Yet still, something was lacking. The richest orange-yolk shades continued to elude me. And the prices (usually around $7/dozen) were seriously straining my struggling writer / wine-slinger budget. So what’s a bona-fide egg fanatic to do? Crazy as it sounds, we decided to go straight to the source. Well, actually, we brought the source to us.

The Ladies.

Yes, we decided to keep chickens. Pretending we were living in the country and not country-club adjacent, we picked up 6 precious little chicks at Rivertown Feed Store in Petaluma, CA, and hand-raised them until they were old enough to start producing their own easter egg-colored beauties. We were so excited about the whole process of caring for the ladies, we failed to document anything and preserve the experience for friends, readers, and our future reminiscing selves.

The Peeps.

No, Not These Peeps.

So this spring, when we were feeling adventurous again, we decided to add to our little flock and raise four new peeps (so dubbed for the adorable yet incessant sound they constantly emit.) And this time, I swore we would spend more time with them and document as much as possible, so that in a few months, we have more than just incredible eggs and big squawking chickens to show for it.

Fresh Eggs from our Ladies

While to many people this this may be a ridiculous or overly precious endeavor, I think even more people are inspired by the idea of keeping chickens, as evidenced by the huge, though mostly undocumented, growth in raising backyard chickens. The benefits are many, and the hassle, work, and expense involved are not burdensome. It’s a hobby of sorts, but one that promises a sustainable, healthy, and humane way to involve ourselves with a key element in our food sourcing. Modern writers and thinkers have long been lamenting the lack of direct connection we have with our food and our land — keeping chickens is a revolutionary way of reconnecting with both.

Monkey Jr. and Author

Plus, they are super-cute.

Pippa the Runt at 1 Day Old, Quickly Falling Fast Asleep

But every once in a while, I just want to hang out in a place that’s more casual. A place with an interesting mix of people, where the patrons are a cross-section of society and where you are guaranteed a cheap drink and a slightly sardonic bartender.

The dive bar is an institution probably  as old as wine itself. The tavern, the pub, the kneipe, the lokal, the taproom, the saloon, and countless others in all various forms and languages are all examples of this type of establishment. The dive bar is the modern incarnation of that age-old place where one can get a decent drink at a fair price and there are no real qualifications for admission, other than being of legal age and reasonable sobriety. Basically, if you can pay for a drink, you’re old enough to do so, and you’re not too drunk to stand, you’ll fit in just fine.

Dive bars get a bad rap sometimes for being less than reputable, but they really are fascinating places to spend an hour or two on a lazy Tuesday evening. There isn’t just one kind of patron; rather, there are all sorts of people from all different professions, backgrounds, socio-economic statuses, and education levels. No matter where you go in to world, the dive bar is a place where, if you know the general rules of common courtesy and have a mild-to-fair appreciation for alcoholic beverages, you can spend some time in a welcoming and oftentimes fascinating environment. At least it’s never dull.

The one black mark of a dive bar is the utter lack of decent/tasty/quaffable wine. At least here in the states, I have noticed that it is next to impossible to acquire a drinkable glass of wine– and I live in Northern California! There is a huge microbrew movement that has been pretty phonomenal in the bar and restaurant scenes for at least the past couple of decades. You can now go into just about any dive bar and have your choice from all manner of beers: from the humble Miller High Life or PBR, to the hoppy craft brew IPAs, to the elegant Hoegaarden white beers and Trumer Pilsners.  So why, pray tell, it is so enormously difficult to get a simple yet well-made glass of wine in these establishments?

If you don’t believe me, please visit your local dive and notice the refreshing variety of beers. Then ask for a glass of wine. I can almost promise you that the response will likely be, ” Red or White?” Then there will be two options: either a cheap chardonnay that has been aged with oak chips to give it that lovely sour-wood quality, or a cabernet sauvignon-based blend that tastes bittersweet in its undeveloped and saccharine nature.  Yuck.

I have asked various bar managers and owners, and all I seem to get for  a response is a shrug of the shoulders. Various reasonings supplied have run along the lines of, “no one is interested,” or “it’s too expensive,” or “it doesn’t fit with our vibe.” To which I reply, Yes! We are interested! People don’t ask for wine because they know it will be awful plonk and they’d rather not subject their taste buds to that drudgery. And No! Decent wine doesn’t have to be expensive! There are plenty of bottles you can get that wholesale for $7-12, that you can turn around and sell for $6-8 per glass. You just need to put an ounce of effort to find them. And while you may claim it isn’t in your bar’s particular style, keep in mind that fancy microbrews hardly fit in with the vibe back in the 1980′s, but they sure seem to be indispensible now.

