As you can see the bottle is empty. We purchased this wine because it is organic and has no sulfites in it which is extremely rare to find. Little did we know we were buying a very unique wine from a very special winery. Coturri has been a California winery since 1883 and is managed by Tony Coturri, a third generation winemaker. What makes these wines so special is how natural they are. Natural yeasts living on the grapes are used for fermentation (virtually all wines, including some organic ones, add foreign yeasts that are purchased and not indigenous to the actual grapes used). Most wines contain a litany of chemicals that do not need to be listed on the label, such as anti-foaming agents, preservatives etc. Coturri wines are minimally processed, not fined or filtered and now chemicals added at all. The result? Flavor that will blow you a way. As soon as we opened the bottle and poured a glass we could tell this was a very different wine than we had ever tried. The aroma was incredibly intense - almost like a fine port. And the taste was truly unique. Powerful fruit that at first was sweet and syrupy in texture, yet seconds later passing over the back of our tongue bracingly dry. And the same rich port like fumes of super concentrated fruit lingered. Our bottle was a zinfandel from Chauvet Vineyards, made from old vines, 50 percent from 1935 and 50 percent from 1976, and was bottled in 2005. We highly recommend you visit their site and order some wine. The zinfandel we purchased goes amazingly well with our bbq sauce! And for around $25 was a bargain. It tasted like a $300 bottle of wine!

Coturri Winery

For those of you who have read this section, you know we frequent our public libraries weekly. We can't emphasize enough how much we love libraries. And the people who seem to buy the books and DVDs always seem to get the coolest stuff. When we find something we like, we purchase it. That said, this book is a recent find we highly recommend. It isn't full of beautiful photographs, but the history of each type of bread is better than any photo.

The breads are centered around holidays from different cultures around the world. While many holidays we don't have here in the U.S., there is no reason not to bake the bread they symbolize. November through January is a great time to bake sweet breads - and this book is loaded with them. Nothing is better than a slice with your morning coffee or for tea time. Available at most online book shops.

Celebration Breads by Betsy Oppenneer

We picked up this issue at the SFO airport with a bunch of magazines for airplane reading and were completely blown away. The writing is just about the finest writing on food we have ever read. Topics range from a master knife maker, to an eccentric craft brewer to a profile on a famous cookbook duo. Yes, the articles are long, in depth and incredibly detailed - just the type of writing more food publications need to be doing. You really get a sense for the magic behind people who are obsessed with what they do. This issue is already probably being taken off the shelves, but if you can find a copy, we highly recommend it. They also have online archives at their website (you need to be a subscriber or can buy access to this one issue at the link below). We wish we could include a copy of this issue with every order from our site. It is that amazing.

The New Yorker

Once a week we visit the Sunnyvale public library. They have a great selection of books, and a few days ago we happened upon Made in Italy, by Giorgio Locatelli. This is a big, big cookbook. But after opening it up you will immediately see why. It is loaded with detailed writing on a wide range of subjects, along with well explained steps to recipes. This book you can read like a novel. It is that fascinating. We highly recommend you get yourself, or a friend a copy. We find this book a terrific source of inspiration and very educational. Even if you don't cook that much but just love to eat, this is a book you will be glad to have.

Nika Hazelton was born in Rome, the daughter of a diplomat who later studied at the London School of Economics. Somehow she found her way writing cookbooks during WWII up until her death in 1992, as well as a food writer for Ladies' Home Journal, House and Garden and The New York Times Book Review. We have several of her cookbooks such as The Continental Flavor (highly recommended), and the picnic book pictured above. The picnic book is a great gift idea, though it is long out of print. We suggest you find a first edition hardcover with the wonderful illustrations. The book is divided into creative ideas based on Hazelton's personal experiences with fun anecdotes, such as a picnic in a graveyard for two, a fire island costume picnic, a thrifty, but filling wine or beer picnic etc. Written in 1969, it is quite international with recipes for Korean short ribs and kimchee to quince paste to raspberry scrub (no this isn't a facial but a drink recipe from the 1800s). We can tell from her writing that she had a great sense of humor; for example, the photo of her in the back of The Continental Flavor has her hugging a plastic dog. She also seemed to be a vanguard proponent of women's rights - especially in regard to the food industry with her memebership in the still up and running, very cool Les Dames d'Escoffier International.

