Welcome to Ripe and Luscious

A Marriage of Seasonal Food and Fine Local Wines

Tomatoes can be organically grown and sustainably produced year round and enjoyed, but at their seasonal peak, picked ripe from the garden, when their flavor is most intense and luscious, that is the greatest joy. “Ripe and Luscious,” a seasonal cookbook, is a marriage of fresh, farm-to-table, organically and sustainably grown local ingredients paired with outstanding Central Coast produced wines, with an occasional nod to local spirits, beer and tea. The Pacific Ocean creates a cool and temperate setting for Monterey Bay farmlands and vineyards. Our climate supports an exciting and exotic year-round abundance of fruits and vegetables, yielding a wide variety rarely appreciated elsewhere on our Earth.

We have become accustomed to enjoying the fresh, ripe bounty offered here year round without having to rely on imported, out of season ingredients. Consequently our menus feature and reflect nature at its most spectacular moment. Our passion is to create recipes and menus made from local and freshly harvested ingredients, devouring them at their peak, and finally enhancing flavors with wonderfully paired beverages.

“Ripe and Luscious” is a romance with food and an invitation to savor the flavors of the land. We delight in sharing cooking adventures using regional harvests with our local community and more distant neighbors. We are emphatic about using the freshest and best quality of ingredients. Once you’ve experienced eating your way through the year with the seasonal menus, you will begin to develop your own sense of what it means to “eat off the land,” and more importantly eating from your local land. You will more than likely weave your own family traditions into your recipes and invent new ones.

All of the recipes and menus, while regional, can be easily adapted or altered to reflect using your local, fresh ingredients. And please do! We have designed the menus by season and in layers: You may prepare a simple meal or dress it up with two or more courses designed to be additions or alternatives.

Savor the flavors of the farm-to-table experience. Neighbor or visitor, when you’re in the Monterey Bay area you can experience the central coast as a native. Most of our Farmers Markets are open all year round.

Savor the flavors of the farm-to-table experience.

— Barbara Woodruff and Jayne McCreadie