I may be athropomorphisizing but this little Great Horned Owl swoops into our garden, finds a perch and sits and enjoys the sunset until it’s too dark for me to photograph her.
These photos were taken in three different sunset sessions in October, November and December in our Naramata yard overlooking Okanagan Lake.
Here is a little poetry to go along with my art… a favourite often recited by my dad…
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat
BY EDWARD LEARI The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five-pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar, “O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love, What a beautiful Pussy you are, You are, You are! What a beautiful Pussy you are!”
II Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl! How charmingly sweet you sing! O let us be married! too long we have tarried: But what shall we do for a ring?” They sailed away, for a year and a day, To the land where the Bong-Tree grows And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood With a ring at the end of his nose, His nose, His nose, With a ring at the end of his nose.
III “Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.” So they took it away, and were married next day By the Turkey who lives on the hill. They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon, The moon, The moon, They danced by the light of the moon.
Source: The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (1983)
Naramata pears and a lovely Chardonnay from Naramata Bench winery Singletree make a poached pear dessert that is both elegant and easy to make.
The aromas of pears poaching in fresh orange juice, orange zest, vanilla beans, Chardonnay and just-picked Naramata pears smells like fall preserving at its best. Add in the ginger and cinnamon scents coming from the gingerbread in the oven and you have an irresistible combination.
This poached pear recipe uses 24 pears and makes four freezer bags worth of desserts that can be thawed, warmed and served with my gingerbread, a sponge cake, or with sweetened mascarpone cheese, candied almonds, over ice cream or simply on its own.
Best served with warm pears and warm gingerbread. Spoon some of the poaching syrup over the gingerbread and add a dollop of whip cream.
Vanilla Naramata pears in orange wine syrup
Use local organic pears if you are lucky to live where they grow.
Ingredients
24 small to medium just-ripe pears
4 cups (1 litre) Singletree Chardonnay or a dry, light wine like a Pinot Blanc
2 tbsp grated orange rind
2 cups freshly-squeezed orange juice
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 vanilla bean, cut into four pieces
Vanilla beans are like gold these days Each bean was $9.
Instructions
Wash pears and peel leaving the core and stem intact. Immerse in ascorbic acid water (I used Fruitfresh) to keep the pears from turning brown.
In a large heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the wine, orange rind, juice and sugar. Bring to a gentle boil over high heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat, add vanilla pieces and gently boil for 5 minutes. Using tongs or a slotted spoon, ease pears gently into the syrup. Cover and simmer for 8 to 10 minutes, gently rolling pears over a couple of times. Pears should not be soft but should show some resistance. Remove saucepan from heat and let cool.
Pack 6 pears and 1 piece of vanilla bean into a freezer bag and cover with 2 cups of syrup. Squeeze out air, seal and place on a baking sheet so pears remain in a single layer in the bag. Freeze. Remove from baking sheets once frozen hard.
Gingerbread
This traditional gingerbread fills the kitchen with its spices. It freezes well if wrapped and sealed in an airtight bag.
Ingredients
2 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup dark molasses
1/2 cup hot water
1/2 cup applesauce
1 farm-fresh egg (from your own chickens if you have them!)
1/2 cup softened butter
Directions
Pre-heat oven to 350F and butter a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.
In the bowl of a mixer, sift together flour, sugar, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon and salt.
In another bowl, combine molasses, hot water and applesauce. Using mixer on low speed, pour molasses mixture into the dry ingredients all at once and beat. Add egg and butter and beat until combined. Increase speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes.
Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake in pre-heated for 55 minutes to one hour, or until toothpick inserted in the centre of the loaf comes out clean. Let cool for 15 minutes, remove from pan and serve with a vanilla Naramata pear in orange wine syrup and a dollop of whip cream.
Vegan coconut sea salt dark chocolate coco rolled truffles
The Golden Ticket
I won a golden ticket to spend the day with owner, founder and Chocolatier Heather Michelle Wilson at the Naramata Chocolate Factory, enveloped in the aromas of warm tempering dark chocolate and raspberry brownies and toffee macadamia nut cookies baking in the oven.