Author Ann Vileisis has written a fascinating book on the history of food and its origins in America, starting from people who grew their own food or purchased it from neighboring farms, to the insane current world of food today where we have no connection or knowledge of its origins. We found this at our public library (we love public libraries!) and it is a must read. While it is a non-fiction book the writing and content is a page turner. Anyone today who buys food at a market must read this book. It strikes home how important it is to buy locally and to know directly the chain of transfer of where your food is grown/raised to how it gets to you, with an emphasis on as direct a connection as possible - what we are all about!

Kitchen Literacy

We drive all the way from San Francisco to Mill Valley's Mill Valley Market to buy the sour dough Brickmaiden bread. It is so delicious - with its crunchy crust and almost chewy interior. The bread is baked in a fire brick oven in a tiny bakery in Point Reyes, CA just a short drive north of Marin and SF. So tiny they don't even have a website. We don't know of a place that sells their bread (they make other types as well) in SF. Worth the trip to Mill Valley Market - an incredible store in the super cute Mill Valley.

Speaking of brick ovens, we were chatting with some bakers in SF who used to have a bakery near the Cow Palace that had 100 year old brick ovens. Apparently they said the ovens always had to be on since there was no mortar between the bricks, and the heat that expanded them was essential to keep the ovens in one piece. If they cooled down the oven would collapse. We don't know if all brick ovens are like this, but that was an interesting tidbit of info.

Apparently there are a few of these old brick ovens still in use in SF. The baker we spoke to swore the bread baked in the brick ovens tasted so much better. We would love to visit these last remaining commercial brick ovens that apparently would be too expensive to build today due to their size.

We have tried all kinds of oven mitts over the years including the horrible Orka Silicone mitt that gave us serious burns and should be banned from the market. Head and shoulders above what is out there is the Kool-Tek mitt. These things really offer protection from very hot baking pans and such. They cost around $24 each, but really are worth it. You can find them for sale on Amazon and other big shopping sites. These gloves are made by a very well known food service company called San Jamar. Most likely you have seen their paper hand towel dispensers in school and restaurant bathrooms a million times. They make all kinds of cool stuff.

San Jamar

It has been unusually hot in San Francisco, and we are talking the 80s here. Beer is best, and when it comes to the best, Belgians know beer. And one of the most interesting is the Tripel Karmeliet. Tripel or Triple beers use three grains - which here are barley, oats and wheat. Then yeast is added to the bottle and further fermentation takes place - kinda like champagne - kinda but not really. This is why the bottles are usually so thick - to withstand the pressure, and why when you open them, they foam up so much when you pour. Now, like so many things, there are classifications, and when tasting Belgian beers many have similar taste characteristics, but this particular brew stands out for its unique taste. We only know of one place so far that sells it in SF called PlumpJack, so good luck finding it. But if you do, enjoy!

Tripel Karmeliet

Eric's brother lives in San Francisco and recently moved into a house in Potrero Hill - one of the sunniest and warmest areas in the city. The neighboring house surprisingly has a small blenheim apricot tree in the back yard. The fruit on it was beautiful with a deep orange color, pink blush and was blemish free. We were shocked to see a blenheim growing so well this far north, but it must be the sunny disposition of the neighborhood. The fruit was ripe much later than in the Santa Clara Valley that is much hotter in the summer - about two weeks behind. So, when we saw this tree, with amazing fruit still on the tree, we asked if we could pick it and make jam. The owners agreed and soon we will have a very small amount for sale.

If you have a Blenheim tree in the Bay Area, we might do the same thing next year if you ask us - and we have the time. We just did this today so we haven't thought this through. Details about pricing and such would have to be worked out. But we like this idea of jam from single tree fruit from backyards. Isn't this the way it is supposed to be where everyone grows something to eat on their property and the surplus is shared?

