With the weather getting cooler and the first frost of the season predicted for tonight, my mind is on getting the remaining herbs in from the pots outside, including chives. Here’s an easy to make ’country’ recipe for cheddar-chive biscuits courtesy of my mom.  Perfect as a side with a bowl of veggie soup or hot out of the oven on a crisp October day. Use good aged cheddar to give it an extra kick. I like Hooks 3 year old Cheddar from Mineral Point.

Cheddar Chive Country Biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup unsalted butter –very soft and at room temperature

2/3 cup buttermilk

1 Tablespoon honey

2 Tablespoons chopped chives

1/4 cup grated aged cheddar

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Lightly blend the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the very soft butter, buttermilk, honey, chives and cheese. Stir to form a ball. Cover and refrigerate for 20 minutes. Roll out on a lightly floured board to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut with a biscuit cutter and place on a baking sheet. Bake about 10-12 minutes.  Serve warm from the oven.

I spent some time this weekend with my cousins and goddaughter picking out pumpkins and apples at Appleberry Farms in Cross Plains, Wisconsin. It was one of those picture perfect crisp fall days in Wisconsin that makes you remember what makes the midwest so special. We all ate one too many caramel apples and apple cider doughnuts and bought far more pumpkins than we need. It was a great reminder of how important it is to spend time with family celebrating the seasons. We all get busy, but a perfect fall afternoon, spent sipping hot apple cider with people you love, doesn’t come around very often. We have to grasp those moments when we can and enjoy them to the fullest. So grab someone you love, go for a walk and listen to the sound of leaves crunching underfoot. Light a fire and make hot apple cider.  Be a kid again and eat a caramel apple. Remember to slow down enough to drink in these last perfect days of fall.

One of the highlights of the afternoon was the apple cider brats. Made for Appleberry Farms by local favorite Bavarian Sausage Kitchen. They are are made with cider in the mix then grilled and simmered in more apple cider. For even more apple deliciousness, they top them with a homemade apple-onion relish….definitely a Wisconsin classic! Click HERE for the video

The last sunny days of fall are the time to prepare for winter. For my grandmother this means filling up the cellar with preserves and pickles of all kinds. Here is my mom’s easy interpretation of a grape jam inspired by the concord grapes that seem to be growing in all of our family member’s backyards this fall. Easier than true canning or jarring, this recipe is a great way to use up backyard grapes. It’s meant to be kept in the refrigerator and will hold for 4-5 months. Although I doubt it will last that long!

‘Ice Box’ Grape Jam

4 cups seedless Wisconsin Concord Grapes (or any dark grapes—would be delicious with grapes for wine as well)

3 cups sugar

1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

¼ cup water

Combine all ingredients in a heavy pot and simmer gently, stirring occasionally for 20-30 minutes.   It will become somewhat syrupy.

Prepare glass jars by rinsing them with boiling water. Fill with the warm jam.  The jam with thicken more when cool. Cover. Store in the refrigerator.  

Delicious on pancakes or toast. Can be used in savory dishes as well— heat a spoonful with lemon juice and brandy for a gastrique to serve over pork chops or roasted poultry.

There is something to be said for doing things the old-fashioned way. In our rush to keep up with our busy lives we take shortcuts. We grab something prepared for dinner as we rush home from work and we lose the joy of hearing a stew simmering away on the stove. We buy bread at the grocery store and never experience the feeling of our hands kneading dough or the taste of bread just out of the oven. In other words, modern life makes things easy & convenient in a million little ways but, does something important get lost along the way? For all our modern conveniences are we better off than our grandparents or great-grandparents?

I have been thinking of my grandmother alot this week as she is celebrating her 87th birthday this week. When I was a little girl I loved the Little House on the Prarie books and read them over and over until the pages wore out. I always thought my grandmother was just like the ’pioneer women’ in those books. She had fresh bread on the table at every meal, made her own soap and preserved the bounty of her garden by pickling and canning to help see her family of 5 kids through the Wisconsin winter. There is alot of talk about local and seasonal, but for my grandmother there was really no other choice. She prepared what was local and in season because that’s what there was.   

Over the next 4 weeks I will be featuring some of these ‘old time’ recipes—made just a little easier for our busier lives–in honor of my grandmother and all the strong, resourceful and loving farm women I grew up admiring. From an ‘ice-box’ jelly to homemade butter, let’s take some time to slow down this fall and make some of the old fashioned foods that our grandmothers would have put on the table.

