My Big Fat Wedding Brunch

I got married last weekend. It was a small ceremony on the beach followed by brunch at home.The reception will be in September, also in our home at Voss Gardens.

The brunch for 14 was orchestrated by my wildly creative partner in food fun, personal chef Jon Lagardere, and sous chef Josh, our live-in stagiaire for Manresa restaurant in Los Gatos. The menu featured cuisine from our garden, which we harvested together in grand celebratory style the night before. Our  Divine Light Minister, a dear old friend, and his charming wife, my Maid of Honor/Beck and Call Girl, also played a key part in the food gathering ritual.

While we were on the beach saying our vows, the chefs scurried around the kitchen like elves making magic. We came home to a wonderland of freshly picked flowers, a table set with elegance, chilled champagne and copious platters of select cheeses, spreads, and fruits. Bottles were popped, toasts were made, people milled and mingled, sat down, feasted, and toasted some more. Then we made beautiful music together,
at least we thought we did.

My Big Fat Wedding Brunch Menu

 Voss Garden Artichokes with Garlic Aioli

 Voss Garden Arugula Salad, garnished with Blood Sorrel, Orach and Nasturtiums

dressed with German Baked Eggs and Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette

 Savory Crepes filled with San Francisco Bay Dungeness Crab and creme fresh,

adorned with smoked salmon and fresh Voss Garden sorrel sauce

 Mom's Cherry Pie

Hubby's Homemade Loquat Ice Cream

Let the revelry begin!

Strawberries and Red Wine

Last weekend I joined chef Niki in the Lucas Arts Center kitchen at Montalvo to help with a literary luncheon featuring authors Alice LaPlante and Jessica Theroux. The menu was based on Jessica's book, Cooking With Italian Grandmothers which chronicles her adventurous year in Italy doing just that.
Its a pleasure for me to schmooze with creative accomplished cooks whose enthusiasm for preparing fresh food matches my enthusiasm for growing it. I'll gladly be any good cook's bitch, give me garlic to peel, herbs to chop, salad to wash, sauces to stir, pots and pans to scrub. By working hands on, their skills rub off  and my culinary repertoire expands.
This particular day I was given the splendid task of prepping strawberries for dessert. Easy as pie, easier really, just sort, cut, sprinkle with sugar, and soak in a proper red wine. As we prepared the rest of the luncheon my job was to stir the strawberries every 10-15 minutes,which required a trip to the laundry room fridge and tasting at the insistence of the Task Master. After a few hours the berries turn deep crimson and sweetly take on the wine notes. By show time, tastefully served in chilled bistro glasses and dolloped with whipped cream, they were a revelation.
So enthused by the simplicity of this deliciousness I tried it at home that very evening. Distracted, I poured in too much wine, finished the bottle, and left my strawberries soaking all night. The next day they looked like beets but tasted soooooo yummy tho a tad over developed. Besotted actually.
Now a strawberry infused red wine is a terrible thing to waste. What to do with all that extra liquid?  I was about to pour it off and save it for wine coolers when my mad skills sweetie, in the middle of making loquat ice cream and grilling lamb chops, claimed it for a reduction sauce. It was brilliant as it laid down with the lamb.

Jessica's Theroux's Italian Grandmother's Wine-soaked Strawberries

Cut 4 cups ripe organic strawberries into halves or quarters; leave small ones whole. Place berries in a large bowl; sprinkle with 2 tablespoons sugar. Pour 1 cup red wine over them. Toss gently. Serve immediately or let berries soak a few hours in the refrigerator to allow flavors to develop. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

Garden Yoga

Funny I hadn't mentioned yoga in this blog before, the essential silent partner of the gardener and the cook, fundamental to the Holy Trinity of body, mind, and spirit. Too esoteric for a food blog or is my catholic girlhood rearing its head again?

No need preaching to the choir about the benefits of growing your own organic food and living la vida yoga. What’s not to love about health and eating well? Yoga practice nourishes and shapes the mountain goat agility I need to maneuver around the terraced obstacle course of my mountain garden/construction zone. Even in comfortable shoes (the secret to a happy life) it takes the flexibility and balance of a yogi to circumvent exposed gutter tubes, abandoned cables, hoses, loose gravel, shaky ground, gopher holes, random tools, and debris left by the construction crew. Often while standing one legged on the edge of a 5 foot retaining wall I'll slip into Virabhadransana, Warrior 3 pose, then ease into drishti, a gazing technique to improve concentration. Reaching for that bean on the highest part of the vine I inhale into yoga mind, exhale, and go deeper into the stretch. Core strength for double digging? Yoga delivers.

