The Road “Home” to Cooking.

Sur La Table “Bigwig Cool Chef Man” Joel Gamoran (I’m pretty sure that’s his title) asked me “So Abi, how did you come to Cook?” I’d flown up to Seattle to tour Headquarters and talk shop. We wore sweaters and munched Cookies freshly baked by icon Dorie Greenspan as TV cameras cooled from her demo. The painter in me watched purpled, gray rain clouds […]

Wine: Think Outside the Box.

I’ve been invited to be an Editor for the FeedFeed — an interwoven website linking cooks cooking away in our kitchens with recipes from around the globe. I am thrilled. It’s a regular site I use when cooking (like Epicurious). And a one-stop place of inspiration. I’ll be introducing and editing posts with my ‘straight talk’ about wine, pairings, cooking […]

Wine Follows Food

In the New Year, many of us Foodies make dietary resolutions to lose weight. Some will fail. But today, thanks to non-fad programs, many succeed. Changing lives by branching out to eat cleaner, greener, and leaner. Beginning to exercise and cook at home, bodies (& lives) will change for the better. (I, too, plan to […]

my Jelly Jar Trick: Not All Wine is Created Equal.

OKAY.  I admit it.  For years back in Los Angeles, I mostly sipped sh*t wine. Thinking it was good wine. And good for me. At $5-12 per bottle, inexpensive wine fit my wallet but still made me feel like I was “healthy.” A glass or two of red wine a day is supposed to be good […]

Cherry Liqueur: Make Now. Love Later.

My husband’s family hails from Bassano del Grappa and neighboring town of Borso in northern Italy. Just outside of Venice in the lower Alps. The Family is still there. It’s just my Dean, his brother Tom and our families in America now. The rest of the extended clan are still cooking beautiful dishes in their ancestral homes, […]

The Night Our Sheep Scared Away Coyotes

The Night Our Sheep Scared Away the Coyotes. All of them. One cold morning in early Spring, Ed “the Sheep Guy” brought 60 sheep here to Annadel. 30 Lambs and 30 Mamas (approximately).  We gathered friends with wee Littles and toasted these babies and mommies with chilled bubbles as they lept from Ed’s trailer into […]

“Cork Dorks” vs. the Wine Aroma Wheel

Much has been written, and even more said, on the subject of Wine.  Wine has been produced for literally thousands of years.  The earliest known production appears in the archaeological record around 6,000 BC in Georgia — that’s the late Neolithic era people!   And the last 40 years of cross-cultural competition and technological improvements […]