kitchenmage

Washington and Oregon wine and cheese pairings

One of the sweet things about living at the confluence of the Columbia River and Pacific Ocean is that I get to claim Tillamook Cheese as my local cheesemaker. The factory is close enough that I could drive down for the afternoon and still make it home for dinner. Since Tillamook cheddar is one of my all-time favorites, this is a real stroke of luck for me. It also means that when a local burger place needs a local cheese, they can go to the source of some very nice stuff indeed.

But the Tillamook folks aren't content to just promote their own fine cheeses. They have created a couple of wine and cheese pairing lists that highlight selections from local wineries, and even other cheese producers.

I have had a number of the listed cheeses and they are very nice indeed - Cougar Gold, for example, is a  longtime regional favorite and it was nice to see it on the list. A number of the wines were less familiar to me, but there are a few I am looking forward to checking out.

If you live in the area and want to expand your options for locally made sips and nibbles, you really should check these lists out!

White and Sparkling wines
Red wines

Summerset: the evidence

I totally forgot the obligatory lateInTheParty photo of people with their "Buy me or the puppy gets it" prints, so here's the very last shot of the revelers.

I also forgot to mention that, in the spirit of "geekiness" (they were Geek Dinners, after all) we came up with an additional use of technology for Stormhoek. See, they use screwtops (!) and, while I'll skip the technical arguments (how anti-geeky) we did find one aspect of the experience lacking. No satisfying pop of the cork coming out of the bottle. While we could (and did) argue for the use of corks, we did come up with an alternative: chip the screwtop.

It seems like those little chips they use to make music in greeting cards could be repurposed into a higher use. Create a realistic cork popping sound and design a means of triggering the sound when the screwtop "breaks" apart. Small touch, big effect.

Not wanting to offload the work for our idea onto Stormhoek, and in the spirit of international cooperation, we also offer to test the technology. Repeatedly. Through many beta cycles. Just as often as Stormhoek wants us to.

I leave you with a final thought, tossed out somewhere in the Pinotage (the last of the wines) by a wise person and agreed upon by all:

This would have been a lot less fun if the wine wasn't so good!

Thanks again Sam, Jason, Hugh, and everyone else at Stormhoek who helped make Summerset so much fun.

Summerset: wine, food, friends...does it get any better?

As part of their "100 Geek Dinners" promotion, Stormhoek Winery was kind enough to send a case of their wine out here to evenTinierTown and we put it to good use last weekend by holding a potluck wine tasting. Our good friends, Sunrise and Jessica Fletcher, loaned us the lawn by the pond at the Inn at Lucky Mud and we gathered a dozen and a half friends on Sunday afternoon to sip wine, nibble delicious food, and listen to a little guitar music (contributed by Sunrise and someoneElse, both charter members of WAGS). Sunrise even came up with a song pairing for each of the wines, which was a real hoot, especially as we got further into the evening.

I decided that we were going to make our wine tasting a potluck so that we could let everyone's efforts shine in the appropriate setting, with the right wine, and it turned out to be a wonderful idea. Invitations included an "assignment" of a wine to cook for, some tasting notes that Sam from Stormhoek provided, and what I could glean from the blogosphere on food pairings from earlier Geek Dinners. This turned out to be a great idea, everyone brought food that was very tasty and went well with their wine. It may have helped that the people who replied sayng they'd been drinking Shiraz a lot lately were given Shiraz and the farmers got a white to go with their abundance of fresh vegetables, but I'm happy with the results.

My job was bread, desserts and coordination...and onon tarts...and I think I pulled it off; the tarts didn't hurt. I decided to make an assortment of bitesized sweets for dessert, which was almost as good of an idea as having other people bring the rest of the food (did I mention it was all excellent? plus made with mostly locally produced ingredients...I wouldn't be surprised if we were darned close to meeting the locavores goal of a 100 mile radius for our foodshed...well, except for the wine from halfway around the globe...)

Details on the food and wine after the jump.

Blogger's Boot-up Blend

This is part two of a series of reviews of Blogger's Fuel, a line of coffee from Boca Java, written by someoneElse, the resident coffee aficionado. Links to earlier reviews are at the end of this article. (disclaimer: the coffee was a freebie in exchange for reviews)

The second Boca Java coffee I tried was Blogger's Boot-up Blend.

After a long and late night of tearing down and rebuilding a Linux server (Fedora), an XP workstation, installing a 400gb NAS device, and getting my new dual core P4 (Dell) to talk to my recording studio (Presonus Firepod w/Cubase), the next morning I was ready for something to boot my system.

