Valentine’s Brunch with Eighteen Twenty Wines

Each year we like to gather our gal pals together and celebrate one of our favorite holidays: Galentine’s Day. It’s a way to celebrate true friendship by kicking it lady style – which includes, but is not limited to getting dolled up, eating yummy food, much laughter, and embracing pure femininity. It takes the pressure off of Valentine’s Day, which traditionally only validates the romantic kind of love and excludes those who are single.

This year we hosted a bagel brunch at one of our favorite local wineries, Eighteen Twenty Wines. Located at 219 Anderson Street in Portland, the tasting room’s cute pastel interior and abundance of delicious rhubarb wines paired excellently with our girly tablescape and general theme. While according to Leslie Knope of Parks and Rec (the original source of Galentine’s Day) waffles are the ideal choice for serving at brunch, we opted for a build-your-own bagel bar. Not only is it super easy to pull together since it does not require any cooking time, but everyone seems to love bagels.

Lucky for us living in Portland we have access to some pretty incredible fresh-baked bagels and topping options. You can easily recreate your own bagel brunch at home for Galentine’s Day or simply just because. For instance, our set up and prep time took less than ten minutes in total, plus the cute pink plates and Valentine’s themed decorations were all from the Dollar Tree making it super inexpensive to pull together.

What You’ll Need:

The bagels you serve should be as fresh as possible. For instance, we picked ours up the morning of at our go-to bagel shop Rose Foods. Be sure to get a variety: plain, everything, sesame, and poppy. Also, it wouldn’t be a bagel without cream cheese – we highly recommend the olive cream cheese Rose Foods carries.
Provide guests with all the topping choices. For instance, we used a large cutting board to serve sliced heirloom tomatoes, avocado, cucumbers, radishes, red onion, lemon wedges, and fresh herbs. Plus if you really want to spoil your friends treat them to smoked salmon and caviar. For instance, we served a few different options from renowned seafood purveyor Browne Trading Company: Scotch Cold Salmon, Lemon and Dill Smoked Salmon, Prime Galilee Osetra, and Hackleback caviar.
Instead of serving your typical morning mimosa, we were excited to cheers with locally crafted rhubarb wines. The Victoria is our favorite and compares closely to a tart and zingy rose. Plus bonus points that the wine is a beautiful pink hue perfect for Galentine’s.

When shopping for caviar, the most important thing to consider is that you trust your source. Hands down we will always recommend Browne Trading Company. They are the premier supplier of fine caviar and smoked seafood to both elite restaurants and home kitchens across the U.S. Lucky for us they are based out of Portland but fret not if you’re not local, they sell their caviars online.

We are major foodies at the Fashion Cookbook, so we tend to not only be adventures with foods, exploring new tastes and textures, but we are also more willing to splurge on food experiences. If you are new to caviar don’t be scared! If you can get over the looks of it and concept (raw fish eggs) you can open your palate to new flavors and taste profiles that you never dreamed possible. For instance, during our bagel brunch, we were able to expose our friends to two unique caviars.

Hackleback has become a popular alternative to the more traditional sturgeon roes and is a more budget-conscious option. It has a delicate texture and a mild earthy flavor.
Oestra caviar has a nutty flavor, clean finish and firm texture. The Prime Galilee Osetra is a fine example of an Osetra sturgeon caviar with the utmost quality and taste.

We are beyond lucky to share in common the love of food with our dearest friends! A brunch featuring fresh bagels, top quality seafood, and handcrafted rhubarb wine was so special and truly made us feel not only so much joy but also loved and supported to be able to share this experience with such incredible women. We hope you share love and support with your friends this week in ways that are special to you!