April at Leatherwood

We’d like to think that the growing season is on its way. Ron optimistically pruned the apple trees yesterday. Today we have 6 inches of new snow. We know it can’t last, but everyone in the area feels the pain of one more day of winter’s blast.

The vinegary has been bustling with wine-making students. Have I mentioned that Ron gives classes for individuals and small groups? Working with wine kits, home grown or purchased fruit, participants learn the science of wine-making and set up their own batch in the first class. They come back to rack-off the wine from the primary fermenters into carboys and to monitor the fermentation process. Then a few weeks later, they come back again to bottle their wine and take it home. We have everything needed for making wine: all the equipment, materials and ingredients; even the bottles, corks and corkers. Some groups come back again and again for a fun time out and a good product to take home. Email Ron for more information.

I’ve mentioned in a couple of previous posts about the new labels for our vinegar bottles. I’ve painted 11 fruit images to identify the fruit flavors of the vinegars. You can see all of them at Whimsy Home Designs. Those same images also help identify the kind of vinegar used in some of our new products: Rhubarb Vinegar Soap, Raspberry Vinegar Soap, Cranberry Vinegar Lip Whip and Raspberry Vinegar Skin Cream. For now, you can see these products on the Whimsy Home Designs website. Soon, they’ll be added to a new Leatherwood Vinegary web store.

Another recent development: the folks at Smude’s Sunflower Oil have put together a catalog of locally produced items for school fundraisers. The catalog looks great and it’s an absolutely terrific idea to offer high quality local products when the kids need to generate funds for their activities. Learn more on their website.

Tomato wine vinegar

      Tomato wine vinegar was a successful experiment.
      Ron hand selected the tomatoes and in the usual process, which lasts at least a couple of months, turned them into tomato wine. I wouldn't say it was gourmet quality, though like many wines, it maybe would have become an acquired taste. But Ron didn't leave it at the wine stage. He put the vinegar starter in and set it up for a slow wait to see how tomato wine tasted as vinegar.
      Tomato wine vinegar is pretty good. It was ready (has to be at least 5% acidity) about the time we had a good supply of basil in the herb garden. Of course basil and tomatoes are classic pairings, like dill and pickles, like Ozzie and Harriet, like Ben and Jerry. Well, something like that anyway. With the thick row of prime-for-picking basil, Ron immediately infused the tomato vinegar with lots of fresh basil. I say "immediately" but that part of the process takes another two weeks.
     When the basil/tomato vinegar was ready, we tasted and were blown away by the intense flavors. We immediately (not after two weeks) knew this would be special on anything with tomatoes: fresh tomato salsa, on salads, sprinkled on pizza, simmered into spaghetti sauce.
      The Leatherwood Basil in Tomato Wine Vinegar has been a hit and now, in 2013, it deserves a new label: a fresh beautiful watercolor tomato.
      Some have asked if we sell just the tomato wine vinegar. We haven't yet since all of it has been infused with basil. We need a lot to meet the demand. But, maybe, if the tomato crop is good this year...we'll see.

The second new label

     Leatherwood Apple Wine Vinegar was one of the first varieties we made and is still a popular choice.
     The new label design shows a generic apple. Many different kinds of apples go into the Leatherwood wine that becomes Leatherwood Vinegar. The early harvest MacIntosh apples are pressed in August making an early wine and a resultant vinegar that may be more true to one variety than later apples that are mixed together. But, we don't make any distinction on different apple varieties once they have become vinegar.
     Leatherwood Apple Wine Vinegar is a little different from apple cider vinegar. Cider is apple juice that has fermented to a low level alcohol. It is then converted to vinegar. We make wine from the juice rather than cider. It is then converted to vinegar in a slow natural process. Some of the Leatherwood Apple Wine Vinegar is infused with dill to make our very popular Dill in Apple Wine Vinegar. This is wonderful to use whenever you like to add the flavor of dill. Try it in potato salad, cole slaw and marinades. We like it on baked or broiled fish.

See more of Nancy Leasman's artwork, in the same style as the Leatherwood Vinegary labels, at www.whimsyhomedesigns.homestead.com.

January 2013, New label designs

     The beginning of the calendar year is always a good time for planning, setting goals, and even achieving some of those goals. Here at Leatherwood, we set a winter goal of designing new labels for the vinegar bottles. Each fruit flavor will have its own design. At just a glance, shoppers will see the difference and know what a bottle holds.
     We'd like to introduce each new design here. Here's the first: CHERRY.

     Our CHERRY vinegar has proven so popular that it deserves the distinction of being the first one to be introduced with the new label. As you may have read in a previous post or perhaps learned on a tour here at the vinegary, folks have experienced pain relief from arthritis and gout by taking daily sips of this delightful vinegar. We like it for our daily sips, too. It's also great on salads, in marinades and stir fries.
     Leatherwood CHERRY vinegar is a beautiful ruby red vinegar. It looks pretty in its slender glass bottle with a cork and beeswax seal and its fancy new label. We also bottle some in the smaller 50 ml bottles to be packaged in our Sampler Packs.

