Left Coast Cowboys

California has been pounded by rainstorms this week, complete with thunder, lightning and lots of power outages. Add one nervous, neurotic terrier and it’s a recipe for disaster. Or at least a week of no sleep. Lucy would be that terrier. And from the first loud clap of thunder on Tuesday, she became the shivering, hyperventilating poster pet for animal medication.

The problem is that her fears didn’t manifest as fear of thunder, lightning or even loud noises and flashes of light. They translated into fear of anything that sounds like water — including showers and running faucets — and anything that flashes — including a light switch going on or the flicker of the television set. Her immediate response is to dive under the bed and start hyperventilating as she frantically tries to dig a hole in the floor boards. This has been pretty much around the clock behavior, although night time is the worst time. It’s safe to say that nobody has had much sleep around here for a week. Not to mention that there hasn’t been much showering going on. I have two choices for a shower. I can lock her out of the bathroom and endure her howls and cries. Or I can bring her into the bathroom and watch her completely lose it as the water hits the tile. Both options give me about a 90 second window. Needless to say, there is no hair washing.

Lucy's feeling much safer under the covers.

Now you would expect that this would be the moment for the heartwarming solution. Where little Oscar, her terrier brother, snuggles up and calms her, resolving the whole situation. But that would be the wrong movie.

Oscar, for all his pretend ferocity, is usually completely under the paw of Big Sister Lucy. He gobbles down his food because, if she finishes before him, she’ll rush over and grab the remainder in his bowl. He is relegated to one special corner of the bed. If he steps into another area, Lucy chases him right back. It goes without saying, that she owns all the toys. But there is now one terrier who is completely unafraid of storms. And he’s been leisurely eating his dinner and hers, stretching out and claiming all parts of the bed. And he now has all the toys. So much for terrier love.

Oscar is now the boy with the most toys. All the toys, in fact.

Luckily California has about one month of winter and about a week or two of it is usually extreme. That means we are getting to the end of this storm season. I can’t imagine how the balance of power is going to shift once Lucy can emerge from her phobias. It’s probably not going to be pretty.

Note: Any post that references a Doors song seems to require a hippy trippy photo illustration. I’m playing around with FX Photo Studio, an iPhone application that lets me manipulate photos in hundreds of ways. This is my “Flashback to the Sixties” style.

And speaking of The Doors, this parody by Weird Al Yankovic gave me a much needed chuckle through all the madness. Ladies and Germs, I give you “Craigslist”:

The beautiful thing about the iPhone are the thousands of applications you can download. Some are ingenious such as iBird Explorer, a database of the birds in your area including a search function that helps you identify any of your feathered friends and an audio clip of each birds call that you can use to scare your terriers. Some are of the “How Did I Survive Without This” variety such as Locavore which tells you what produce is in season in your area then points you to the nearest farmers’ market. Then there are the WTF apps. Those are the applications that make you wonder what drugs some programmer was taking when he thought them up. Not that these applications are any less fun for being bizarre. Under this latter category, file Hipstamatic.

The premise of Hipstamatic is to add a filter program to the iPhone’s built-in camera that makes it operate like the old Diana and Holga toy cameras. You know those cameras that featured light leaks, vignetting and other quirks that some photographers prize for their serendipitous flaws. In addition, Hipstamatic simulates the use of circa 1969 film, especially if that film had originally offered oversaturated color, been stored incorrectly and now had faded into a yellowish ghost of its former self.

Let’s review here. This is an application that takes a state-of-the-art technology item and reduces its functionality to that of something that was considered primitive even back in the Sixties. I’m reeling from the Postmodern irony.

Like the old Holgas and Dianas, the results are all over the map. I’m still trying to figure out how to get the best effects. But let’s look at a sampling, shall we? Even if the whole premise seems counterintuitive, I’m sure we can come up with a good reason for Hipstamatic:

You can make your terriers look Retro Cool.

You can give even the most prosaic scene that glow of nostalgia.

You can make a 2005 vintage look as if it's been cellared for decades.

