Tag Archives: wine

So What is National Local Mom and Pop Business Day?

Posted on March 29, 2012 by AnnieRie

Is it just another Hallmark holiday, or what?

I had a draft post I was working on for weeks, that had this time stamp on the draft that sent it to March 18th, when I hit publish. Still need to figure out some of the quirks of WordPress, but I was working on telling the story of using small businesses for most of what we buy. Services and supplies, from people in the county, not from national and international chains.

It is here. Those who subscribe did get it. To update it even more and include food in the mix, I am posting tonight about the local sources of dinner from small, family owned businesses.

We did do one thing today using a mom and pop business. That is, if Cavallero and Company count. My husband has been getting his hair cut by Vince’s shop, from the days they were Rex’s Place. First, Arnold. Now, Wayne. No one else is trusted to cut his hair. Since the late 1970s, I think is when he started with them.

As for the rest of today, I celebrated with a grazing meal tonight. Almost everything on the table was small business.

The salad. Beets, onions and orange from CSA — the oranges come up from a small farm in Florida. Fennel from Roots. Lemon olive oil from St. Helena Olive Oil, CA. USA olive oil, not imported. Woman owned business, that I support wholeheartedly year round.

The cube steak came from Wagner’s in Mt. Airy. The flour from Union Mills. The cole slaw I made using cabbage and carrots from the CSA. The accompaniments were from Cava in Rockville MD. Harissa and tzatziki. Bread from Atwater’s. Butter from Trickling Springs. Wine from Elk Run. No big businesses here. It can be done with just a little effort.

For me, I want to support these businesses all year. Not just for one day. By the way, the wine was awesome. Thanks to Fred and Carol Wilson, who started their winery in the 1980s. This wine, a cabernet, is from 2002. It is ten years old and still full of fruit. Not brown or fading. Just luscious. MD can make really good wines. Supporting people like the Wilsons is something I believe in. They started the very first all vinifera vineyard in MD. Hats off to them for making this lovely wine.

hocoblogs@@@

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The Final Week of the Eat Local Challenge

Posted on March 28, 2012 by AnnieRie

In November I signed on to prepare at least one meal a week for sixteen weeks using locally sourced items. Locally being defined as within 150 miles of your home. The Dark Days Challenge is the Title. Over 100 people signed up. About 30-40 of us made it through the challenge.

Highlights to me of my meals included learning to make sweet potato gnocchi, making roasted cornmeal polenta, and using turnips far more than I ever did in the past.

These ingredients produced this soup. Jerusalem artichokes, leeks, apples and turnips. Thick, rich and satisfying.

The South Region, which included participants from MD, VA, NC, SC and TX, was one of the most active regions. Not surprising because it is fairly easy to source local items year round here. The northern participants struggled more.

This last week had a theme for us. Make breakfast. So far, I did eggs one day, but I intend to finish the challenge before Sunday with pancakes and sausage patties. Not going to go out without putting forth some real effort. Eggs are too easy.

In Howard County, we are lucky to have a year round CSA deliver. We also have access to meats and dairy from local farmers. We can also get produce from Amish markets in the area, and three year round farmer’s markets in Tacoma Park, Silver Spring and Dupont Circle. A Saturday morning visit to Silver Spring yielded enough fresh goodness, plus my Friday CSA delivery, to make Giant or Safeway superfluous in my life. Like the week shown below.

Friday Delivery CSA – beets, onion, sweet potatoes, celery, microgreens, broccoli, and Angus ground beef.

Saturday morning at the market – including chorizo, bread, mustard, high tunnel grown tomatoes, bibb lettuce, and not pictured, fresh basil.

Those of us who garden had put aside some frozen or canned items to use. I ran out of almost everything in my freezer, with one pint of turkey stock left. I used my last pickles in egg salad a few weeks ago. I still have half a jar of concord grape jelly from my neighbor, and enough frozen veggie items to make one more batch of veggie stock.

It made me think about what to do in the future. I intend to use Larriland Farms and Butler’s Orchards quite a bit this year to augment my garden and freeze/can items to use. I will also make good use of the summer CSA and farmer’s markets to get items to put away.

Why, you ask? Because, for me, eating fresh foods keeps my allergies at bay. It also limits my exposure to GMO vegetables, and to meats full of antibiotics and hormones. I feel better when I do this. Besides, serving fresh food to my friends and husband, prepared by me with love, is one of the things I enjoy best about being retired. Yum, TLV Farm kielbasa with CSA veggies, Canela bread from Boarman’s, and Black Ankle Syrah. Goodness, from Howard County and the surrounding area. Doesn’t get much better.

hocofood@@@

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Frost Happens!

Posted on March 26, 2012 by AnnieRie

It never seems to fail. The tulips come up. The herbs start growing. Thankfully, I didn’t transplant the lettuces yet.

And then, we get a frost warning. I had to cut some herbs and bring them in, so I could cover the rest.

Covering the garlic and herb beds.

And the tulips in the front of the house, just the ones that haven’t opened yet.

The ones that had fully opened or that were all by themselves, not worth spending the time to cover the single bulbs, came in to be the centerpiece on the dining room table. I usually do this later in the spring, but you can’t beat Mother Nature.

The temps will hit the 20s here tonight. Here’s hoping it doesn’t mess up the strawberries and the fruit trees coming along nicely for spring.

As well as the grape vines. Budbreak has occurred in some areas due to the warm spring weather. Cross your fingers for the farmers spending a tough night protecting their plants.

As for me, I am just happy the weeping cherry hit its peak and is already shedding its flowers. I love it when it reaches that intense pink and white loveliness.

