Category Archives: Wine

Keeping It Mostly Local – Pizza

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Last night we felt like having pizza. But, I refuse to be influenced by TV commercials enticing me to just pick up a frozen pie or calling for delivery pizza. Making it myself is really not that difficult, as long as I buy dough, or find a flatbread that works in the oven or on the grill.

I picked this one up from Roots the other day.

It is a thick crusty base that will hold up to lots of oil and sauce and cheese without getting soggy. Making my own toppings is what I like about pizza. Dig around in the fridge and see what looks good.

I made a sauce using local Maitake mushrooms bought at MOM’s, Hummingbird Farms cherry tomatoes bought at Roots, garlic and onion from my CSA, a bit of sauce from Quaker Valley in PA, bought at the Silver Spring Farmer’s Market, and some organic tomato paste, bought at the Common Market a while back. Sweated the onions and mushrooms. Added the rest and left it on low to simmer while I got the cheeses on the crust.

Used up some Firefly Farms chevre, and some tomato basil spread from Bowling Green Farms. Put the sauce on top of the cheeses. Ready for the oven.

Baked at 400 degrees for 20 minutes to make it crispy.

Served with a 2002 Linden Cabernet Franc, the last of this year and varietal in the cellar. As usual, the wine did not disappoint, nor did the pizza. The wine did not exhibit that bell pepper taste the francs from VA usually do. It was well balanced and still had quite a bit of fruit for a ten year old VA wine. If I recall, this was an OK year after a really good one in 2001. This wine proved that even in a less than optimum year, Linden made wines with longevity.

What made this dinner even more fun were the brownies. Made with a mix and black beans and water. That’s all. No eggs, or oil. I did jazz them up a bit with peanut butter and peanuts, but you can make them just with the mix and beans. Look it up on line. Simple brownies, dark, dense and chewy. Great to finish the wine with them while watching the basketball games.

This was a mostly locally sourced meal, and yet simple to do. In just a few weeks the farmer’s markets will open across Howard County, and it will be really easy to pick up cheeses and mushrooms to make your own pizza. We will have to wait a while though to get good tomatoes, but until then, Roots has Hummingbird Farms hydroponically grown tomatoes, including the heirlooms.

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Eating Local – High on the Hog

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“I don’t know why I want to eat anywhere else!” My husband’s comment at dinner on Sunday night. We did an Eat Local challenge meal. It was really only leftovers, with a side and a salad, but what leftovers! I appreciate the praise from my husband who agrees, unless it’s something special and a fancier restaurant, dinner at home beats most of what is available around here.

The Treuth pork chops from last week CSA delivery. There had been three huge chops, so almost two of them were left from my crock pot meal last week. With the greens and sweet potatoes, all packaged up to wait for another night. I put them in the oven to heat up and made a salad and a new recipe for a side dish.

Mashed turnips and carrots with sage butter. Three turnips, two large carrots, from the CSA, boiled, then simmered until tender. Drained and finished in Trickling Springs butter with sage from my garden. Really sweet and just the right amount of sage butter.

The salad, spinach from the CSA, my microgreens, Firefly Farm chevre, and Everona Dairy dried fruit topping. Finished with Catoctin Mountain Orchard’s raspberry vinaigrette. The pepitas on top were from Roots Market, bulk aisle, not local.

Dinner accompanied by a Linden 2009 Hardscrabble Chardonnay, big enough to stand up to the tomato preserve/pepper jelly glaze on the pork chops. According to tasting notes on the Linden web site, this wine will peak in 2014-2017. It certainly is a baby now, with huge amounts of apricot and ginger on the palate. Just enough oak not to overwhelm.

Dinner was really good last night. I have now been completely converted to cooking with turnips. Thanks to the CSA and the Dark Days Challenge. Two more weeks to go in the challenge, which ends on April 1st. I made it through every week with at least one local meal, and sometimes more than one.

Winter CSA Week 12 …

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… and a variation on colcannon to use up my brussel sprouts. I saw kitchen scribble mention colcannon on the hocoblogs page, and it inspired me to make it tonight, to use up last week’s potatoes and brussel sprouts.

