On rare days when all the scheduling stars align, I take a long walk during the day with fellow BAB-writer Stephanie. We use walk time to catch up on projects that we're working on, and any other news worth reporting. For months now, Stephanie has been referring to her Library of Cheese project. While I knew that it was a project for Cowgirl Creamery, the nationally recognized artisan cheese shop in San Francisco, I didn't know much more about the Library of Cheese.

A couple weeks ago I was clicking around on the Cowgirl Creamery website to find out more about my beloved burrata cheese -- it's a mozzarella cheese that is made with cream to create one of the most wonderful, buttery, rich tasting delectables that I've ever eaten -- and I found my answers in the Library of Cheese. The Library includes over 250 cheese descriptions. Most entries have history and flavor profiles of the cheese along with information such as the cheesemaker, the proprietor, the affineur, the region the cheese is from, the milk type, the rennet type, the rind type, the texture, and how long the cheese has been aged.

The database is searchable by provenance, milk type, and milk treatment, which is helpful for me when doing a project such as the Eat Local Challenge. The database appeals to the part of me who wants to know all about the Cowgirl Creamery cheeses, but doesn't want to have to ask a million questions to the cheesemongers at the store -- I like to have a little research in my pocket before walking up to the counter.

If you're familiar with any of Stephanie's writing, you won't be surprised that the cheese descriptions are interesting, thorough, and often witty. About the flavor of Serena, a cheese made in the Central Valley of California, Stephanie says, "If classic Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano and tulip-sniffing Gouda were to marry, Serena would be their delicious progeny." And reading about buffalo mozzarella, I found out the following: "Stories, fables, and oft-told anecdotes about mozzarella abound. Some say mozzarella was first invented when cheese curds in a Neapolitan cheese factory accidentally dropped into a vat of hot water. Others yarn that in 41 B.C., Antony and Cleopatra spent a good part of their clandestine courtship feasting on the cheese as they floated in barges pulled by water buffalo."

Whether you're using the Library of Cheese to do research before going to the store, or you just want to browse through to learn about some of the world's best cheeses, check out this wonderful resource!

This past Memorial Day took me out of the cold, foggy city and up to sun-drenched Pt. Reyes Station to celebrate Cowgirl Creamery's 10th Anniversary. Cowgirls, Cowboys, and friends and families of both gathered under circus-peaked tents to listen to the inspirational words of The Cowgirls (Peg Smith and Sue Conley), Albert Straus of Straus Family Creamery, and Janet Brown of AllStar Organics. After the speeches, the entire staff plus the Straus family and some honored customers, stood for a very long time for a very large photo and then finally went into the closed-on-Mondays Tomales Bay Foods barn to chow down on the homemade potluck.

I balanced a satisfyingly heavy plate of Laura's Kitchen Sink Mac and Cheese, chorizo, cornbread, salad, and my own basil-mint pesto edamame in one hand and grabbed at a wine glass with the other. I had taken a long sip of the Mount Tamalpais Vin Gris 2006 and was just starting to think that it was the best pink wine I had tasted in about ten years when I heard someone behind me ask, "How's the wine?" I turned around to see a tall guy wearing a yellow Pey-Marin tee-shirt that matched the label on another bottle sitting on the bar. I babbled about how fabulously spicy and dry the rosé was. How I hadn't had a wine like that since I tasted my very first Rosé d'Anjou. How THIS was the kind of stiff rosé I could snuggle up with any day of the week. Then I caught myself and, gesturing at his shirt, I added politely, "Of course, I haven't tried your wine yet." Well, I had, because Pey-Marin and Mount Tamalpais are labels from the same wine-making family, Susan and Jonathan Pey of Marin Wines. Jonathan smiled at me and said, "I just wanted an honest reaction."

Well, he got it. This vin gris is insanely good. It went with everything on my plate -- the rich mac and cheese, the stingingly spicy chorizo, the fresh basil-mint pesto, everything. I had to have a bottle of this. Jonathan told me I could find it at Plumpjack and the Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant in the city.