Needless to say, there are plenty of establishments that do cater to the needs of the wine lover. I love these places and have no wish for them to disappear. I would simply like to see the humble dive bar continue to display its welcoming and egalitarian nature by offering all its imbibers something to get excited about.

When we are prevented satiating this hunger for the unknown, we can often feel confined and lonely—as if somehow the trappings of our everyday existence stifle us and make us feel less like ourselves. If our true self only emerges when we are exploring, how are we ever to feel at home?

This is when we must turn the act of exploring to something more local. Familiar though this territory may be, we can put ourselves in the boots of those traveling here – see what they are seeing for the first time. While it may not be so fresh to us as we are now, trapped in our mundane masterpiece of monotony, it can be wholly new to us—the renewed adventurer.

Personally, the Point Reyes shoreline is well-known and beloved. But on a typically foggy day, with wines in tow from both local Sonoma County and distant New Zealand (a memory of previous adventures,) Hog Island Oyster Company is fresh and new when taken in as a distinctive experience. Never again will we have these succulent divinities known as oysters paired with these particular cheeses that near mystic experiences. Never again will these wines from these vintages be open together with this simple yet delectable feast.

And we are, right now, wholly joined in laughter and contradictory ponderings. We can share this inimitable moment and yet still be lost in our own dreams and longings.

When the worlds of responsibility, economics, obligations, and frustration collide to keep us tethered against our will, we must survive by exploring that which might be less unusual to our personal identities—yet can also be exceptional in its imaginative freshness. And we can do it together or alone, as we somehow always are, no matter the company we keep or where we are in the world.

I clicked off the distractions and wandered outside. The crickets were beginning to sing and I wondered where they’ve been all summer. This season has been unseasonably cool for us in Northern California, and it seems as if everything has been on hold. In the wine world, grape harvesting is almost two weeks behind across the board, and summer stone fruits haven’t had the juicy sweetness that comes with their usual ripening.

The saddest part of it all has been the utter lack of ripe tomatoes from the garden. Our tomatoes are either hard and greenish or brown and withered— the few days of searing heat destroyed some and did nothing for the others. Summer should mean salads composed of fragrant basil,  sweet tomatoes, and utterly fresh goat cheese. It should mean cool silky tomato soups, or light pastas dressed with pungent olive oil and chopped tomatoes. We should have more tomatoes than we know what to do with!

Alas, the closest I came to summer this year was a few heirlooms and a basket of cherry tomatoes from the Central Valley, where they had less difficulty ripening than our more coastal regions. I had picked them up that morning at the farmer’s market in San Rafael and used them for a Southern France-inspired dinner of green bean salad with tarragon vinaigrette, rustic tomato tart, and thick tuna steaks seared on the grill. It was the perfect rendition of summer, but little was I to know it would be very nearly the only al fresco dining experience I was to enjoy this year.

I thought it was a good idea to study inside after dinner — how glad I am now that I gave it up to take in the night fragrance of those roses. Autumn is most decidedly upon us, and I am afraid to say I haven’t smelled that fragrance again since. And perhaps we’ll get a few straggler tomatoes before the chill takes over fully– but otherwise we will have to wait for next season.

I’m finding it very hard to get excited about stews and brussels sprouts.

So in case I haven’t mentioned recently (and I’m sure I haven’t,) we’ve left San Francisco. I miss the fog, the restaurants, the nightlife that doesn’t end at 9 pm… I feel like a traitor to my city, but honestly, the knowledge that I’ve left those astronomically high rents behind have done much to assuage my guilt. Who can afford to pay $1800 for a one bedroom in the Richmond? Especially making the kind of money we’re making these days? There is a cost to pursuing your dreams, and it starts with accepting bottom-of-the-totem pole salaries in exchange for that blessed career builder called “experience.”

Knowing for some time now that I wanted to focus more on the wine aspect of food and wine, I started looking for work in the wine country back in the early part of the year. I won’t bore your with the gruesome details of my nearly three month stretch of unemployment.  It’s too painful. And this blog isn’t about painful, is it? After months of searching, I finally accepted not one, but two offers.

Several days a week, I get to hang out in the tasting room at Gundlach Bundschu Winery in ever-beautiful Sonoma. I spend all day talking about wine and meeting people from all over the world who have come to visit California’s oldest family-owned winery. It’s all estate-grown and bottled, for 152 years! It’s incredible being in a place with this much history, especially living in the US, where everything has always felt young in comparison to our cousins in Europe. And the wine is beautifully elegant, well-balanced, and delicious. The fruit, alcohol, tannins, and acid all seem to sing together in harmony on just about all of the wines. It’s pretty remarkable.

