Category Archives: Wine

Rediscovering #mdwine

Posted on April 14, 2013 by AnnieRie

After that amazing twitter taste off from the Drink Local Wine conference yesterday, where comments and pictures kept popping up on twitterific, I thought I need to pay more attention to what is happening in our own backyard here in Maryland. We had pretty much abandoned Maryland until Black Ankle came along and reignited our interest.

Today we went off on the first of many day trips to see what has popped up around the area. I love Chambourcin done right, and all comments told us to try Port of Leonardtown.

To make this a multi-leveled event, this week for my eat local challenge we had a theme “WAY OUT THERE”. So, why not a drink local post instead of eating locally. We paired local cheese from Brandywine MD with local chambourcin to have lunch outside the winery.

We now need another road trip to check out the farmstead where this cheese originated. It was excellent as were the dry chambourcin rose and the chambourcin. We brought home some of these lovely wines to enjoy this spring and summer.

And, yes, there will be a taste off between this late harvest vidal and one of our bottles from Linden VA. MD vs VA. Let the rivalry keep all our winemakers on their game to continue to produce beautiful wines.

Glad that the Drink Local Wine conference in Maryland showed us that MD is up and coming as a wine region. Being a locapour and a locavore is not a bad thing. Besides, Wine in the Woods and Wine in the Garden should keep us busy next month.

Been to any good local wineries lately? If not, you should!

hocofood@@@

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Posted in Day Trips, Food, Locavore, Sixty@Sixty, Wine, Winter Eat Local and tagged day trips, howard county conservancy, Locavore, weather, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

The Sunday Night Eat Local Report

Posted on April 7, 2013 by AnnieRie

It’s Sunday, the day our small group of bloggers puts up our latest meals made using mostly local ingredients, bought from farms and artisans in our 100 mile radius.

As for the farm reports, which I am working also, I hope to do at least two farms a week, and make them part of my Eat Local Challenge. They will be spaced out to take advantage of visits once they open for the spring and summer seasons.

Tomorrow I will talk about Clark’s and later this week, Breezy Willow. Clark’s just opened their Elioak site last week, and I stopped by today to see how they were doing. Busy, busy, busy. As I said, more tomorrow, but how can you resist such a beautiful scene?

Today I want to showcase some local foods from my Breezy Willow Early Bird CSA, which found their way into dinners the past two nights.

And, since wineries are farms, too, I will touch on the wines from VA that made their way to the table.

Friday night stir fry.

The Napa cabbage, sugar snap peas, mushrooms, onions and spinach all came from Breezy Willow. The Canadian bacon in there came from Orchard Breeze Farm in PA, bought at the Olney indoor winter market. Orchard Breeze raises Berkshire hogs. This bacon made its way into many meals the past few days. The Japanese sweet potatoes that you see in the pan came from my fall CSA, Sandy Spring, which uses Lancaster Farm Fresh Coop, a nonprofit Amish coop from PA (80+ farms). I divide my CSAs between the two, using the strength of each one to keep me in fresh foods most of the year.

Looks good, doesn’t it? The shrimp came from the new Harris Teeter in Marriottsville, and the noodles are from Nature’s Yoke. I picked them up in the farm store at Breezy Willow when I got my CSA.

Served with one of my favorite wines for slightly spicy dishes. Since this dish also included some of the red peppers from the olive bar at Harris Teeter, some garlic from last week’s CSA, and grated ginger (another Harris Teeter purchase), it had a little kick to it. Enter Linden Vidal Riesling, a slightly sweet yet acid balanced white perfect for Asian styled foods.

I include Linden and his wines in my farm categories, as if you ever meet the owner of Linden, Jim Law, he will introduce himself as a farmer. To him, growing the grapes and tending his land is extremely important in the success of his winery.

Last night we had another local meal. Venison tenderloin. From my stash of venison. The farm across the way from us. My neighbor helps them in herd management and we got one of them for the cost of processing. This was the tenderloin, a prized part and one that demands careful handling.

I did a dry rub with RubJoeMeat. I can’t explain it. Read it on their web site if you really want to know. Trust me, though, it is a great rub for beef and for venison. I found the recipe to use for the tenderloin here.

