Cherry- Zinfandel Grilling Sauce

We had a party with our neighbors last weekend and have a family barbecue coming up this weekend for Memorial Day.  For the neighbor party I signed up to bring barbecue chicken, however, I didn't want to make my classic sauce, even though it is a favorite at our house during the warm months.  This time I wanted to make something different, something seasonal if possible.  Cherries came to mind.

I used to subscribe to quite a few food magazines.  Before I'd put them in the recycling bin, I'd go through and tear out the recipes I wanted to try.  I store these torn pages in pretty file folders along with my cookbooks.  Now, I subscribe to two cooking magazines and check the rest out from the library.  Then I go through and pin recipes that grab me to my Pinterest Foodie Love board.  Anyway, I remembered a recipe from one of those old magazine pages in my files.  I pulled it back in 2007 and somehow had not yet managed to make it.  Until last week.  

I ended up making two separate batches of this sauce.  The first time I made it I only slightly changed the original recipe.  The second time I modified it to taste exactly the way I wanted it to taste.  The recipe I'll leave you with is from my second time around, which is my just right. 

As for the chicken, it was scrumptious.  The next night I grilled a pork tenderloin and slathered it in the sauce just before pulling it from the grill.  For the Memorial Day gathering I'm hoping to find some good local corn to grill and serve drizzled with this sauce and some crumbled feta.  I'm also making my first ever batch of homemade lemon and sea salt ice cream to serve with individual blueberry tarts, a recipe I came across while looking through my old files for the cherry-zin sauce.  I'll get back to you on the ice cream and tarts!

Cherry-Zinfandel Grilling Sauce

(adapted from Sunset)

2 tbsp. olive oil  (I recommend using a high quality oil)

1 medium onion, chopped

3 tbsp. chopped garlic

1 1/2 cups dry red zinfandel (I recommend a Lodi zin)

1 cup ketchup

2/3 cup dried tart cherries

3 tbsp. cider vinegar

3 tbsp. worcestershire

1-2 tbsp. brown sugar

2 tbsp. Dijon mustard

3 tbsp. grated fresh ginger

1 tsp. anise extract (or seeds)

1. Pour olive oil into a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Add onions, stirring until soft.  Add garlic and stir, about 3-4 minutes.  Add next 9 ingredients and lower heat.  Add in fresh ground black pepper to taste.  Stir often and simmer until sauce thickens, about 20 minutes.  Remove sauce from heat and let cool, about 20 more minutes.  

2.  Pour sauce into a blender and blend until smooth.  If storing, pour into clean jars and seal.  Sauce should keep well refrigerated for up to one week.

I was reminded today...

We have a bird feeder right outside of our dining room.  Lately the windows have been open non-stop, which makes the birds seem like new members of our family.  Tonight at dinner Sully wildly informed us of a breed called red-winged blackbird sushi, and that these birds fly straight up into the sun and then burst into zombies, and that is how zombies are made.  Hysterical, yes.

I have a Kentucky bluebird nesting box on my Colorado fence.  It's unlikely that we will be able to attract bluebirds where we live, but wrens are a possibility.  When I hung the box three years ago this summer, the bluebird website said that it typically takes about three years before a bird will nest (in a more urban setting such as ours).  This week wrens have been on our feeder for the first time.  I hope.

Today I photographed a grandmother and her grandson.  There was such an abundance of gentle love present.  The images I captured of their relationship moved me to pieces.  To ponder loving your child's child.  That cool, warm place, just past the sea foam and before it gets so deep you can't see.  I think that's where grandma love lives.  

I was reminded today that life is good and beautiful.

I will. We will.

Two nights in a row I have slept.  With all windows open wide, comforted by cool air and night noises, I have deeply slept. 

It has been raining.  Rice paper-thin rain; pounding rain; cleansing rain.

The combination of this blessed rest and real spring rain has tempered me a bit, which is wonderful and most welcome right now.

My parenting map has been full of complex routes lately.  We are trying to navigate our way through some very jagged territory.  Feelings are all over the place, so much so that by day's end I truly don't know if I should laugh or cry.  Mostly, I have been slipping into a bath.  I have been reading this and this, and I have been quieting my mind, hopeful that I will find our way out of this disorienting place.

I will.  We will.

I was standing at the kitchen sink cleaning up this morning's mess when I decided that today what I needed most was to get out and do something creative.  Sully and I had most of the day to do anything we wanted.  

I wanted to take pictures.  He wanted to play football.  

We went to my favorite Denver neighborhood, our old neighborhood.  For the first time in a very long time, I brought the stroller with so that we could go for a long walk.  We ended up strolling for blocks, enjoying small chats with people along the way, and stopping in spots where I wanted to take photos.  Then we made our way to a favorite lunch spot of ours.  Then we went to the park.  We played football.  We dashed through the sprinklers in the garden where Eric and I got married.  We rested on a blanket in the shade and watched squirrels roll around in dirt. We were gone for almost five hours.  Sully fell asleep on the way home and I felt something close to peace.

As I type this it is back to night.  The windows are wide open again.  The words I will and we will are resting on my shoulder; not fully there, but there.