truffle fries, a holiday tune and catch up

I was sipping on a glass of Alamos Malbec (great wine for under $15 pick), and thinking that I've let the week slip by without posting.  

I went to Marks again this week with my buddy Ximena and totally ordered their Parmesan Truffle Fries.  They are so blasted good that there aren't words.  I'm a huge truffle fan.  Love the truffle. I think I'd eat it on morning buttered toast.  Seriously. Anyway, you should go get these fries... their burgers are damn good, too.

Onward. December is a big ta-do in the Livengood household.  There's baking and present wrapping and shopping and house cleaning and chorus concerts and parades and dinners with friends... yep, the Christmas season has us all wrapped up with busy-ness.

The blogs are full of delicious Christmas recipes this time of year, too, aren't they?  I can't possibly cook everything on my Holiday Baking board on Pinterest before the Big Guy comes down the chimney, but I'll gonna sure try!

I stumbled upon the Big Red Kitchen blog last week.  What caught my eye was a post about mixing Eggnog with Ginger Ale.  I ran to the fridge (I had both) and excitedly mixed them together, because as we all know, I am obsessed with all things eggnog.  It was interesting.  I wouldn't serve it at your next party, but it was definitely worth trying once.

Jacob Johnson is the bomb.  He's a fixture in the local coffee shop (Ithe Forest...still known to many locals as Leopard Forest) so I get to see his smiling face when I run in for a mid-afternoon pick-me- up. He posted this rendition of the Peanut's version of Christmastime last week.  The boy can tear up a guitar. And apparently he too shares an appreciation for Charlie Brown's Christmas which makes him even cooler. Enjoy.


Next.  Kate Middleton is pregnant.  There will be royal baby...which as a toddler will actually be a royal pain in the butt.  Hahahahaha!  Yep.  Made that one up  folks.  I'm just a regular Jay Leno, eh?

(crap!  My glass is empty. Time for a refill.)

Oh!  I finally found someone who could appreciate my appreciation for bowties!  Adam Roberts!  If you follow my blog often, he's The Amateur Gourmet guy I talk about all the time. A food nerd and fellow food blogger (but he's made it BIG TIME).  Check out this really awesome talk he just gave to publicize his new book (which is on my Christmas list).

Okay.  That's all folks.  Enjoy your evening. I have more for tomorrow so stay posted!

BevMo, puppy feet, and cupcakes

I'm in San Diego this week to visit my mom's sister, see their old stomping grounds and make a few visits around here and there and ooooh... will I have some things to share with you. I'll start here:

Have you heard of Zox Straps?  May be the next big thing folks.  Check them out.  My cousin ordered this one and I had to go see what the buzz was about.  Have to say I ordered one too. $7 shipped to your door.   Should be here next week!  Yea me!

Ginger's my puppy cousin and and cuddle buddy for the week. I could pinch these little feet all day long. Seriously. She's gonna hate me by mid-week.

Okay, nuff of the puppy and product and on to the food.  I found Wild Ophelia Beef Jerky milk chocolate bar at a store here called BevMo (think very small Total Wine plus booze section).  I'm taking it back to try with the hubs. I'll let you know how it is later. It's taking all I have not to rip into it! BevMo had a really awesome higher end soda section, too.  I love a good eclectic soda selection.

We ate at Sammy's Woodfire Pizza  for lunch.  My mother just found out she must say goodbye to Gluten. (Out of support, and because let's face it, Gluten is absolutely horrible for you, I may join  her.  I'll keep you posted on this front.)  Anywho, they have a great selection of Gluten Free pizzas but we had giant salads and shared Gluten Free Pasta. It was so yum no one knew the difference. 

And the atmosphere in the outside seating was so stupendously cool I could have lived there.  The light fixtures... the white leather couches... so wicked!

 I made my first cupcake stop of the week today too!  There are crazy good bakeries here. We stopped in at Babycakes in the Hillcrest community of San Diego while we were passing through.  The cupcakes were BEAUTIFUL but I was not over the moon about the cake or the icing.   The staff were super sweet and the place was really awesome, but they definitely didn't place in my top three of all time.  Headed to La Jolla tomorrow to visit Sprinkles and play in the tide pools.  I love looking for sea glass.  I am STOKED! 

We're digging in to these puppies now. One from my aunt's cellar and the Terradoro Zin I bought at BevMo. Ye-haw! More later, so good night!

If ya want to tag along for more of my California adventure, all of which, I cannot possibly tell you about on the blog, be sure to like Gap Creek Gourmet on Facebook! 

May book club, cookbook review and the joy of singing our lungs out

Last night was Cookbook Book Club night!  

