Thank you Sherry for hosting In My Kitchen, a collection of posts focusing on what is new in kitchens around the world. You can read them all on Sherry’s Pickings.

Not a whole lot has been going on in my kitchen. October and November have been filled with travel. We stayed with friends in the California  gold country, then a reunion of our New Zealand gang at Donner Lake, then on to Mexico for a week long retreat with a girlfriend, and finally Utah to visit yet more friends at their lovely second home.

My contributions to the parties are usually wine and goat cheese from our local Anderson Valley (Mendocino County) wine region.

I did cook dinner one night for our Donner group.

 

The dogs didn’t go to New Zealand but had a wonderful time on the trails near Lake Tahoe where they were able to run off-leash. That’s me in the middle of the back row.

In my kitchen I have a selection of goat cheese from Pennyroyal Farm in Boonville, CA (in the Anderson Valley wine region). I belong to both their cheese and wine clubs. If you get a chance to visit, you shouldn’t miss this stop. They serve lunch in addition to wine and cheese tastings. Anderson Valley wineries feel like Napa and Sonoma 40 years ago, they are friendly and welcoming and you don’t need a reservation. Because the valley is cool, most wineries focus on white wines and pinot noir.

In my kitchen I have this package of crisp red peppers. They added a nice crunch to our green salad.

In my kitchen I have a new chili paste. Sally at Bewitching Kitchen wrote about it recently in her blog post for Aji-Amarillo roasted chicken thighs. We eat a lot of chicken and I am always looking for new flavors. I know Amazon isn’t everyone’s favorite, but it allows me to purchase items that are not available in our rural outpost.

I am still trying more salad recipes from the cookbook Salad Freak. Last night I made this one with roasted Romanesco cauliflower, endive, roasted grapes and hazelnuts with a apple cider vinegar dressing. It was delicious. We had some cold roast chicken on the side.

I will try and post the recipe for you in the next few days.

I am finding it difficult to come up with recipes I haven’t already posted. There are a lot of them after so many years. If you are looking for something you can search the categories on the right side as you read the post. Unfortunately it doesn’t work with your phone, you won’t see it.

The New York Times published a recipe for fried rice with kimchi a few months ago. One of the commenters wrote that they made it with riced cauliflower. I decided to try it and it was very successful.

I garnished it with fried shallots.

Gnocchi has appeared on our menu more frequently since I discovered that you can stir fry the fresh varieties without cooking them first. This time it was sauteed with turkey sausage.

It was delicious garnished with pomegranate seeds.

 

In my kitchen I have a new cookbook, a birthday present from my dear husband.

It is much more that a cookbook and I am enjoying reading about her life and thoughts about food.

From my kitchen I can see this lovely new vase, another gift for my birthday. This time from a lovely friend. I filled it with the last of this year’s dahlias.

Lastly I wanted to leave you with a couple of amazing sunsets. This one is from our last night in Utah. From our friends’ front porch looking out over the Capital Reef National Park.

And this strange cloud formation was seen from our car on the drive back to the bay area. I don’t think I have ever seen this particular type of cloud before.

It looks a bit like a spaceship or like the alien in the movie Nope by Jordan Peele.