The Production Area of Gundlach Bundschu

In addition to my days at the winery, I spend two nights a week at the Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America, in St. Helena. I’m running the door in the evenings, when it’s full of reservations and walk-ins looking to experience the fun of eating around an open kitchen or relax on the terrace with a postcard-view of the Napa Valley. Though I was seeking a break from restaurants, the opportunity to work at Greystone was also too good to pass up. Historic in it’s own right, the campus also offers tons of wine classes and hosts exams for us bourgeoning wine “professionals.”

So here we are, in the North Bay where the sun actually shines in the summer, learning and studying, cooking and tasting, and getting some great experience. I have to say that I do miss the excitement and activity of San Francisco, and maybe we’ll be back sooner than we think. But in the meantime, I’m going to take one of my rare days off to drink some wine in the sun by the pool.

There are minor downfalls, as with any deal this wonderful. The low price tag and sheer number of wineries and tasting rooms involved create an irresistible opportunity for local college kids, large groups of giggling housewives, and others looking more to get down and party than those looking to seriously taste and explore the possibilities of each wine. However, these large groups of people probably are the only reason why it is possible to hold an event of this magnitude! But as long as I can get a little wine in my glass and am able to say a few words to those pouring (often the winemakers themselves,) it really isn’t much of a complaint at all. Especially if it exposes those who might not have a huge passion for wine to some really neat stuff. Anything that has the possibility to spark interest in the uninterested is great for wine industry… right?

And of course, there’s the wine. It was wonderful to be able to do a vertical tasting of the wines from several different wineries. Wilson Winery let us taste their 2008 still in the barrel, as well as their ’05, ’06,  and ’07 vintages. What is remarkable about doing a vertical tasting is how amazingly different each wine can really be. It’s a fantastic opportunity to see how nature affected each year’s grape harvest and how the personality and style of each wine really is varied. 

Attending barrel tasting also gives us an excellent opportunity to purchase “futures.” Basically, this means you have the opportunity to buy the not-yet-released wines you are tasting before they are available to the public. You don’t get to take them home right away, of course. You have to be patient and wait until the wine is in the bottle and officially released! But most wineries offer these futures at a pretty little discount– sometimes as much as 50% off what they will eventually retail for! So it’s a special deal, especially if you are excited by what you taste in the barrel.

What a fantastic way to ring in the spring! To taste some delicious wines straight from the barrel while taking in the gorgeous scenery… The bare vines, so naked and vulnerable, with the riotous streaks of yellow mustard bursting through the rows… Already I’m looking forward to next year, when I can take possession of our futures and start exploring the new season’s offerings!

One of the greatest ways to move oneself out of a rut is to travel. And one of the greatest travel destinations in the world must be New Zealand. How lucky for me then, that we had an opportunity to spend three full weeks in the land of Kiwis and Lord of the Ring filming locations. Feeling creatively stagnant before this trip, I’m thrilled to be exploding with new ideas for poems, articles, recipes, photos, general life-plans. It helps that this trip came right at the beginning of the new year, when the excitement of New Year’s resolutions hasn’t worn off to grim resignation or shamed defeat yet.  I will eat less cheese! I will drink less wine! I will eat more leafy greens and less cream and more root vegetables! I will do yoga every day and some sort of cardiovascular activity at least 2-3 times a week! Right?! 

Of course, one must not attempt all these things when on holiday, that would be detrimental to experiencing the most a country has to offer, the totality of the national culture. So we’ve been on a hiatus from the grey, dreary weather as well as those pesky resolutions.

Thankfully, we were able to explore New Zealand, through hikes in the mountains and along the beaches, through restaurants and street food, farmers markets, grocery stores, and wineries. Though we weren’t  huge fans of most of the local beers, we did love some other things uniquely Kiwi.

For instance, at a local Saturday market, we were able to sample a whitebait patty, which seems to have consisted solely of eggs, butter, and tiny little briny fish. Fairly mild, it’s served on a buttered slice of white bread. Though it is not quite “gourmet,” it was delicious and savory, perfect for nibbling on while strolling in the hot New Zealand sun. 

When the heat turned into a heavy humidity that wouldn’t be stirred by the slightest breeze, I turned to Real Fruit Ice Cream. Advertised by wooden placards as we drove through small towns, it was irresistable in its cooling, frozen-fruit and chocolate-y way. I haven’t eaten an ice cream cone in years, and this was well worth a break in the fast! You are asked what ice cream you want (I chose plain frozen yogurt) and then a fruit (raspberries) and if you would like chocolate added (obviously yes.) Then the whole thing gets whirred up in a big stainless steel machine until its almost totally blended, leaving you with the tiniest bits of frozen fruit and chocolate chunks. Creamy purple goodness! 

