Linden Vineyards/Panzanella

It was early Sunday morning (10am is early in our house) on our last day of annual holiday and Ann and I were sitting in the sun room, drinking coffee, chatting, and chewing on what to do for our final act of vacation, when I received a text from Mike, "Scott and I are doing to go to Linden today. Would you all like to join us?"

Linden, Beautiful in all Seasons

Needless to say, Ann said yes in a nanosecond and 90 minutes later, Mike and his friend Scott rolled up to our house and Mike offered to drive. While we were texting, I mentioned that I was making a big panzanella for dinner, way more than we could possibly eat, and invited them to dinner after the winery.



Mike's Friend Scott



Jim's Wisteria is Ten Days ahead of Ours

World's Most Expensive Panzanella

I call this panzanella the world's most expensive because I was in sticker shock over how much things cost in a grocery store. I get into a grocery store once or twice a year and then only to pick up a specific item that just cannot be found elsewhere. The last time I actually shopped for ingredients for a dish in a grocery store, well, I just cannot remember the last time. It would have been well more than a decade ago.

We all pitched in making the panzanella when we got home. Ann made a dressing from balsamic vinegar, mustard, and olive oil in a big salad bowl. I sliced a loaf of multigrain bread into croutons and tossed them with olive oil, garlic, and herbs before putting them in the oven on a sheet tray under the broiler. The other items in the salad are salame, mozzarella cheese, grape tomatoes, thinly sliced red onions, and arugula.

Mike Brought Dessert

 We finished off the evening with fresh berries and pound cake that Mike had brought along.

Glen Manor/Panzanella

Sunday September 7th was one of those beautiful fall days that we dream about all summer. After it being 93 degrees and nearly 100 percent humidity the day before, a welcome cold front blew through in the night bringing both rain and delightful temperatures. I noticed right away on Sunday morning when taking the dogs out that I didn't walk into a wall of water in the air as I had done the entire week before, the hottest and most miserably humid of the summer.

Based on that miserable weather, Ann and I had planned to picnic on Sunday up on Skyline Drive (which you can see just below the ridgeline in the photo below), up at elevation to get away from the heat. I had already put a bottle of Côtes de Gascogne Blanc in the freezer to chill for the picnic. But after we both went outside on the patio for morning coffee, I told her that the cold nip in the breeze was not white wine drinking weather, that it was decidedly red wine drinking weather and suggested that we scrap Skyline and go rather to Glen Manor and drink red wine and look up the mountain. No complaints from her!

Early Fall at Glen Manor (see the bird netting on the vines?)

We were the first to arrive at the tasting room, about 12:15 and got to spend about a half an hour catching up with Jeff and Kelly before people started showing up, at which point we took a bottle of T. Ruth red blend and our container of panzanella out on the lawn and pulled up a couple Adirondack chairs to take in the view for the next three hours or so. At times, the breeze was downright nippy, but on the whole, I can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Our Mini Feast: Panzanella, Water, and T. Ruth

I had big plans to throw together a proper picnic menu. I was going to fry some quail, devil some quail eggs, and make a little potato salad. I was, I promise. But Saturday got away from me in that we had a bunch more prep at the restaurant than we had anticipated and so the end of dinner service Saturday night arrived with me having prepped nada for our picnic.

Serendipitous Panzanella

As I was packing away my station for the weekend, I noticed a container of croutons on the counter, unloved and unneeded, having been used as salad garnish some weeks ago when we actually had salad greens. August heat is most unkind to salad greens and it is very rare that we would have a green salad on the menu during that month.

And next to the bin of croutons were several balls of unsold fresh mozzarella that we had made right before dinner. [<rant>I'm just going to say it here: customers are knuckleheads. You can get Insalata Caprese at the restaurant for about 6 weeks a year. Order it when you see it!</rant>] And then I remembered that I had a bin full of chopped salad that would not carry through the weekend. And there you have it: instant panzanella.

You should have seen Ann freak out when I covered the croutons in water: she loves, loves, loves croutons! I soaked them for a minute and squeezed them out, diced the mozz and added it, and then poured over the chopped salad and gave the whole a big stir. A bit of salt and a touch more olive oil finished it.

The chopped salad is made from cucumbers; red, yellow, black, and green tomatoes; red, yellow, and purple peppers, a couple ears of corn, and sliced queen olives, all dressed with olive oil, sherry vinegar, minced garlic, and salt.

Honeymoon: Nick's Italian Cafe, McMinnville OR

Thursday May 2, McMinnville OR

After tasting at Eyrie we drove a very few blocks to the very nearby Nick's Italian Café where I haven't visited since the mid-1980s. We wanted to order everything on the menu. Seriously. Look at it. We also got a look at the dinner menu, which is almost identical, with the addition of a few secondi. Seriously, look at this menu and drool. I changed my mind: try not to drool. I bet you can't.


Droolfest!

So the place isn't a whole lot to look at. If you're expecting something other than a café, you'd be disappointed, but we really don't give a crap what the inside of a restaurant looks like. We're there for the food. The décor is gravy. At Nick's we really like the one long wall of barrel staves: that's a pretty cool statement of where the restaurant is located.


Not Much to Look at

Cool Wall of Barrel Staves

Nick's has a hell of a wine list for a small café and the list of Pinots is a veritable who's who of the Willamette Valley. Ann's favorite wine of our Wednesday tasting was the 2011 Ayres "Perspective" and so I ordered a bottle for her. Not that I minded in the least. This is one great wine!

Yes, Please!

We started with panzanella which turned out to be more of a green salad than a bread salad, but who cares. This mixture of Arugula, grilled bread, tapenade, and mozzarella in a lemony dressing was a great, honest salad. I would have been happy with just that for lunch. This is Ed food: direct, clean, honest, and flavorful. I don't think I have words for how pleasing this salad was to me.

Simple, Bold, Direct, and Awesome!

Ann was hell bent on pizza and I don't blame her. The potato pizza with sautéed stinging nettles and red chile flakes was as good a pizza as I have had in years. You could have put dog poop on a crust that good and it still would have been a great pie! Pretty cool to be serving the pizzas on barrel lids. Our health inspector would have a cow!

For those of you reading along who wonder about stinging nettles, their nasty stinging habit aside, they could be spinach or any mild green. At the restaurant, we use them every spring when they are in season.


Potato and Stinging Nettle Pizza

And we ordered a pork panino of slow-roasted pork belly, fennel seed, chili flakes, sage, rosemary, and braised rapini. The bread was awesome and the sandwich was tasty, but we are spoiled by my off-the-hook pork belly and this wasn't even close. On the plate also were homemade potato chips (a tad over-fried) and homemade giardiniera that was outstanding. [Psst. Nick's: I'll come out and show you how to make really phenomenal pork belly. You show me how to work a wood-fired oven that makes crust that freaking awesome! Deal? Call me.]


The Giardiniera was the Highlight of This Plate

Because One Photo is not Enough

After lunch, despite our plans to hit the Dundee Hills and visit White Rose and Durant, I guess it all caught up with me and we headed back to the B&B where I took a long nap before cleaning up for dinner. I was at the point where I just couldn't and didn't want to visit another winery or taste another wine. It happens.

This would prove to be the second best meal we ate in Oregon and I would love to go back and eat my way through the entire menu.

[Note, August 2023: McMinnville icon Nick's inevitably closed in July 2023 after struggling for at least a decade. Because of the unpredictable quality of the food after Nick retired, we rarely visited this landmark during the five years that we lived in McMinnville.]