The bottle secured a week later, I set about trying to confuse the wine with a whole host of foods. Secretly, I knew it could stand up to every single one of them, but I still had to try. We sat down to a dinner of minted Iacopi English peas with red onion, garlic, and roasted Dirty Girl turnips, homemade black pepper fettuccine with a wild mushroom-thyme cream sauce, and a beet salad with spicy greens (Heirloom Organics tatsoi and arugula and Four Sisters flowering watercress). The vin gris not only stood up to everything, including the rich and earthy mushroom sauce, but it actually gave each dish a shove back, asserting its own strong personality without shouting them down. My amaranth-hued glass gleamed back at me across my plate as if to say, "Is that all you've got? Because I can take it. Bring it on, my friend. Bring. It. On."

Even the color is fierce! None of this blush and bashful pink that's barely a whisper of color, this was wildhotcrazy lascivious pink. The pink of deep-bosomed sunsets, the pink of Barbie's dress from the 80s (you know the one I mean), the pink of Belle Watling's sheets, the discontinued pink of a Clinique lipstick I wore in high school. This Mount Tamalpais Vin Gris isn't "pink," it's "PINK!"

I don't know much about wines. I just know what I like, and I loved this.

Mount Tamalpais Vin Gris 2006, $18.00

Next Week: Mount Tamalpais Merlot

California produce has slain yet another one of my Hate Foods. There were quite a few groups things I refused to eat as a kid and peas were definitely one of them. I hated the mushy, tasteless, mean little things. If I piled enough butter and salt on them, I could just swallow them down with a big slosh of water but my gag reflex still worked overtime.

Last weekend, I was picking through the produce at the Sunset Andronico's and my eyes fell on the big smooth pods of English peas. Without thinking too hard about what I would do, I started stuffing them in a plastic bag.

Once at home, I perched on a sunny stool in the kitchen and took old-fashioned pleasure in slitting the pods open with my thumbnail and rolling the pale fat peas into a bowl. A few seconds dip in rapidly boiling water and slightly longer in a shocking ice bath and my peas were ready. Firm and mouth-popping, the peas were as smooth as a freshly Botoxed baby's bottom with nary a wrinkle to be found. But what to do with them?

I pulled out the butter and salt and stared at them. Ugh, I couldn't go that route. While I love the simplicity of salt and butter when oven-roasting or steaming summer corn, in order to fully expunge my childhood memories, I definitely needed something completely different. Since the peas were already cold, I opted for a salad. Peppery watercress, slightly bitter endive, and flaked ivory shavings of salty Pecorino Romano in a light lemony vinaigrette all brought out the sweetness of the spring pearls.

English Pea Salad

Serves 4

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon Champagne vinegar
4-5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 1/2 cups shelled English peas
Three heads of Belgian endive, bruised leaves removed
2 bunches small-leaved watercress, about 1 lb
Pecorino Romano, or an aged sheep's cheese of your choice

1. Whisk the lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil together. Add salt and pepper and taste. Adjust seasonings to your preference. Set vinaigrette aside.

2. Fill a large, heavy-bottomed pot with cold water and bring to a rolling boil. Add the shelled peas and cook for about 45 seconds. Plunge the cooked peas in an ice bath to stop the cooking.

3. Slice the endive at an angle and put the slivers in a large bowl. Add the watercress and drained peas and toss with the vinaigrette until glistening.

4. Serve the salad on individual plates and shave the Pecorino Romano over each portion. Use as much cheese as you like.

When it come to ginger ale, I've had only one opinion: drink it when you're fluish. Since that was the childhood application for me, it's pretty hard to separate fever, nausea, and vomiting from those emerald green bottles.

Until now.

After my last Fever-Tree musing, I was invited to participate in intimate Fever-Tree event at Perbacco. Not only did I get to meet the charming Tim Warrilow, the Fever-Tree "plant hunter," but I got to experience side-by-side comparisons of Fever-Tree mixers against the leading brands.

I had already done the tonic water comparison myself. The only difference was that I had completely ignored the idea that Canada Dry tonic was even worth the plastic it was bottled in. To me, Canada Dry tonic water has a sweet, glue-like smell and an even worse flavor. At the tasting, it assailed my tastebuds with high fructose corn syrup and choked out my throat with unctuous spittle. Not attractive.