I did not use a BBQ sauce, I made my own sauce from my berry vinaigrette, local PA maple syrup, balsamic, cinnamon and cayenne. Grilled it on that lovely evening yesterday.

The sweet potato is from last week’s CSA. The salad made with eggs, spinach, mushrooms, onions, all from Breezy Willow, the last of the bacon from Orchard Breeze. Perfectly cooked venison, not tough or gamey at all.

It looks great, doesn’t it? I will definitely use that web site again, for other venison recipes. As for the wine last night, I mentioned wanting to use a really good wine, and decided on a very old lovely Barboursville Octagon. From 1998, as a matter of fact.

Luca Paschina makes exceptional wines near Charlottesville. And he is one of the sweetest people to talk to, we spent 15 minutes in a buffet line at RdV last fall talking about his winery and his love of Virginia, coming here from Piemonte to be the winemaker at Barboursville.

1998 was the vintage year for the third edition of Octagon. Beautiful wine, that stood up to the venison and had that smokiness that matches grilled food so well.

You don’t have to buy imported wines, or food shipped halfway around the world to have first class meals. This weekend we celebrated the arrival of spring, using some of the best in the area.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in CSA, Farms, Food, Howard County, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, Wine, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, farms, grilling, Howard County, local businesses, Locavore, real food, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Colcannon on CSA Day

Posted on April 3, 2013 by AnnieRie

It’s week five of our Breezy Willow CSA. Mostly spring veggies with a little fruit and citrus. I did need to use up older stuff so colcannon came to mind.

I’ll add my recipe at the end of the post, but let’s start with what we got today.

Six juice oranges
Four Fuji apples
One pound sugar snap peas
Half pound white mushrooms
Two pounds onions
Three pound sweet potatoes
Half pound salad mix
One pound spinach
One dozen eggs
Sesame Seed Bread

This value added CSA brings us local veggies and fruit, along with not quite local but still not across the southern hemisphere when it comes to sourcing the items. I can handle that. It is all so fresh. It lasts all week and then some.

After picking up our veggies and checking out the alpacas, we headed off to Marriottsville. My husband does think the alpacas are amazing.

They are cute, aren’t they? So, we went off to the new Harris Teeter, that opened last night. The one in the west edge of Turf Valley. I used to go to Maple Lawn after picking up my summer CSA in Columbia, so this is a welcome addition to west county.

I wanted some seafood to pair with our latest veggies. And, to use up those older ones. The sockeye salmon on the plate above was picked up today. I also had considered getting some spring rolls but the sushi counter isn’t open yet. They were making balloon animals for the little ones, and doing a brisk business in VIC card sign ups. Even at 3 pm, it was crowded. Lots of checkouts open, though. No wait. I picked up seafood, olives, a red onion and fennel bulb to use with those gorgeous oranges for a salad.

They are 7 miles from us. Giant is 5.5 the other way. Looks like this Harris Teeter will be my local store for staples, seafood and those items I need to round out real food recipes with my CSA foods. Convenient, too. Double that trip. Conservancy and HT. Or, landfill and HT. Or, Woodstock snowball stand and HT. I can see the possibilities.

As for the colcannon recipe. I had two ounces of spinach left from last week. Six Brussels sprouts. Two parsnips. I also had six tiny new potatoes bought at England Acres. Potatoes and parsnips parboiled until tender.

Pan started with butter, olive oil and onion. Shredded sprouts and spinach added. Garlic, three cloves grated over them. A pinch of salt. Let it all cook down. Add the potatoes and parsnips. Mash them and add another pinch of salt and of pepper. And a splash of milk.

With dinner, we opened a bottle of Rappahannock Meritage. Old red wine goes well with salmon. It does have that characteristic cab franc nose from VA, but still a lovely bottle.

Mostly local for the veggies. Local wine. Great CSA. A good Wednesday night.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in CSA, Howard County, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, West HoCo, Wine and tagged CSA, Food, foodie, Howard County, local businesses, Locavore, West HoCo, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

April Fool’s Day

Posted on April 1, 2013 by AnnieRie

No jokes. No pranks. No weird posts. Just the third anniversary of my last day of working. The day I left Federal service was thirty years and one day after starting it. Somewhere in my mind I kept thinking, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke. I am really retiring.