You can add the patina of age for pennies. If only we'd known about Hipstamatic BEFORE we sourced all those old materials for our barn and outbuildings.

You can take something eerie like Spanish Moss and make it positively freaky.

You can take ordinary items and give them a poetic significance. "so much depends upon a blue wheel barrow glazed with rain water". (Ooops. William Carlos William beat me to this one.)

You don't need to wait decades to say "back in my day...blah, blah, blah". Take a Hipstamatic shot of any daily activity and bore the kiddies now!

I think we’ve more than justified this app. Thanks, Patti for introducing me to it. I’m feeling hipper with every shot. Here are more photos from my first Hipstamatic day.

Sorry for the long lapse in posting. I’ve been, well, sort of collapsed. See, Sunday we finally got all that Mourvedre and Grenache out of primary fermentation, pressed and into steel tanks. Which means I’m relieved of three times a day punchdown. At least for a few days. Until tomorrow when we pick, crush and get our Cabernet into primary fermentation. Which starts the whole three times a day punchdown cycle all over again. But in celebration of my brief respite, I got myself a pedicure. Before the press. Which wasn’t really smart as I spent the next day standing around in grape juice and citric acid. But still, I wanted to be ready for the Big City when I could finally get back there. And the press? Well, here’s how it went:

First you set up a complicated Rube Goldbergian system of pumps and hoses to get the grapes from the primary vats to the press and from the press to the secondary fermentation tanks.

Then you pump out the fermented grapes from those white bins to the press.

When the hose and pump can't handle any more, you resort to the shovel, brute force and ignorance.

Meanwhile, a large bladder inside the press is separating the juice from the skins and seeds and forcing it out of the press.

There it comes, gallons o'Grenache.

At various points, you have to taste. And it's all tasting very good.

Now comes the hard part: getting the pressed out skins out of the press.

Then trucking them up to the top of the hill for composting.

And by the way, terriers are no help at any stage of this process.

And speaking of terriers, a very large coyote has been spotted lurking about. Terriers would rather snuggle under the covers where it's safe than hang out on an exposed crush pad.

And as for that two and a half day respite in the Big City? Well, I did exciting things like laundry and getting a broken crown fixed. So maybe it’s a good thing that the whole cycle starts again tomorrow. Especially since Cousin John, the Indiana Jones of California, will be joining us. Stay tuned.

Most of my friends would say I’m a pretty good cook, but I don’t think that begins to describe it. Andy is much more what I’d call a good cook as in the bold, adventurous, “cooking as contact sport” Gordon Ramsay kind of cook. Me? I’m all about the gadgets and the processes. I can improvise, but I want the scientific tests to back me up before I chose a methodology or alter the formula. Yes Gentle Readers, you’ve seen The Mother of All Pressure Canners and shared my frustration with what seem to be lacksadaisical instructions from cookbooks about using it. Somehow I managed to muddle through and make some pretty outstanding tomato marmalade. So good that I’m thinking of following my friend Susi’s suggestion and adding “Win a Blue Ribbon at the Sonoma County Fair” to my Bucket List. I think I have a contenda.

But what I want to talk about today are slow cookers. And yes, once again, I had to buy the best one I could afford. Problem is, finding a cookbook that helps me maximize what I think must be its potential. For the next few weeks, my target are beans. Because a) beans, beans, they’re good for your heart and b) because, at 39¢ to $1.79 per pound, you can make a lot of mistakes with beans before you really start feeling bad about wasting food dollars.

I’ve made beans before in this slow cooker. And Lord knows, I’ve got the Western Hemisphere’s most extensive collection of slow cooker cookbooks. The problem is, if I admit it, I’ve never managed to make beans that taste better than some of the stuff you get in cans. Or, as in the case of the cannellini beans I just made last week, they taste as good, but they are kind of mushy and not all perfect like the canned stuff. But I’m not giving up. So today, I tackled pinto beans or frijoles — those classics of the American Southwest.

