Oh, I so love fall. Sweaters and jeans, crisp frosty mornings, a fire in the wood stove. It also means good comfort food to me. I have some great recipes, with wine of course. This one is a favorite that I serve every year at our Harvest Home Festival at Wenwood. I do a traditional chili too, but this one always gets rave reviews, and I hope you enjoy it on a, well, chilly autumn evening.
COUNTRY ESTATE WHITE CHICKEN CHILI
1 Onion
1 yellow sweet pepper
1 garlic clove
2 T olive oil
1 lb boneless/skinless chicken breast, diced
1 cans cannellini beans
1 can navy beans
1 can great northern beans
1 can creamed corn
1 small can green chilies
2 - 16 oz cans chicken broth (more for a "soupier" soup)
1/3 cup Wenwood Country Estate White Wine
1/4 lb pepper jack Velveeta cheese
In a stock pot, saute the onions, peppers and garlic until soft. Add diced chicken and cook until cooked through. Add the rest of the ingredient, except the Velveeta cheese. Heat the chili through, just to boiling. Add the Velveeta cheese in small chunks, and stir until melted and mixed thoroughly. Simmer 20 minutes to a half hour to blend flavors. Serve with shredded jack cheese, green chilies, sour cream, and crackers as toppings.
Add some fresh, crusty bread and a crisp glass of Country Estate White, and your yummy autumn meal is complete. Enjoy!
Laura's Halloween quest was great! I loved seeing all the costume ideas - very creative! Clyde and I have just about ignored the fact that it is almost Halloween. We didn't do any costumes...no parties...just winery stuff all weekend (not that I'm complaining mind you - we have fun with that stuff too!).
But as I was driving home from a tasting tonight, I put my radio on KDHX out of St. Louis and turned it on just in time for a segment they called 'stumbling in the dark'. Tonight it was dedicated to Halloween music! MWAAAHAHAHAHA!
That was it, all of a sudden, I wanted Halloween.
And I know we are usually all about the wine, but I have a bottle of Kraken spiced run in my cupboard and I just thought that seemed so perfect for a Halloween drink. So I stopped at the grocery store on my way home to pick up ginger ale for one of our favorite drinks, a dark and stormy.
But alas, no ginger ale to be had in small containers at my small-town grocery. So I walked around until inspiration hit - I'll make my own drink! It'll be made with Kraken Rum plus some type of red soda, and I'll call it Kraken Kill.
And since it was 9pm at the time I decided that it needed to be pretty light on calories too. So here's what I came up with:
My grocery store, which doesn't sell ginger ale in a single can, does carry these odd dollar-aisle flavored sodas. I chose the Pomegranate Berry flavor....probably because I'd had a conversation earlier in the evening with a tasting attendee about how to pronounce 'pomegranate'. I'll leave that conversation for another post.
Anyways....
I got home and filled a glass with ice and added a few raspberries on top.
Then I mushed up those raspberries with the back of a spoon. After that, I poured two fingers of Kraken rum...arguably the best spiced rum on the market IMHO...into the glass and topped off the glass with the dollar-aisle soda.
Please don't ask me how much rum is in 'two fingers' - it just depends on how fat your fingers are. My recommendation is to find someone with fat fingers, have them hold two fingers together, memorize that width and then use for all your drink mixing purposes in the future. Or use two of your (non-fat) fingers...it's probably healthier that way.
Doesn't this look perfect for Halloween? I call it Kraken Kill since the mushed up raspberries kinda make this gory-ish.
Hey, I'm trying to get in the Halloween mode here...go with me.
You might be wondering how my little Kraken Kill experiment turned out. Well, this did not taste like pomegranates and raspberries at all to me. It actually tasted more like cherries. I'd recommend squeezing in a bit of citrus if you try this at home. A dribble of orange or lemon would have done this drink wonders. And it will still look like a bloody kraken!
And here is the first song that KDHX played for the stumble in the dark program tonight that put me in such a ghoulish mood:
What is your favorite Halloween drink (or song)? Let me know in the comments, and have a Happy Halloween everyone!
This past Saturday was Chic friend Lee Baker's infamous Halloween party. The wine was flowing (Wenwood, of course!) and the costumes were fun. Here are some photos - feel free to use them as inspiration if you still need a costume. Happy All Hallows Eve!
Me - I'm a 50's TV character - all black and white!
Shyanne, Wenwood friend and employee, and me.
Becky & Shyanne - great witch and pirate!
Sally & Burt made an appearance, on their way east bound and down, loaded up and truckin'.