However, the ginger ale taste off was a completely different matter. Canada Dry's offering smelled and tasted like Sprite. Fine, but not really ginger ale, right? Schwepps' offering smelled like a cleaning product and tasted like practically nothing. However, Fever-Tree's ginger ale not only spiced my nostrils with raw, sliced, heady ginger but it actually tasted like ginger. In the past, I have held firm that ginger ale in cocktails is nothing compared to ginger beer. That is has to burn going down and make you sneeze after one sip. When it comes to Fever-Tree, I stand corrected. For this particular brand, I might actually relax my ginger beer stranglehold.

Fever-Tree's ginger ale, like all of Fever-Tree's mixers, are made from "all natural ingredients, sourced from around the world. A blend of natural botanicals, spring water and a touch of can sugar, Fever-Tree mixers are free of artifical preservatives, ingredients, sweeteners and coloring." Specifially, Fever-Tree Ginger Ale is made up of three different kinds of ginger: fresh, green Ecuadorean ginger, Cochin ginger from India, and Nigerian ginger from Africa.

After the tasting, I scuttled home to try out a new and very simple cocktail. Full disclosure: while Fever-Tree did give me tonic water samples, which I totally didn't need since my husband and I had just stocked up on a recent trip to BevMo, they did not give me ginger ale samples. Those I already had in the house, just for kicks.

While on the same aforementioned BevMo trip, I picked up a bottle of gin that had been a curiosity to me for quite some time. Tanqueray Rangpur gin has all the clean notes of regular Tanqueray, but has the added kick of being distilled with Rangpur limes. We first sampled the gin in a very dry straight-up martini, but the aggressive lime tones convinced me I was drinking some old l'Occitane verbena perfume. However, when combined with the Fever-Tree ginger ale, the lime was slightly muted but, like Eddie Murphy in Coming to America, still very happy to be there. The ginger sung out spicy and strong without being overly sweet, and the fragrant lime just played right into its piquant hands.

It's a great summer-time sipper that can be enjoyed when the weather gets hot again.

Rangpur and Ginger

2 ounces Tanqueray Rangpur Gin
Ice
Fever-Tree Ginger Ale

The Shake:
In an Old Fashioned, add the gin, ice, and fill to the top with ginger ale.

This early summer heat has left me wilted and without much of an appetite for aught but cold salads and homemade fruit smoothies. However, it brought out a special request in my husband, "I want Hawaii in a cocktail," he announced the other night when the temp was still hovering above 75° after 7:00. Knowing them to be a fabulous place for cocktails -- both seasonal and inventive standbys made with the highest quality ingredients -- we betook ourselves to Nopa on Divisadero and Hayes and cooled off with their Mumbai Iced Tea. A heat-beating concoction of gin, vodka, tequila, tamarind syrup, rhum orange, the tropical cocktail is topped off with spicy ginger beer and garnished with a sprig of mint.

We paired a few of these with a some cold salads and sides -- their toasted barley and pea shoot side is served at room temp and is simply delectable -- sat back, and decided the heat wasn't so bad after all.

That brings me to my traditional summer cocktail: Pimm's Cup. Last year, Sam of Becks and Posh beat me to the posting punch, but as she's actually British and I just wish I was, I guess I'll forgive her. This time.

As Sam noted, normally a proper Pimm's Cup has to be mixed with Sprite or 7-Up to approximate what you get with British lemonade. However, I've finally managed to dig up authentic British lemonade at Andronico's. It's made by Belvoir and the same company also has an elderflower pressé and a British ginger beer so spicy it stings going down. Refreshing in Pimm's Cup, that sort of ginger beer is also wicked important when making the definitive Dark and Stormy.

What do I think Pimm's tastes like? Curry. Definitely. I've always maintained that there's an elusive curry flavor that overrides -- but doesn't overpower -- all others. For me, anyway. Some people look at me like I'm crazy when I say that, so "herbal" might be a better descriptor. Whatever you call it, there's no debating that Pimm's Cup is one of the best summer refreshers.

Pimm's Cup of Joy

3 oz. Pimm's No. 1
4 or 5 mint leaves
2 fresh strawberries, halved
1 slice of cucumber
Lime quarter
Sprite, 7-Up, British lemonade, or ginger beer

The Shake:

In a tall glass, add Pimm's and mint leaves. Use a muddler or the handle of a wooden spoon to crush the mint leaves a bit. Toss in the strawberries, cucumber, and lime quarter with some ice cubes and fill the rest of the glass with your desired mixer.