The month of July for us is basically non-stop apricot jam production where all else in our lives comes to a screeching halt. Sleep is rare, mail piles up, house cleaning ceases, socialzing evaporates, and hard physical labor predominates (loading 1000 lbs of apricots into our car every two days, hand washing, cutting, cleaning and inspecting hundreds of pounds of apricots every monrning for example), and all the complexities of a very carefully controlled process that is always tested by the follies of nature, make our summers anything but relaxing. After a long 14 hour shift, pleasures other sleep are few. However, a nice glass of wine with a quickly prepared dinner is something to look forward to. Sean Thackery is a master wine maker who makes some of the best wines that are almost impossible to find outside of restaurants. His affordable Pleiades is truely outstanding for $23. A blend of Syrah, Barbera, Carignane, Petite Sirah, Sangiovese, Viognier etc. make for a haunting, tantelizing wine that never lasts more than a few hours. Thackery's website is full of translated ancient texts about wine, and a winefinder where you can locate his wines - both the budget we drink and the fancy stuff we have yet to find.

Sean Thackery Website

Thackery's Wine Finder

 

From August 29 to September 1 the first national event by Slow Food USA will be held in San Francisco. We will have a booth in the Civic Center where we will have our Blenheim apricot and Elephant Heart plum jams available for pickup for local customers, and both products will be featured in their Taste Hall where you can sample them. This will be an amazing event that brings farmers and artisan food producers from around the US together. We highly encourage you to visit - what a perfect excuse to come to beautiful San Francisco!

The Blenheim apricot, the mariposa plum and the elephant heart plum are all on the Ark of Taste by Slow Food USA - which is a list of foods that are in danger of extinction. The theory is to eat things to save them. By giving farmers a reason to grow these varieties isn't just about preserving amazing tasting foods, but keeping agricultural traditions alive throughout the American regions these crops have traditionally been grown. We are passionate supporters of Slow Food and encourage you to learn more on what you can do to save good food from disappearing.

Slow Food Nation

Slow Food USA

May 10: Growing Apricots

We are big fans of Ridge wines - a SF Bay Area winery in, guess what? Cupertino, CA. In fact, they are around 8 miles away from our original apricot tree in Santa Clara. This is really one of the best agricultural areas in the world. Never once have we gotten a bad bottle of Ridge - and that says a lot since many wines we buy with corks are iffy. Anyhow, they source their grapes from several vineyards, and our favorites are Monte Bello, Ponzo, York and Lytton. Ridge is famous for their zinfandel wines, a true California grape that they handle so well - usually blended with other variety of grapes of a lesser percentage than the zin. However, we were lucky to recently buy a 1995 Cabernet of theirs at a value of $80 instead of the usual $300 that was really fun to drink. We normally never spend this much on wine, but it was very rare and we like Ridge so we splurged.

Ridge is famous for the blind taste test in France in 1976 where their Monte Bello cab from 1971 won top place. Our 1995 Monte Bello was a blend - after 1975 they started to blend it. So we decided to do our own blind tasting. The 1995 Ridge against a 2006 Elvenglade pinot noir. Now we know this is a totally unscientific taste test since they are different grapes. But what the hell. It was fun to compare a $300 bottle of 13 year old wine to a $20 bottle of 2 year old wine. The results:

On first tasting, we thought we had a winner. Of course this was like most blind tastings, subject to speculation. One wine was very powerful and deep yet rough and at the same time with a rich mellow after taste. Unsanded wood was one image, yet the powerful assertiveness of the fruit on the palate at first and then the mellowing vanilla and then more earthly qualities like mushrooms and tar and leather came through. This assertiveness we attributed to a younger wine and thought we could tell it was the pinot. The other wine was more flavorless, timid and one dimensional as if it were stale. OK, we thought, the old stuff is the stale stuff because it has mellowed too much. We thought we were pretty smart. Then we opened our eyes and were surprised that the super rich flavored, young and even rough tasting wine was the 1995 Ridge cab. What a shock. We closed our eyes again and mixed up the glasses and tried tasting again. This time we could spot both wines. On second tasting, at first we could smell the higher alcohol from the pinot at 14.6 percent but the taste was one dimensional again with just a tannish, very dry but flat cardboardy taste. The Ridge in comparison at 12.7 percent had an amazingly assertive aroma of wild fruit like cherries and blackberries but tempered with a little vanilla from wood. The taste on the tongue at first was musky, smoky and like sauteed wild mushrooms, yet very dry and tannic. After swallowing the flavors continue on the memory banks, fall leaves, rich soil etc. The pinot left a sour dry yet uncharacteristic taste.