There were lots of delicious morsels and great meals, including a three-course meal we created using only local New Zealand ingredients! It featured lamb three ways (meatballs, a braise, and roasted rack of lamb,) local cherries, potatoes, eggs, yogurt, herbs, greens, cheeses… It was fun to be able to reach for summer ingredients in January and not feel guilty! 

But now we’re home, and I’m back to making rich winter stews and using only canned tomatoes. Sigh. At least I have the memory of the warm sun and dramatic mountains to sustain me until we reach summer here, or I embark on another excursion. And thankfully this trip has provided me with bucketfuls of inspiration that will hopefully also sustain me creatively as well. 

We tend to hear revolution and think of historical wars within nations, like the French or American revolutions. It conjures up visions of battlefields and raised fists and shouts of freedom. In a way, these images could be appropriate for the Food Revolution as well– except we’re fighting to be free from the industrialized food system that is threatening our health, our environment, and our collective conscience.

But at the core of the word revolution is the word revolve, or “to turn over” or “roll.” This word comes from the Latin revolvere, or, “to  roll back” or “cause to return.” And here we see the true roots of the modern organic, local, sustainable movement– it is a return to a world where our food system is not being run by large corporations, super mega-markets, and fast food chains. A return to a world where people used to buy their food at the village market or grow it themselves. The Food Revolution embraces technology and innovation while remaining true to the principles of producing and consuming food that were standard from the beginnings of human existence. 

The Food Revolution is thus both a desire to return to our roots and a revolt against the destructiveness of our current and fairly recent industrial food system. The disconnect most people have from their groceries is something we’ve only really seen in the last few generations. The convenience of the modern supermarkets and the influence they wield is nothing short of amazing. 

We can enter a Safeway or a Lucky’s on any day of the year and find tomatoes, lemons, green beans, or shrink-wrapped packages of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. We’ve simply forgotten that the tomato or the green bean were once seasonal products and only available for a few months of the year. And just because we can get them in the dead of winter doesn’t mean that we should. They don’t taste as good and they’re more expensive.

This notion of eating seasonally, even if we have access to produce from other far-off regions is by no means a new concept. The point is made quite clearly in a dialogue excerpt from Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, first published in 1866: 

“…the way I see it, the great thing for getting on in the world is, always keep to the seasons; if you don’t insist on having asparagus in January, you keep your money in your purse!”

And while keeping money in our wallets certainly is at the forefront of our minds in this economy, we must also remember the costs we do not see every day– the costs to our health, our land, air, water, and animals. It can be so tempting to bury our heads in the sand and buy the Oscar Meyer or Smithfield Farms package of bacon instead of the pricier Niman Ranch or local farm stuff. But if you take five minutes and read just a little about what the big corporate pig farms do to their animals and how they are simply and blithely destroying the environment, you might just think twice about buying that “cheap” bacon. 

Click here for a short explanation of some of the issues surrounding factory farming from sustainabletable.org. This website is a fantastic resource for information on all sorts of issues relating to the Food Revolution. Take a few moments from your busy day to explore some of these concerns.

There are also some incredibly enlightening books out there that are very helpful in understanding our current food system. The most popular, and probably the best, is Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Delimma. Click here for a synopsis. 

The Food Revolution is here. It is up to you to educate yourself and ask yourself where you stand. After all, it’s just food. It’s also money, the environment, our health, animal and laborer rights, a whole host of issues. But at the end of the day, it’s what we buy, prepare, cook, store, serve, and consume. So ask yourself– what exactly do you want to eat?

Needless to say, I thought it would be fun to kick off my informally-formalized independent wine education with a mini-tasting here in the house. With Chris otherwise engaged preparing us dinner, I started off with two whites I had picked up at Cost Plus that morning. From France I had the Louis Jadot Pouilly-Fuisse, a white burgundy. And my representative for California chardonnay was a Gundlach Bundschu from Sonoma. Both wines were from the 2007 vintage. I opened them up, gave myself some generous pours, and set about to write what I thought of them.

All of a sudden, I felt strangely nervous. Who do I think I am, that I can just presume to open some wines I know nothing about and then write what I think of them? What if I think it tastes like something that’s not really there? What if I don’t notice something about the wine that is painfully obvious to everyone else?

Why this sudden reticence? I’m certainly not one to shy away from speaking my mind, no matter what the subject. So it should be no different when it comes to my opinions about wine, right?

