Leap of Faith

I have to remind myself at times that my friend who lives in Italy is not on facebook and that she does not see things that I post in that forum.

Last Saturday was the annual Napa Home Winemakers Classic held this year in Yountville. Proceeds from the event support the Dry Creek- Lakoya Volunteer Fire Department. As we have been doing since the 90's, our home wine making group "Leap of Faith" entered a wine in the competition and poured our recently bottled 2008 Cabernet from the Oak Knoll District.



photo by John Poole

My husband John snapped this picture as we lined up with our award for the top Cabernet of the competition (no first place awarded). We tried to get him to put down the camera and join us, but to no avail. Next year we may get a group shot with everyone in it.




This wine tasted special in the barrel. After discussion and blending tests, we decided not to blend it with the Merlot/Cabernet Franc in another barrel. Usually we produce a "Bordeaux blend" with at least these three grapes and call it "Trinity" -- but this year bottled the Cabernet Sauvignon by itself. The Merlot is still in the barrel, which is now the American new oak barrel that held the Cabernet. If we go another year in the barrel, that will be a record for us.



John took lots of photos, and his son Laurence got to taste many wines as good or better than commercial wines of Napa. John as designated driver did not taste.




The sunflowers on our table were glowing from the late afternoon sun. We made some sangria (with one of our wines, of course) expecting a hot afternoon, but the weather remained sunny and warm. Near the end of the event we pulled out some of our "blue ribbon first place" 2007 Syrah Port - a big winner from last year. With chocolate.

Wine makers trade wines near the end - and we had to turn away some who wanted to trade for the port. We poured it all.

plum cake

Today we bottled wine for the Leap of Faith home wine making group. We work now in John and Cyndi's garage (so we can call ourselves "garagistes"). They have hot and cold running water and electricity, things lacking in the old carriage house we used for years. While the carriage house has apple, fig and lemon trees - John and Cyndi's has a plum tree. On the counter were these perfectly ripe plums - asking to be eaten and to be baked in a plum cake. Cyndi asked for the recipe - so here it is. The picture above is a pluot cake from last fall and the pictures below are from today.

"Brunelleschi's Dome" by Ross King is a highly recommended book for those interested in how an enormous Renaissance dome is constructed. John read it before their trip to Italy...



Plum Cake
adapted from a recipe at "Sweet Amandine"

1 C flour
1 tsp. baking powder
Zest of 1 lemon
3/4 C. sugar
2 eggs
1/2 C. canola oil
1 tsp. vanilla
4-5 plums, pluots, or other small stone fruit (or 1-2 C. berries)
1 T. raw sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour 8 or 9 inch springform pan and slice fruit thinly. Mix flour, baking powder, lemon zest - add sugar, eggs, vanilla and oil. Stir till mixture forms a thick batter. Place batter in pan and arrange fruit on top. Sprinkle with raw sugar and bake for 50-60 minutes. Do not over bake - but do remove as soon as cake tester in center comes out clean.

I've made this cake with pluots and with plums - and will see tomorrow how the plum version turned out.

Nocino, or Liqueur de noix

This is a recipe I've been wanting to try since last summer at the Napa Home Winemakers Classic. A bottle of an intriguing brown liquid was brought out from underneath one of the pouring tables, and a small amount of an aromatic liqueur poured into the wine glass. I had never tasted anything like it. On reaching home, I started looking for recipes for "Nocino" and found several, including one for a "liqueur de noix" or "green walnut liqueur" by David Lebovitz, a favorite author and chef.

Unfortunately, this requires green walnuts, and by July the Napa walnuts were too mature to be cut. The shells had already formed. I made a mental note of the date for harvesting the green walnuts - June 24.

I picked the walnuts at my friend Cindy's house this afternoon and bought a 1.75 liter bottle of vodka for this batch. The gallon glass jar is one I use for making Meyer lemon "limoncello" - also an Italian favorite.










Because of the size of the jar, I decided to make one and a half recipes of the green walnut liqueur. A recommendation from several of the recipes is to use a heavy cleaver to cut the walnuts. Tap the cleaver into the side of the green walnut (keep fingers well away) and let the weight of the cleaver slice the walnut in half, then quarters.

