The Mimosa Dilemma

In honor of this summer's harvest and all things girly, I decided to have a little garden tea party this weekend.  It would give me the opportunity to finally have my double dutch teammates over to my garden since they have been hearing incessant news about it since December. I put my garden's bounty to use in a few choice recipes: Caprese salad (i.e. slices of my heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil, and mozzarella from the Farmer's market with a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil), Disappearing Zucchini Orzo, tea sandwiches (with the crusts cut off!) with homemade hummus and cucumbers, and mini-zucchini bread loaf "favors" (i.e. little loaves, packaged up and ready to go home with my guests). 

As a special treat and challenge for myself, I made baguettes for the first time ever to go with the Caprese salad. They came from yet another fabulous recipe in the Kneadlessly Simple cookbook. They were actually pretty simple to make, although it required some hand-shaping and I had to make a baguette tray (a baking pan with two long troughs) out of foil. While they weren't as long and perfect looking as the baguettes you'd see in a French bakery, they tasted delicious. I think with a little practice, I could get it dialed in. 

I was inspired by Molly on Orangette to make peaches in white wine. I served them in the beautiful little antique tea cups my friend Gina lent me. It was delightful to eat wine-soaked peaches out of dainty cups and saucers. Plus, it allowed for polite sipping of all the delicious juice after the peaches had been eaten. A bowl just wouldn't do. 

Now, this brings us to the title of today's post. When asked what my guests could bring, I suggested a bottle of champagne. Mimosas seem girly and elegant – the perfect choice when you've asked all your guests to wear tea party dresses for the occasion. However, when I made that suggestion, I had no idea I'd be confronted with a localtarian dilemma. 

On our way home from the farmer's market, on the day before the party, I realized I had to stop by the store to buy orange juice for the mimosas. Now I know oranges don't grow in the Pacific Northwest, but I was hoping that I could get some juice from the sunny state of California, just a few states away. But since I don't ever drink orange juice, especially now that I started this local/seasonal endeavor, I had no idea how difficult that would be. Jake and I began scouring the store, looking at every brand of orange juice there was, trying to find out where the oranges in the orange juice came from. The most information we could get was that while the OJ might have been packaged in California, the orange juice came from the USA (thank you so much for narrowing that down), Mexico, or Brazil! I wasn't about to buy orange juice from over 6,000 miles away after making painstaking efforts for almost a year to eat foods that come from within my own state.

So with that, we were off to another store, in hopes to find a more local brand of orange juice. When we got to that store and discovered the same 6,000 mile juice situation, we began exploring our options. Maybe another type of juice, we thought. But the other juices we found neglected to specify where the fruit had come from. Besides, when Jake picked up the bottle of carrot juice, I concluded that those exotic mimosa possibilities might deter my guests from ever braving my parties again. So, we decided on option number three: I would buy oranges and squeeze them myself. So I did. I bought six pounds of organic Valencia oranges, grown in California. Then, I invested in a mini hand juicer and set out to juice all the oranges by hand. $12 later, I had half a pitcher of orange juice and the most decadent, labor-intensive mimosas I have ever had. Needless to say, it was an eye-opening experience. It made me look at orange juice – an all-American beverage that we take for granted – in a whole new way.  

In the end, except for our California orange juice, it was a localtarian success. The champagne, provided by my guests, who know me all too well, came from Chateau St. Michelle in Woodinville. I'll definitely have a garden tea party again next year to celebrate the summer's harvest, but I'll think twice about serving mimosas.