Sit down for a spell on our newly refurbished deck and have a Rosemary Julep (Julep:  Noun. A sweet flavored drink made from a sugar syrup, sometimes containing alcohol or medication.) ?? Medication?

I’m sure there is no medication in it unless you consider bourbon a medication.  At any rate, Yes!Chef! made us each one of these bad boys which we enjoyed on the deck.  The power went off here at the Schmautzhaus for a couple of hours, but it was a beautiful evening for sitting outside.  We don’t need air-conditioning here in the Sierras (in fact, we don’t have air-conditioning in the house…we do have a whole house fan and fans in almost every room). We were quite content to wait out the outage outside enjoying the quiet of the forest.  Besides, we now have a generator that powers up a good portion of the house (we frequently have power outages in the winter.) So, we really weren’t put out very much.

The Julep was very tasty and not overpoweringly sweet or Rosemary-ie.  I thought that a picture of  the drink would look better with a little sprig of Rosemary in it and as it turned out, it added a great aroma as I was drinking the Julep.  We used it as a little stir stick.   I love the smell of Rosemary and this drink was just the thing for a warm summer evening with no electricity.  Yes!Chef! also grilled up a couple of burgers and some corn.  We ate well.

We have been busy with this and that lately.  Last night we were down in Placerville doing a little work for a magazine assignment I’m working on and I looked up the hill  and here came a bunch of skateboarders…right down the middle of Main Street.

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Because I had my camera with me and I saw them coming, I got several good shots of these skateboarders.  These guys are no spring chickens and they looked they were having a hecka good time as they sped by us.  There were three or four others who stuck to speeding down the sidewalk, which was probably less safe than the main road.

Earlier in the day I had been over at a local orchard, Hooverville Orchard, to take some pictures of their picnic area and their old homestead.  Very interesting place and I will probably be back in August when they are putting on a pig roast. There really isn’t any ripe fruit right now in the orchard.  The cherries are at the end of their season and the peaches aren’t quite ripe yet.  The pears are pretty to photography but they won’t be ripe for at least a month.  And the apples, well, we’ve got several months yet before they are ready.

After we were finished downtown, we headed up the hill to Camino to see if we could catch any kind of sunset over the vineyards.  The area we live in is very agricultural and there are many different types of fruit and vegetables growing abundantly here…pears, apples, peaches, cherries, pumpkins, apricots, tomatoes, and plenty of wine grapes.  There are many vineyards in the area, so Yes!Chef! and I sometimes will spend a weekend afternoon tasting at several of the wineries.

We went over to Madrona Vineyards, which is one of my favorite wineries and they have a lovely view of the rolling vineyards and down to the coastal ranges.  We waited around until around 8:30 and were rewarded with the above sunset.  There were no clouds, so it wasn’t the best sunset that I have ever seen, but I enjoyed it nevertheless.  Yes!Chef! generally does not care for sunset watching because there’s way too much watching and waiting and not enough action. But he doesn’t like me to be out after dark in some of these desolate areas by myself, so he gallantly agreed to go with me.

The prior night we visited another lovely winery, Grace Patriot Vineyards, and when we got home he threw together a couple of pizzas for the two of us and my youngest son.

Both pizzas were tasty and had a crisp cracker-like (homemade) crust.  He cooked it on the pizza stone right on the grill, which crisped up the crust nicely.  I prefer a very thin, crispy crust on my pizza so this was perfect.  Now, if you have never tasted anchovies on your pizza (I remember a time when all pizza makers put anchovies on their pizzas and you always had to tell them to, “hold the anchovies”), you might want to consider adding them to your next pizza. Anchovies on pizza is a very old tradition and does add quite a bit of flavor and saltiness to the pizza.  I liked it, but I don’t know if I want it on all of my pizzas.

On some future post I will divulge Yes!Chef!’s recipe for the crust, sauce and cooking secrets to making a delicious pizza.

For now, I will leave you with the recipe for Rosemary Julep generously provided by Ted Allen of Food Network:

Rosemary Julep

Recipe courtesy Ted Allen

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 sprigs fresh rosemary, plus 1 sprig for garnish
• 4 tablespoons bourbon
• Splash seltzer
• Crushed or cracked ice, for serving

Directions