In the meantime, here is a very Wisconsin inspired recipe for tonight from one of my favorite food blogs…enjoy!

“The true harvest of my life is intangible–a little stardust caught, a portion of the rainbow that I have clutched.” – Henry David Thoreau

It’s harvest time in wine regions across the Northern hemisphere. From Napa to Burgundy, rows and rows of grapes are paitently ripening and waiting to be turned into wine. It’s a great time of year to think about what you are harvesting from your own life.  Will you harvest the little joys? Like Thoreau, will you slow down enough to tune into the seasons, the ’stardust’ and the simple moments that make life special? This fall—make a resolution to put down the smart phone and make some time to open up that bottle of wine that you have been saving, pick apples with your kids or just curl up in front of a crackling fire with someone you love. Life is short. What will you choose to harvest?

Fall is also the perfect time to start a home practice. Click HERE for a ‘Harvest Moon’ playlist that’s perfect for a home practice!

“Optimist; Daydreamer more elegantly spelled”- Mark Twain

This weekend I had the pleasure to attend a 70th wedding anniversary party.  Statistically, getting to 70 years of marriage has to be about as likely as getting struck by lightning.  In today’s world it is nothing short of a miracle. So when you see two happy, healthy people in their 90s, getting decked out in corsages and boutonnieres, to celebrate a milestone like a 70th wedding anniversary you have to stop and take notice.   

We live in a cynical time. With divorce rates hovering around 50% and the news featuring economic crashes, violence and bickering politicians, it can be hard to believe that there is anything left to believe in. As I raised my class of champagne to toast their lifetime of family and love and commitment, it reminded me that there is alot of good out there if we can just tune into it.  What would our lives be like if we chose to view the world with rose colored glasses? How would each day be different if we tuned out the doubts and the fear and tuned into the good?

On your yoga mat, this means tuning out that loud, self-critical voice that tells you that you are not flexible or strong enough and tuning into that little whisper that reminds you to be grateful for the strength, grace and health that you are blessed with.  In life, it means chosing to focus on the moments and people that lift you up instead of spending precious energy dwelling on the moments and people that bring you down. We can’t change our whole world, but we can make a choice to tune into that little victory at work, the smile on your daughter’s face as she heads off to the first day of school or the feeling of pure unadulterated joy when you get up into handstand for the first time. It’s not just the milestones that make life worth living—-it’s the little joys.  When I asked the ‘groom’ what the secret to 70 years of marriage was, he didn’t mention the big milestones or the challenging moments. He said;  ”Kiss your wife at the end of the night. Things will be ok in the morning if you do that.” For the record, a kiss a day for 70 years is over 25, 000 good-night kisses.  If that’s not an everyday miracle that’s worth celebrating…I don’t know what is!

Popping open a bottle of bubbly for no particular reason is a great way to turn a grey, rainy day like today into a celebration. I usually keep a bottle of inexpensive Prosecco or Cava in my fridge for just that reason. A great one to try for under $20 is La Marca Prosecco. Not only is Prosecco a great value, but like Champagne and sparkling wines in general,  it’s also extremely versatile with food. I am a firm believer that you shouldn’t wait for a special occasion to pop open a bottle of sparkling wine, instead you should create a special occasion by popping open a bottle of bubbly!

In honor of the ‘groom’ (a very sweet and very dapper Italian in his 90s)  here’s a little Frank Sinatra to start your Monday off with. It’s the perfect song for looking at the world through rose colored glasses with! Click HERE to listen

“We live in a river of change, and a river of change lives within us. Every day we’re given a choice: We can relax and float in the direction that the water flows, or we can swim hard against it. If we go with the river, the energy of a thousand streams will be with us, filling our hearts with courage and enthusiasm. If we resist the river, we will feel rankled and tired as we tread water, stuck in the same place”- Elizabeth Lesser

One of my favorite postures is ‘Humble Warrior’.  I find that for most of us, myself included, humility is a lesson that’s difficult to learn but hard to avoid. Just when we think we have life all figured out it surprises us and lifts us off our feet—forcing us to swim in a whole new direction. When life presents us with change our first reaction is often to fight hard against the current. My dad’s recent illness this past month was a lesson for me on life’s ability to knock us off our feet when we least expect it.  Having gone in for a fairly routine heart procedure, I watched, helpless and frightened, as my healthy and strong father’s heart came to a complete stop on the monitors in front of me. In that split second and the uncertain time that followed, I was reminded of just how fragile we are and just how precious life is.