I mixed the sugar, lemon and spices with the vodka before adding the walnut quarters.







The walnuts are still green and firm and the shells are forming but still papery. They looked just about right.
























Ingredients:
3 3/4 Cups sugar
1 1/2 Liter vodka
3 sticks cinnamon
15 whole cloves
1 vanilla bean split lengthwise
zests of two Meyer lemons removed using a vegetable peeler

Mix vodka, sugar, spices, and lemon zest in gallon glass jar. Stir till the sugar is dissolved. Add the walnuts. Close jar and let stand on the counter for two months, shaking the jar every day. (For limoncello I put it in the cabinet and shake it every day for 40 days, add the sugar syrup and shake it every day for another 40 days.)

When it's ready to bottle, filter the liqueur through cheesecloth and pour into clean bottles.


























According to David Lebovitz, this liqueur de noix will keep for years in a cool, dry place. It can also be stored in the refrigerator. Supposedly good on vanilla ice cream. We shall see!

Olive Oil Citrus Cake

Several people have asked for the recipe for this citrus-olive oil cake, so I am including it here. It is adapted from a recipe at "Sweet Amandine" - whose author, Jess - adapted it from the cookbook "Rustic Fruit Desserts" by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson. A photo of the cake I made is in this post.

At the Napa Rotary Club meeting last week we had a speaker from Round Pond who lead us through an olive oil tasting. The blood orange olive oil reminded me of this cake. The olive oil tasting may be a wonderful alternative for Napa visitors who are not big wine drinkers. We certainly had a great time at Rotary slurping and swallowing some spicy virgin olive oil and the much more delicate and mellow blood orange olive oil. Round Pond also makes a Meyer Lemon olive oil.



1 ¼ c. cake flour
1 t. baking powder
¼ t. salt
3 eggs, at room temperature
1 T. plus ¾ c. sugar, divided
Zest of 1 ruby grapefruit
Zest of 1 blood orange
Zest of 1 Meyer lemon
1 ½ t. vanilla extract
squeeze of lemon juice (optional)
1 c. fruity (not spicy) extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Using a paper towel, coat a 9 x 2 inch round spring-form baking pan with olive oil, then sprinkle it with the 1 T. of granulated sugar.

Sift the cake flour, baking powder, and salt together twice. Using a handheld mixer or stand mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs, sugar, and zests on high speed for five minutes, until the eggs are thickened and lighter in color. Yes, you need to mix it that long. Add the vanilla and juice, if using. Turn the mixer down to medium-low speed and drizzle the olive oil into the batter, pouring slowly along the edge of the bowl.

Add the dry ingredients, and mix on low speed until just incorporated. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the cake is golden and slightly domed in the center. Cool to room temperature in the pan.

Glaze (optional- I omitted this):

¾ c. powdered sugar
2 T. freshly squeezed grapefruit juice

Sift the sugar into a small bowl. Add the grapefruit juice, and whisk to combine. Pour the glaze over the cooled cake.

Wrapped in plastic, this cake will keep at room temperature for 2 to 3 days. Good luck with that!

Yield: 8-10 servings.

Mean girls

I was struck by the meanness and pettiness of Carly Fiorina's on-mic comments about Barbara Boxer. The linked film clip is 4:19 long - and also includes cutting remarks about Meg Whitman. The hair comments come after the hamburger homily.

( - Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America)










Why do I care? Why does anyone care about such trivial comments? Why has this caused so much commentary on blogs and editorial pages?










I think the meanness demonstrated is that of a "mean girl". One of our great fears as humans is being cast out, not belonging to our group or tribe. There are the "mean girls" of our early teen years, the even worse "mean girls" of our high school years - and as adults we see social and political cliques and cabals trying to rule many fiefdoms. In spite of these divisive elements, our human nature requires belonging.