I opened the bag of Bloggers Boot Up Blend with anticipation — hopefully something to yank my interrupts and get my operating system going!  The aroma lofting out of the bag was of a mild light roast with a bit of a rustic edge. There was a transient subtleness suggesting tastes imprecisely defined, like an elusive memory that slips away as you try to identify what it is or what it reminds you of. There was also a waft of something my nose identified as "staleness" — you know, like when you pre-grind extra beans that you don't use that day and you toss the extra coffee in a jar with a lid to use later, and then a couple weeks afterward you grab the jar because you don't have beans ground and you sniff it and it smells....stale.

Blogs of Bravery coffee review

Perhaps sensing a niche, Boca Java coffee recently started a line of coffees called Blogger's Fuel; a series of blends with names like Blogger's Boot-up Blend and New Media Mavericks and an offer that 500 bloggers couldn't resist: Free coffee in exchange for reviews on your blog.

My forays into coffee began in the military, where hot caffeinated water would have been perfectly acceptable — come to think of it, maybe we could have mixed that water with the sludge that filled the dingy glass carafes to make something a bit more palatable — and ended when I could once again make myself a decent cup of tea. (I really consider those triple-shot mochas I indulge in to be more of an adult hot chocolate with a caffeine kicker...and it's so much more socially acceptable to ask for a triple mocha than the other... but i digress...) The upshot is, not being much of a coffee drinker myself, I've recruited someoneElse, the resident coffee aficionado, for a series of reviews of the various Blogger's Blend coffees.

The beginning of the adventure

The first coffee I tested was Blogs of Bravery, a good, serious-minded blend that left you with no doubt that you were drinking a real cup of coffee. No frou-frou stuff here — it is not flavored or spiced or altered in such a way that would leave you wondering what you are drinking. With Blogs of Bravery you have no doubt that you are drinking a solid cup of good coffee.

Science you can use

I am sure someone will point to a certain inevitability to a writer on a tight deadline choosing the topic of this post...I think I'll call it channeling my inner Hemingway and leave it at that.

A while back, an online community I belong to was talking about the purported effect of a standard water filter on cheap vodka. The theory was that, since vodka is supposed to be tasteless — or is it tastefree? — then the problem with cheap vodka was that it tasted like...well, cheap vodka. Hence, removing the harsh flavors would leave the desired nontaste and render a palatable drink. The tool of choice seemed to be a standard water filter pitcher, something that a lot of us have shoved in the back of a cabinet somewhere, and also available at thrift stores for a few dollars.

blenders of the gods...

The current Utne magazine has a recipe for Xocoatl from a group of folks at Chocosuisse. According to the article, Chocosuisse researched the Aztec chocolate drink and are attempting to recreate it with this recipe.

They offer an interesting sounding concoction of chocolate, crushed almonds, milk, honey, lemon juice, rum, arrack (a cocount palm liqueur which I've obviously been missing out on), allspice and ginger. (What? No cinnamon? No chiles? No vanilla?)

They go on to describe a method of making the drink that involves melting the chocolate wih the almonds and milk, then chilling it in the refrigerator. Did the Aztecs really drink their chocolate cold often enough that it is the authentic way? Wikipedia indicates that it was served at all temperatures, so maybe I am being a purist, but I am thinking hot chocolate. Maybe it's the endless rain.

The final step in the process includes this: "...place in a blender or shaker..."

But, but, but... (she sputters)

What about a delightful carved wooden molinllo? Yes, I know this is totally inauthentic, being invented by the Europeans who came over and "found" a continent that was not lost, being full of lovely people as it was. But it's pretty well associated with chocolate from south of the US border over the few hundred years it's been around and they said a blender! A blender!

Just what every drinker needs.

I am sure you've seen thing that make you wonder, if this is the answer, what in the world was the question. Perhaps this is the answer to balancing drink and plate at cocktail parties while occasionally having a free hand. Perhaps it doesn't look quite so ridiculous after a few shots. One can hope.

