The Grape Escape Revisited

A few years ago my husband, Dave, and a friend, Mike, led 4-5 wine tours to Europe. They called them Grape Escape Tours. Dave had a background leading tours and Mike had wine connections through the wine importer he worked for. I had the good fortune of going on two of the tours, and I’m kicking myself for not going on all. I’m sure there was some good reason why I didn’t go at the time. My vague recollection is that I thought it was more important to work…

To this day I still hear tales of memorable moments on the tours I didn’t go on, such as the time the small minivan group had an amazing lunch with the Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi, maker of Brunello di Montalcino, at his Tuscany wine estate. One of the tour members had the audacity to ask the Marchesi if he had ever dined at the Olive Garden in the United States. After a brief pause for effect, and a group hanging by his every word, he said in a hushed voice laced with a heavy Italian accent “Yeees, I deeedn’t expect much – and I wasn’t disappoiiiinted!

One of the fun things about the tours was how informal they were. Sometimes we would roll into a small town without hotel reservations. One such stop that I remember was in a small town called Serralunga in Italy’s Piedmont region. It was a hazy day and as we were driving along the narrow winding country roads, the landscape around us reminded me of the stylized landscapes and vegetation of a Da Vinci painting.

As we arrived in Serralunga around lunch, Dave asked around at restaurants about the availability of rooms (there were no hotels in town). Nobody seemed very interested in our plight for a place to stay, but one restaurant said to come back after the siesta. We did, and while the room situation hadn’t been entirely sorted out – or maybe we just didn’t understand what they were saying - we had an amazing dinner of seemingly endless Piedmont specialties coming out of the small kitchen, including meats and vegetables I’d never tasted before, and desserts worthy of a banquet. To top it all off, in came the cart of grappas, Italy’s version of “firewater” made primarily from fermented grape skins, stems and seeds leftover from the wine making process. Until then I never understood why people drank these “digestivos”. But after a big rich meal, it’s just the ticket to digestive health, certainly a much more appealing remedy for bloating than Tums.

It also helped us climb the stairs to the rooms above the restaurant and deal with the quirky room setup and sagging beds. But that’s another story…

On Starting "What’s for Dinner?"

I’ve been thinking about blogging for a while, but it wasn’t really until a couple of days ago that I finally joined the ranks of millions of bloggers. Why now? Well, I’m enrolled in a social media certificate program at the University of Washington and I was tasked with doing a PPT presentation on blogging. Part of the presentation needed to include a ‘how-to-use-a-blogging-tool’ demonstration. So, I decided to walk my class through how easy it is to start a blog. The hard part is to blog about anything that’s even remotely interesting for people to read. After all a blog is all about me, Me, ME!

Since I’m always thinking about eating (if I’m not actually eating), I thought food would be a great topic. Next, I had to come up with a name for the blog. I thought What’s for Dinner? would be a good start. While it was no problem selecting that name for my blog, it was of course unlikely that nobody else among the 400+ million English language blogs hadn’t already chosen that domain name.

But I tried it anyway with a couple of back up names in mind:

• What’s for dinner?  –  not available
• I Wonder What’s for Dinner?  –  ditto, not available
• Hmm, I Wonder What’s for Dinner?  –  Bingo, available

And, that’s the URL for the blog:

http://hmm-iwonderwhatsfordinner.blogspot.com

Potato and Kale Cakes with Rouille

As I was waiting to get a haircut in a downtown Seattle salon yesterday, I was leafing through a variety of magazines including Bon Appetit. I was interested in an Asian looking chicken salad, but it seemed to include so many steps and so many ingredients that I quickly abandoned the idea. Disappointed and slightly hungry I turned to the next page which contained ideas on how to use dark green veggies for cooking. Of course, kale, Swiss chard and other select greens are hard to like - and impossible to love - for most people. Nevertheless, I decided to give the recipe a try. I figured it would be fun to add a starch (with a green twist) to my usual repertoire of rice and potatoes cooked in two to three different ways.

I served the cakes with oven-baked salmon, only because that's what I'd originally planned for dinner. But I think the cakes would have been better matched with grilled chicken or beef.

I used slightly less kale and all of the potatoes, because I knew that would help make the side more appealing to the rest of my family. By the way, the rouille was fantastic. The rouille would also go well with a grilled meat.

Hungry yet? It's delicious. Here's the recipe from Bon Appetit. http://bit.ly/i0Ap2i