We love buying young zinfandels for drinking for their powerful fruit. Most wines today are made for drinking within a few years. The older tradition of making wines to age and be at their peak after 10-30 years seems outdated. However, this tasting really opened our eyes to how a well made wine can actually survive a long time. Granted, buying older wines is very expensive, but this tasting shows that a wine designed for aging can surpass in flavor, ripeness, richness and power a young wine. We would be curious to know what the Ridge tasted like say ten years ago. It must have been really overwhelming.

We buy our Ridge wines at our favorite SF wine shop where the staff are personable and smart: Wine Impressions - 3461 California St.

The Judgment of Paris' 30th Anniversary

Ridge 1976 Paris Tasting

Ridge Vineyards

Eric is currently writing a book on the industrial design team Van Keppel-Green, who were responsible for developing the concept of indoor/outdoor design. You can read more about VKG on a simple site he has made.

Van Keppel-Green

If we had a dollar for every bottle of wine we bought and opened before dinner only to realize it was undrinkable because the cork allowed in air that ruined the wine, we probably could go on a very fancy vacation, somewhere exotic and for a long time.

When we buy wine, we look for screw caps. We even wish wine shops had screw cap only sections to make our searching easier. While wine properly stored so the cork is always in contact with the wine can survive a long time, the reality is most wine is improperly stored. And what a horrible waste.

Many people are resistant to screw caps since historically cheap jug wine used screw caps and due to this prejudice, wine shops don't buy that many. We would like to simply add that screw caps are great. They are better than cork. We have never had a corked bottle of wine with a screw cap, and there is never the trepidation when opening a screw cap bottle of wine that what is inside is some foul smelling, disgusting slosh.

We spent years developing a naturally fruit infused soju (type of Asian vodka) but didn't follow through because manufacturing costs based on our process was just too expensive (think starting a new, aged-scotch-whisky business). However, we used only screw caps for aging in small bottles, and can say with authority that aging in a screw cap is better than cork. We have bottles that have been aging since 1999 and with bottle-to-bottle comparisons, quality is consistent and the few we did with cork didn't hold up, And the taste - oh, if only this were for sale. You would go nuts! Passionfruit, plum, cranberry, raspberry...., dry but not too dry, all organic and natural color from the fruit and full of antioxidants.

But the subject of wine...

One of our customers works for Quixote winery and they use only screw caps. And there is also the Loring Wine Company. If only more wineries did this!

Well our biscotti are finally for sale. The first flavor offered is one we have been making for nearly a decade. They are filled with Belgian chocolate, raw local almonds and hazelnuts we roast ourselves, and our own hand-made candied citron. The flavor combination is unlike anything you have ever tasted and incredibly delicious.

We are the first food company to use a 100 percent biodegradable clear bag made from cottonwood trees. Just about all food packaged in plastic uses plastic that is not recyclable or biodegradable. We care about the environment and the health of people, so we do things differently.

Click here to order your biscotti now.

When it comes comes to cleaning up after a party nothing beats a machine that will flawlessly clean even the heaviest soiled pots, glasses, plates and silverware in 2 minutes. Yes - two minutes! Welcome to the big leagues. Hobart is the most respected manufacturer of dishwashers, rack ovens, mixers etc. for the food industry and we can't say enough about how great their products are - even if they are designed and priced for professionals. And their LXi undercounter dishwasher, at a cool $5000, is the best you can get for home use. Not only is it beautiful, it is a beast when it comes to cleaning and sterilizing. If you do a lot of dishes, this machine is blazingly fast and very water efficient.

