Summer Fav: Frozen Grapes

It some how still surprises me that we never tire of grapes in our house. We work with grapes and we love to eat them too. We go through 10 lbs of table grapes a week, easy. At harvest time, we have to regularly clean out the bottom of our washing machine as it fills up with grapes (of course, there’s debate about whether that’s from being out in the fields or the kids’ mess).

During the summer, one of our family favorites is enjoying frozen grapes. We bring them home, wash them, remove them from their stems and lay them out on a baking sheet and stick them in the freezer for a few hours, then collect them in a ziploc bag for snacking. They don’t last long. For grown-ups, they’re great to drop in your glass of wine to keep things cool at the end of the day (pseudo sangria?) and then enjoy the booze infused fruit at the end. For the kiddos, there a sweet, easy, healthy treat.

Fish Dish: Baked Salmon

There are a few dinners that are just better with wine. The dishes almost beg for a pairing, and the sipping helps savor the dish. Pizza and a nice medium-bodied red wine - our go-to is Zinfandel. Tacos and Pinot Noir. Fish baked or grilled with a well balanced (fruit and acid) white wine. Maybe it’s the acidity that helps cut the fat in the food, the combination embodies mouth-wateringly savory. Maybe it’s because we’re in wine country and it just makes sense. Maybe it makes the evening feel more celebratory and less like a Tuesday.

Either way, we enjoyed a nice piece of salmon, flavored with cilantro (substituted for the dill in the following recipe) from our garden, lemon, garlic and butter. And served it with roasted red potatoes, and fresh green beans with a little butter, salt and lemon. Back-deck kinda eating. It was good. And so, we share the following recipe inspiration for baked salmon and say a socially-distant cheers!

We used this recipe from Tastes Better From Scratch. She offers lots of good tips, and three flavor options. We went with the Lemon & Dill and substituted cilantro for dill.

Kale Chips

When we started this business, Francisco was adamant about the logo. It had to be green. We are wine growers and plants that are healthy and strong are green. Green is our color.

The greenery is also calming, re-assuring, and exciting. This year we’ve been able to extend that to our home garden. Our latest green harvest - kale. Now, if you’d told me a few months ago that I’d be writing my first food post on the new blog (in a previous life I was food blogger) on kale, I would’ve laughed. I’m not kale’s biggest fan. I get it, kale is a super food. It’s also a chore to eat raw.

And then we had fresh kale greens in the garden. We had kale seeds on-hand this winter, and Francisco sewed some along with the other greens, first planted indoors in March and then transplanted outdoors in April. We didn’t know how good we had it, and let these leaves get pretty large before our first harvest. Their wavy, green leaves have been lovely in the garden and we let them hang on longer than needed before we finally harvested.

Harvest we did. Before being turned into something wonderfully delicious:

Toasted and transformed - the leaves made a delicious, fought-over, pre-dinner snack. Below is the recipe. Enjoy and cheers!

Toasted Kale Chips

Ingredients

• Bunch of kale

• Olive oil

• Kosher salt

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 350 deg. Line a cookie sheet (or two depending on how much kale you have) with parchment paper.

2. With a knife, cut away the greens from the thick stems. Then roughly slice them into 2 inch pieces. And place them in a large bowl (with room for tossing).

3. Drizzle the kale with olive oil. Do this with a light hand as a little goes a long way. Use about 1 tablespoon of oil if you have enough kale to spread out evenly in one layer on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle liberally with salt.

4. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the leaves are crisp to the touch. Toss in a bowl and don’t forget to taste some before sharing with others (they’ll be gone by the time the bowl comes back around to you).

From Our Table to Yours

Note - this post was originally published 04.12.2015

I love nights when culinary inspiration strikes our kitchen and my mood lends itself to a great pairing.  Tonight's wine: Rudd Mt. Veeder Sauvignon Blanc 2012.  If you ever have an opportunity to enjoy this wine, take it.  It is spectacular and not your every-day Sauvignon Blanc.  The pairing: Salvadorean Pupusas with Pickled Cabbage.  Yum.

This takes a little time, but is well worth the effort for this little satisfying meal.  So pop the cork, pour yourself a glass, and make the beans ahead of time.  We prefer pinto beans.  Rinse the beans, and boil them for a couple hours until tender. Don't forget to add a little salt. (Can be done the day before and stored in the refridgerator)

Tonight I started with the Pickled Cabbage Salad.  I used 1/4 the ingredients for our dinner for two, and this recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

Pupusas - I used a reduced version of this recipe: Fried the beans, made a mixture of corn meal and water, and lightly fried the pupusas in canola oil. No cheese, no onion, no masa. Delicious.

Salut!

Our Little Batch of Limoncello

Note - this post was first published 2/23/2014.

It’s citrus season and we decided to take advantage of the alluring lemon aroma by starting our own small batch of limoncello!  After reworking our recipe from a couple years ago and harvesting over 50 of our favorite organic lemons, we sat down one morning to begin.

First step wash and dry the lemons.

Next, peeling just the yellow.

Then mixing together the alcohol, filtered water, and lemon.

And now we wait.