I think I'm starting to show my age because I remember when the E! True Hollywood Story was interesting. It was gossipy, smarmy, histrionic, and total brain candy. Each commercial break was punctuated by a "And then it all fell apart!" or "But friendship alone wasn't enough to keep her from spiraling to her destruction!" because there was no way you were flipping over to Pop-Up Videos with that sort of temptation waiting for you just beyond half-a-dozen singing Quiznos rats. You HAD to know what went on behind the scenes of Beverly Hills 90210 -- was Shannen really a bitch? Did Jason Priestley sleep with that gel in? How old was Gabrielle Cateris -- 30? 35? 42?

And now, Rachael Ray? How...pedestrian. I mean, I get that she's a huge success and has managed to get Bill Clinton on her show to talk childhood obesity as well show you how to successfully dress for your body type, but still. I mean, we've already heard it all -- the successful yet dubious cooking show, the successful yet very loud talk show, the husband, the dogs, the not being a chef, the mother, the jobs, the big mouth. What new things are we going to learn, really? That she was a cheerleader? Not much of surprise there -- we know she learned how to scream somewhere. If you care, this airs Sunday, May 5th.

In other food television news, the hungrily dedicated posters at Television Without Pity are reporting that the new season of Bravo's Top Chef will premiere on June 13th.

The third season of this competitive cooking reality show was filmed in Miami and, according to Bravo execs, will feature "the most seasoned" cheftestants yet. All food puns aside, I think that might be their way of promising that there will be no more head shaving. And maybe no more offers to pee on fellow cheftestants. I hope.

Going fishhead-to-fishhead with Top Chef this summer is FOX's Hell's Kitchen. Also returning for its third season, the Gordon Ramsay competitive cooking reality show is loud, ridiculous, and almost entirely bleeped. It's also pretty awesome, and set to premiere on June 4th.

I'm having a really hard time writing about food this week. Frankly, I've lost my appetite. All my favorite foods turn to ashes in my mouth, and anything that does pass my gullet curdles with each additional reporting on the Virginia Tech massacre. With over thirty dead, it's the deadliest shooting rampage in America, and I can't, I won't, ignore it.

Maybe I'm too emotional for my own good, but you know what? I'm a writer, I'm emotional, and while I can fake a lot of things -- a smile, a falsetto, a fava bean puree -- it's a losing battle this week.

Therefore, I'm going to use this space not to revel in San Francisco's bounty, which I can do every day of my life here, but to celebrate the great variety of victuals that come out of Virginia.

First, I want to quote Food History blogger, Gillian Polack:

Foodways and food history are about communities and individuals. They're the story of people and the food people eat.

We all know that, in theory. In pratice what changes the life of a community and rips out its soul is not something that often gets discussed in food histories. Sometimes it does. The extreme stuff. One day I'll talk about that, when I find courage.

One of our regular 451 bloggers lives in Blacksburg, VA. Today I think it's important to stop and remember the people of that particular community.

Instead of reading about food today, I'd be grateful if you took a moment to stop and think about him and his friends, about the son of SF writer Michael Bishop, about everyone who was killed in the shooting at Virginia Tech. Remember that history is about people, and when we lose those people we lose a part of ourselves.

Click over to the Virginia Is for Lovers tourism site and sneak a taste of Virginia.

Initially, I was surprised to learn of wines flowing out of Virginia -- specifically the Shenandoah Valley -- but then I was lucky enough to suck down a wonderful Meritage from Valhalla Vineyards in Roanoke, Virginia. Maverick, on 17th street between Mission and Valencia, has this wine as well as another offering from the Shenandoah Valley.

With that wine, you could enjoy thick slices of Virginia's famous Smithfield Ham and maybe even a handful of peanuts or some local cheeses. Both Meadow Creek Dairy and Everona Dairy are cranking out sumptuous artisanal cheeses that would do any cheese plate proud.