Within five minutes of my arrival, disaster, a tray of truffles awaiting filling slipped off the counter and onto her commercial kitchen’s beautifully clean floor. Always helpful, I gathered chocolate for disposal and it took every ounce of self-discipline I possessed not to take a page out of Lucy’s most famous scene and stuff the broken bits into my mouth. Heather, seeing my pained look, laughed and offered me a just-made truffle from a box. There is nothing better than a new friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.
At a crossroad in her life in Australia last year while on a wine touring holiday, a friend suggested, “You should open a nougat factory.” She replied, “What is that… nouga? He didn’t pronounce the “t” in his Aussie accent. Oh you mean that stuff that goes in Toblerone? Maybe Australians like to eat nougat but nobody wants that. If I were to open a factory it would be a chocolate factory. My life is already devoted to chocolate. I may as well learn how to make it.” Heather was working in the wine industry at the time and was ready to take her business degree and sales acumen and start her own project. When lightening strikes, Heather doesn’t hesitate. She threw herself into studying chocolate making in Melbourne under a prestigious chocolatier and came home and launched her ethical, local, artisan chocolate business and we are all the happier for it.
Chocolatier Heather Michelle Wilson
What the heck is it with people and chocolate?
It’s a thing alright. Here is a crazy fact. Every 10 years or so a typical adult eats their own body weight in chocolate. My husband is not typical. He is on a five-year cycle and it looks like I will be soon catching up to him with my Naramata Chocolate Factory discovery.
There is actually a boat load of chocolate science that has to do with Dr. Feel-Good chemicals the cacao bean contains such as anandamide (similar to anandamide THC). There is also lots of anecdotal evidence that chocoholics live longer. I believe it. Take Jeanne Calment, who lived to be 122 and ate two pounds of chocolate a week. Scientists and Heather are also saying that chocolate is good for you. It comes from a plant for starters. A British Medical Journal published review found that the highest levels of chocolate consumption were associated with a 37 per cent reduction in cardiovascular disease and a 29 per cent reduction in stroke.
Truffles!
Why artisan chocolate?
If you are going to eat chocolate, eat great chocolate. Mass-produced chocolate in all those chocolate bars at the store like many convenience foods today are full of preservatives, high in sugar and a lot of mystery ingredients such as wax. Heather’s creations are made with the highest quality Belgian chocolate that is certified as ethically sourced and filled with wonderful local ingredients like our raspberries. She avoids plastic packaging and sells her chocolate in cute recycled paper containers and paper bags.
Her chocolate bars are wrapped in the pages of second-hand copies of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for a fun touch.
Heather is also making vegan and gluten-free products to cater to these growing markets.
Heather hit the ground running and is now working at 100 per cent capacity with the help of her new assistant manager and cookie baker Deb Staples and several part-time helpers. Her delicious treats can now be found at the Naramata, Penticton and Summerland farmer’s markets, through partnerships with wineries such as Origin which sell her Cherry Noir confection that is a cherry and red wine chocolate made with Origins’ Pinot Noir and at Mile Zero Wine Bar. More winery and restaurant partnerships are in the works as are online sales through her website naramatachocolate.com as well as a subscription box.
Former Oil and Gas Engineer Deb Staples, the factory’s assistant manager and chief cookie baker and founder, owner, Chocolatier Heather Michelle Wilson at the Penticton Farmer’s Market.
“I am a product of a long tradition of makers in my family,” says Heather. My grandparents grew and canned much of what they ate. I love this tradition and feel strongly about shopping local, making things ourselves and I place a lot of value on the art of making something by hand.”
She combines her life-long love affair with chocolate with a pragmatic side that includes her Ontario business degree (where she spent all her free time experimenting with vegan baking, protein-packed baking and just plain old-fashioned tasty baking) and career experience in books and wine sales.
Naramata Farmer’s Market
“I am having the most fun,” she says. “I really like seeing results and I love talking to people. How rewarding is it to hear, ‘That is the best brownie I’ve ever had in my entire life,’ which I’ve heard more than once from market customers?”
Those raspberry brownies, just out of the oven and Deb making toffee macadamia nut cookies.
These golden beauties are filled with sparking wine ganache.
Market display.
Vegan toasted coconut sea salt dark chocolate rolled truffles.
