Here at (oops), we’re definitely indebted to a few kinds of bugs.
As horrible as Phyloxera was, it’s great for our brand.

However, there are a few bugs that aren’t welcome to our party.
Mosquitos, ticks, spiders and flies like to crash your beautiful dessert, buzz about your guests’ heads as they try to enjoy their wine and snacks.

Of course you can use the dangerous chemicals available in your local home improvement store. However, since we’re talking snacks and drinks here, I prefer to employ less toxic solutions

Plus that nasty West Nile virus makes lots of folks resort to toxic rDEET-filled repellents and the organophosphate pesticide malathion, both which are thought to be neuroxicants.

Neuroxicants are not welcome at our party.

You can make your own repellent with essential oils — and this could make a fun pre-party event. Put out the essential oils of basil, eucalyptus, cloves, geranium, peppermint, rosemary, lemon balm (citronella), onions, garlic, and/or feverfew.

Guests can mix their own insect repellent and take it with them.

Mosquito Repellent Oil
10 drops essential oil (see list above)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Combine the ingredients in a tiny glass jar; stir to blend.
Dab a few drops on your skin or clothing.

Outdoor tables become crusty with dirt, rainwater, sprinkler residue. Although each summer, I scrub the table down as part of my weekly cleaning routine, I still want to make sure my guests aren’t eating off a funky dusty table.

Enter the oilcloth tablecloth.

Three major benefits follow,
One is the easy to wipe down-ness of the oilcloth.
Two is the cost and durability.
Three is the fact that you can cut it yourself!

I love to order oilcloth from any online retailer to size. See, my 10 foot picnic table is tough to dress in the average tablecloth sizes.

You can find chalkboard oilcloth, floral oilcloth, even checked. And it all looks styley.

In measuring, you want to remember that the tablecloth should drape at least eight inches down from the table’s edge. Longer, it will plop in your guests’ laps, shorter, and it won’t cover the table completely.

Hose or wipe the tablecloth down when you’re done and maintenance is simple.

Like I says before, you’ll find my pasta salad (in the photo below) hearty and thick, loaded with Italian and Californian influences.

My orzo salad, however, is all light and fresh and brisk. Like most of these summertime recipes, it pairs well with (oops) Sauvignon Blanc.

Ingredients
8 ounces orzo (or about 1 1/4 cups)
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/2 lemon’s worth of lemon juice
1/2 cup olive oil
1 1/4 pounds tomatoes, seeded and chopped into 1/2-inch pieces
3/4 cup chopped green onions
1/2 cup chopped, pitted black olives
1/4 cup thinly sliced fresh basil
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Directions
Cook orzo in large pot of boiling salted water until tender, stirring every once and a while.

Drain and rinse under cold water.
Drain again and then put in a medium bowl and cool.

Mix the vinegar and lemon juice together in small bowl. Use a fork to slowly whisk in oil.

Pour dressing over orzo. Gently stir in the remaining ingredients. Salt and pepper the mixture until it tastes delicious.

(This can be made several hours before serving. Stir before serving at room temperature.)

I recently invested in some fancy skewers from a fancy home goods store. Like with any brand new purchase, we needed to come up with some supertasty dishes to make our investment worth our while.

Enter skewer day!

The photo below is from our “poked and skewered” themed bocce night, but illustrates the tastiness appropriately.

During our skewer day, we enjoyed steak, prawns and vegetables all grilled separately.

Steak chunks.

I cut 2 New York steaks into roughly 2 inch chunks. I then tossed the chunks with a marinade composed of:

2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar (doesn’t need to be the expensive kind)
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp ground black pepper

And then let them sit at room temperature for roughly 30 minutes.
Then I slid the meat on the skewers where they awaited their grilling.

Prawns.

1 pound of prawns/very large shrimp were tossed with their own special marinade. To slow the cooking time, I tossed the prawns with their shells on, and then let the lucky eaters peel their own.

2 cloves garlic
Juice from 1 lemon
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

These don’t need to marinate long, just toss, skewer and to the grill with you!

Vegetables

On our vegetable skewers, we used the following:
Mushrooms, red peppers, shallots and broccoli.

My better half hated the broccoli, but I thought it brought some much needed green to the party.

These were tossed with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste before skewering and grilling.

We grilled the steak first, then the prawns and vegetables at the same time.
The steak was allowed to rest while the prawns and veggies sizzled.

If I were you, I’d serve this with one bottle of (oops) Carmenere and one bottle of (oops) Sauvignon Blanc. That way, you can pick which one you like better.

I served these with grilled corn on the cob and pasta salad. No taco wraps, no sandwiches, this is a fork-stabbing meal.

Happy May!

This month our theme is “outdoor entertaining.”

Yes, some parts of the country are still a little chilly, but it’s warm where I am and I’m itchy to get outside with my friends to celebrate this change.

This month we’re going to decorate, marinate, grill, light, surprise, prepare and do all the things together that make outdoor entertaining a success.

Also, not sure if you’re interested in this kind of thing or not, but we’ve also changed our back end to Wordpress, to more happily accommodate tagging, categorization and other organization. Thanks for your patience while we update our pages.