Already second year I have a pleasure to participate in In Love with Redwood Valley "A Day of Wine, Spirits and Chocolate"  @Frey wineyard. This time Matt and I made chocolates filled with smoked chestnuts, wild huckleberrie/sangiovese/ honey, Coconut infused with wild pennyroyal and clusters with beebread, raisins and walnuts from Yerba Santa Dairy. 

Friday was a long night making chocolates. Even with the help of amazing chef and friend from Santa Cruz Pasquale we finished our project at 4 a.m.  But what a nigh it was! lots of chocolates made, lots of ideas shared and new future recipes born during conversations and good laughs.

After sleeping 3 hours we were on the road beaming to the winery.  Frost and fog was our companions on Hwy 20 keeping us fresh and awake. Not mentioning coffee from Esspreslow A-frame. And here we are at the winery. Beautiful, rustic place, with friendly dogs running around and always warm welcome from Frey family. 

Setting the table, packaging chocolates, talking to people, tasting wines, more chocolate, more wine, more people, sun outside,  relaxed atmosphere, conversations, live music….wow 6 hours went really fast. Lots of happy faces, lots of chocolate given away… Time to go home, coast is waiting with it's unusually sunny and warm weather. Thak you so much Frey familly for warm welcome, food, vine and good atmosphere.

       At last  after some rains porcini (boletus edulus) season is kicking in.  It's nice to find these gigantic mushrooms after dealing only with chantarelles for last couple of weeks. Noting's wrong with chantarelles, they are not a bad mushroom at all……especially if prepared with freshly cought crab, carrots, onions and served with soba….. It's just nice to find a mushroom which is bigger than your head

     Yaaayyyyy….59 pounds of goodness! Getting ready for tango tea dance practicas & easter chocolate madness.      Was excited when I got a package. It was not a problem even to carry it from wort to home. When I unpacked it I found out that i haven't got agave syrup, but oh well….I got  agave inulin, lucuma powder, hemp protein and seeds, loads of cacao butter and paste, etc. A lot of ingredients to play with and keep me happy…..

     Old Vitamix works like a champ…of course it has its own character and is ways different from his grand kid Vita-Mix 5000. But oh boy it blends……

     Was excited about the tap sticking out of the vessel so decided to make a juice out of greens that Mitzi brought me from Botanical gardens. As well picked some parsley in the morning while was planting garlic at Grey Whale's garden. Stuffed old blender with greens and in seconds it turned into thick soup that was not willing to leave the vessel through the tap….and it tasted….. it needed some serious flavor intervention. It was not an option to skip it so grabbed some spices, condiments, this and that, threw everything in the blender and gave some spins……mmmm turned out nice green soup that I enjoyed sitting on the second floor staircase and watching storm coming from the ocean.

     Sunny day again in Fort Bragg, CA. Lunch break. I'm on my bike with container full of salads ready to sit on cliff @ Glass Beach and spent some time in the sun.

     Beautiful. Low tide, lots of birds, people are sunbathing, gathering glass pebbles from the beach. Suddenly squirrel showed up out of nowhere…..  after a while total of 4 was running around but keeping distance. I was sitting and eating my lunch silently still watching them. Soon two of them got really close and started munching on grass running from place to place. I put some salad on the ground near me to see how clese they will get. After a minute or so two of them joined me for lunch and were happily downing greens that I offered to them. After they ate almost all of it (skipped cabbage, maybe because of coconut dressing) they turned around checked out my bike and continued to munch on grass that was abundant on headlands. Short but nice lunch.

     Was missing my Vita-Mix 5000 a lot. Thought I could get by with out it for some time as it was too heavy to take it with me on a plain.  It was hard. Not a lot you can do with a regular blender and borowing one (thanx Matt) is not always an option…..  But one sunny day just across the street at thrift shop (or I could say even thrift barn) while picking thru some interesting old plates, my eyes catched vintage blender which looked more like a toster with some stainless steel vase on top…… but it had a Vita-Mix 3600 badge on the front!!!! It was in good shape and it was for 15$!!!! YAAAAYYYYY…… so it's in my room waiting to be pluged in to make Minneola IPA jell.

     So……. getting back to my blog after some time.

     It's been busy at work and not a lot of time spent at home in the kitchen making something new and exciting…..if it was not enough allready spending almost all day dealing with food. Missed creating something on the fly until recently, thanks to Mike form Grey Whale Inn. I was asked to make a raw birthday cake….. so I made two.  Turned out not so bad…… or I should say very good taking in account that they were almost gone the same day….. 

     After a week, on Valentine's, I was honored to take part in "A taste of Redwood valley" at Frey Vineyards. I had lots of chocolate on my table  as couple of nights before was making and pouring chocolate into molds until late….

Photos later.

     On sunny Saturday we all gathered at Matt's place to learn about chocolate. After spending  some time on the sunny deck outside and listening to Matt we got to know how cacao bean makes its way from pod to the actual chocolate, changes from a nib to cacao butter and cacao powder. As well we tasted cacao nibs  of different varieties (yes different varieties tastes way different…can you imagine that? ), tasted different natural sweeteners. Later tasting chocolate we learned a good deal about different ratios of cacao butter, cacao powder in chocolate. Before a sunset we moved to the house were chocolate preparation class began.

     After some introduction to chocolate making we had a chance to see how actual chocolate was made and tempered. We ended up with full pot of tasty chocolate. ..so we just jumped in and added different flavors (cayenne, nutmeg, goji, incan berries, cherries, beebread, cinnamon, etc.). To tell the truth we could not stop ourselves from polishing spatulas and bowls with our tongues and trying to get every bit of chocolate that was left after we have poured our chocolate on baking sheets and created all sorts of swirles, clusters, etc…. the chocolate was so good that we felt like kids in chocolate factory! That was great.