The week twelve delivery hit the porch at 4 PM. Meat was an Italian beef sausage, my favorite of their beef options.

The veggies had a twist. Seems the beets weren’t up to snuff, so they substituted some of the Florida oranges. I know they do that when they go out and pick and find themselves lacking enough, or what they get isn’t good enough to send us. The way CSAs have to deal with what nature gives them. All part of the buy in. And I am OK with that.

We got:
2 lb. carrots
12 oz. radishes
2 1/4 lb. mixed potatoes
2 leeks
3 oranges
a 3 lb. cabbage

The cabbage will become part of tomorrow’s St. Patrick’s Day meal, with corned beef bought at Boarman’s.

This is a half share CSA, just enough to get through a week of eating home four or five nights for two people. The full share of ten items would have been too much, since many of the winter veggies wouldn’t be candidates for freezing or canning, like my summer ones are. I have to say, we have not thrown much at all away due to spoilage. This is a good size for winter for us.

As for the colcannon, another Irish dish, made of nothing but potatoes, milk, winter greens and butter. All smashed together. The filet for dinner was also from Boarman’s, pan fried with a balsamic, wine and butter reduction.

The wine, a 2001 Valhalla Valkyrie, a meritage with the five Bordeaux grapes. Ten years old, still a baby. Nearly sixty percent cabernet sauvignon with 25% franc, and the rest merlot, malbec and petit verdot.

You can eat amazing mostly local food all year round without that much effort here in this area of the country. This meal came from my CSA, Boarman’s, and the wine from the basement. Never set foot in a Giant or Safeway. Supported my local farmers and businesses.

Drinking Local Wines — A 30 Year Journey

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In 1982, 30 years ago, we bought our first house together. We packed up our case of assorted wines and put them in the car to drive the 5 miles from East Columbia to West Columbia and set down roots for 23 years.

We had a neat town house. Split level with the basement half level all below ground. Sixty degree temps year round. A dark cool nook under the stairs. We decided to put wine down there. A few bottles at a time. It was out of sight, out of mind, and a great place to establish a cellar.

What went down there? It could have been fancy Bordeaux or California wines but we didn’t have the money to buy those. We did however have a curiosity about local wines fueled by Les Amis du Vin membership, and by presentations by Brett Byrd and Bob Lyon. We first met Bob at a wine tasting event at White Oak, where we worked. He had a passion, and the ability to make good wine in MD. Wine with longevity. Cabernets that were good five to ten years after bottling.

We also started attending wine festivals in MD and VA, with our first festival the MD wine festival in Westminster.

We then met the Crouch brothers from Allegro. They lived in a trailer on a hill with their vineyard near Red Lion PA. We are drinking the last of their 20 year old reserve cabernets and they are gorgeous.

John and Tim got lucky. They held a BATF permit that included one of their peach wines they made to sell locally in PA. The peach dessert wine gave them enough capital to make their vinifera wines. Imagine their surprise when they were contacted to sell that registered name. Seems a large company decided to call their reserve wine by the same name and couldn’t register it because the Crouch brothers owned it. Most of their equipment upgrades came from that sale. The name OPUS ONE.

Stories like that exchanged over a shared taste of wines is what made it fun to discover local wines in MD, PA and VA. We would buy a few bottles whenever we could. Buying mostly inexpensive, but one bottle of “good stuff”. The good stuff went under the basement stairs.

Brought up to serve on birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, promotion celebrations. We found that making a simple steak dinner with a killer bottle of wine was way less expensive than dinner in a restaurant, even when the wine cost was the bulk of the dinner cost. A $20 Allegro or Catoctin Cabernet left to soften for two or three years rivaled or bested a Bordeaux Superieur. At a restaurant, yeah, they waited on me, but grilling a steak and a couple of potatoes, served with cheese and bread was no real work and so much more satisfying.