I was pulling Sierra's Andouille Sausage Pigs in a Blanket out of the oven and finishing the final touches on my Alabama "West Indies" Crab Salad dish when I realized it started 30 minutes earlier than I thought... all the way across Greenville County. AH!!!  Truly a cuss moment.  Saved by the iPod, I pulled up the quickest route.  45 minutes y'all!  (Usually an hour drive.) Speeding or the wonders of shortcuts.  Not sure, but we made it!

Some of other dishes were Oven-Roasted Sweet Potato and Green Bean Salad, Endive and Roquefort Salad, and Butter Bean Croustades. If you're new to the blog, the Fiction Addiction Cookbook Book Club cooks from a new cookbook each quarter.  Right now we're making our way through "Basic to Brilliant Y'all: 150 Refined Southern Recipes and Ways to Dress Them Up for Company."  Don't go out and buy this cookbook unless you are seriously good in the kitchen.  Virginia Willis worked for Martha Stewart and the cookbook is NOT for a novice.  The recipes are pretty dang daunting and she should fire her editor!  The recipes are not an easy read. They are complicated and not very descriptive for a cookbook with limited pics.  There.  That's my review. Anywho.  The food, though sometimes wing it we must, is very delicious!

The folks at Wine Styles are nice to host us.  Last night, the very nice lady behind the bar kept bringing me and my new friend Joy new wines to try.  You MUST run out and grab a bottle of Apothic White.  Apothic Red is one of my go-to reds at $9 a bottle.  I'd never had the white. Oh, baby. So good!  Will be picking one up today!

My child and I go to book club together.  How very cute of us, right?  She picks out her dish, we make our grocery list and go shopping.  She cooks it herself too (with a little help). She doesn't eat much while we are there, but tries way more than I thought she would!  

We ran through Jack in the Box and sang our lungs out on the way home. Thank goodness we like the same music!  This is our favorite song.  Ever.  I hated nursery rhymes so I sang her the complete Indigo Girls Rites of Passage CD from first song to last.  She was colicky and I had to sing and rock a lot.  It usually took three songs to knock her out: Three Hits, Galileo and Ghost.  Anyway, she still says this is her favorite and still asks me to sing it to her sometimes. 

I'm a busy body... usually.   I finished the work I planned for this morning already and I'm torn as to whether I should watch Smash over lunch or save it for tonight.... decisions.  Thinking of making Pork rolls with greens and black eyed peas for dinner... I'm making this one up as I go folks.  I'll post pics.

PS: stay posted because an Upcountry Provisions give away is coming soon!

Taqueria on wheels and satiating the wine beast.

We often shop in Hendersonville, North Carolina, because frankly, it's a lot closer than heading down the mountain the other direction.  Daniel (the hubs) and I have passed this taco truck thousands of times, and finally decided to give it a go this past weekend.  It's on Spartanburg Hwy just off Highway 25 headed toward Hendersonville. It sits just off the road on the left behind a run down second-hand store.

The guy at the window was the owner and very helpful.  He said they had tacos and burritos.  We asked what kind.  He said steak and chicken.  Really?  That's it?  He said they had tongue and cheek tacos too, but people like us don't usually order that.  Oh, really?   We ordered one of everything they had on corn tortillas packed to go.

The beef and chicken tacos were amazing.  The cheek taco was a little fatty, but incredibly flavorful.  The meat had been marinated and was tender and well seasoned. The tacos were topped with chopped onions and cilantro.  There was a lime on the side and a smokey sauce which we squeezed poured over them.   I wasn't to stoked about the tortillas. I'm still wondering if they were homemade or bought from a store.  Kinda dry, but it didn't take away from the flavor of the tacos.

I haven't had tongue before.  Guess what?  It looks like sliced tongue. If I hadn't seen the actual taste buds on the meat, I could have tackled it with more of an open mind, but as much of a foodie as I am, I often have problems eating things that look like they were once alive. This falls in that category. I think if the tongue meat were seasoned a bit more, it would have been better.  Like I said, the taste buds had me distracted.

When someone tells me about a new food/wine they've tried and love, it awakens the gatherer inside me and I am singularly focused on getting that one thing.  A blessing and a curse. So, a friend of mine Facebooked me (wow.  Facebook now has a verb tense) about a new wine she saw called Entwine.  It is put out by Food Network and Wente Vineyards (Wine Enthusiast Magazine named them American Winery of the Year for 2011). She had made her way through three bottles and said they were all stupendous.  So of course I had to get my hands on a bottle and try some too.  Problem: I have something resembling whiplash in my leg (no, I don't know why) so running out to the store was an issue.  About five days later, my husband fetched me a bottle of Chardonnay and Cabernet.