Okay, I don’t want to be a finger-pointer here. As the Irish say, “It’s a poor workman who blames his tools.” But some of the fault has to be apportioned to the divided food writer community. No one seems to have a clear consensus on how to cook beans. Here’s what I found when scanning through all my cookbooks.

I've got all the cookbooks and nobody agrees!

There’s the school that says, “Hey, it’s a slow cooker, just dump everything in and Hey Presto!”. I’m rejecting that advice. I’m a victim product of a mother who hated cooking and embraced the old Peg Bracken I Hate to Cook Books. Until my brother and I took the reins and started cooking, our mealtimes were an endless round of a mass of stuff covered with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, topped with those orangey crunchy things and lots of hamburger helper. Shudder. Not going back there again. I’ve purged out the cookbooks that share that philosophy. (I say, if you are going to cook, really cook. Otherwise make a salad.)

Then there are the conflicting controversies:

1) Beans should only be cooked on the Low setting.

2) NO! Beans should only be cooked on the High setting.

3) Spice it up before you turn on the crock.

4) Nope, all spices should only go in just before serving.

5) Nothing salty or you’ll toughen the skins.

6) What?! Gotta add stock or it will be bland. Who cares if stock has sodium in it?

7) Don’t need to soak the beans for slow cooking.

8 ) Fool! You ALWAYS need to soak the beans.

Then there are the alleged secret ingredients. A bit of Kombu seaweed. Or something called Epazote or Mexican Tea. I almost embarked on a safari to the Mexican side of Sonoma in search of the elusive herb until I read that, in large quantities, it’s toxic. I quickly reassessed how committed I was to tasty beans

Actually I found what I’m hoping will be my own secret ingredient. Let’s not even get into the controversy about what liquid to cook the beans in. But I did find one cookbook that recommended at least part of the liquid should be beer. Yes, JACKPOT!

My friend Keith has backed an outrageous Scottish Microbrewery, BrewDog. Needless to say, during Keith’s long and illustrious career in what he, with British quaintness, calls “The Drinks Industry”, we’ve always been well stocked with his product. So I could put my hand on just the thing, BrewDog’s Paradox MacCallan.

BrewDog's Paradox is an Imperial Stout (that's hearty dark beer for the uninitiated). They have several flavors, based on the whisky or sherry casks they age it in. This one spent several months in one of the casks used to age MacCallan fine malt whisky.

So I found the recipe that sounded the best because it included steps like blackening Serrano chiles, onions and garlic, then cooking the beans in stock and beer liberally sprinkled with cumin and coriander. (For reference, it was from The Gourmet Slow Cooker by Lynn Alley. Ten Speed Press.)

Of course, into it I added a full bottle of Paradox MacCallan. See, I’m betting the Scottish and the Mexicans have a lot in common. In fact, I’m sure we could find some sort of historical connection — maybe having to do with the Spanish Armada — that proves Scottish Stout is THE KEY INGREDIENT to a good bowl of frijoles.

I know the proof will be in the eating, but barely an hour in the aromas wafting through the kitchen made me think I was really on to something here. Scottish and Mexican. Hmmm. Okay, hear me out. Think of a classic old Western. The wagon trains are rolling through the Southwest. Many of them are driven by the Irish and Scottish. Hey, I have history to back me up here. Where do you think the Teamsters came from? So they get ambushed by Mexican bandits who relieve them of a load of beer destined for the thirsty miners in the gold fields. Mexicans, being a thrifty and industrious people, and preferring their Tequila as a drink, figure out something else to do with the casks of beer. Frijoles. Yes!

Okay, if you aren’t buying this, I do have proof that Buffalo Bill took his Wild West show to Scotland frequently. So there.

Anyway, the only test that matters: the taste. The taste. THE TASTE!

These are beans from Charro Heaven -- by way of Aberdeen.

I’ve been my own worst critic on beans. (‘Cause I’ve always shifted the blame to the cookbook!) But these beans are fabulous. Better than canned. Better than a restaurant. Unbelievable.