We built an interesting collection over the past 30 years, keeping enough down in the basement here to have special occasion wines available still. Like my 60th birthday. Our 35th anniversary. I think the smartest thing we did was stock up before retiring. Now we can reap the benefits.

The local wines tend to be from Linden, Black Ankle, Glen Manor, Breaux, Barboursville and Valhalla with a few others thrown in, like Boordy, Sugarloaf Mountain and Elk Run. Not a bad collection of wineries in the area. Cooking with, and enjoying, the fruits of the labor of committed people like Jim Law, Sarah O’Herron, Jeff White and all the other winemakers in our mid Atlantic area is a hobby that gives pleasure and satisfaction at the end of a busy day.

My Philosophy?

A Special Award for a Local VA Winery

We received an email yesterday that I just have to share. Glen Manor Vineyards in Front Royal, VA won the VA Governor’s Cup for their 2009 Hodder Hill Meritage. I have written about Glen Manor wines here on the blog as they are some of our favorites, including those made from Glen Manor’s grapes while Jeff White grew for Linden.

We have earlier vintages of Hodder Hill in our cellar, tucked away in boxes waiting for them to mature. This wine is made from four of the five traditional Bordeaux varietals. Only Malbec is missing from the blend.

We have been drinking these wines since 1998 when Jeff’s first single vineyard designation appeared on a Linden label. We recently had a 1999 with dinner. Just like all of Linden’s reds, it was still big, beautifully balanced and still a bit tannic.

A visit in early January to Glen Manor resulted in our stocking up on
their Sauvignon Blancs while assuming we would get some Hodder Hill in April at their barrel tasting. Now, it may be difficult as he indicated he will have to ration us to four bottles. It seems the phone is ringing off the hook since he won this award.

The Virginia Governor’s Cup was revamped this year, making it a very stiff competition, with two levels of judging. The twelve top wines, designated the Governor’s Case, will be featured in marketing and at official state events. Winning this first place finish is indeed an honor for Jeff. Over 400 wines were entered, many of them from very respectable long standing vineyards, and some from “upstarts”.

I mean, how often can you say you beat The Donald? Yes, Glen Manor beat out the Trump aka Kluge blanc de blanc sparkling wine. Here is the link to the press release.

Virginia is so far ahead of MD in promoting local wines. For years we have found the agriculture and forestry office in their government to aggressively promote their wines, all the while MD has been putting road blocks in front of potential MD winemakers.

Now there is some support for MD’s boutique wineries, with legislation passed favorable to the industry, but they will have a hard time competing with VA.

For those of us who love local wines, any progress is a good thing. With Black Ankle getting national press last year, and Glen Manor rising to the top of a booming industry in VA, this region may finally get the respect they deserve. The hills all along the Appalachian Mountains are a perfect place to grow Vinifera. No need to buy foreign wines. Uncork a bottle of something locally grown and produced.

And enjoy the view.

Eating Locally – Bison and Polenta

Week 13, three months into the challenge to eat at least once a week with locally sourced items. All of the main ingredients for dinner came from less than 150 miles of our house. A few exceptions, spices and oils/vinegar, as noted when I started this personal challenge.

This week I challenged myself to cook items new to me for cooking, but not new from experience in restaurants. Bison, from Gunpowder Bison, and bought at the Silver Spring Year Round Farmer’s Market. Short Ribs, slow cooked in the oven. Served over soft creamy polenta and with honey glazed carrots.

The bison was first rubbed with “RubJoeMeat” coffee based dry rub bought last year at one of the local home shows. It is not local, obviously, but perfect for bison. Then, I placed it in an olive oil rubbed shallow pan, added red wine, balsamic vinegar, sliced white onion, and spread some McCutcheon’s tomato preserves over the top. Salt, pepper and cayenne. Baked at 225 degrees for three hours.

The polenta was made using Burnt Cabins roasted cornmeal. Nothing but water, cornmeal, salt, pepper and unsalted butter. Also, I steamed carrots then glazed them with honey.

Here are the supporting ingredients that went into the meal.