I can’t believe three years have flown by. Always busy. Loving the gardening, volunteering, wandering, and other hobbies like my cooking and wine interests. Today, we ushered in April. A different weather pattern than a year ago. Still breezy and cool. No flowering trees or shrubs.

I did do a mostly local dinner, like I do many nights. Today I used up my CSA basket items to make a veggie stir fry.

Add to that a local wine, from Linden.

Good wine. Good food. Success in my seedlings. Check out how the squash are doing.

And, yes, the pot on the left has two new ones. I now have seven plants of the heirloom Thelma Sanders squash. Retirement gives you that freedom to revel in crazy little things, like success in planting seeds.

April is the beginning of planting, nurturing, harvesting, and enjoying the fruits of my labor. Different from a year ago, when the March heat had the plants all early blooming and I was recovering from surgery. It looks like this year will be a typical mid Atlantic spring. And I am ready to start putting plants in the ground. The mesclun, arugula and kale are getting bigger and need to be transplanted soon.

Stay tuned for me to check out how the azalea gardens are doing, out at Brighton Dam. It is definitely the beginning of spring. If you think of retirement, my advice is, do it in the spring. You will never miss the office and working.

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Posted in CSA, Food, Gardening, Hobbies, Retirement, Weather, Wine and tagged cooking, CSA, Food, gardening, hobbies, retirement, weather, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Mixing It Up

Posted on March 31, 2013 by AnnieRie

It’s time for the weekly Winter Eat Local posting, a Sunday night thing. Yes, today it’s Easter and I was off to my brother’s house to eat traditional foods, but I did take local Virginia wine down there to share with the family.

As for my weekly local meal, it was last night, and another crock pot meal using some of the venison in the freezer. The reason I am calling this post, mixing it up, is because I mixed all sorts of items to make this meal. It tasted great, just had weird combinations. And, was a mix of local fresh, local frozen, and organic canned items.

Basically, a salad and a stew. The stew, made with venison rump roast, spent all day getting tender in the crock pot. I started with the roast placed on top of one of those huge carrots from the CSA, two of the parsnips, and an onion, again Breezy Willow CSA veggies. Then, the weird part, one pint jar of a root veggie puree made with last fall’s CSA, and taken from the freezer. This gave substance and thickness to the stew. One pint jar of heirloom Amana orange tomatoes from the freezer. Home grown tomatoes, blanched and frozen. Some frozen organic peas from last year. Two tablespoons of tomato paste. A bunch of dried herbs and spices, like cinnamon, garlic powder, cumin, paprika, parsley and oregano. Salt and pepper, too. All plopped in that pot for six hours on high. Oh, almost forgot, for the last hour, add a splash of chicken stock and some whole wheat egg noodles. Mine were picked up at Breezy Willow. They sell them at their farm store. Really good noodles.

It came out tender and juicy and full of flavor. Paired with it was a very simple salad. I made the croutons Saturday morning with the last of the Great Harvest old fashioned white bread. The greens were CSA greens. Olives from Wegmans. Dressing from Roots. Neither of those were local. Still, this salad is so satisfying. Almost stole the show from the venison but not quite.

The croutons are really easy to make. I used one of my spice mixes, and some St. Helena Napa Valley grapeseed oil. A neutral oil, great for making dressings. I buy it by the 1/2 gallon. Mix bread cubes with the oil and spices, and a little salt. Put into a hot oven for five or six minutes. I used 400 degrees on the convection setting. Careful not to burn them, but get them dry and crunchy. I now have enough for a half dozen salads for the two of us.

The wine. An excellent pairing with venison, a cellar selection Malbec from Breaux in Virginia. 2010 vintage. Just the right touch of weight to compliment the venison. By the way, you could cut the venison with a fork, it was so tender. And, cinnamon and garlic powder. A spice combo that is a winning one.

