Food

Pinot Gris is a light, bright and uncomplicated wine that's refreshing and easygoing. It's the perfect wine for a Spring garden dinner party. And that's just the way Kendall-Jackson chose to introduce their new Vintner's Reserve Pinot Gris recently.  Kendall-Jackson has always impressed me as a winery that puts their money where their mouth is when it comes to claiming "food friendly wine." They have a restaurant in Healdsburg called Partake by KJ and host a whole variety of food and wine pairing tasting experiences at their estate which has a vast organic garden including a sensory garden to help demystify food and wine pairing and explain the flavors in wine. Culinary gardener Tucker Taylor showed us around, explaining his gardening techniques and pointing out some very interesting varietals including celtuce , a cross between celery and lettuce and spigarello , a leafy green with tender curly shoots. The garden produces enough for not just the winery but...

For years my husband insisted that we should only buy  McCann’s Irish Oatmeal , but I generally bought whatever steel cut oats were available and just refilled the McCann’s tin with them. I honestly didn’t think one brand of steel cut oats could possibly be that different from another. I was wrong. But it turns out, so was my husband.  Recently I got a sample of  Flahavan’s Irish Oatmeal . The company has been around for over 200 years and is still family owned. They grow and mill their oats in Ireland. They claim their unique milling—kilning their oats with outer shells, a kind of malting process—helps to retain natural texture and golden color and yields a very creamy taste. The oats tasted great, but were they better than any other steel cut oats? The only way to know for sure was to do a blind taste test.  So we tasted four different brands of steel cut oats: Bob’s Red Mill Steel Cut Oats, McCann’s Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal, Flahavan’s Steel Cut Irish Oat...