Joanie Hudson writes in the Winery and Vineyard Blog…
“
When you’re not in the mood for wine at the Bistro Restaurant’s Thursday Grilled Cheese Night, order the Irish Porter Cheddar melted on toasted sourdough to accompany your dark rich beer. Cahill’s Irish Porter is a full flavored and tangy cheddar that is marbled throughout with Guiness. Its firm texture is made from pastuerized cow’s milk. The marbled porter gives the mild Irish cheese an extremely unique and interesting mosaic patterned appearance as well as a distinctly rich sweetness. Putting this cheese on a party platter is sure to provoke a number of comments from your guests.
Porter is a dark brown ale, which is produced by Cahills from an old Limerick recipe. Layers upon layers of sweetness, nuttiness, and meatiness make this cheese one of the most interesting cheeses I have ever tasted. You can’t miss it served grilled between artisan sourdough (as is).”
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager Santa Barbara Winery
This is a VERY exciting time for the Lafond Vegetable Garden! We’ve harvested our first batch of lettuces and kohlrabi! The 
These are a rare heirloom from India that I’ve heard so much about, I decided to grow it for the Bistro. Rare, beautiful and delicious, this unique, yellow, edible pod pea has tasty, flat pods that are sweet and crunchy.They have enchanting, two-toned purple flowers followed by their striking lemon-yellow pods. Originally from India, this heirloom is just fabulous in stir-fries. To be sure, I’m growing the usual varieties as well, like Precoville Petit Pois.
These diminutive peas are authentic French petit pois and are ever so sweet. Precoville are ready to use at miniature size, when the slim pods are just 3” to 4” long. Each pod contains six or seven tiny peas, less than half the size of regular shelling peas. Their buttery flavor and tenderness cannot be matched! Peas are a cooler weather crop and if mature enough by the first frost, can be harvested for Summer solstice as well as Christmas.
Often in the cooler weather, damp conditions can make the pea vines look like they have fungus on the leaves; don’t worry, it happens and will not affect the productivity of the plant or spread its condition. Peas like to fed a low strength fertilizer like fish emulsion once a week from the day they appear as a sprout. As they are vines, they like to be supported with a trellis.
Presuming we get a cool start on summer, you’ll have until the third week of July to enjoy peas, then switch over to beans, as beans are heat lovers.
“Blush” Lettuce is remarkable in that it had many different shades of green inside and many shades if red on the outside. Both of these lettuces I am growing for the 
Lettuces are cool weather lovers and “bolt” or flower in heat, making it one of the easiest plants to collect seeds from. I have grown green and speckled types in the shade of other plants in the summers. Indirect light when the temperatures are above 75 is fine for most lettuces. There are varieties that people in Australia have developed to deal with the heat which I’ll be growing this summer for the Bistro. Lettuces are a neutral presence in any garden.
The “cut and come again” technique is a great way to have an ongoing supply of fresh salad for the home vegetable garden and is the basis for baby salad greens. First you have to grow the lettuce to nearly full size and have about 15 lettuces growing. Do two plants a day and go to back to the first cut one at the end of the cycle. Choose the plants that are biggest to do the first time.
This first cutting may be a bit bitter. New leaves for where you cut, these are the tender yummy leaves. From then on you can rotate what lettuce you cut and keep a constant supply of fresh greens for every day salads. After about two months of this rotation you’ll want to plant new lettuces to cycle in, as this technique can exhaust the lettuces after some time.
Another yummy sandwich featured on the Pierre Lafond Bistro’s Thursday night Grilled Cheese menu is Fontina pressed between two slices of artisan sourdough bread with prosciutto. The suggested wine pairing is Pinot Noir, but I would also say you could go with our off-dry Riesling.
to grow, exciting to watch and delicious to eat. And the health benefits are tremendous. There’s nothing like having a seeds grow into something you can eat in three weeks!
before you pick for the most crispiness. Try growing these in a window box even!
To me it is very endearing, like an adorable mutt with a great personality. It makes me happy to see them growing, enduring healthily. They can be grown in the deep cold of winter up to late spring and ripen in only 40 days or so.
them a champion in the garden! They don’t need a lot of fertilizer or attention. You can forget about them, tucked away under a canopy of zucchini and get a great surprise in the fall! Alien plants! They come in purple or white and some varieties can grow to 5 pounds!! I like mine small and firm.
The tops or leaves are wonderful in a stir fry, tasting more like broccoli than the fleshy bulb. I’ve had Kohlarbi pureed as a soup as well, both cold and warm. It has the ability to soak up the flavors of the other ingredients you are using in any way you prepare them.
They are very high in vitamins and minerals; 103% vitamin C. This is popular veggie with children, as they are fast growing and bizarre looking. Europeans have been using them extensively for decades are common fare in fine culinary establishments.
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