Back to my first love in wine, red. Give me a spicy, complex, juicy red any day and I will be a happy girl. Even though it has warmed up in Minnesota I still enjoy a good glass of red, mixed in with a few more whites.

This week is Concannon Petite Sirah 2009, from the Central Coast of California. Concannon Petite Sirah is full of flavors of plum, blackberry
and black cherry on the nose. With hints of chocolate and molasses.

$10 dollars a bottle and it paired really well with grilled flank steak. A great value red.

Another week on the road, this time in Oklahoma. I can honestly say I never thought I would spend a week driving through this state but it has been very interesting.

Seeing more plains than I have ever seen, many big trucks, driving through Garth Brooks home town and eating a chocolate shake from Braum’s.

I am not a big ice cream or milk shake person but wow. Made on site with real ingredients. I had a small chocolate malt for $1.79!

Best use of $2 dollars that I can think of.

Picture me sweating away on the elliptical, treadmill or bike reading Food & Wine. Seems like a bit of an oxymoron but I love to read cooking magazines while I workout, I think it helps make the time go by just a bit faster.

While working out one morning I came across a recipe in Food & Wine for Pork with Grapes and Tarragon. The picture alone had my drooling. I knew I would be making this!

A rich flavor but very healthy! The sauce is very thick and you would think it would have a lot of fat in it but it is just a great mix of ingredients. Pork chops can be dry out very easily but the key is to cook them, remove them once mostly cooked through and add them back into the sauce.

It has been a few years since I had last visited Sea Salt near Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis and since Scott and I were at the part to get our engagement pictures taken I figured it would be a great time to go. Scott had never eaten at Sea Salt and it was perfect for an al fresco meal.

We grabbed lunch around 11:15 after finishing up our pictures and I am really glad we were there early, very short line and we managed to snag a table right away. By the time we left at around 12 the line was 20 people long.

70, sunny and perfect for a shrimp basket, a po boy sandwich for Scott and 2 Crispin’s.

I could have sat outside all day and enjoyed the weather and all the people watching. Maybe we can pencil in a Saturday to do that before the end of the summer. We are heading to brunch later this morning and hopefully more time is spent outside on this perfect Sunday. Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mom’s out there.

Learning how to can has been on my list for years. There seems to be something so fulfilling about spending a day in the kitchen prepping jars, chopping and dicing, heat processing and sealing.

I remember being 5 or 6 and spending time at my Grandparents house during the canning time and helping in the kitchen while Grandma canned peaches, corn, beets, tomatoes and made more pickles than I ever thought could be eaten. But every year their pantry in the basement would go from full to just 1 or 2 jars left.

Taking the food that is at it’s peak and preserving for later. Seems so smart to me. Now if I could just get up the nerve to actually do it.

My fears?

1. I will do it wrong and will spoil all the fresh food.
2. It is hard to have a whole Saturday/Weekend available to spend all day cleaning, cutting/chopping and canning.
3. That it won’t turn out after all that work

A publishing house offered to send me the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. 400 recipes for canning various foods. From spreads and fruits to salsa and pickles.

I finally paged through it and know I want to make the Picked Three-Bean Salad and now I just need to get up the nerve to do it. I even have a starter canning set. I can do it!

Picked Three-Bean Salad

Ingredients

4 1/2 cups sliced trimmed green beans

4 1/2 cups sliced trimmed yellow wax beans

1 lb lima beans

2 cups sliced celery

1 2/3 cups diced onions

1 cup diced seeded red bell pepper

Boiling Water

2 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1 tbsp mustard seed

1 tsp celery seeds

4 tsp pickling or canning salt

3 cups white vinegar

1 1/4 cups water

Directions

Prepare canner, jars and lids.

In a large stainless steel saucepan, combine green and yellow beans, lima beans, celery, onions and red pepper. Add boiling water to cover and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat and boil gently for 5 minutes, until vegetables are heated through.

Meanwhile, in a separate stainless steel saucepan, combine sugar, mustard and celery seeds, salt, vinegar and water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Reduce heat and boil gently for 5 minutes, until spices have infused the liquid

Drain hot vegetables and pack into hot jars to within a generous 1/2 inch of top of jar. Ladle hot picking liquid into jar to cover vegetables, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. remove air bubbles and adjust headspace if necessary, by adding hot pickling liquid. Wipe rim. Center lid on jar. Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight

Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water. Bring to a boil and process jars for 15 minutes. Remove canner lid. wait 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool and store.

It looks manageable but I am still nervous, my goal is sometime in the next few months is to try this and to make pickles. Scott could eat a jar a week and I know I could make them taste so much better by making our own.

Do you can? What is your favorite thing to make?

My Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning workouts are before work, I head to the gym and get ready there. I have it down to a system, my bag is always packed, ready to go and I just add my clothes for the day and makeup. I get ready at the gym and then head directly to work with my gym bag in the backseat. But now that we are getting into warmer weather I was thinking about how bad my gym bag is going to smell.  Apparently I think about strange things The thought of putting wet gym clothes back into the same bag where I put my clean clothes grosses me out. Yes, I know I am a clean freak. I am fully aware of that. Pretty much anyone that knows me thinks that too…

Then I found gym and travel bags from Tide and Febreze laundry odor eliminator. I saw these at Target and considered buying them and randomly 2 days later I had an email about them. I enthusiastically agreed to samples. Cleaning products make me happy, especially ones that work! The Tide Odor-Absorbing Travel bag is perfect for adding to a suitcase to put dirty clothes in.  And with that same odor-absorbing technology, they have also created the Tide Odor-Absorbing Sports Bag – after your workout you put your  sweaty gym clothes in it. This has really helped with not making my gym bag smell. When I get home that evening I add the clothes to the hamper and put the sports bag back in my gym bag. Once a week I wash the sports bag with my gym clothes.

The travel bag has been great for my 3-4 day work trips for keeping everything contained in one area of my suitcase.

But the best products is the Febreze Laundry Odor Eliminator, just a small capful and it helps get that smell out of my yoga towels, Scott’s work clothes, and just getting things smelling fresher.

All are available at Target, the sports bag has been so great for hot yoga clothes that are pretty much soaking wet after class.

The giveaway of the Oxo Slicer is Kate , I will contact you.

I am sad that this is the last of the found posts about our trip to Spain and Portugal. I figured I would save all the foodie fun for the last one. We had some amazing food in Portugal and I can not wait to visit again one day! It will be awhile since I love to go new places but Portugal will hold a special place in our hearts.

Monday was a perfect lunch, we walked down to the beach and found one of the few restaurants open. Two and a half hours later we got our bill and left. Sitting and enjoying the fresh seafood, a glass of rose and looking at an incredible view really was a perfect day.

I got the lunch special and for 15 euros had bread, a glass of rose, a starter of spinach ravioli and an entree of a white fish with a butter sauce. We leisured, talked, enjoyed our drinks and walked along the ocean.

A somewhat rare appearance from a white wine, a $5.99 find from Trader Joe’s on my recent trip when I bought 5 bottles for less than $40. I love finding drinkable, unique, and perfect for every day kind of wines.

The Tres Pinos 2009 Three Pines Cuvee White Wine is a perfect every day kind of wine. A light, easy drinking white. Is it the most special wine ever, no, but at $5.99 I am not expecting to be wowed. I just wanted a glass of white wine.

If I come across this I would pick it up again. They also make a Tres Pinos Three Pines Cuvee Red Wine that I may need to try.

Every few months I get the urge to bake, I want to break out an apron, my family cookbook that contains recipes from my Great-Grandma, Grandma, Aunts and extended family that I have never even met. I love spending time in the kitchen but for some reason I don’t bake much. Some of it stems from not eating a lot of baked goods and the other part is time, baking can take hours and hours.

Scott had brought home a big bag of rhubarb and I figured last night was the occasion to bake, I needed to use it up while it was still fresh. It was also a great opportunity to finally try out my handheld mandolin slicer that Oxo had sent as part of their blogger outreach program. One for me and one for you!

Small enough to fit in a drawer, it has 3 levels of thickness and works really well to get apple slices just thin enough for a good pie. If I finally getting around to learning how to can fruits and vegetables this would be perfect for getting a consistent slice on things.

Since it was a Monday night and I didn’t want to be in the kitchen all night I took a few shortcuts in getting this pie ready. I used store bought frozen crust (sorry but I am not sorry about that, I lead a busy life and it is enough that I am even making a dessert), the slicer came in handy for the apples and I didn’t peel them. Gasp. I like my apples to have a little bit more texture in pie. We all have to figure out what shortcuts to take sometimes. That is what I do when I bake, yes I measure things exactly but having some store bought parts of the pie works for me.

Placing bets on how long these last? One is 1/3 gone and Scott is taking the other one to work tomorrow. By dinner on Wednesday I am guessing this will be gone…

Want to win a Oxo Handheld Mandolin Slicer? Just tell me what you would make with it. I will pick a random winner Friday morning.

How is it May already? The last few weeks have been packed. I think I need a day of nothing. Too bad that won’t happen for at least another week. One day at a time…

This months Secret Recipe Club features a Berry Smoothie from Delishhh. Ewa was born in Sweden, raised in Asia and now lives Seattle. She loves international flavors and travel. I think we would get along great!

I knew how hectic things would be, so when I was assigned Ewa’s blog I picked something that I knew I would have ingredients on hand for and would be quick. She had so many things to choose from. I came across a smoothie recipe and figured any excuse to pull out the Vitamix The addition of the vanilla extract was so good. I may keep doing that in future smoothies.