Four years ago today, my son, Oliver, was born.

Four. Wow.

We had a little party for him on Saturday morning with some of his friends from his preschool. Truthfully, we celebrated Oliver all weekend. That’s the great thing about a birthday, right? It always stretches out for a few days, and if you’re lucky, maybe even a week.

Oliver’s party invitations came from Tiny Prints. I love that store. I buy invitations and holiday cards from them all the time. And, no, they didn’t pay me to say that. I wish they did, but they didn’t.

If I were a good mom, I would have baked and decorated the birthday cake myself, staying up all hours of the night until it was just perfect. But, I’m a busy works-full-time-and-has-too-much-stuff-going-on kind of mom, so I didn’t. I’m also into maintaining my sanity for as long as possible. So I ordered a cake. And, as usual, the Publix cake decorators did a fantastic job matching the decorations to the invitation.

(And don’t tell anyone, but I’m totally addicted to the Publix buttercream frosting, so I’ll order a Publix cake any chance I get. Shh..)

Madeline had specifically requested a bouncy house with a slide for her brother’s party, and, because he’s still in awe of his big sister, Oliver wanted whatever she told him he wanted. We, of course, obeyed. I also set up an activity table with foam stickers and foam craft paper. As it turned out, the stickers were a huge hit among all the kids  – boys and girls alike.

“I had a fun day,” Oliver told me before he went to bed Saturday night. My heart warmed. I had a fun day, too.

I’ve had a fun four years, in fact. The most fun ever.

For my submission to September’s RSVP Redux, I decided to go with the savory spinach, feta, and peppadew muffins from the Singita Sweni Lodge in South Africa. Except, of course, that I had no intention of tracking down any peppadew peppers if they weren’t immediately available in my local grocery store. Which they weren’t. I could have ordered them from here, but I didn’t. Instead, I used roasted red peppers, an easy substitution that was readily available right next to the jars of pickles and olives at Publix.

If given the option, I’ll always go for easy when it comes to cooking. There’s just too much going on in my life to ignore easy.

Instead of regular paprika, I jazzed up the muffin a bit by using pimenton de la vera, a sweet smoked paprika. This has become my go-to paprika, and I highly recommend picking up a container of it. A little goes a long way, so I typically don’t need to use very much.

The recipe instructions called for letting them cool completely before serving, and after making them, I agree completely. The savory flavors came together well upon cooling, and the flavors were even more pronounced on the next day. The muffins made a great snack and would make a wonderful appetizer, although it would be difficult to do them in smaller sizes without sacrificing some of the pieces of feta, spinach, and red pepper that made the muffins so visually appealing.

The verdict here? These are great for grown-ups, but my kids had a more difficult time with them. My more adventurous eater, the six-year old, really wanted to like them. Because of her tomato hang-up, she just couldn’t get past the pieces of tomato-look-alike red pepper scattered throughout the muffins. The almost-4-year old wouldn’t even give the muffins a second look. Too much color in them for him.

And, of course, now I can’t stop thinking about those peppadew peppers. Wonder what those would have tasted like?

Savory Spinach, Feta, and Roasted Red Pepper Muffins

Only slightly tweaked from the Singita Sweni Lodge recipe mentioned in RSVP, Bon Appétit, September 2010 issue.

Ingredients:

Nonstick vegetable oil spray
2 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon smoked paprika (Pimenton de la Vera - Dulce)
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup whole milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 cup thinly sliced spinach leaves
3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/2 cup chopped drained roasted red peppers from jar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray 12 standard muffin cups with nonstick spray. Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, paprika, and salt in medium bowl. Whisk milk, oil, and eggs in large bowl to blend. Add dry ingredients and stir just until blended. Add spinach, feta, and peppers. Fold to incorporate evenly. Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin cups (cups will be filled to the top).

Bake muffins until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, 25 to 28 minutes. Cool 5 minutes. Run knife around muffins to release from pan. Invert pan to release muffins, then turn muffins right side up and cool completely.

Print

One of my favorite ways to spend an evening is at a wine tasting, especially when I get to taste wines that I am completely unfamiliar with. A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went to a wine tasting featuring the wines of Finca Allende, a Spanish winery in the Rioja region. Spanish wines are, for me, a bit of a mystery – much like Italian and French wines – so I was happy to learn a little more about them.

The wines we tasted ranged in price from $15 a bottle to (hold on to your seats) $200 a bottle. The priciest of the wines were the 2004 Pago Del Calvario Rioja – my personal favorite of the reds that we tasted – and the Finca Allende Aurus Rioja.

But I’m not going to tell you more about these reds, because that’s not what we walked out with at the end of the night. We left with a couple of bottles of a lovely white wine that started off the tasting – a bottle called Jorge Ordoñez & Co. Botani Moscatel Seco.

This wine is a beautiful wine, very easy to sip and linger over. It’s crisp and refreshing, and even though it’s made with the Muscat grape, this is not a sweet wine (hence seco, which means dry). This is the type of wine that is great on it’s own, as an aperitif, or with seafood or Chinese takeout or just about anything else you’d want to eat in the summer.  It cost about $15 a bottle, so maybe it’s a little pricier than one might like for a typical bargain wine, but it’s so, so worth it.

I wish I could write about wine in as beautiful a fashion as Jancis Robinson is able to do, but I just can’t. I don’t speak that beautiful wine language. Since she does – and did – please go read what she said about this wine. And then go find a bottle or three.