Oregon: The Meal

Tonight, for reasons which I shall explain in another week or two, I'm making a special dinner to celebrate Oregon's local bounty. Sure, a cookout is probably more common for Labor Day, but it's still raining off and on, and the good late-summer/early-fall produce is in. Here's the menu...

Appetizer
Rogue River Bleu Cheese
White grapes from my own grape vines
Argyle Sparkling Wine from the Willamette Valley (pinot noir and chardonnay blend)

Dinner
Pumpkin Quiche
Homemade Sour Rye Beer Bread
Salad Greens topped with Dried Hood River Cherries, Hazelnuts, and Homemade Lemon-Dijon Vinaigrette
Local white wine TBD or Deschutes Beer

Dessert
Chocolate Bundt Cake with Chipotle-Hazelnut Praline Glaze
Fresh-Ground Decaf Coffee with Hazelnut Milk

The quiche will have a handmade savory crust with ground hazelnuts and nutmeg in it, and it'll feature eggs from my chickens and a pumpkin I harvested and pureed the other day (I got 12 cups of pumpkin puree from this one pumpkin and there are plenty more on the vine, argh). The sour rye starter has been fermenting for about two weeks now and it has a lovely beery smell, and we dried the cherries ourselves in July after our friend brought them back from a wedding she attended in the cherry orchard. The chocolate, okay, the chocolate came from Peru (a friend brought it back a couple of years ago and it's kept nicely in the fridge) but the hazelnuts and chipotles are local, as well as the flours and some other ingredients, and I'm in love with my Bundt pan so I'll take any excuse to use it.

I don't often do Gourmet Cuisine (however gourmet this is), so I'm excited for this one. I'm about to start the pie crust this morning and I'm still waiting for the chickens to give me one more egg for the quiche. Meanwhile Keith is hunting down that missing camera cable - this is one dinner we're definitely going to want pictures of!