Hobart

January 9: Creative Cooking

 

We love public libraries and pay them a visit at least once a week it seems. Where else can you see your tax dollars put to good use? A few days ago we noticed this cookbook from the famed restaurant at the super luxe Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, Calif. and took it home. It is really special because not only are the recipes very creative in the use of ingredients and techniques, but this book is a great place to get ideas. At first glance recipes look complex and have many steps, but after spending some time reading the book, the steps are short and simple, and what is really nice is you can pick say one step such as a sauce, or a technique for tying a strip of fish into a disc, or grinding dried procini mushrooms and using the powder to coat fish to create a crust (not all recipes are for fish) - that you can incorporate into your own recipes. If you enjoy experimenting in the kitchen as much as we do, this book is a terrific source of inspiration. And unlike most cookbooks, this one you can actually curl up in bed and read.

Sierra Mar Cookbook

Post Ranch Inn

We love freshly squeezed juice and if you don't know it already, freshly squeezed juice changes flavor quickly - and not for the better. That is why the fresh squeezed juice you buy in the market never tastes as good as if you squeeze it yourself and drink it right away. You can do a taste test yourself. Squeeze some fresh citrus juice and put in in the fridge for a day. Then compare it to freshly squeezed. The difference is amazing.

Recently needed to find a juicer to help us gently press lemons for our upcoming Meyer lemon rub we will be making. After doing some research we settled on this Amco commercial juicer. Manual juicers are more gentle with the fruit, not to mention quiet, and this particular model is so powerful that you hardly need to apply any pressure and it extracts all the juice and pulp with little waste. You can use it with any type of citrus. The cheapest we could find was on Amazon for around $112. Just do a search online for "Amco OrangeX Commercial Juicer" and see what you can find.

Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé and written by Dorie Greenspan is one of the most beautifully photographed and well written cookbooks. If you love to bake, and love chocolate, this is the book for you. While some recipes have multiple steps and are perfect if you have time to spare and enjoy being in the kitchen, others are shorter and faster. As with all good cookbooks there is ample text explaining the recipe and its background. A definite must have and a perfect gift.

Pierre Hermé

Buy the Book at Amazon

When it comes to staying healthy there is nothing like eating in moderation good, healthy and delicious food (this includes desserts), lots of physical exercise, maintaining a positive outlook, and of course skin care. Looking good means feeling good. And when it comes to skin health there is one company that is hands down the best. SKII. One of us has been using SKII daily for nearly ten years and while we aren't exactly Dorian Gray, this stuff works! The active ingredient, pitera, is derived from fermented rice. The best products are the all important facial treatment essence, the facial treatment milk and the advanced signs treatment.

SKII

Strawberrynet.com - best place to buy it

We spend a lot of time relaxing while watching films. These can be those on the big screen or that we rent. When it comes to DVDs, The Criterion Collection offers a wonderful collection of independent-minded celluloid representations.

Criterion

Today while shopping for presents we stumbled on a new shop that was selling some terrific cutting boards. What caught our eye was the cut out holes in all of them just like our labels. And who can't love bird's eye maple? They are made by Edward Wohl. Perfect for serving cake, cheeses, or if you are adventuresome enough, wax the bottom and take it for a ride down a snowy slope!

Edward Wohl

It's hoshigaki season right now. We love hoshigaki, which are dried persimmons that have been slowly massaged daily for a month to soften them and bring their natural sugars to the surface as a fine white powder that you can see above. The art of making hoshigaki is dying out and we are trying to keep it alive. This year we bought 60 lbs of the best hoshigaki we could find and sold it to our customers. Next year we will buy more.

November 14: Best Energy Drink

November 14: Delicious Dorie

We love all kinds of Indian food including chaat and yes, even pizza. Luckily we live in San Francisco where the very best, and perhaps the original Indian pizza is made. Imagine a traditional pizza with cheese but with curried spinach, cauliflower, eggplant, green onions and cilantro on top. Yum! There is also a meat version, but we have always gotten the vegetarian out of habit. If you ever visit SF, you have to visit Zante Pizza.

Zante Pizza