What makes it so? A wonderful smokiness. Remember those chiles, garlic and onions the recipe had me broil and char?  Part of it. Then I added two small strips of bacon. Because, well you can’t help but improve anything with bacon. But the largest part of the equation and what I think really underscored everything and brought the tastes together: the dark and slightly peaty flavor of the beer. And that’s not going to be just any beer, Folks, it’s got to be beer aged in whisky casks. It’s got to be BrewDog Paradox. Or back to blaming the cookbook. So thank you, BrewDog. I’m renaming you CervezaPerro.

Ai Yi Yi Yi and Scots Wha Hae. You’ve just proven my point about that Scottish/Mexican connection.

When the going gets tough, the tough winemaker makes rosé. Or something along those lines. We told you earlier how we were planning a panic harvest of the tenderer Mourvedre and Grenache ahead of this typhoon-driven rainstorm that was heading our way. We just made it, harvesting, crushing and securing the harvest into primary fermentation vats just hours before the big storm hit. We couldn’t have done it without my brother who, fortuitously, was here and devoted a vacation day to hard manual labor for no pay. Despite his heroic efforts, it still was a close call. We managed to scrounge up six vineyard workers to pick our harvest on their lunch break between “real jobs”. Not an easy task, given that every vineyard in Sonoma and Napa was in the same emergency mode that we were. That is unless you had Cabernet. Apparently Cabernet grapes are tough as old boots and — barring a storm of Biblical proportions with frogs, toads and fierce Prophets wielding burning bushes — can withstand just about anything.

But as I said, it was a close call. We had six Mexicans picking and three Anglos on the other end desperately trying to process enough grapes to keep shuttling empty picking bins back up to the vineyard. It wasn’t a fair fight. If it had been three Mexicans against six Anglos, it wouldn’t have been fair. Given that one Mexican can do the manual work of eight Anglos. And that’s a Mexican child. I’m telling you, these are the hardest working people on the planet. But somehow we managed to do it.

Toward the end, we had filled all the primary fermentation bins and the Mexicans were still picking. We had to sacrifice three of these bins of grapes for the deer and critters.

Then, just before the storm hit, Andy decided it would be a great thing to do something we’d never done and make rosé. Blame it on the glycol chiller he just bought. We’re very equipment-driven here.

So here’s how you make rosé using the saignee method — the only method allowable in France for fine rosé. If it’s good enough for the French, it’s good enough for Two Terrier Vineyards. Saignee literally means “bleed” or”bled”. And that’s what you do:

Syphon or bleed some juice off of the red wine grapes you've just crushed and placed in primary fermentation vats.

Typically, you allow the juice to have only a few hours contact with the skins before bleeding it. But with the barometric pressure and the temperature dropping dramatically, we ended up not getting to the process until the juice had been on the skins overnight.

Now drop the glycol plate into the tank of bled off juice. The glycol runs through an enclosed plate and chills the wine liquid.

The next morning between the rain gusts, with our trusty hose systems, we siphoned off about a 25 gallon mixture of the Mourvedre and the Grenache into a steel tank and dropped in the glycol chiller to bring the temperature down to 31 degrees.

Here's the whole set up. The tank with the wine is on the left, the chiller is the black box on the right. The green stuff is the glycol running through the tubes and into the enclosed plate.

And why chill? If you get it down to about 31 degrees, all the particulate matter drops to the bottom and the liquid clarifies. It's a science-y thing.

We returned today, removed the glycol chiller and racked the baby rose into a new tank for fermentation. A few sips told us the juice is tasting really really good. Too early to get excited about it, but it’s a good benchmark, since, if it isn’t good now, it isn’t going to get better.

Yup. Tasting good. And our Baby Rosé isn't even fermented yet. It's just sweet, sweet juice.

So today, we added yeast to our juice.

Let the winemaking begin!

A note on an earlier point: yes, you can make rosé from a variety of grapes. Grenache is a traditional one, but we thought, since we were experimenting, we might as well blend.

And the red wine vats we siphoned the 25 gallons from? Well, what's left is more concentrated, so, we hope, we'll have even more robust, flavorful Grenache and Mourvedre.