Each moment presents us with a choice—-to fight against the river of change or to  flow with it.  In that moment, I realized that I had been fighting hard against the current for a long time and that it was time to let go of things in my life that were no longer working.  We can hold on tight and stay stuck or we can do our best to flow with change and create a new beginning.   The truth is that sometimes in life we have no choice but to submit, with as much grace and courage as we can muster, to the flow of the river.

As a person and a business owner,  the one thing that is inevitable is that life has more surprises, some wonderful and some challenging, in store for me.  I can’t control what life decides to throw my way, but I can do my best to humbly look at change as an opportunity for growth and grace. So I’m choosing to swim with the current. However scary it may be, life is simply too precious and too short to not dive in. Each moment that we resist is a moment wasted. These days each moment with my dad, however humble, is a precious one.  I’m sharing this piece of myself in hopes that it resonates with you. Where are you fighting hard against the current in your own life? Where are you flowing with the river?

I invite you to listen to ’Courage to Grow’ by Rebulation. It has been on my iPod alot these days. Click HERE to listen. I hope the beautiful lyrics,  about change and growth,  are as inspiring to you as they are to me.

I am seriously obssesed with gelato. To me strolling around a piazza with a gelato in my hand is the quintessential Italian experience. If you aren’t able to hop on a plane, you can still recreate a bit of that experience at home.  So skip the complicated desserts this summer and making something easy, elegant and effortless. The great thing about this recipe is that their are a million variations based on what’s available and in season. This is also delicious with strawberries and brandy in the spring or oranges and Grand Marnier in the winter. Enjoy!

Peaches with Moscato D’Asti served over Vanilla Gelato

Ingredients

2 Fresh ripe peaches (if peaches are not in season you can substitute strawberries or raspberries)

Good vanilla gelato (Ciao Bella is available at most Whole Foods. If you can’t find it use high quality vanilla bean ice cream)

1 teaspoon unsalted butter

Moscato D’Asti wine

Pinch of grey sea salt

Optional- Amaretti Cookies and/or mint sprigs to crumble over top for garnish

Directions

1. Dice peaches and put aside
2. In a heavy saucepan melt butter over medium high heat then add peaches. Sprinkle with a pinch of grey sea salt. Sauté for 2-3 minutes or until cooked through.
3. Add one cup of Moscato D’Asti wine and cook until reduced to a thin syrup.
4. Divide peach and wine mixture into 4 parts and serve immediately over ice cream scooped into pretty wine or martini glasses
5. For optional garnish add crumbled amaretti cookies and mint sprig. Serve with glass of Moscato D’Asti wine.

Easy Italian Wine Pairings…. available at  Steve’s Wine & Spirits in Madison!

Steal- Bricco Riella – $11.99 – Great orange/tangerine fruit, slightly effervescent and a sweet finish
Splurge- Chiaolo Nivole – $16.99 (375ml bottle) – An elegant version of Moscato D’ Asti with an almost perfect balance of fruit, sweetness and crisp acidity to keep everything in balance

One of the most important words in understanding how Italians view food is ‘tipico’ or typical. Want to learn how to pronounce it? Click HERE

In Italy, each region, each town and sometimes each family has recipes that are ‘typical’ of that area and based on traditions passed down through generations. In reality, Italian food doesn’t exist. Instead there is the food of Sardinia or Rome or Piedmont.  In a world where food traditions are disappearing and the same fast food is available from Kansas City to Cairo, I find it comforting to know that food that speaks of a place, that is typical of a region, still exists.

One of my favorite places to taste food that speaks of a specific place is the Pasticceria del Convento in Erice, a small medieval town that sits on top of a mountain in Sicily. When I was a little girl, my cousin Pietro would take my sister and I to Erice to taste the almond pastries made by nuns in the same way for centuries.  These cloistered nuns didn’t have a storefront, instead you would knock on a window and the nuns would open it up sell us their sweet pastries. To a child, it felt like a sweet secret that my cousin knew which window to knock on. It felt magical that in Sicily behind any random door nuns in their habits could be rolling out almond paste creating fantastic treats. At Pasticceria del Convento,  Maria Grammatico continues to make pastries in this same tradition taught to her as a child by the nuns of the convent.  When I taste these pastries as an adult, I can taste what it felt to walk through these streets as child, the centuries of tradition and the sweet magic of Erice.

Want to learn more about Maria Grammatico’s pastry shop and her fascinating childhood in Sicily? Check out her book, ‘Bitter Almonds’

Street in the Medeival walled city of Erice, Sicily