Last night, as I cooked sweet potato curry, I nursed a glass of the Chardonnay.  I was surprised at the apple notes in the wine.  Possibly because I had just cut an apple to add to the curry... but the first thing that hit my nose as I popped the cork was a fresh cut apple. The flavor was light and fresh and smooth with just a tiny bit of bite at the end.  I don't think I've ever tried a Chardonnay like this before.  If you're looking for some of your own, note that it's not that easy to find (at least here, anyway).  The only grocery store carrying it in our area, that we have found is Publix, or check your local wine store. (This wine definitely goes in the 5 under $15 file! I'm still compiling a list of Chardonnay's.)

Let me know about exciting products you have tried so I can try them too and share them with the class.

Enjoy!  Happy hump day!

Victoria Valley Vineyards

My neighbor Kathy and I drove out Highway 11 to Victoria Valley Vineyards on Friday afternoon. As we sat in the sunshine on the terrace and sipped our wine, I forgot I was on the outskirts of Marietta, South Carolina. I could have been in Italy or France... California, if the mountains weren't so green! The hillsides were rolling with vines and the weather was perfect. Breezy and chilly in the shade and warm and amazing in the sun. It's insane that such a beautiful winery is so close.  Even more insane that I haven't done this at all since we moved to Gap Creek.

The first time I tried this vineyard's wines, they had just bottled their first vintage. It was at a TRAM Gallery opening.  I wasn't that impressed, but there were so sweet to donate wine and come serve it for us!  The wines were a bit thin then, but now that there's a few years on them, they've got a good thing going.  After sampling my way through Pulse (their red blend), Merlot, Cab, Chardonnay, Viognier and a few others, I settled on Silk (their Chardonnay/Vignier blend).  I'm a big fan of blends.  I was surprised to find out that they use 100% of their own grapes for many of their wines. I had no idea we had the kind of weather and landscape in this neck of the woods conducive to growing enough grapes for wine production, but apparently so.  

I love how wine is like a picture of the landscape... of the soil and the air...You can almost smell the fresh mountain air in this wine.  It's grapey and earthy and crisp, but at the same time, a little buttery and plummy. Not too sweet. A little cloudy.  A great wine for sipping and gabbing on a sunny afternoon.  

As we were leaving, the band was setting up for Tunes on the Terrace at 6:30 pm (every Friday until the end of October).  As the leaves keep changing on into October, I can only imagine how very cool it would be to sit back, listen to some tunes, nosh on a few appetizers, uncork a bottle and watch the sunset over the mountains. 

(I love this quote from Sideways.  I thought about that movie as I sat out there: 

"I like to think about the life of wine. How it's a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I'd opened it on any other day..." Quote from Virginia Madsen playing Maya in Sideways)

5 Under $15: Gap Creek Gourmet approved wines that won't break the bank

California Reds

I walk into most wine shops mouth wide open. I think even seasoned connoiseurs have trouble navigating ratings, suggestions and sales to pick just one bottle.  Rarely do I make it out with just one. Here’s a present for those less than decisive shoppers out there (like me): a list of five Gap Creek Gourmet approved California wines to ease the pain of your next shopping experience.  

You can pick these up a nicely stocked supermarket or local wine store. I’ve paired them with some food for you, too.  Like the wines? Tried it and don’t agree with me? Don't like my description? Have a wine I should try for the next 5 under $15 posting?  Let me know what you think!

Gnarley Head Old Vine Zin 2009

Smooth, oaky, bold red this wine would go well with spicy Mexican food, I think.  It’s dark and a little jammy.  I like jammy… not too jammy, though.  Slightly tannic.

Dancing Bull Cabernet Sauvignon 2009

This wine is layered…smoky and earthy.  Try with BBQ pork or something from the smoker or grill. Hints of chocolate and fruit would make it a good chocolate pairing too.

Bogle Old Vines Zinfandel 2009

Bogle wines are a good go-to.  This Zin has soft tannins and is full of berry flavors with a little bit of pepper and spiciness and a smooth, oaky finish.   Uncork this with pizza.

Apothic Red Winemaker’s Blend 2009

Dark, rich, jammy with very little tannin, this wine combines my favorite parts of Syrah, Zinfandel and Merlot. With hints of dark chocolate, spice and a smooth lingering finish, this wine would make a nice accompaniment to …well, I’ll drink this one with dang near anything.  It’s my go-to red blend.

Manifesto! Lodi Zinfandel 2009

This smooth Zin is loaded with dark fruit flavors and finishes a little dry with notes of pepper and orange.  It would go well with a bacon cheeseburger… or salty, buttery pasta.