Best Sandwich I've Eaten in a While or to Rachael Ray or not?

So yeah, peeps have differing opinions of the Rach and they usually are polar opposites.  Either you like her style or you don't like her set or her recipes.

Well, I get it.  I don't always like her recipes, they don't always feel well thought out or remotely appealing.  But I saw this on TV today and I have to say, was salivating.

It's a grilled cheese sandwich with bacon, very sharp white cheddar and shaved apple, served wtih a spread of apple butter, honey and grainy Dijon mustard. 

I happen to have a boyfriend who has a brother who lives in Washington State, and every year this brother sends the BF a wheel of tinned cheddar (in a can). Cougar Gold. The BF doesn't always get to it so fast so it ends up aging in his fridge.

This is a major ingredient bonus in my sandwich. Kicks it up a notch, you know?

I used, blasphemously, peppered "uncured" turkey bacon from Trader Joe's. Uncured is the same thing as "except for whatever occurs naturally in celery powder" which I am guessing is an important point. Regardless, it is lower in fat than regular bacon but once you get that salty, chewy thing, you kind of say, well, why not?

So I shaved my apple and made a slurry of apple butter, a little less honey and a little less grainy Dijon.  Slathered the french bread with it, layered some of that great sharp cheddar, a layer of "bacon" and another layer of cheese and cooked very slowly (after spreading the outside with butter of course) so that the cheese would melt.

Delicious, the only change I would make would be to maybe add some arugula or watercress for some balance to the overall sweetness.  the mustard just wasn't enough. 

So give this a try, I highly recommend it.

Sun and Sunscreen

One of the best and cheapest on the market

When I'm in the vineyard the sun can be brutal. It's no accident that vineyard workers who spend all day out there are dressed in hoodies and long-sleeved shirts. This past week, the FDA announced new guidelines for sunscreen labeling in order to protect consumers against false claims. Manufacturers can no longer use the terms "sunblock", "waterproof" and "sweatproof".  They will also have to provide  UVB and UVA protection in order to label it "broad spectrum".

UVB are the rays that cause short term damage, i.e., sunburn, but UVA rays are the ones that can cause skin cancer over time and are especially harmful to people sensitive to sunlight. What they didn't do was come out and say what every dermatologist knows: any SPF over 50 is a waste of money and a marketing ploy.  An SPF of 100 offers only about 1% more protection than that of  SPF 50, marginal at best.

So what ingredients should one look for in a sunscreen? According to Dr. David J. Leffell, Chief of Dermatologic Surgery and Cutaneous Oncology at Yale School of Medicine (in other words, he's a skin cancer expert), there are three ingredients that offer the best broad spectrum protection: zinc oxide, avobenzone and to a lesser extent, titanium dioxide.  If any of these are in your product, you've got the best protection out there, but you still have to reapply frequently (every 2 hours).  He also suggests multiple strategies including SPF clothing and hats, full skin coverage and of course, just staying out of the sun, especially between 10 and 4.

I'm getting ready to head out and do some canopy management and I've checked my sunscreen, 70 for my arms and 90 for my face. None of the three essential ingredients are there.  So I'm going to toss those in favor of my Trader Joe's SPF 30 with zinc oxide. Both of my parents have had cancerous growths from their faces removed, I'm not taking any chances.

For more information on skin and the sun and the new FDA regulations, check out Dr. Lefell's website. It offers up a ton of useful info.

Fawned of Deer

One of the joys of living on a vineyard is the beautiful pastoral landscape.  I live on the outskirts of Sonoma where the roads are still barely paved and I can't vote in city elections. The result is that I have one of the most cherished vistas in 360˚. Everywhere I look there is something to marvel at, during every season.

In the middle of winter, when the vines are dormant and the weather is too nippy for salad days, the crackle and spark of the wood stove are there and I am graced with a frosty landscape on a February morning.  In the spring, everything is at its promise, the peacocks across the street begin their mating calls in March, the grasses are beginning to run rampant in the vineyard rows and the frogs keep their chorus up all night.  It is approaching summer and the last of the very, very late rains seemed to have finally said their goodbyes and now it's just madness. Those same very late rains have pushed the canopy (the green part of the grape vines) way beyond what one would expect at this time of year and the weeds are, well, they just piss me off. 

So today I took out the riding mower to mow. It wasn't two weeks ago that I had done it before and some of these weeds are again nearly the size of a yardstick.  It sometimes takes two or three passes in opposite directions to get them fully cut.  Annoying.  But today I was on the fringe of our fence line and I spotted a fawn about ten yards away, panicking on the other side of our short fence.  You see, we don't have high deer fencing around and they seem to slip in through the back of our property line.  Then I spotted its mother taking a whiz (quite a long, leisurely one) on our side of the fence.  So I stopped the mower. 

What can I say?  I'm a sucker.  Mommy and fawn were separated and I didn't want to add to the chaos with the mower.  It was about a five minute standoff, the fawn scamping about trying to make her way to mom on the wrong side of the fence and finally Momma Doe high-jumped the neighbor's fence and they were reunited.  

Most growers (and gardeners) don't like deer.  I just don't like to kill them.