As a child I belonged to the most stable and permanent kind of a group: a family with six siblings. These tight bonds shielded and protected us from bullies and mean girls. The feeling of having a real posse - two big brothers, their friends, plus mine and those of my younger siblings - gave me a feeling of invulnerability in any confrontation. It did not occur to me that I could get hurt in a fight before I could call in the cavalry. Just the knowledge that they were all available gave me a probably unwarranted confidence. The sibling bonds are strong ones.

BFF's - "Best Friends Forever" - do not always turn out that way. I wonder if the staged friendship of eMeg and iCarly will withstand the stresses of a campaign season?

There are some interesting facts on the Fiorina Facts website. She cut tens of thousands of US jobs, and shipped others overseas. This mayhem continued in a bitter and stormy environment until Carly Fiorina's job was cut by the HP board.

While Fiorina was CEO, HP sold millions of dollars worth of high tech gear to intermediary shell companies selling to Iran, despite trade sanctions against the country.

As thousands of HP employees lost their jobs and the company's stock value fell, Fiorina was compensated with more than $108 million, including salary, bonuses, stock, and a $21.6 million golden parachute when she was fired. She also acquired two corporate jets that cost $1 million per year to operate.

Politics may be a risky investment for some of those millions of dollars. "The trouble is, by and large, CEOs have turned out to be pretty mediocre politicians." According to the Washington Post:

Even when they manage to get elected, CEOs often are surprised to learn that their skills in the boardroom do not easily translate to the business of governing. Former Goldman Sachs head Jon S. Corzine discovered this when he was ousted as New Jersey governor last year. "You don't have the flexibility you imagined. There's no exact translation," Corzine, a Democrat, later told Newsweek.

I recently returned to my hometown for a high school reunion. My old friends are wonderful people - and were distance not such an impediment, could be great BFF's. They are my "high school heroes" list in facebook land. However, I did hear a few whispers from a "mean girl". All these years later, can it be that such behavior is a character flaw and not a stage of adolescent behavior? This is something voters will decide in spite of millions of dollars of carefully modulated messages. So, this little kerfuffle may have a larger significance.

Blue Oaks

We went on a little back road quest in Napa and Lake Counties - late spring - looking for blue oaks and quiet country vistas. Napa County is a magnet for visitors, but the vast majority of them crowd a small area of the Napa Valley floor along Highway 29. Most of the county - almost 450,000 acres - is oak woodlands, fir and redwood forests, and valleys that are unknown to visitors. All these lands are protected with agricultural zoning that prevents subdividing parcels smaller that 320 acres.




One of my step sons from southern California drove us on this little jaunt. We wended our way through Chiles Valley and Pope Valley, past the still slumbering Aetna Springs Resort and into northern Napa County. This part of the county has serpentine soils and has been the crucible for volcanic activity. Most of the mining and hot springs of the county are located in this area. One of the magnificent trees native to the area is the Blue Oak. In southern Lake County, near Guenoc (now known as Langtry Estate) - is this Blue Oak.



It was a perfect place to pull off the road. No traffic, just a quiet view of the lake full to the brim after a winter of rain. We shared a late afternoon picnic from the trunk of the Chevy Malibu. The serving table was a boogie board on top of a case of wine from Nichelini in Chiles Valley. If this doesn't make you yearn for a convertible, you lack a car gene.

Up-town at the Uptown

The long and excruciating slide into oblivion of the 1937 art deco Uptown Theater in Napa has been halted. By 1990 this movie palace had been converted to a discount second-run 4-plex movie house with sticky floors, vestiges of the old interior poking out in unexpected places, no air-conditioning, and broken seats.

I stopped by the theater on the afternoon before the grand-reopening, and found about 20 construction trucks lining the curbs and people furiously working to satisfy the building inspectors' temporary occupancy permit inspection.



A few days ago there were still plywood panels instead of doors in the entrance openings. It looked like the building inspector required the door panic hardware and closers be installed before the public could come in. With all the action, the mood was still upbeat and excited.



After the show by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy the crowd lingered under the restored marquee and canopy sparkling with neon and incandescent lights.

Check out the line up for the next few months at the Uptown Theater website.