The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

A nyone who knows me knows I am a yoga freak, on my mat practicing each morning before coffee or hello.

Yoga and stretching keeps me vital, limber and most at peace with everyone and everything around me. I have practiced this method of living for the better part of thirty years, in the garden through summer and on the living room floor in winter, there's just no stopping me.

When I was asked to speak this year at the Green Festival in Seattle, May 21-22, I jumped at the chance. My lecture topic: "How we eat and think about food today," and my second reason for being a speaker at the festival this year is selfish; my original yoga teacher, Sandra Dietz, of Santa Cruz, California, will be teaching classes in the festival tent and I plan on attending one class.

She's a master fitness yogi and today, at a young eighty years of age, she can still put an insomniac asleep with her soft sing-song voice. The Green Festival is breaking records in attendance all over the world with booths: vegetarian cuisine, family entertainment, hands-on workshops, organic wine and beer, live music, green building products, ecofashion, natural body and health, kids green zone and yoga and movement. If you are interested, check out their web page at: GreenFestivals.org.

Is rural the new suburb today? Yes, have you noticed the folks coming into town and starting businesses in our small communities? How about the excavation of roads at the Blue Mountain Station project on the outskirts of town? It just goes to show that the winds of change are upon the towns and villages in the Touchet Valley. Pride on the Eastern Side, can only go just so far and today, new currency is needed to breathe life back into our communities.

I walked into Walla Walla's Reininger Winery (509-522- 1994) looking for the 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon, Gold winner at the San Francisco World Wine Competition. This Cab, made of grapes from the legendary local Pepper Bridge and Seven Hills Vineyards, is simply divine. Exhibiting a nose of aromatic wild berries, this complex well-balanced red wine drips in espresso-chocolate nuances rolling in a long legged cinnamon tongue, perfect with a little Ricotta Pate appetizer. The '07 Cab is blended with 5% Petit Verdot and 3% Cab Franc.

Winemaker Chuck Reininger is what I would call a "Wine to Food" expert. Some winemakers make wine for food bent on a dry palate. Chuck's '07 Cabernet, with its lilting succulence demands softer foods big in round opulent flavors. Here's to Chuck Reininger, who earns 98 points from Wine and County Living for your ability to blend perfume and leather in a gracious fruit forwardness. Congratulations Team Reininger! Until next week, "Eat Art, Drink Imagination!"

Lemon Ricotta Spread

1-cup ricotta

½-cup fresh feta crumbles

1-tablespoon snipped fresh chives

1-teaspoon lemon zest

1-teaspoon minced garlic

Coarse salt and cracked black pepper to taste

In a food processor add all and blend until very smooth. Pour into bowl and serve with water crackers, paired with Reininger '07 Cabernet Sauvignon.

Hear Judith Speak @www.chefjudithhenderson.com