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Vintner shares favorite family foods in cookbook

By MARY JANE PARK
Published July 10, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - Erich and Joanne James Russell have homes in St. Petersburg and California. They travel the world. They make wine and olive oil from fruit grown in their orchards in Healdsburg and Paso Robles, Calif.

Their work is also their passion, which makes Joanne Russell's recent cookbook a natural extension of their interests.

A Cook's Tour of Rabbit Ridge Winery and Vineyards, published late last year by Central Coast Press of San Luis Obispo, Calif., is a coffee-table size volume filled with Jim Stoots' lush photographs of food and the changing seasons so integral to a vintner's art.

Joanne James Russell grew up in St. Petersburg and started cooking and studying about food in her teens, even before her career as a fashion buyer and model, before she earned a marketing degree from Eckerd College and before she married award-winning winemaker Erich Russell in 1999. Today, she is president of the winery, designs labels for the bottles and does much of the marketing for Rabbit Ridge.

The couple split their time between California and St. Petersburg, where she continues to model for charity fashion shows. She has taken numerous culinary arts courses, taught cooking classes and had a catering business.

The book took her "forever to finish," she said. The more she studied, the more she edited it.

But "you can be too much of a perfectionist," she said. "It's a comfortable, casual book. I wanted it to be sort of a personal piece of work for me."

Russell, 44, indulges in occasional treats but focuses mostly on healthful, flavorful foods. Wherever she is, she shops for fresh ingredients available locally and in season.

"You can't get good mangoes in California," she said, but they are plentiful in Florida this time of year. In the West, avocados and walnuts are more abundant.

Russell said she developed many of the recipes after dining in restaurants. "I would go home and try to re-create" dishes she had enjoyed. "That's fun, to be able to make something from memory."

The book contains personal favorites: Dad's Chili, developed by Russell's father, Bill James, shortly after he retired as a St. Petersburg bank president; Mom's Key Lime Pie, from her mother, widely known St. Petersburg artist Janice James; Sarah's Chocolate Chip and Ice Cream Tower, developed by her daughter; and Pasta with Bolognese Sauce.

The pasta dish is a favorite of her husband, a onetime college track star and middle school math teacher and coach who first made wine from a kit more than 30 years ago.

"He's just my biggest fan," Joanne Russell said. "When we're craving pasta, he can't get enough of it. We love Italian food."

Because the Russells own Rabbit Ridge and are its chief executives, people often think the winery paid for its publication.

Not so. Joanne Russell said she used her savings to underwrite the book, which costs $30 and is available through the winery's Web site: www.rabbitridgewinery.com click onto "Ordering Information"; or by calling (707) 431-7128; or fax (707) 431-8018.

[Last modified July 9, 2005, 23:34:17]