South Dakota, Sioux Falls - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - Strawbale Winery

Strawbale Winery is out in the country just north of Sioux Falls.  They have been in business for seven years now and make wines from local fruits so there were lots of choices in the sweet or semi-sweet category that we prefer.  The tastings cost $5 for five choices and you get to keep the glass.  Since we were the only ones there at the time, the owner suggested we try 10 wines and split the tasting sample, so that was what we did.  She was pretty generous with the samples so it’s probably a good thing that we decided not to go to the other winery we planned on visiting today.

 

Strawbale has live music every Friday and a Sangria party on Sunday.  We won’t get to either of those this week.  The Friday night event lasts until after dark and the winery is located on a gravel road.  Motorcycles, gravel roads and darkness aren’t good companions and we do our best to stay safe.  On Sunday night we plan on square dancing for the last time with the friends we have met here.

It looks like they have a nice stage.  They say they have 200-400 people here every Friday night.

And the seating for sipping wine outside and enjoying the sunshine is great.

 

We stayed inside today and had some good conversations with the owners.  They suggested some things to do in Sioux Falls – we’ve hit about all of them.

We ended up purchasing some plum, cranberry and black current wines.  I’m a fan of plum wine with Chinese food.  Greg and I both liked the cranberry wine and neither of us liked the black current wine.  So why did we purchase it?  Well, after the tasting the owner brought out a sample of their Strawbale Black Ice.  It’s a slushy drink made of equal parts of Black Current Wine, Jose Cuervo Lime Margarita Mix and crushed ice.  Wow, is it good.

On the way back home we stopped at Harley Davidson to get some duplicate keys ordered for the bike.  Since it is our only mode of transportation, it seemed wise to have a spare set of keys.  Wouldn’t you know the 2014 models are out and they have made a lot of nice improvements – Greg was definitely interested.  The 2014 bikes had just arrived at the dealership and they didn’t even have prices on them yet.  They are having a Bike Night tomorrow night and we plan to go (just for the food and music).  At these events they usually have some good discounts on merchandise and we have been thinking about getting new rain suits.  They have some new ones out that are lightweight and are orange with reflective stripes.  That seems a much better option than the grey ones we have now.

I forgot to mention in my post last night that we finally thawed the wonderful shrimp our friends Barbara and Anne brought us before we left Indiana.  I even made their recipe for Shrimp ‘n Bread.  It is so good but definitely something you don’t want to make very often since it has two sticks of butter in it.

I worked on the recipe scanning project some more yesterday and as I was going through some of my old recipes I came across a copy of one that came from my mom.  She mentioned a few months ago that she used to have a really good banana cake recipe but she didn’t know what had happened to it – I think this might be it.  If not, it still sounds pretty good.

Banana Cake

Use your favorite white cake mix.  Follow directions on package.  Fold in 1 cup banana pulp.  Bake about 5 minutes longer than time specified on cake mix package.

Banana Filling & Icing

1 c. whipping cream

½ c. confectioners’ sugar

1 c. banana pulp

½ tsp. vanilla

Few grains salt

Beat cream until stiff and add sugar.  Fold in banana pulp, vanilla and salt.