While the states of the Chesapeake Bay watershed are home to many sumptuous seafoods -- shad, oysters, and flounder (there's even a Flounder Capital of the World, claimed by the town of Wachapreague, Virginia) -- the seafood I most associate with the area is blue crab.

My husband, who grew up in Virginia, has fond memories of crab feasts where he worked hard with mallet and blunt knife to scrape out every last scrap of pure white meat from Old Bay-drenched shells. As he tells it, your hands and fingers sustain tiny cuts from hungrily slaving over the sharp shells, and the sting you get from the spicy seasoning working its way into your tender skin is a sweet and necessary pain, as much a part of the blue crab experience as the crab itself.

I've never been able to whack my own pile of blue crabs in either Maryland or Virginia, but I was able to enjoy these Beautiful Swimmers in another luxurious way.

Just after we got engaged, my soon-to-be mother and father-in-law sent Mark and me off to a celebratory dinner at L'Auberge Chez François, an adorable and lovely Alsatian restaurant (or, more correctly, auberge), nestled in the rolling green countryside of Great Falls, Virginia. It was there that I crunched through an appetizer of soft shell crab, whose fresh season is all too short.

I apologize if I haven't been able to cover all the foods and drinks that come out of Virginia, but I'm a novice where eating this state is concerned. I invite any transplanted or current Virginians to share any food memories, facts, anecdotes, or favorites they may have stored away in their heart cupboards.

In the meantime, take care of yourselves, each other and give the closest student, professor, teacher, or school administrator near you a hug.

I used to think I was a tonic water snob because I was hopelessly devoted to Schwepps. There is something about Canada Dry's cloyingly sweet, glue-like flavor that makes it vastly inferior to the one John Cleese used to pimp. However as I trudged down the endless rows of food and drink and food and drink and food and drink at this year's Fancy Food Show, I learned that I had not even begun to understand how snobbish I could get.

Last quarter's Imbibe Magazine had a recipe detailing how you (yes, you!) could brew your own tonic water. A process which, as CHOW blogger James Norton noted, seemed excessively time consuming just to squeeze out a puddle of brown water that dirtied up your gin and tonic. However, the piece is a testament to the fact that people are getting just as sniffy about their mixers as they are about their high-end alcohols. After all, if you are banging down top dollars for Hendrick's, Van Gough, or Grey Goose, why taint their delicate flavors with heavy-handed, overly-sweet mixers?

No good reason, I slur. And this is why I am currently obsessed with Fever-Tree's line of tonic water, ginger ale, and bitter lemon. Previously available only in the UK (Fever-Tree's managing director is Charles Rolls, the former owner of Plymouth Gin) these minute bottles of sublime refreshment will soon be poured into a cocktail near you. In fact, I have it on good authority that California's favorite liquor superstore, Beverages & More!, will be stocking Fever-Tree by the end of this month.

In a taste test performed under the most scientific of conditions -- there was a control group and everything -- it was unanimously determined by a blind panel that Fever-Tree's light, clean, and sharply bubbled flavors blew my previously favored Schwepps clear out of the tonic water. Next to Fever-Tree, Schwepps tasted heavy, fake, and sugary. While the ginger ale is still not equal to my preferred ginger beer, the Fever-Tree bitter lemon also put its Schwepps counterpart to shame.

Drink deep, my fellow tipplers, drink deep.

I'm a gin girl. Gin and Ginger, Gin and Sin, Pink Gin, Greyhound, Gin and Tonic -- I love them all. Yet despite that, up until a year ago I was unknowingly depriving myself of an entire world of gins. Sticking primarily with Tanqueray, I treated myself every once in awhile to cold, elegantly aquamarine bottles of Bombay Sapphire. It was my gin of indulgence. However, everything changed when I discovered a whole nother country of gin. Forget the Brit brands, I suddenly found myself swimming in premium gins in my own Californian backyard. First there was Gin 209, then Junipero, and now, a new gin.

New to me, Sarticious Gin is locally made in Santa Cruz by Jeff Alexander.

Two years ago, Peggy Townsend wrote a piece on the Sarticious guys for the Santa Cruz Sentinel and she explains where the crazy name came from:

It comes from this time Alexander is up in Alaska drinking, watching the Northern Lights and listening to this song by some guys called Dead Can Dance. And even though these dancing dead guys are singing about "her surreptitious smile," he hears them say "sarticious smile."