This was a really tasty meal. The polenta set up beautifully with an earthy quality: using roasted cornmeal created this heartier version of a soft polenta. The bison is lean, but using the wine and vinegar kept it from being dry or tough. The tomato preserves are awesome. Just tomatoes, sugar, and citric acid. Slightly sweet but still tart like tomatoes. This stuff is also great on toast for breakfast. The McCutcheon Family has been in the butters, preserves, jams and jelly business in Frederick for 74 years. We can find their jars of goodness all over the area.

As for the wine to stand up to this meal, we chose the 1998 Linden Hardscrabble. A fourteen year old Virginia red wine. Still with oodles of fruit and still tannic. Not brown around the edges. This wine is a killer wine and it proves that Jim Law has truly mastered the art of making big wines right here in our backyard. If you are a fan of Black Ankle and have tasted their big Crumbling Rock or Slate wines, they are babies compared to Linden. Sarah O’Brien is pushing Black Ankle in the direction that Jim Law took Linden. These are very concentrated wines. It will be interesting to see if Black Ankle can get to the level of Linden as their vines mature.

I have added Jim’s notes from his web page below the picture for those who want to know more about this lovely wine, that almost but not quite upstaged my bison and polenta.

Linden Vineyards Cellar Notes:

Aromas: Cocoa and dried herbs, especially rosemary.

Palate: Flavors of dark cherry, cloves and black pepper with firm, yet fine grained tannins.

Food Pairings: Red meats, rich cheeses, and dishes with olives or garlic.

Vineyard: Estate (100% Hardscrabble Vineyard), on Blue Ridge at 1,300 to 1,400 ft. with an eastern to southern slope. Deep, well-drained mineral soils give cherry character, deep color, and good structure. Vine ages from 8 to 14 years.

Vintage: 1998 was an unusually hot and dry year. A severe hail storm on June 15 reduced average yields to just 1.5 tons/acre (about 22 hectoliters per hectare). Harvest was September 22 through October 7.

Winemaking: A blend of 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 27% Cabernet Franc, 5% Petit Verdot and 3% Merlot. Grapes were destemmed and lightly crushed and fermented warm in small open bins. The cap was punched down by hand two times a day. The wine was pressed off just prior to dryness and put immediately in primarily one and two year old Virginia oak barrels. The wine was bottled after 21 months of oak ageing. 332 cases produced.

Wine and Chocolate

Valentine’s Day is an interesting holiday. The cynical side of me considers it a Hallmark holiday, where much money is spent on cards. We don’t do cards. Just like the advent of digital cameras impacted film, and the progression to ebooks is affecting book stores, and newspapers and magazines fall one after another, it is only a matter of time until cards in the mail disappear as well.

But the point of this post is “What did we do for Valentine’s Day?”

Wine and chocolate.

More of the first and less of the last. I try to limit the amount of chocolate in the house, so just a taste is what I want. Not a box full of empty calories.

This fit the bill. Just enough to enjoy, and the wine lasted two nights. 15.9% alcohol will make it last more than one sitting. I have to thank Les Amis du Vin, the predecessor of Taster’s Guild, for introducing us to Biale Zins. Big Zins. With interesting names like Black Chicken. For a trip down memory lane, we reminisced about Yogi Barrett and the wine tastings at the old Chez Fernand, where we first tasted Biale wines. A piece of HoCo loco trivia. The names of the restaurants where Fernand worked. Where was Papillon? Chez Fernand? It also had us to trying to remember the name of the restaurant when he was in Baltimore after the fire in Ellicott City. Then returning to Ellicott City with Tersiquels.

This wine is from 2002. It is a Lodi appellation, from Spenker Vineyard. High in alcohol yet not with that burn that high alcohol wines sometimes contain. Perfect with a chili infused dark chocolate.

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Eating Locally for Valentine’s Day, in the Dark Days Challenge

Maybe I should title this post, why I can’t wait for the Columbia Wegman’s to open. I will be going out to dinner even less when specialty items are right down the road. (OK, 15 miles but who’s counting?)