I twisted my ankle recently, no bloody drama, just getting up from my desk, a simple accident in the home. Such an irony considering all the precarious places my moccasins walk. "It’s So Easy To Slip," (thank you for that song Bob Weir) you eat healthy, exercise, maintain the right attitudes and then stumble upon your own self. It is only a foot after all, plenty more functional body parts in this package, but the injury has left me practicing yoga and gardening in a gimpy format. Aside from the vanity plummet of poor form, hobbling about has heightened my awareness of the body, mind, spirit connection, recalling once again that the Mindfulness of yoga is what brings it all home. 

In or out of the garden, always changing, always the same;

Let go of what was going on before.

Let go of what will be going on later.

Be in this present moment,

 and BREATH...

as if your life depended on it.

 

A Garden State of Mind

In the garden getting down, or in the kitchen cooking up.

Catch of the Day

Enchantment in the Berkeley Hills

Every year my sweetie's family gathers in the Berkeley Hills to celebrate Mothers' Day. Our hosts are art collectors who's tastes spill into every facet of entertaining. Mothers and children are treated to a magical banquet for all the senses. BBQ ribs, deviled eggs, Chinese noodles and Voss Garden salad are the traditional fare. But for me, the garden is the feast that leaves me charmed and inspired, affirming  once again that you can't take the gardener out of the garden.

 

Bean Poles

Here's the skinny on beans.  I plant them in cages made from wire fencing, 9 feet high, 2 feet in diameter, secured with bamboo poles. The 5" grid leaves plenty of room for harvesting hands. Since my territory is terraced I'm always looking for the best use of vertical space. The upwardly mobile bean plants cling to the cage, allowing the vines to rise up and yield beaucoup returns on a limited share of garden real estate. Lightweight, a breeze for the lone gardener to move, they can be reused year after year. Perching on the wires, the caged birds sing, and I know why.  Cages are fabulous support networks for tomatoes, peas, or placed sideways for cucumbers and brassicas.
In a pinch of desperation I've jerry rigged a few into some no nonsense booby traps for deer.

Note to self: Be careful not to fall into them...

Romancing the Calla

May I wax poetic in May?

My affections lean to the Calla Lilly. Callas are the most elegant of flowers because they keep it simple. Their curvaceous clean lines beckon the beauty from the beholder.
They used to grow like weeds here, popping up in sporatic places and never blooming, quite annoying to the anal gardener. I grouped the strays according to my "like things together" philosophy. Clumping in general makes for stronger plants and visual statements, like being surrounded by family. Now Calla clans flourish in prominent places, lifting their trumpet like forms to play heavenly eye music.  

May I indulge? May I revel in memoirs?

                       

A Midwestern girl, I'd never seen a Calla until my early 20's, when I left the USA  in a fit of "love it or leave it." Casting fate to the wind, the vision quest landed in Bolivia. My husband and I found dwelling in an abandoned brick factory at the end of the bus line on the lower outskirts of La Paz, a city at 12,000 feet. Settling into our new home in the Valley of the Moon, we paid $5 a month rent to our landlady, Frau Lilly, a German widow of questionable emigration status. (Was she or was she not an ex Nazi?) She dutifully ran a tight little garden, the remnants of a land reformed dairy farm. Calla Lilies bloomed prolifically outside her uber tidy house, while abundant bouquets charmed the inside.Young and impressionable, my first up close and personal with a Calla in Frau Lilly's living room left me breathless. Their graceful form seemed supernatural. Perhaps it was the altitude.


The local Indians, taking advantage of the warmer temperatures and flat terrain of the valley, farmed long rows of Calla Lilies to sell at market. They'd set up makeshift plastic booths at the bus stop and hawk Callas and ham sandwiches. We nicknamed the display "The Valley of the Ham Sandwiches." Vegetarians at the time, we never tasted their wares, but would load up on Callas just to hang out with the Cholitas as they watched the Beverly Hillbillies dubbed in Spanish on 4" black and white TV's, proudly wearing their derby hats and multiple petticoats... hmm, long term memory seems to be in check.

Meanwhile, its planting season and the lovely Calla has been gilded long enough.
Now where did I put that trowel?