Then, when this Alexander guy can't figure out what in the heck "sarticious" means, he decides it's like if the word "sartorial" and "luscious" got together and had a baby and it would be "sarticious," which sounds like something you'd like.

How completely out-of-control awesome is that? Naming a gin because of a "Wrapped up like a douche" moment? I love these guys already!

I took one sip of Mathra's lovingly made Sarticious gin and tonic and breathed, "Citrus!" Kim -- the one responsible for taking our Sarticious virginity -- thinks it tastes like pine. Mathra thinks it tastes like Granny Smith apples. All reactions are true and valid ones, and now, after a brief scurry to BevMo and a slap-down of $30.00, I am a proud pourer of this amazingly fresh and complex gin.

Gin makers are notoriously secretive about what all goes into their gin. Other than the usual juniper berries, there is a dizzying swirl of botanticals that all conspire, flirt, and whisper behind painted fans to perfume the gin with their ethereal souls. Bombay Sapphire has tactile white etchings down one smooth side of the gem-like bottle. Run the tip of your finger over each rough botantical representation -- both in words and sketch -- and you will learn that Bombay Sapphire gin contains angelica, grains of paradise, lemon, licorice, almonds, orris root, coriander, cassia bark, and cubeb berries. The secret is how they are all balanced.

Sarticious, on the other hand, will only reveal that their gin contains "the artful blend of the best juniper berries, organic orange and cilantro, and other fresh botanicals." Very well, you can keep your cool shadowy shroud, Sarticious, for all I require is a moonstone of your gin in my glass. That is my satisfaction.

And just in case a single sip of this taste bud-smacking gin isn't recommendation enough, Alexander has liquor chops that run very deep -- he has made wine, beer, and even made Hanger 1 vodka at St. George Spirits back in the day.

The spare Sarticious site has a list of recipes, but quite frankly, the only accompaniment Sarticious needs is a few ice cubes and a splash of really good tonic water. More on that next week.

Sarticious Gin Distillery
427A Swift Street
Santa Cruz, CA

Sarticious Spirits is open for wine and gin tasting from noon-5pm, Friday-Sunday.

With a Mayor whose life appears to need the same kind of control his gel exerts over his hair, and killer frogs stalking Golden Gate Park, spring has fully come to San Francisco.

To honor St. Patty's Day, I had to write about my newest out-of-body experience: Guinness Floats.

I know there's a lot of you out there who -- for better or for hate -- have already suckled at the vanilla-y, stout-y, creamy, heavenly goodness that has recently enraptured my small household. However, for those three of you who haven't and have always been curious, please seize this holiday opportunity to satisfy yourselves. All it takes is a pint of Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Bean -- definitely go whole bean hog on this one, you'll thank me later -- and a six-pack of fully widgeted Guinness cans.

Plop one, two, three, okay, FIVE scoops of ice cream in a pint glass and carefully pour the Guinness over the mound of decadent sensuality. With whorls and dips and swirls, the bitter bite of the Guinness surrounds, melds with, and accentuates the heady vanilla. I know it sounds weird, but it works and it's beyond fantastic.

Are we all on the same page? Ice cream and beer is a taste only drunk angels could have imagined? Okay. Now, let's check in with a brand new beer from Hawaii's Kona Brewing Company that is so brilliant, it should be illegal. Well, hello, Pipeline Porter, what's your story? What's that? You say you're made with 100% KONA COFFEE?! Seriously? Coffee and beer -- another brilliant combination. On its own, Pipeline is smooth, rich, smokey, and definitely filled to the rim with coffee. It's so wonderfully strange, and I can't remember the last time I was so completely taken with a beer that I started thinking in terms of multiple cases. Oh, wait, I can.

Here it becomes time to apply what we learned earlier with ice cream and beer. My brilliant, BRILLIANT husband is the one who pointed out that if we can reach near nirvana with Guinness and ice cream, how far can we go if we match Pipeline Porter with ice cream? So far that I don't think we've yet returned to Earth.

Guinness or Pipeline -- it's up to you, but you'll be sorry if you don't try one of them.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!