Our hostess, Dia de los Muertos style
Lee and Darin and a hookah, with delicious peach tobacco.
The sexy vampire couple, Jarrod and Anna.
Hope these photos didn't scare you too much! Have a nice glass of wine and relax - the witching hours is over 24 hours away.....
Happy Trills and Halloween Thrills,
Laura
10/28/2012
My weekly quest is a lame one I'm afriad. Truth is, I haven't gone anywhere and I mean a ny w h e r e lately. October is a crazy busy month at the winery, plus we are adding in some big financial paperwork, meaning that the biggest distance from home I've been lately is to the grocery store.
My doggies, on the other hand, have roamed the countryside freely hunting down every dangerous rabbit that can be found.
And trust me folks, rabbits are not only dangerous but tasty too.
So I'm sorry I don't have a wine quest entry, but if Maggie and Pepe were to write this post up, they would probably recommend the following link as possible hosenpfeffer/wine paring recipes:
Well, enjoy the recipes above if you get a chance - I know Maggie and Pepe love this wild dish!
In the meantime, I'll probably be bbq-ing chicken drummies or something I can easily find in the grocery store. But hey, if you are in the mood for a culinary quest, I do actually enjoy rabbit quite a bit, so don't hesitate. They are plentiful and delicious. Just ask Pepe!
Blech! It's fruit fly season here at the winery, and these little buggers are annoying wineries & wine drinkers everywhere. You're probably fighting them at home too. Did you know this itty bitty flies can fly up to six and a half miles per day? They are attracted to ripened fruit and - guess what? - fermented products!
So if you have fruit flies, what can you do to help get rid of them? I've got a few techniques to try.
First up: prevention & cleaning! Try to keep your fresh fruit in the refridgerator, and don't let anything sit out rotting on a counter or table top if at all possible. Second...rinsing dirty dishes, wine glasses, etc. immediately after use (or just go ahead and get them washed) will drastically cut down on possible food sources.
Put half opened bottles of wine, soda, juice, etc. in the refridgerator too. And it doesn't hurt to empty out your trash can more often this time of year too so that food sources aren't available for the flies.
Second up: getting rid of an infestation. Try putting an ounce or so of wine or apple cider vinegar in a bowl or container. Seal the top with plastic wrap rubber banded around the container to seal it tight. Then use the tip of a knife to poke teeny tiny holes in the plastic wrap. The flies will go in to eat and won't be able to get back out, thereby dying a wine/vinegar death.
You could also try calling the Orkin man I suppose - their site has lots of information about fruit flies. But those bug zappers are way more fun, trust me!
Finally, if you are trying to enjoy a glass of wine and the flies are just annoying the heck out of you, move to a location under a ceiling fan or set up a fan to blow across where you are at. The flies are so tiny that a medium breeze will carry them far away from your wine glass.
Do you have any tips to get rid of fruit flies? Let me know in the comments.
Last week I showed you some photos of our worst clutter areas in our currently disorganized home. Today, we made a heck of a start getting those areas revamped. Here's the before photo of the area behind our couch:
Behind the couch - before
And here is the after:
Behind the couch - after. Our cat Chessie seems to like it!
Now, I love the way this looks, and we scrubbed and polished all the way around the room, cleaning baseboards to ceiling light fixtures, but I must confess I may have been doing more "decorating" than "organizing." I guess I deserved a little fun after all the hard work, so in the next couple of days I'm going to tackle some actual organizing in the home office and family room closet (as pictured in the previous post.) So, one last photo of my fun, and I'll let you know how the organizing goes. Then it will be one room down..... eight to go (not including bathrooms. I probably should include bathrooms. *sigh*) Wish me luck!
Our friends went to Eureka Springs AR this weekend and visited Keels Creek winery. They brought this bottle of 'La Row' for us to try. the wine is a play on the varietal name, Laurot...which is clever. The wine was a deep rich red:
As you can see from the table, we were having snacks while we tried this wine! I noted dried blackberry and herbal aromas, and the tanin level was nice and soft. The flavor was a bit more one dimensional unfortunately, but certainly very drinkable. It was excellent with the sheep milk cheese, smoked venison sausage and homemade salsa we paired it with too.
Had a great weekend, due to the fact that we decided to be spontaneous and indulge ourselves just a bit. A couple of old friends from Wisconsin were coming with a group to go to the Rams/Packers game (apologies to my current state of residence, but GO PACK GO!!) We hadn't thought too much about this, since it's the busy season, but on Friday we just said, forget it, we're going - you only live once. So we bought game tickets and made hotel reservations (thank you, oh great internet) and headed out early Sunday morning.