Tempering chocolate is not for the faint of heart. Perfectly tempered, these chocolates are shinney and have a lovely snap.
Nine out of 10 people like chocolate. The tenth person always lies.
Lingering over dinner at Poplar Grove’s Vanilla Pod restaurant during a warm smoky summer sunset is one of those memories to be teased out on a grey January day.
Summer in a glass.
Negroni sunset
Creme brulee with namesake vanilla pod. Tastes even better than it looks…
Poplar Grove is perfectly positioned for its views of Okanagan Lake.
Post dinner trip up Munson Mountain to watch the strange sunset.
Thinking of all the evacuees worrying about their houses and their land and the hard working fire crews and wishing for a good soaking rain…
Harvesting lavender…those words together sound pretty idyllic. Even in the heat and smoke from Okanagan fires it is a pretty amazing way to spend a morning. It is the only farm work I’ve done where you come home hot, dirty and sore but smelling better than when you started.
In movie speak It’s The Colour of Purple, Scent of a Woman and Attack of the Killer Bees all rolled into one. The glorious purpleness of the fields, the clean, stringent and all encompassing lavender aroma and the buzzing of a zillion bees make the time spent at Forest Greenman Lavender Farm in Naramata an intense sensory experience. This photo essay captures the sights of the morning…your imagination will have to fill in the rest.
The bunches are left to dry in the sun before being collected to hang to dry.
Farm owner Doug hams it up while Brian does all the work.
It was about 30 degrees by quitting time.
A neighbour, aptly named Harvest, dropped by to help.
Doug felt the bee population had never been as high. Two harvesters got stung, an occupational hazard.
It takes several passes with a scythe to collect enough lavender to make a big fat bunch.
The bees were everywhere. They seem to move along as you work and only sting if they get caught up while you are gathering the stocks or while transporting the bundles.
It’s the last year of Forest Greenman Lavender Farm for Doug and Karolina as they have sold the farm. Be sure to drop by this season to get your aromatherapy. It’s not the last year for lavender though as the couple have a new venture in the wings involving this amazing plant.
Some of the lavender we harvested will be distilled for its essential oils.
Some will be sold in dried bunches.
The lavender fields are rimmed with lovely fruit trees.
This old Massey-Fergus is a beauty.
These are special cherries, Balatons. I traded my labour for some to make the best jam in the world.
Ingredient and end product pictured on our Naramata raspberry farm
Our raspberries are summer captured in juicy jewel bites. When they hang out with Legend Distilling‘s craft vodka along with some BC blueberry and cranberry pals summer is but a pour away, anytime of the year.
A good portion of our Naramata Carpe Diem berry farm’s raspberries end up at Legend Distilling, a short walk from us. They use them as a cocktail garnish and in their Slowpoke Farm Berry Vodka.
Distiller and Legend owner Doug Lennie was pressing off the fruit that had been infusing into his craft vodka for a secret amount of time when I dropped off this morning’s harvest.
Doug giving the batch a stir
The spent fruit goes into a fruit press
The raspberries have given up their lovely hue to the vodka.
Fruit press in action
The pressed juice goes back into the steel tank and the vodka will be bottled and labelled next week.
The whole operation is closely supervised by distillery dog Roxy
The vodka has a beautiful colour and Legend’s legendary view is the perfect backdrop. It tastes out of this world but for me the lovely fruity aroma is the best part.
I can’t think of a better home for our organically-grown raspberries…
Pack 6 pears and 1 piece of vanilla bean into a freezer bag and cover with 2 cups of syrup. Squeeze out air, seal and place on a baking sheet so pears remain in a single layer in the bag. Freeze. Remove from baking sheets once frozen hard.
Lingering over dinner at Poplar Grove’s 
Thinking of all the evacuees worrying about their houses and their land and the hard working fire crews and wishing for a good soaking rain…
Harvesting lavender…those words together sound pretty idyllic. Even in the heat and smoke from Okanagan fires it is a pretty amazing way to spend a morning. It is the only 
A good portion of our Naramata Carpe Diem berry farm’s raspberries end up at Legend Distilling, a short walk from us. They use them as a cocktail garnish and in their Slowpoke Farm Berry Vodka.
naramata-blend 