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A Day Trip to Breaux

Posted on March 24, 2012 by AnnieRie

About an hour from here is an amazingly beautiful vineyard, developed by Paul Breaux as one of the area’s destination wineries. They purchased 400 acres of land to the east of the Appalachian Trail near the border of VA and WV. They are six miles south of Harper’s Ferry WV. When you cross the bridge from MD to VA on US 340, turn left at the gas station and drive the six miles.

On the site, they planted 100+ acres of mostly vinifera. This was one of the few large scale, well bankrolled wineries in VA in the 1990’s. First class all the way. Paul Breaux had done well in real estate. You may know of his company, Sun Realty. If you rented a place in the Outer Banks, it may have been one of his. In an interesting “six degrees of separation” moment, it was Sun Realty that rented us a house on the Outer Banks for our honeymoon in August 1980, when they were a fledgling company.

In the year 2000, we first went to visit the vineyards with friends, after a morning hike in Harper’s Ferry. The building is impressive. Way bigger than almost any winery I had ever seen in the mid-Atlantic. Now, after a trip to Napa and Sonoma, I can put it into a different perspective. Barboursville in VA also has impressive grounds, but we never saw the other big VA wineries until years later. So, for us, this place was awesome. They had invested in much better equipment than any Maryland winery we had visited in the 1980s or early 90’s. This place even has a misting machine in the barrel storage chambers, to keep the barrels from drying out by regulating the humidity. And, they are still growing.

Coming up to the building yesterday, we saw massive construction going on. A new building that promises to add more capacity for storage of production, as well as surprises, since they are not revealing yet what all will be housed there.

We are charter cellar club members. Breaux and Linden are the VA wineries we support as case club members. Black Ankle and Boordy are the cellar clubs in MD that we also support. As a hobby, wine collecting is not inexpensive, but it beats car collecting, or having a boat, or playing golf. All those other things are money sumps, just like our winery visits are. We have become very selective about where we go and what we purchase now that we are retired. We continue our Breaux membership because we believe they provide a great value for the money. The wines for the club are not available to the general public.

Yesterday we went to pick up six bottles. We get two bottles every two months, or a case a year. It is one of the more affordable clubs, as others were requiring two bottles a month. We were last there in October. The hostess opened a bottle of one of the cellar club wines for us to taste to decide if we wanted to purchase more. We ended up getting a couple of bottles of the Cabernet Franc Reserve, and a couple of bottles of the Viognier, which has won numerous awards. Viognier is a wine that Virginia does a very good job of producing, and Breaux makes a stellar bottling.

We bought a baguette and some salami, and took our picnic lunch of local Howard County cheese, and my brownies out on the patio to enjoy the view.

Served with a bottle of Lot 10-08, a cellar selection. We enjoyed a glass and corked up the bottle to bring home for later.

As a committed locavore, I want to support local wineries as well as the local farmers. Even extending my tendencies to buy local to buying pottery, and plants, and services. Supporting local businesses puts some of our money directly into our local economy, and I feel good about that. Not to mention, day trips to wineries are a benefit of living in a very good viticultural climate.

Cheers!

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Winter CSA Week Thirteen, and Dinner from the Box

Posted on March 23, 2012 by AnnieRie

Over nine pounds of veggies. Six items. $18/week which includes home delivery. This week was one of the heaviest hauls of veggies in the CSA for the winter. Zahradka Farm is a vendor at the Glenwood Farmer’s Market so everyone can partake of their fresh veggies for at least six months a year. Joining their CSA allowed us to experience home delivery for the rest of the year.

The six items are a half share. A full share would have been ten. We choose from an on line ordering form. Over the weekend they put up a list with what is ready to pick. This is what I ordered and received, with weight in ounces after item received:

collard greens (12 oz)
carrots (34 oz)
onions (24 oz)
beets (26 oz)
radishes (14 oz)
new potatoes (40 oz)

We also received skirt steak from JW Treuth butchers, as our weekly meat selection, and this is the week for my biweekly dozen eggs, all colors and sizes.

Some of the eggs are a deep brown, although the pictures don’t do them justice.

I already put one of the carrots in the leftover cabbage from St. Paddy’s Day, with last week’s white potatoes. Topped it with a fresh kielbasa from TLV Tree Farm. They are just down the road from us. We go out to the farm on Saturdays when they are open from 10-2. Last week we picked up this fresh kielbasa. Just like the kielbasa made in my husband’s home town in PA.

I opened a bottle of wine from one of the closest wineries to Howard County, Black Ankle. Interesting that this 2006 Syrah had a musty nose, which disappeared after a while, but I wonder how the other couple of bottles in the cellar are doing. Tasted great, though. I wanted a bigger but not huge wine to stand up to the kielbo and the mustard.

This dinner came from less than 25 miles away, if you discount the ramp mustard, which is from Spring Valley Farm and Orchard, in Augusta WV. I did buy it at Dupont Circle Market, which is 25 miles south of us.

A really tasty dinner, right from our proverbial back yard.

hocofood@@@

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Keeping It Mostly Local – Pizza

Posted on March 23, 2012 by AnnieRie

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.

hocofood@@@

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Eating Local – High on the Hog

Posted on March 19, 2012 by AnnieRie

“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.

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Winter CSA Week 12 …

Posted on March 16, 2012 by AnnieRie

… 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.

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Drinking Local Wines — A 30 Year Journey

Posted on March 16, 2012 by AnnieRie

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?

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A Special Award for a Local VA Winery

Posted on February 28, 2012 by AnnieRie

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.

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