VA Malbec and MD venison. Nice dinner, and still enough left for another dinner this week. That’s why I love my crock pot. Easy to use. Makes enough for multiple meals.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in CSA, Food, Local Businesses, Locavore, Wine, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, crock pot cooking, CSA, Food, heirloom tomatoes, local businesses, Locavore, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

National Mom and Pop Business Day

Posted on March 30, 2013 by AnnieRie

Yesterday was National Mom and Pop Business Day. It is always the 29th of March. I forgot to post about it but we certainly do our part in supporting family owned businesses.

If you didn’t know it, but want to show support there are lots of ways around here to do so this weekend, and to say thank you to family run businesses by giving them sales on a holiday weekend.

How about Easter egg hunts? Clarks Farm opened today. Martha Clark and Nora Crist run the farm. They would love to see you on their opening weekend.

Brunch? How about taking your family to one of the small locally owned businesses, like Iron Bridge, Victoria’s, Tersiquel’s, Shanty Grill, Elkridge Furnace, to name a few. Any others family owned and operated?

Last minute meat purchases? Boarman’s.

Wine? Elk Run. Black Ankle. Both nearby wineries run by husband and wife owners.

I certainly did enough damage getting ready for Easter. Wine from Linden. I have to take Vidal Riesling. It is a family favorite. Also, some sauvignon blanc from Glen Manor, another family owned small winery in Virginia.

The lamb for my dinner. England Acres. The veggies. The eggs for my Easter brunch. Breezy Willow. Two local farms.

Can you think of other places in and around Howard County that are family owned and operated? Besides food and wine and restaurants, there are small stores like Kendall and Clark’s hardware.

Shopping locally owned businesses keeps more of our money close to home. More and more, I buy items from individually owned businesses, and I am eliminating or minimizing national chains.

hocoblogs@@@

Road Trip!

Posted on March 28, 2013 by AnnieRie

Day trips on weekdays out of season are one of the pleasures of retirement. Today we had plans to check out a fairly local “hams” set up to see options for my husband’s towers and shack. But, to appease me, we added a lunch stop and a winery visit, a new one for me to add to my Sixty@sixty list. First, lunch. At a local deli, Big Al’s Market, in St. Michael’s.

Sometimes it’s nice to be bad and eat sinfully delicious pit beef smoked that day. Right out on the sidewalk. You also know it’s good food when the sheriff’s car and a police car are there for their pick up of lunch. Fresh seafood, caught off Tilghman Island and brought in daily, sold for take home, or eat there. Beef, pork, brisket, turkey, all smoked. Oyster sandwiches. Shrimp salad. All sorts of crab accessories for sale, too.

The outside, with picnic tables. There are four tables inside too. They also said they had smoked salmon for sale. We should have brought a cooler and I would have been taking home local seafood from the market in the rear. Summertime, they do crabs daily too.

From there we wandered up Talbot St. to St. Michael’s Winery, in business since 2005, and now growing many vinifera and hybrid grapes on the Eastern shore. Nice crisp white wines. We bought a couple (OK, three) bottles. Nice selection. Cozy little tasting room. Must be crazy during high season on the shore.

I can do without the cute names, but the oaked chardonnay was a pleasant surprise. I first heard of this winery when one of my employees gave me a bottle of their chocolate zinfandel, a sweet red dessert wine good to pour over dessert cakes or ice cream. They told us they buy the zin grapes from Rhode Island.

Last stop, the ham shack up the road. My husband was suitably impressed with the towers and the shed converted to a shack.

Surrounded by pine trees and right off the creek, great location for amateur radio. All in all, a nice eight hour road trip. A couple of hours down and back and four hours to wander around and make the visit. St. Michael’s is a lovely destination convenient to us, and on the way to the ocean resorts. I see more road trips this spring and summer, and for me, those road trips will almost always include looking for local mom and pop restaurants, or markets.