Sunday night is the night we relax and have a great meal. And, since my husband teaches on Monday nights, plus we are not crazy enough to try and go out on Valentine’s Day, I decided to do our Valentine’s Dinner on Sunday. For me, as an avid cook of real food using local ingredients, I love to find great inspirations to build a meal around.

Our trip to Wegman’s Friday found us that inspiration, wild caught Chesapeake Bay rockfish. Our rockfish are really striped bass and are a best choice on the Monterey Aquarium Seafood list. It is advised though not to eat large amounts of fish that could contain mercury, so this is one of those “eat occasionally” seafood choices.

The morning after I brought it home, I put together a marinade and placed it all in a plastic bag for 24 hours. The marinade is not local. It is one of the few non-local items on the menu. I used St. Helena Olive Oil and some leftover white wine (Bota box pinot grigio) plus cilantro from Wegman’s, salt and pepper, and a squeeze of lemon.

This lovely Bibb lettuce, from Mock’s Greenhouse in Berkeley Springs WV and bought at Wegman’s as well, is the basis for the salad.

We usually find Mock’s greens at the Silver Spring Freshfarm Farmer’s Market, and we were happy to see more than one item of theirs located in the produce section at the Frederick Wegman’s.

The salad was made from this lettuce plus baby beets from our Zahradka Farm CSA, and Mountain Top Bleu Cheese from Firefly Farms. Both of these sources are on our local source page. I used Catoctin Mountain Orchard’s peach vinaigrette for the dressing. I stocked up at Catoctin in December since they take a very long break in the winter and don’t return until spring. I know not all the ingredients in their dressings are local, but the peaches are theirs.

I baked two small sweet potatoes from the CSA delivery, and served them with South Mountain Creamery butter. Sauteed a mess of collard greens in TLV Tree Farm bacon with onion and garlic from the CSA, and plated it all with the baked rockfish. The rockfish was baked in olive oil with a couple of pats of South Mountain butter placed on top at the end to melt.

Dinner was served with a Glen Manor 2009 Sauvignon Blanc. Jeff White used to work for Jim Law at Linden, and his sauvignon blancs are lovely. They have that citrusy note. This wine was big enough to stand up to that cheese as well. We always eat our salads after our dinner, almost as a palate cleanser and the salad went well with the wine. You had to have the fish before the cheese kicked in. That mountain top cheese from Firefly is intense.

All in all, it was a really nice meal, for a fraction of the cost of going out. $20 for the wine, $20 for the fish, and everything else from the weekly CSA deliveries plus freezer and pantry. I like splurging on good ingredients and good wine and making a celebratory meal like this. Less stress. Easy to cook. Really it is easy to cook these things. They just take time. Sundays for us are the perfect night to enjoy the results of my hobby.

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Eating Locally Hasn’t Been All That Difficult

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Here we are, I believe on Week Eleven of the “Dark Days Challenge“, where over 100 of us from across the US, with one or two from Canada and the UK, are trying to see if we can make one meal a week using ingredients sourced from 150 miles or less from where we live. We have exceptions like spices, oils, chocolate and coffee. Plus, whatever we declared before we started. I will use locally produced items that may contain ingredients like flour or baking powder that aren’t local. Atwater’s bread is one of those sources.

So far, every week I have been able to source and use local items to make at least one meal. I finally reached the repetitive stage in this week, the eleventh one. I did an omelet for dinner, not much different than my frittata of a few weeks ago.

Finding a CSA that delivers all winter, and having numerous markets open year round, has made this fairly simple. Silver Spring, Tacoma Park and Dupont Circle all stay open year round. Zahradka farm provides home delivered veggies, fruit, meat, eggs, bread, and specially ordered items using an online weekly form. After picking which options you want for the 18 weeks, and pay in advance, we just sit back and take delivery weekly.

For this meal, the inspiration was a package of bacon from TLV Tree Farm in Glenelg, bought from Jamie this past year at the Fall Fest at the Howard County Conservancy in October and put away in my freezer with other goodies like a brisket and sausages. I defrosted it to use for Tuesday’s omelet and for Southern greens I will be making this weekend when my CSA arrives with collard greens. I admit, belonging to a CSA means you have to plan meals.