Drink your way around mid-Cascadia

Apparently someone sent a memo out with something about this being a post-holiday recovery time for food blogs. You know, low-fat, low-alcohol, maybe even go on a diet, that sort of thing. Hell, even my favorite crazies are joining in and Sam's declared it Sugar-LOW Friday! Sugar-LOW? Is nothing sacred with you people? shakes head in dismay

Whatever folks. You all enjoy your no-carb, no-fat, no-meat (no fun) carrot stick and celery dinners. I'm pouring myself a glass of something alcoholic and searching the cupboards for some chocolate. Sadly, I already know that I have neither great wine nor terribly good chocolate. I have perfectly good slabs of bittersweet chocolate, but that's my baking stuff and the last truffle dissolved last night...in my mouth. Same thing with wine, the good stuff all went away over the holidays, leaving a small selection of random bottles.

And memories of better wines I've discovered in the last year...

insert waving fingers and doodley-boop fade noise

Coca Sek: the real "real thing"?

We all know that Coca-cola used to contain a bit of cocaine, even though Coca-cola now denies it. Other soft drink companies are a bit more honest, one might say refreshingly so, about the not-so-secret ingredients in their drinks. Coca Sek, a new offering from a small business in Colombia (yes, that Colombia), is essentially bottled coca tea. Yep, that coca.

Feeling the doubletall love

Our Sam may be a star, but Sambuck's is not Starbucks's...and I doubt anyone would confuse the two. Well, anyone other than a corporate attorney, that is. Just down the road in Astoria, a hole-in-the-wall has fought the (strip)mall and the mall won. Sam Buck, the owner of Sambuck's Coffee House in Astoria just lost a court decision in which a federal judge ruled that she was willfully infringing on the coffee behemoth's trademark by naming her coffee shop after herself. Note that she did this in 2000 before there was a single coffeeBehemoth store in Astoria. Apparently when they arrived in town in 2002 they decided to care about Sam's little place and sue her.

Let me pause for just a moment to say that any business that names itself after a character in a classic book that was written long before they were incorporated and then claims that character's name as if they'd invented it needs to take a good look at itself. Whats next? No more Moby Dick readings because they say the word? I've hung in there with coffeeBehemoth through a lot of stupidity--even when they responded to criticism of their inclusive stance on coffee cup quotes by adding one that was anything but. (For some reason I thought that it might get a homophobe to think, "well, the coffee's good, maybe being gay is okay too" and lighten up. Silly me.)

I must admit that I haven't been into Sam's place yet, even though I get espresso everytime I go to Astoria, sometimes at coffeeBehemoth. Not anymore. Next time I will go to Sam's coffee house and I shall avoid coffeeBehemoth like the avian flu. Although I may stop by, cup of Sam's coffee in hand, to tell them why I am not shopping there anymore.

Odd that a company that claims to support small business in the form of farmer's overseas does its best to squish small business here at home. Fair trade, indeed.

Pretty, and you can drink it too!

My frst serious fall color, a staghorn sumac that's still in its pot and tucked away in a back corner of the yard. This was going to be just a pretty picture to celebrate the turning of the seasons, but then I found a recipe for Sumac wine!

Sumac wine? Who knew! (and why didn't they tell me?) I don't have a significant amount of berries this year, so I can't try it now, but I bet I can turn up enough to try this next year. There's the kind of project I can get behind--one with a deadline that's an entire year away.

WBW13: Like Chocolate Wine

I'll have to thank Clotilde for inspiring me to participate in my first Wine Blogging Wednesday, her oh-so-tempting theme of Like Wine for Chocolate has coaxed me out of my professed cluelessness about wine to play with the real winos...ooops, I meant, the true aficianados of all things grape. Which is really funny because my chosen wine doesn't have any grapes in it, nor did I eat chocolate as I sipped. Hey, I said I was participating, I didn't say I was a slave to conformity. (Amateur Gourmet, surely you will defend my laxness on the rules? At least there was no nutella involved!)

Wizards of Oz (the one with 'roos)

Saffron over at The Food Palate has the latest installment of Omnivoribus Australis up, and I have spent the last hour (or two...okay, maybe three) clicking and reading and planning what to make first. Omnivoribus Australis, for those of you who, like me, have missed it until now, showcases the writing and photography of Australian food blogs — and do they ever have things to showcase!

Apparently I have been wandering around with a delusion that Australian food ran the gamut from shrimp on the barbie to vegemite. Okay, flog me with wet noodles ouch for willful ignorance, I can only say I am making up for it.

Whining about wine

One of the things on my never-ending list of things I want to learn more about is wine. I really enjoy good wine, and I can usually find something reasonably decent if I read enough labels and reviews, but I feel truly clueless when it comes to anything much deeper than that. This glaring lack of knowledge is brought to mind today because I have to pick a bottle of wine for a special occasion later this week.

And not just any special event...