What could be better if you wanted Maryland seafood and Maryland wine? If you want to try St. Michael’s wine, they regularly attend Columbia’s Wine in the Woods, coming up in May.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in Day Trips, Food, Locavore, Real Food, Restaurants, Retirement, Sixty@Sixty, Wine and tagged amateur radio, day trips, Food, foodie, Locavore, real food, retirement, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Venison Chili with Virginia Wine

Posted on March 24, 2013 by AnnieRie

Wine with chili. Only a real win if the chili is subtle, smoky, with cinnamon undertones. Not the “In Your Face” heat. Sunday is the day the Eat Local All Winter group posts what we made using locally sourced items. After a wonderful day hiking and discovering new things at the Conservancy with Tom Wessels, it was nice to come home to a warming meal, chili.

Did you know we have young American chestnut trees surviving the blight, although they are fighting it, on the property in Woodstock? We found many interesting items today, and have the opportunity to learn more from the books about reading the forested landscape.

I will save more details about what we learned for a future post, and get back to the other topic, What was dinner? The vast majority of the chili came from our freezer. It included a large container of heirloom tomatoes from my garden, onions and peppers from the CSA, and a beef stew stock made last fall. All dumped in the crock pot with a pound of the ground venison. Additional tomato paste, black beans and tomato/lime/cilantro mix (courtesy of Rotel) came from the pantry and weren’t local. Also, a couple of onions from last week’s CSA delivery, chopped up. The spices were cinnamon, chili powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper. A splash of Pennsylvania maple syrup, and a chopped up jalapeno out of the freezer, another CSA contribution. Slow cooked for ten hours in the crock pot. It looked like this when done.

Served on the side were Trickling Springs butter and that old fashioned white bread from Great Harvest.

Since it didn’t overwhelm with heat, and had lovely flavor, I decided to open a VA wine. An old one. Predominantly petit verdot. A grape used sparingly in France in Bordeaux, but one which does well in the long growing season in VA.

Yes, the year is 2001, a very good year for VA wines. This blend is vastly different than the other three blends Linden produced in 2001. With all of them in the cellar, we get to sample the differences. This wine has softened over the years, but is still lovely. Supposed to be past its prime, but we don’t think so. Cherry and tobacco in the taste. Very easy to drink. Not brown around the edges either. We do need to drink the rest of these though, as they won’t hold many more years.

Later tonight, a bit of maple flavored yogurt from Pequea Valley Farm in PA, mixed with some blueberries from Butler Orchards, out of the freezer. Lots of berries left, and the yogurt is one I have talked about many times, available at Breezy Willow or at England Acres.

I have to admit again, eating locally in the winter is not difficult around here.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in CSA, Farmer's Markets, Food, Howard County, Local Businesses, Locavore, Nature, Real Food, Volunteering, West HoCo, Wine, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, crock pot cooking, CSA, farmer's markets, Food, foodie, Howard County, howard county conservancy, Linden Vineyards, local businesses, Locavore, West HoCo, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Dinner Out … In

Posted on March 12, 2013 by AnnieRie

And, no, I am not talking about In N Out Burger. Perish the thought. I am talking about replacing an evening out with a killer dinner at home. Better food. Less money.

We did that today.

Courtesy of Wegmans, my freezer, the Breezy Willow CSA, and my favorite Virginia winery, Linden.

It all started with a coupon for $5 from Wegmans, and a trip to Safelite because my windshield finally turned a ding into an eighteen inch long crack. A new windshield this morning and a visit to Wegmans looking for coffee.

Wegmans sells an 80 pack of this French roast for $35. Cheaper than Costco for an 80 pack. Add a $5 coupon to it, and it is a real deal for coffee snobs. A big, rich, bold coffee in environmentally friendly packaging. What’s not to love?

We had other coupons too. Yogurt, deli, sushi and cheese. I could do serious damage.

Today is Tuesday. Half price wine night at Bistro Blanc, right down the road. We considered dinner out. Until I saw the U-10 scallops in the seafood section at Wegmans. This is why I still love the place.

Buying a dinner out with scallops this huge would set you back a large amount of cash in a restaurant. Pan searing them in butter at home. A fraction of the cost. Trust me. Scallops are easy. So are fingerlings. I put the fingerlings in a pot with water for 15 minutes while looking for everything else. Finished them in that browned butter in the searing pan.

Made a salad with microgreens and the beets from the CSA. I roast the beets and use them in salads. I finished the potatoes with the last of that container of garlic scape pesto from my freezer.

