A Grape Sensation

Delicious seasonal dishes for a happy holiday

(Family Features) By incorporating versatile ingredients into your holiday cooking, you can make a vast array of tasty seasonal goodies.

For example, California grapes are abundant throughout the holiday season and add taste and visual appeal to dishes of all kinds, such as Seared Salmon with Spinach and Grapes, Grape Caprese Salad Hors d’ Oeuvres, Grapes in Rosé Wine Sauce and Wild Rice Stuffing with Grapes and Hazelnuts. Plus, they’re an easy, fresh, healthy snack to keep onhand for hungry guests waiting for the meal. With their natural beauty, grapes can also be used to create tablescapes and centerpieces for festive holiday se ings.

Find more holiday recipe inspiration at grapesfromcalifornia.com.

Seared Salmon with Spinach and Grapes

Servings: 4

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon pepper

4 salmon steaks or fillets (6 ounces each)

2 teaspoons honey

3 teaspoons olive oil, divided

1 large bunch spinach, washed and stemmed

1 clove garlic, minced

2 cups red California seedless grapes, halved

1/2 cup dry red wine

Heat oven to 325 F.

In small bowl, combine salt, mustard, thyme and pepper. Drizzle salmon fillets with honey and sprinkle with seasoning. Reserve any remaining seasoning.

In nonstick skillet or saute pan, heat 2 teaspoons olive oil. Brown both sides of salmon fillets over medium-high heat, about 4 minutes per side.

In baking dish, toss spinach and garlic with remaining olive oil. Place browned salmon on bed of spinach, cover loosely with aluminum foil and bake 8-10 minutes, or until salmon is just cooked through.

In skillet used to brown salmon, over medium-high heat saute grapes 1 minute. Add wine, bring to boil and reduce quantity by half. Season sauce to taste with remaining herb mixture.

Serve salmon on wilted spinach topped with grape and wine sauce.

Nutritional information per serving: 449 calories; 36 g protein; 20 g carbohydrates; 23 g fat; 45% calories from fat; 4.3 g saturated fat; 9% calories from saturated fat; 100 mg cholesterol; 730 mg sodium; 1,120 mg potassium; 1.6 g fiber.

Grape Caprese Salad Hors d’ Oeuvres

Servings: 24

Extra-virgin olive oil high-quality, aged balsamic vinegar freshly ground black pepper

24 decorative bamboo skewers

24 red seedless California

Hardy Mums Mums

grapes 24 fresh basil leaves

24 small, fresh mozzarella balls sea salt

On serving plate or platter, drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar, as desired. Sprinkle with pepper.

To assemble skewers: On each skewer, add one red grape, one small basil leaf and one ball fresh mozzarella.

Lay skewers on serving pla er and sprinkle with dash of sea salt.

Nutritional information per serving: 44 calories;

2.5 g protein; 1 g carbohydrates; 3 g fat; 64% calories from fat; 11 mg cholesterol; 20 mg sodium; .07 g fiber.

Grapes in Rosé Wine Sauce

Servings: 4

1 1/2 cups rosé wine

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 vanilla bean, split

1 pinch salt

3 cups halved red, green or black California grapes

In large skillet, bring wine, sugar, vanilla bean and salt to boil, stirring until sugar has dissolved. Stir in grapes and let cool.

Serving suggestion: Pour warm grapes over creme fraiche or vanilla ice cream.

Nutritional information per serving: 250 calories; 0 g protein; 49 g carbohydrates; 0 g fat (0% calories from fat); 0 g saturated fat (0% calories from saturated fat); 0 mg cholesterol; 55 mg sodium; 1 g fiber..

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Dear EarthTalk: What have we learned from storms like Katrina, Sandy and Harvey about protecting our coastal cities be er from the warming-intensified major storms hi ing them?

—Mitch Wyndam, Burlington, VT

One especially climate-resilient feature of NYC’s new Hunter’s Point South Park is a big playfield made of synthetic turf that can “detain” a half million gallons of water when the East River overflows during a high tide or storm surge. Credit: NYC Parks.

Major storms like Katrina,

Sandy and Harvey were devastating to local populations and reformed the landscapes of the regions where they made landfall. They also changed the way we think about—and design—our coastal cities. Let’s hope we’ve learned about where (and where not) to site habitable buildings as well as the importance of maintaining—even expanding—natural buffers that protect the places where people live from unnecessary property damage and/or loss of life.

New York City has go en busy bolstering itself against future “super storms” like 2012’s Sandy. Code changes like requiring electrical transformers to be in the upper floors (not basements) of commercial buildings, and developing feasible strategies for shu ering tunnels, airports and subways, are just a few of the changes wrought by Sandy.

Developing resilient infrastructure is another way that city planners are hoping to mitigate future flood- ing issues, like at the recently opened Hunter’s Point South Park along the East River in Queens. One especially climate-resilient feature of this park is a big playfield made of synthetic turf that can “detain” a half million gallons of water when the East River overflows during a high tide or storm surge. When the tide goes back out—or the storm moves on—the detained water is slowly released back into the river through a network of exfiltration channels hidden beneath landscape features.

An outer wall protects natural barrier marshes that filter water and can also absorb and detain more stormwater as needed.

It was surprising just how walloped New Orleans was by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, given that the city’s leaders and residents were used to regular flooding during storm events. But the damage, displacement and loss of life from this “100-year-storm” event spurred long overdue efforts to bolster the city’s defenses against floodwaters—includ- ing efforts to conserve and expand outer marshlands which serve as buffers against storm surges and flooding.

New Orleans also bolstered its infrastructure and capacity to handle flood waters. “Given similar evacuation conditions to those seen in Katrina, the [new] system is expected to reduce potential loss of life by as much as 86 percent without pumping and up to 97 percent with 50 percent pumping for a 100-year flood event,” reports Wolfgang Kron of insurance giant Munich Re. He adds that New Orleans’ postKatrina flood mitigation system should reduce property damage by 90 percent for a 100-year flood event and 75 percent for a 500-year event, compared to the pre-Katrina situation. While New Orleans hasn’t been tested on such a major scale since Katrina, everyone is hoping the projections bear out when the next major storm hits.

As for lessons learned from 2016’s Hurricane Harvey, it’s too soon to tell, as many Houston-area residents are still in recovery mode. But no doubt some of the lessons from Katrina and Sandy will be applied in Houston and other coastal cities around the world ge ing ready for rising sea levels and more extreme flooding and storm surges as global warming heats things up. EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk. See more at h ps:// emagazine.com. To donate, visit h ps://earthtalk.org. Send questions to: question@ earthtalk.org.