Wow! We wait and wait for nice days to get the outside world back in order, the garden world, and our poor unconditioned bodies are so laid back and weak that we have to take repeated breaks to get the work done. Yesterday, I was doing some heavy-duty shoveling and at 9:00 last night my heart rate was still putt-putting along at 92 bpm. My blood pressure was great and my cholesterol level must be dissolving by the minute. Just see if one workout at the fitness center can accomplish that?! Unlike working out on treadmills and weight machines, I’ll have a beautiful garden to show for it; and with any luck, a svelte profile.


The herb garden made it through the winter and is coming back in full force. With one exception: the lemon balm. I had such a nice patch last year but apparently made a big mistake a month ago. There was so much foliage lingering from last year that I opted to burn off the brown herbal vegetation. The tarragon didn’t care. The mint didn’t mine. The oregano was optimistic. But the lemon balm is just not coming back. The thyme is a little iffy, too, and I didn’t burn that area. Maybe I’m not to be blamed. Maybe it was this goofy winter we had, the warm March and the cold April. The lemon balm vinegar we have in stock right now might be a very rare vintage.

The straw bale garden of last summer was a success so we’ll do another one this year. We have 20 bales lined up in four rows. They’re in the process of being conditioned right now and we’ll plant in another week. I’ve also plotted two special areas for giant pumpkin growing.

We’ve already had fresh rhubarb crisp and will have fresh asparagus tonight. We’ve had ramps from the woods, multiplier onions and chives, and the garlic is up and looking great.

I pruned the grape vines last week. They’re just beginning to bud. Blossoms are a long way off on them but the plums have finished blooming while the cherries and apples are humming with bees.

Ron has had several days of harvesting and bottling vinegar. We’ve had trouble keeping up with demand for the sampler packs so he’s bottled more in the 50 ml size. Frequent visitors have kept him busy both in requests for vinegar as well as wine-making supplies. He has several wine classes underway. Folks come here to start their wines, return for racking off and a few weeks down the road, again, for bottling. That’s working really well and with the fruit season starting, there will be abundant material to work with.

A visitor this morning, noting our dandelion dotted lawn, asked if we make dandelion wine. No, still haven’t though it wouldn’t take too long to gather enough for a small batch.

Time to get back outside. A storm rolled through this morning leaving the soil nice for working. It’s clouding up again so should be cooler to work in.

Olive Oil Tasting

Over the last few years our family has taken a formal approach to tasting food. Of course we offer vinegar tasting to all tour groups but our private tastings have been pretty interesting. Pickles, mustard, chocolate, blue cheese, and Scotch have been among the themes. This last Saturday, we compared nine olive oils from seven countries.


Our daily olive oil has been one we buy by the gallon. It comes from the Middle East and has only a small amount of English on the label. It does say, “Pure Olive Oil.” Other olive oils in our tasting included: Cat Cora’s Kitchen Greek, Italian Colavita, Baja Precious from Mexico, Zatoun from Palestine, Spanish Carozzi, Mt Kofinas from Crete, Columela also from Spain, and Italian Affiorato. Son-in-law Jim had a great time with online shopping for the oils. They came in a lovely variety of sizes and shapes of bottles.

Jim also planned the menu and wines to accompany the courses:

• Antipasto with Lustau Sherry

Prosciutto, roasted red peppers, sun dried tomatoes, olives, sweet & sour onions, marinated mushrooms, Asiago, Parmagiano Regiano

• Intermezzo

Vanilla gelato

• Tasting experience 9 olive oils from 7 countries

Fresh marble-sized mozzarella balls, baguette chunks, cold shrimp, small steak bits, warm boiled potatoes, crucible of sea salt

• Intermezzo

Raspberry sorbet

• Closing

Late harvest Zinfandel

Dark chocolate

The antipasto set the atmosphere. We started before noon and allowed plenty of time to taste and savor. Following the intermezzo, we took a little break while Jim set up the formal tasting offerings on the dining room table. He provided special spoons in which to pour the different olive oils to allow tasting of the singular characteristics of each. While it might seem off-putting to sip pure oil from a spoon, we soon forgot our American reluctance for such a straight forward approach to olive oil. Jim had thoughtfully provided comment sheets which we did our best to use. Comments appeared: nice, fruity, nutty, grassy, peppery, nice olive flavor, light, heavy, musty. Several of us chose the Palestinian Zatoun as our favorite.

We’ve long heard that Americans prefer mild olive oils. I expected that one or more of these would be strong flavored but found all of them to be mild to my taste. We’ve used olive oil in cooking and for dipping for many years. Maybe we have developed more worldly taste buds.

Vinegar has long been touted as beneficial to the human body. Olive oil is tasty and a great carrier for the fat soluble vitamins. I learned that I prefer my olive oil mixed with some sea salt and one of our Leatherwood Vinegars. The oil provides a bass note while the salt and vinegar sing the melodies. Whether for salads, marinades, or condiments, oil and vinegar mix well.

We will continue to use our Middle Eastern variety while it lasts (our source has gone out of business) and experiment more with the Zatoun and Carozzi which Ron found to his liking.

We highly recommend this kind of event for a family gathering. It’s a real conversation stimulator and fun activity for the whole family.