Opened a bottle of chardonnay. Without the chardonnay, this dinner cost me $30 in ingredients. The scallops, $18. You could pay way more than $15 a person for much less at any chain restaurant for an entree.

Really easy here. Two pots, one for potatoes and one for scallops. Greens on the plate. Goat cheese from Cherry Glen. Kumatoes, I wanted to try. Not bad, a little mushy but a good taste. I did homemade dressing. You could buy yours.

Dinner in a half hour. Way better than Applebees, or any of those other chains. No beepers. No really overpriced beers and wines, the real cash cows at restaurants. What is stopping you from cooking great stuff at home?

Really. Don’t “Get out there”. Get in your kitchen.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in CSA, Food, Real Food, Restaurants, Wine and tagged cooking, Food, foodie, Linden Vineyards, Locavore, real food, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

CSA Inspiration

Posted on March 10, 2013 by AnnieRie

It’s always fun to get inspiration from something in the CSA delivery and make it a highlight of a meal. This week the inspiration so far is from the citrus. I love really fresh citrus. This week we got oranges and ruby red grapefruit. We scarfed down a grapefruit while I was attempting to segment one of them. It never made it to the salad bowl. Eventually one grapefruit and two oranges, supremed, became the base for this salad.

Well, let’s say most of the fruit made it into the bowl. When I didn’t cut it well, I ate it. What can I say? I really do love fresh juicy sweet citrus, and these do not disappoint.

The recipe:
two or three citrus fruits, navel oranges, juice oranges, sweet red grapefruit, what you have
about two or three ounces of fennel, pulled from the bulb
an ounce or so of red onion
salt, pepper
really good olive oil

Supreme the citrus, by cuting off the peel, save it, cut out wedges avoiding the pith and membrane. You will use the peel to make the vinaigrette. Julienne the fennel and the red onion. I make both really thin and usually an inch to two inches long. Mix it all together. Just before serving, drizzle extra virgin olive oil and squeeze as much juice as you can from the fruit left attached to the peels you reserved. I also squeeze all the juice out of that center of the fruit after you have cut out the wedges. Salt and pepper to taste. Refreshing and for us, the way to end the meal.

If we have a rich dish for dinner, this citrus salad really is a light finish to the meal.

The rest of our mostly local meal last night was a simple pasta with pesto, and steamed Brussels sprouts with butter. The pesto is my garlic scape pesto defrosted from the freezer.

The recipe for the pesto is here. What is really funny about looking for that post, I saw I made strawberry cubes. They must be in the very bottom of the freezer, so I need to go “freezer diving” and find them.

I boiled up some egg noodles, picked up at the market a while back. You can find these many places. Egg noodles with pesto.

Served with a 2007 Linden Hardscrabble Chardonnay. Big, rich, buttery. Cuts through the richness of the pesto. I took this picture while I was cooling it in the freezer. I didn’t have any chardonnay in the back fridge, so pulled this one up from the cellar.

Before this light dinner, we shared some spring rolls picked up at Roots, alongside one of our favorites, that Meyer lemon basil fizz, made with Aranciata, also from Roots. Lovely evening, sitting on the porch and watching the sunset before dinner.

Today I considered grilling something, but had nothing defrosted and a crock pot full of tomato, basil and Boarman’s sausage sauce. Tonight there will be pasta with sauce, some bread and greens with goat cheese. I made that sauce to serve a few times this week, once it will be served over steamed kale from the CSA. Looking forward to what we will get Wednesday, and eating mostly locally sourced items. Loving the coming of spring. In other words, running out of garlic scapes and wanting to make more pesto.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in CSA, Food, Gardening, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, Weather, Wine, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, crock pot cooking, CSA, Food, gardening, Linden Vineyards, local businesses, Locavore, real food, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

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Category Archives: Wine

Rediscovering #mdwine

The Sunday Night Eat Local Report

Colcannon on CSA Day

April Fool’s Day

Mixing It Up

National Mom and Pop Business Day

Road Trip!

Venison Chili with Virginia Wine

Dinner Out … In

CSA Inspiration

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