See, this is the funny thing about the wine world. It can be so intimidating to explore, with different people proclaiming opinions with an air of absolutism, magazines assigning points to “grade” wines and a plethora of different varietals and styles. Most of us simply don’t have the knowledge, time, or money to be able to give ourselves a thorough education in all the dizzying aspects of the art of enjoying and understanding wine.

Plus, isn’t the idea of taste subjective? I don’t care for the taste of peanut butter, but it might be your favorite foodstuff in the pantry! Additionally, two people can like an identical dish but for different reasons. So, couldn’t it be the same for our tastes in wine?

As our tastes vary, so shall our opinions. And if I think a wine tastes like hibiscus or seems flirty, that’s just my way of expressing a personal opinion. There shouldn’t be any reason to be shy about that.

Taking a deep breath, I sipped. Pen in hand, I boldly wrote my first impressions. The Pouilly-Fuisse was slightly sweet. It was crisp at first, then softened to something silky. It was pale. Light-colored. It had a fragrant perfume. And then came the chardonnay. It was so different! It was richer, golden-colored. It tasted like butter. It coated my mouth in a way totally unlike the French wine.

Excitedly, I sipped more. Chris jumped in, cautiously proffering his opinion as well. We were so taken with our new roles as wine critics that we forgot the whole tasting-in-moderation aspect of the wine tasting. Hm. I had planned on doing a red wine tasting that evening as well, but we polished off the last of the two bottles of white, I thought I might just postpone it for a day or two.

But we had so much fun! I liked writing about the wine — it made me think about it more, and enjoy it even more than if I’d just absent-mindedly sipped it. Wine has always stimulated conversations, daydreams, pleasures, and friendships. Too often it can also stimulate depression, discord, and strife. I think the balance can be struck not just in moderation, but in always remembering to savor and enjoy the experience of drinking– and feeling a little gratitude for the blessing that is wine.

Shyness simply cannot mix with unbridled enthusiasm. And so, I vowed that night to dispense with my hesitations and embrace this magical world of wine and words, sans fear.

Mix butter with herbs, garlic, and freshly grated parmagiannio reggiano, slather it on a baguette, and you’ve got the makings of a delicious garlic bread. Mix butter, lemon zest, and chopped capers to take an ordinary filet of fish to a restaurant-worthy entree. Or mix butter and honey to server to guests so they can dress up biscuits at brunch. 

It takes almost no time to whip up a batch of flavored butter, and yet the end result always elicits praise and satisfied lip- smackings of delight whenever I serve some up. It’s awfully fun to create new ones to go with whatever I’m cooking that day, and I do secretly love getting the compliments from my pleased guinea pigs I get to practice on. 

The other night we were having a small barbeque, and I’d just picked up some incredible corn from the farmers market. I decided to make up a new butter to go with our Southwestern-themed dishes to give our farm fresh corn some pizzaz. 

I like the clean tasting quality of fresh herbs, so I used some chives for their crisp sharpness and some cilantro for some Latin bite. I also used a heavy hand with the smoky chipotle chili powder , and since I use cayenne in just about everything, I applied a few liberal shakes of that too. 

Chives and Cilantro: fresh, organic, grown in California

Slathered on our in-husk grilled corn, it was pure heaven. It took five minutes to make and it elevated the meal to an even greater status. Next time perhaps I’ll add a finely chopped and seeded habanero for even more heat. For that is the fun part about flavored butters– they’re almost impossible to mess up and so easy to enjoy! 

When cooking, putting together a meal to be shared among ourselves and others, it is often the smallest touches that spark a smile. Though our busy modern lives have cut down on our time to prepare and even to eat our meals, it’s almost always possible to add a little extra touch that can turn our ever-present need to eat into something much more special.

Southwestern Butter

2 Sticks of softened (room-temperature) butter

1 small handful of chives

1 small handful of cilantro

1/2 – 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 – 1 1/2 teaspoon chipotle chili pepper

Finely chop herbs. Add to a bowl with the softened butter and mix well with a fork. Make sure the butter is very soft, otherwise it will not incorporate well. Mix in spices as well, adjusting if you like more or less heat. Add salt and pepper to taste. Be careful is you use salted butter– you may not need to add any salt at all! 

Leftover Southwestern Butter is great on toast too!

* A note about recipes:

Unless I am baking something, I tend to shy away from using exact measurements or following a recipe exactly. If I am making something totally new, I’ll canvass multiple recipes of the same dish to get the general gist of it. My recipes that I post here should also be used as guidelines–feel free to substitute something if you feel it might work. After all, how else do you think those master chefs create new dishes!

*A note about ingredients:

I always try to use organic ingredients from local sources whenever possible. It’s always worth the extra effort to seek them out or just a little more money to know that what we eat is better for our bodies and the environment. More on this soon.