Washington Avenue, Downtown St. Louis, compliments of City-Data.com
Apart from a very satisfying football game and a chance to reconnect with a couple of favorite friends from years back, I have to report how much fun we had in downtown St. Louis. We were in what is known as the Central Business District, which is near the Mississippi River, just under the Arch. What a great, historic place. It seems to be in an ongoing process of revamping and revitalization. We walked all around this area that is filled with great restaurants, interesting shops and a wonderful energy. I love that city energy, probably even more now that I live in the country. It's a bit like plugging in for a while, catching up with the rest of the world that we here in rural America lag a bit behind (by choice, most of the time!) There is a great website, DowntownStL.org, that lists lots of things that look well worth exploring.
The drive home this morning was, simply, beautiful. I know, I know, I've gone on and on about this fall and how pretty it has been, but really, I just can't say enough.
Even though it is a bit past peak in most places, it just seems to me that the entire season of color has been like one long, slow sunset. A few spots of color popped out first, blending and changing into the vibrant, intense reds, yellows and oranges at its peak, now softening and deepening to the colors of red wine and old leather. Ahhh, I must be tired, I'm waxing poetic. That's what a couple of days of spontaneous rejuvenation will get you, I guess.
Remeber way back when (o.k., September) where I showed off my mad crazy window glazing skillz? Well, after Laura's post yesterday about how she plans on organizing her home (by the way - maybe tall book shelves behind the couch for magazines & books that you've read but just don't want to give up? Plus you can display some knicky knacks above the couch level too) I thought I should share a little about my home too. Thus, I'm showing off my first refinished window in place!
See all that glass? Oh yea - it's in there because of moi. And I painted the window to boot. I'm not too proud to brag.
Here's a close up....because I'm just sure you wanted one.
This is a convenient before-and-after shot since the window on the left is basically what the window on the right looked like before I worked on it. Pretty spiffy if I do say so myself.
But wait! There's more....I also stained the inside of the window. And I'm sure you can't wait to see it, so here we go....
Ta-daa! So, as you can see, I cannot remember a stain color from one moment to the next and picked up a much, much darker color than what the rest of the window frame inside was actually stained.
We're trying to decide...do we like this two-toned stain look, or do we go ahead and stain the rest of the frame that dark color?
By the way....isn't this fall color amazing this year? Clyde thinks he has never seen such a colorful fall at Peaceful Bend. I cannot commit to that statement because I'm having a tough time remembering anything before August for some reason.
Anyways...what do you think of the window results? Let me know in the comments!
I am an avid magazine reader. Pinterest peruser. Internet cruiser. I am constantly reading blogs and articles about how to get organized and stay that way. And I do appreciate the irony of the fact that I could spend that time doing it, rather than reading about it... but hey. I'm apparently not the only one, because I never find a shortage of reading material on the subject. All of us busy working people in the real world strive to be more organized, so I'm taking one for the team.
As the busy season in the wine world starts to slowly wind down, Tom and I are looking around our house wondering where everything is. Literally, we can't find anything. So we've decided to start putting a little of the advice I keep reading to the test, and share the results with you. Since I'm still a bit under the weather with a cold, today we simply started to form a game plan (read, no actual work...) We are going to take one room at a time, and create an organized, functional, and aesthetic space for us, geared to our needs. Here are a few "before" pictures:
This is our "home office" area/coat rack/craft area/dump. I think you can see the problem. So our goal here is to create a functioning work space, move the craft stuff to a whole new craft room for me (eventually,) and find a new, user-friendly place to put our coats and other junk.
You'd think this nifty coat closet not five feet away from the desk would be a great place for that. We never use it. I'm not sure why, but following the advice of the experts I'm gonna stop fighting it and find a new use for this closet, and a place for the coats that is not only out of sight but more immediate to the door. We'll see how it goes.
Then there is this great area behind the couch:
Here, we could...... I got nothin'. Move the table out, probably, but it is a black hole sort of space, so if you've got any ideas please let me know. Please. No, really, please.
So here we go, Wine Chic & her guy getting organized for all the world (or my small corner of it) to see. I hope all you crazy busy real people out there can be inspired by our efforts. I hope WE can be inspired by our efforts! I'll pass on all the advice that I think works and what I think is some sort of crazed Martha Stewart/Stepford Wife not-gonna-happen-in-any-recognizable-reality crap. I'll also let you know how much wine we need to get through the process. So there you go. Stay tuned!
