if ever i doubted nature's power over man, i especially don't today. i've got a *raging* case of poison oak and i'm just miserably itchy. at least i hope it's poison oak. the upshot is that get to take lots of benadryl and when i combine that with a few glasses of wine, i'm wiped out for the night! well, until like 3:00 am, anyhow, when i start itching like mad again and have to slather myself in hydrocortisone.

but enough complaining.

i've decided to finally get off my rump and start to really chronicle my adventures with food. i'll travel from my own tiny kitchen in oakland, ca to the vineyards of napa valley during the 2006 harvest season.. to coastal berry farms along the pacific coast where i'll pick my own fruit...to midwestern kitchens, where my mom and grandma cook up some of the best food i've ever had...to farmer's markets and farms...to a tiny winery in berkeley, california, and to friends' houses for gastronomy-gone-wild parties!

on friday night, immediately after work, i drove to a local winery to help out with the chardonnay crush.

tracey and jared run the small winery off 4th street in berkeley. since they're a tiny winery, they rely on a lot of volunteer help...which i gladly provide, especially since time spent in the winery almost always involves wine consumption! this friday we had a potluck, too, to celebrate the first crush of the season...a tradition in france.

the grapes had been picked that morning and they came in big crates stacked on pallets. we'd dump one crateful of grapes onto the steel sorter and hand pick out any bugs, twigs, large leaves and bad grape clusters and then push all the good clusters down the sorter and into a barrel at the end. the grapes tasted amazing; they were tiny and had little seeds in them. once the barrel was full enough, we'd call in the stompers and they'd start stomping away. we had volunteers there from estonia, denmark, nepal, scotland, israel and all over the USA! the little nepalese kids did all the stomping - they loved it and were tiny enough to fit two in the barrel :)

afterward, the juice was filtered a little and then put in steel tanks overnight before going into barrels to ferment.

once the work was done, we ate! i'm looking forward to more crushes this harvest season so that i can get my feet in there with the grapes.

sunday was a california-style food extravaganza. noelle, petey, louie, chelsea and ella and i met for dinner...and although the meal was really simple, it was amazing. the girls sat around and talked while the man went to work rolling out the fettucine, as it should be :)

the vino was plentiful; noelle had brought bottles from stag's leap where she's working as a harvest intern. even the baby loved it.

for starters we had salted almonds and concord grape foccaccia. and for the main course...cheese-filled, deep-fried squash blossoms on a bed of freshly-made fettucine with sauteed baby zucchini and cherry tomatoes...all tossed with a simple marigold butter. it was amazingly delicious. chelsea is a true artist in the kitchen :)

i was in charge of dessert and since petey had brought me some real marsala from italy, i used it to make some fig and raspberry tartelets with a marsala sabayon. *delicious.*