Winter weekend in Grand Marais

     One terrific way to keep the creative juices flowing is to take a cooking class. Whether novice or experienced cook, you’ll come away with new ideas and greater understanding of what constitutes good eating.

     We did just that this weekend, traveling up to Grand Marais for a French cooking class (see photos below) with second generation French chef Judi Barsness of Chez Jude. We stayed at the MacArthur House B&B, took in some of the north shore night life and spent five delight-filled hours with Judi.
     Judi planned the menu and prepped ingredients for our private class, a Christmas gift from our daughter and her husband who shared the weekend with us. We arrived at 9:00 in the Chez Jude dining room which is right across the road from Lake Superior, the fish market and the North House Folk School. Judi invited us into her kitchen with an immediate tempting treat of fresh scones with lemon curd, cranberry confit and whipped butter. While we indulged in this “second breakfast” (we’d enjoyed poppy seed muffins, vegetable frittata, fresh fruit and juice at the MacArthur) we reviewed the day’s menu and cooking instructions with Judi:
• Roasted butternut squash salad with cider vinaigrette

• Braised short ribs of beef (Bouef Bourguinonne)

• Potato Root Vegetable Gratin

• Molten bittersweet chocolate cake with Tawny Port and raspberries

     Judi grew up in her mother’s French restaurant (Frenchy’s and later Fleur de Lies) in Milwaukee. She learned her mother’s techniques and then sailed off to expand her cooking repertoire as sous chef in a 16th century manor house in England, studied at the Culinary Institute of America and the National Baking Center, interned with Alice Waters at Chez Panisse (California), and became the chef at Bluefin Bay resort on Minnesota’s North Shore. Eight years ago, Judi struck out on her own, purchased the building that had been a bakery and opened her own restaurant and cooking school. Judi’s husband Peter, who was instrumental in establishing North House Folk School helps out in the kitchen and delights guests with tales of his sailing adventures on the lake.
     After introductions, we jumped right into chopping, slicing and dicing. We coated the short ribs with herbs de Provence rub, browned diced bacon in a Dutch oven and then seared the meat on both sides. Adding a host of delicious ingredients to the pot, the meat went into the oven as did the cubed butternut squash which was destined for the salad.
     We combined apple cider, cider vinegar, and shallots, cooking them until the liquid was reduced by half. Then we whisked olive oil, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper into the liquid to finish the vinaigrette. Of course, we were thinking how Leatherwood Vinegars could be used in place of the cider vinegar and how they would influence the final flavor.
     Potatoes, rutabagas and parsnips were diced, cooked in water, lightly mashed with milk and butter and then spread in a baking pan. Topped with cheese and additional butter, this gratin baked in the oven until golden brown.
     The chocolate dessert of bittersweet chocolate, butter, sugar, tawny port, vanilla and a small amount of flour was baked in generously buttered ramekins placed in a pan half-filled with water.
     We began eating our four course dinner, each paired with wine, at about 12:30. We savored both food and conversation (Peter joined us) while Judi continued to flit in and out of the kitchen, attending to the final details of our meal while prepping and taking reservations for later in the day.
     Judi is excited about trying some of our vinegars in her menu. As her website says, “Chez Jude's menus reflect her commitment to the freshest offerings of the Minnesota seasons, organic, locally grown, harvested, wild caught, handcrafted ingredients.” That philosophy fits right in with ours. We also discussed how we might pair our cooking skills with hers in class offerings at the North House School.

     Friday night, our B&B host Max Bichel joined Pete Kavanaugh down at the Gunflint Tavern. With Max on the violin and Pete on guitar, they played a sampler of country music featuring the music of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and others. Max coaxed a great variety of delightful sounds out of his violin, pleasing his audience and one little dog snuggled on his master’s lap.
     We returned to the Tavern Saturday night and joined a table of diners only later to learn they were members of the Bluegrass band The Moss Piglets who then played from 9:00 to midnight. We were back in our cozy beds at the B&B long before midnight.
     Saturday evening we also sampled the food at the Crooked Spoon. We were so full from the good food at the MacArthur House and Chez Jude that we simply nipped into the appetizers, salads and the puff pastry topped onion soup. They were all delectable and judging by the full tables, it’s top of the list for the locals and visitors alike.

     We’re back into the work week, now, refreshed, rejuvenated, and excited about trying new cooking techniques in our kitchen. We’ve had a call from Bon Appetite Management ordering a good amount of vinegar for their catering service and one from a community planning their summer festival and inviting us to bring vinegar. We’ve also had a call from daughter number five saying a semi’s actions put her in a spinout on the snowy freeway causing a three car pile-up. She was on her way to interview for a summer internship at an organic farm. The front of her car has taken on a new shape and her right front signal light is dangling. She’s OK and will still try to make it to the interview.

Chez Jude: www.chezjude.com

MacArthur House: www.macarthurhouse.net

Gunflint Tavern: www.gunflinttavern.com

The Crooked Spoon: www.crookedspooncafe.com



Ron expertly slices and dices at his work station in the kitchen of Chez Jude.



Nancy and Judi add the short ribs to the Dutch oven.



Photos courtesy of Dawn Tanner.