A Cooking Blog?

For this week my blog is being published as a cooking blog.  We had the most amazing experience of a three day wood burning oven cooking class held up in the wine country near Napa, CA.  We’ve had a wood burning oven for about seven years and have always wanted to expand our cooking to include more than pizza. 

Well….this was exactly what we needed.  It was three days of cooking everything from cinnamon rolls for breakfast to baking peach cobbler and bread pudding for desserts.

The adventure begins…..across the Golden Gate Bridge to the charming town of Healdsburg.



We built our first fire and started to cook.  We had six wood burning ovens for our use so there was a lot of cooking.



These were some of our creations.  Can I just say “incredible”?   Do you see how beautifully our flame is burning over the roof of the oven?  Pizza and empanadas are done when the oven is the hottest - 650* on the floor.



As the oven cools you can go into the roasting stage which is 550* on the oven floor.  Different areas of the oven will register different temperatures so it is a lot of playing around.  Baking is done when the oven floor reaches 450* and after removing the hot coals.  These are SOME of the foods we made.

Prosciutto wrapped scallops on rosemary skewers.

Peach cobbler before baking

.....after baking

Sweet stuffed peppers.

Singaporean style shrimp

Zucchini blossoms

Zucchini blossoms stuffed with ricotta

Wood roasted eggplant parmigiano

Pan seared lamb chops marinated in garlic and rosemary

Our appetizer table presentation.

Rotating the bread loaves.

Finished rustic bread loaves.

Zucchini gratin with tomatoes and Gruyere.

Roasted peppers.

Halibut Ligurian style.

Beef tenderloin.

Paella.

Chicken -done under a brick

Parsnip fries.

Limoncello Bread pudding.

Our class with our delightful teacher, Andrea Mugnaini, in the center.

It was such a fun and busy few days made even better by meeting up with a dear friend (and our daughter’s Godmother) for dinner at her home in Healdsburg.  We have shared so many wonderful times together. 

I had a lovely squishy package in the mail when we arrived home.  I had won a giveaway from Tudy at Tudy’s Craft Cupboard and she sent me some of her exquisitely made items.  I have always admired her crochet and I am thrilled to have some of her work.  Can you say “pretty”? 



I have been doing a bit of sewing, but I can’t share it yet.  Hopefully, I will be able to on my next post.