mmm-yoso!!! is Kirk’s fascinating food and travel blog out of San Diego. Sometimes he lets Cathy or me, Ed (from Yuma), blog here too. Thanks!!!
I wish I could share with folks the great natural beauty and wonderful hospitality Tina and I experienced in Central Oregon. But I am uncomfortable writing about wonderful meals prepared by friends and family, and Tina and I both failed to take photos of the Cascade peaks and rugged scenery we witnessed our way down to Jackson County in Southern Oregon.
We arrived on a scorching (108°+) afternoon in the Rogue Valley too early for our motel room, so we sought the house where I grew up and the nearby house of my grandparents. Pulling into the driveway there, we were greeted by the current owner, who was happy to learn about the history of the house and happy to share some details about living in Medford these days. After he learned that we were interested in wine tasting, he insisted that we drive a short way to 2Hawk winery, nearby on N. Phoenix Rd.
Located about 2 ½ miles from where I grew up, the brand-new winery was built with old wood: 
Amazing to see vineyards where there were once empty fields or cow pastures at the edge of town: 
The tasting room was modern and attractive, the servers were very friendly and helpful, and some of the folks at the winery seemed like locals who drop by in the afternoons: 
2Hawk offered a couple of different tasting flights, but their lineup was limited but good: 
In fact, limited supply seems to be plaguing many of the new Southern Oregon wineries. One place we stopped was out of wine to sell, and when I came back two days later to 2Hawk to pick up a bottle of their excellent reserve Tempranillo, which they had kindly let me sample, they had none.
2335 N. Phoenix Road | Medford, OR 97504
541.779.WINE (9463)
http://www.2hawk.wine/
The Rogue Valley with nearly 30 wineries is the center of the Southern Oregon Vineyard industry but I wanted to take Tina over to the Applegate Valley, just to the west, because it is much more rural, very beautiful, and offers some distinctive wines.
But folks gotta eat; so we stopped in at the C St. Bistro in Jacksonville. Jacksonville, now is a very small town, has a historic district that goes back to the 1850s, when Jackson County was founded. It’s in a nice location up off the Valley floor some, but it would’ve been inconvenient for the railroads, so they went down to the heart of the Valley and created Medford.
The C St. Bistro is a small home style lunch and dinner spot in Jacksonville: 
http://www.cstbistro.com/
It has a pleasant patio though it was getting awfully hot by the end of lunch: 
I had a nice fresh lemonade that I failed to photograph. I opted for the turkey BLT, made with toasted homemade focaccia: 
Real roasted turkey – an abundant portion – was the highlight of the sandwich. Being lactose intolerant, I ordered the tomato soup with no sour cream. It was full of red ripe tomato flavors, but the acidity might have been better balanced with the sour cream as Tina’s was: 
But the real highlight of her lunch was the magnificent wild mushroom and melted cheese cibatta: 
Here’s a detailed photo: 
The bill was reasonable: 
We headed out of town on the Jacksonville/Ruch highway, which crosses a low spur of the mighty Siskiyou mountains and descends into the beautiful Applegate Valley: 
We stopped at only two wineries; the Schmidt family winery (the funnest in the Applegate Valley) seems to have a party going on constantly: 
330 Kubli Road Grants Pass, OR 97527
541-846-9985
https://sfvineyards.com/
I’m sure the wines were very good, we enjoyed the tasting for sure, but the emphasis at the winery seem to be on the beautiful grounds and picnic areas: 
Our last stop in the Applegate Valley was at Cowhorn vineyards a few miles south off the main road at the edge of the forest and the Valley, one of the most innovative and progressive vineyards in the Southern Oregon wine region: 
The entire winery has no carbon footprint. All employees have 52-week a year employment and healthcare. Though the winery is very new, some of their best wines Syrah, Grenache, and Tempranillo are some of the most sought after and expensive in the Valley and (in my humble opinion) some of the best tasting.
The vineyards are spread out from the winery: 
1665 Eastside Road
Jacksonville, OR 97530
(541) 899-6876
http://cowhornwine.com/
Tina and I thoroughly enjoyed the wine tasting and scenery. What makes Southern Oregon wineries unique is a variety of microclimates, most cooler than many regions in California, all more elevated than most other regions in Oregon or in California, and producing varietals not usually well represented in West Coast wineries such as Tempranillo, Grenache, Viogner, Roussanne.
If you’re in the area, you should definitely stop in and check out the one top 10 Vineyard area in the United States that you had probably never heard of before.
Fast forward to last week when The Mister and I were driving around with no plan except to find breakfast. We stopped here- Memo's Bagel Cafe. 
The bagel display looked the same as Pistachios had. 
So did the items being sold from the inside refrigerated section(although Pistachios had some of those items, notably the Middle Eastern flat breads, sold fresh and warm). There were pre-packed boxes of baklava next to the cash register- with the Pistachios label! We found it. The storefront is smaller, but one of the main draws for me-housemade bagels-were back.
Egg, cheese, sausage on an everything bagel ($4.75) was great- a good, thick, quality sausage, Swiss cheese, fluffy egg and the fresh, toasty bagel. It was perfect and as I remembered it. 
"The Works" ($5.75)- egg, cheese, bacon, turkey and ham on a spinach parmesan bagel. So good, so tasty, so much (quality) meat. You can see the bagel itself has a green tinge from the spinach. By itself, this bagel is tasty. 
with the toppings- the bottoms aren't 'plain'.