The baby Swiss cheese from a recent visit to South Mountain Creamery along with their milk and unsalted butter is going to be used for this 5 egg omelet. I am getting my biweekly delivery of eggs this coming weekend from Zahradka Farm CSA so I needed to use up some of the ones from last month. The spinach is from the CSA as well. The mushrooms I picked up at Boarman’s. They are labeled as from our favorite local source, Kennett Square PA. I get these mushrooms most of the spring and fall from the Sandy Spring CSA that delivers to Columbia and to the Conservancy.

Come this May will mark our second year with the cooperative of 70-80 organic farmers around Lancaster, including Mother Earth mushrooms. Until then, though, I am eating lots of greens, onions, potatoes, leeks, chard, cauliflower and broccoli. Eating seasonally is something many of us stopped doing when year round veggies from all over the world came into our chain supermarkets.

Taking this challenge has brought me back to simple cooking, fresh foods and decreased allergies. I am glad I did it.

On to the omelet, I cut up some bacon, browned it in the pan, added the veggies and mushrooms, then poured in the egg and milk mixture.

The finished product fell in pieces when I was trying to serve it so there are no dinner pictures.

We poured a glass of Linden Chardonnay from VA and buttered some some Atwater’s Bread, making this a completely local meal except for the salt and pepper.

A source that I have relied upon to tell me where to find local foods is the book Dishing Up Maryland by Lucie Snodgrass. I bought mine at Black Ankle vineyards last year, and I have seen it at Baugher’s Market. Besides the great recipes, there are pages of local resources in the back, a great place to find farms, artisans and markets in the state.

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It May Be Winter, But There’s Lots Going On!

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I honestly am not sure how I found time to work. I have so many things happening this month, and places I want to go.

The Howard County Conservancy has two events this month, one this Saturday and one on the 26th. The Howard County Bloggers are having a blogtail hour in Columbia on the 13th. The 14th is Valentine’s Day and we are wandering down to Bistro Blanc for an after dinner drink, if we can get in.

The Great Backyard Bird Count is February 17-20.

I am volunteering to set up for an event at Sharp’s Farm for the Howard Legacy Leadership Institute for the Environment.

Breaux Vineyards in VA has their annual Samedi Gras event on the 18th. And, we are meeting friends for Fireside Friday at Black Ankle one of these Fridays if we can fit it in.

First up for us, going to the Conservancy on the 11th to see how to worm compost. Squirmy Wormy Worms That Work: Kitchen Garbage to Top Soil – with Barb Schmeckpeper, a retired researcher in human and medical genetics, Howard County Master Gardener and environmental volunteer, who loves to talk to kids of all ages about the wonder of the natural world. Dr Barb Schmeckpeper has been doing this for many years – and she and her grandkids have a lot of fun with it! The Conservancy event page is here.

Then, Monday night I will be meeting some of the long time Howard County Bloggers in Columbia to get to know others who blog locally. It should be an interesting evening, as I have lived here 40 years almost, but spent most of my life commuting to DC.

Doing my thing counting the birds in our yard and meadow for the annual Backyard Bird Count next weekend. The habitat that I so carefully created and have nurtured has given me dozens of visits. My highest count one year was over a hundred birds, thanks to a flock of geese who landed in the adjoining fields behind our house and my neighbor. We routinely get more than twenty different species here. It’s easy to register and send in a count. Click the link above and get started.

On the 26th, we are going to see a truly amazing lady, Twig George, talk about Life with her mom, who wrote over 100 children’s books including the famous My Side of the Mountain. Twig herself is an author, writing children’s books as well. This family event at the Howard County Conservancy promises to be a great one. Learning more about nature and the environment are priorities for me in retirement. I spent too long as a bureaucrat pushing paper and now take every opportunity to get out and experience new things.

Who says retirement is boring? Certainly not us.

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