add a little pizazz to any dessert.  


Bottoms up.

Christmas Feast, reloaded

Last night I was scavenging around in the refrigerator for something to make a dinner for one with, and I found these terrific Christmas leftovers.  Since I left the Christmas dinner clean-up to the kids, I had no idea what was left and what had been demolished completely.  So you can imagine my delight in finding a near-perfect replica of the meal served on The Big Night tucked neatly into Tupperware containers and stacked in the fridge.  There was prime rib, mapled sweet potatoes, green beans and horseradish sauce for the meat.  There was even leftover champagne! The only thing missing was the Yorkshire puddings I'd made, which tend to vanish off the serving plate and into people's mouths at lightning speed anyway, so I wasn't expecting to find any of those.  Maybe I'll make more next year.


This meal, unlike the first, was eaten in solitude and in the quiet of a cold, clear evening.  It gave me a chance to reflect on my blessings and sort of take stock of the year that's just passed, and my hopes and dreams for the one to come.  Christmas dinner No. 1 was sweet because it was shared with family.  Christmas dinner No.2 was sweet for its opportunity for quiet reflection and joy.