Diane Padoven of Napa Farmhouse 1885 is living the dream. Several years ago she departed from her corporate job (and the 80-hour work weeks), to take a much needed, year-long break. During this time, she embraced her life-long love of quality foods by starting a blog to share the recipes she constructed. She also expanded it into a business selling gourmet foods and other handcrafted products.

Padoven credits her summers with her Grandmother for teaching her about quality ingredients and honing her love for cooking. “I believe quality ingredients are an investment. An investment in your health, in really good tasting food, in supporting small farmers and in the earth.”

Why Springpad? Padoven says that the recipe index is her primary reason for using it, since blog archives do not provide an adequate search capability. With Springpad, however,  you can categorize and tag recipes, which makes them easy to search and filter.

More tasty recipes from Napafarmhouse 1885:

Lavender Cookies
These simply delicious cookies are paired nicely with vanilla ice cream topped with a balsamic reduction.

Pasta with Cilantro Pesto
A fresh twist on an old Italian favorite – serve with a margarita?

Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Figs & Balsamic Reduction
Pork gets gourmet treatment here with sweet figs and a balsamic reduction.

• Follow Napafarmhouse 1885 in Springpad
• Follow Napafarmhouse 1885 on Twitter

recipes users