tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11545160823083490722024-02-21T04:11:07.412-08:00Wines & RoseDrinking, Eating and Trying to Stop and Smell the RosesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger205125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-74798799978487057622013-05-30T11:35:00.002-07:002013-05-30T11:59:11.437-07:00Candle Man-TownI admit it, I love Yankee Candles. I burn them daily in almost every room of the house.<br />
<br />
There is a Yankee Candle outlet in the Berkshires, where I used to go with my parents, and my Dad and I loved going there and bringing back a whole array of scented delights.<br />
<br />
These trips were the bane of my poor mother's existence, because the smell of those candles makes her sick. <br />
<br />
I, however, love them. I especially love the warm holiday-type fragrances that have a touch of cinnamon and nutmeg in them. And there's a Sage & Citrus that is absolutely delicious. I used to love the Hazelnut Coffee, too, but it started to make me crave crullers too much, so I had to stop burning that one.<br />
<br />
They often come out with new seasonal scents, and I look forward to whatever new concoctions they create. But recently, they have developed a new line that has me scratching my head.<br />
<br />
It's called <i>Man Candles, Manly Scented Candles</i>. I kid you not. Thus far, the scents include <i>Mmm, Bacon, Movie Night, First Down, Man Town</i>, and <i>Riding Mower.</i><br />
<br />
Again, I'm not kidding.<br />
<br />
I always thought that the purpose of scented candles was to obliterate the smell of, say bacon, or popcorn, or, you know, man.<br />
<br />
What does <i>First Down</i> smell like? Football-player butt-crack? Sweat sock? Jock strap? How about <i>Riding Mower,</i> does that smell like oil and gasoline?<br />
<br />
And how about <i>Man-Town</i>? That's the scariest one of all. I shudder to think what a Man Town would smell like. Cigars? <i>Man Town</i> sounds like a gay bar, which makes the whole notion of what it would smell like even more horrifying.<br />
<br />
Why don't they just make one that's called <i>Hairy Armpit</i>, or<i> Fart</i>? We all know that's probably what Man Town would smell like anyway, don't we?<br />
<br />
If these are the manly candles, what would the womanly candles be called? <i>Placenta</i>? <i>Baby poop</i>? <i>Summer's Eve</i>? <i> Barefoot and Pregnant</i>? <br />
<br />
No matter how hard Yankee Candle tries, I'm not sure it's ever possible to make a candle manly.<br />
<br />
I mean, can you see a group of guys gathering at someone's house to watch a game, or play poker, and the host saying to one of his friends: "Hey, Biff, grab me a beer, and light the Fart candle, would ya?"<br />
<br />
Well, he might, I guess, if it was a fart candle.<br />
<br />
They love that kind of thing in Man Town.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-92225960381053474142013-05-25T11:26:00.001-07:002013-05-25T11:26:28.174-07:00It's In ThereIn my last blog email, I included a yummy smoothie recipe, and I thought what might be fun would be to look at the ingredients in said smoothie and see what each of those ingredients is doing for your body.<br />
<br />
I find it nice sometimes to think of what my body is getting out of what I eat, and it often helps me decide whether or not to eat it.<br />
<br />
To refresh, the smoothie recipe was as follows:<br />
<br />
3 cups almond, soy, rice or other milk<br />
1 cup frozen mango<br />
1/2 cup frozen blueberries<br />
1/3 cup yogurt of your choice<br />
2 tablespoons almond or cashew butter<br />
2 tablespoons cacao powder<br />
1-2 tablespoons maple syrup or agave<br />
dash of cinnamon<br />
5 kale leaves, stems removed<br />
large handful spinach<br />
<br />
Put everything in a blender and whip it up good!<br />
<br />
OK, so what've we got? (Much of this info is from <i>The Juice Master</i> by, Jason Vale)<br />
<br />
<b>MILKS:</b> Often fortified with calcium, which is good for bone health. Though I have learned recently that calcium can interfere with iron absorption, so I opt for an almond milk without calcium added. <br />
<b>MANGO: </b>Source of vitamins B and C (good for brain and nerves, growth of body tissues, healthy skin and vision, boosts immune system, neutralizes free-radicals, aids absorption of calcium and iron), beta-carotene (antioxidant, cardiovascular health, boosts immune system), flavonoids, potassium (aids muscle and nerve function, helps maintain normal blood-sugar levels, helps control blood pressure), antioxidants and magnesium (important for healthy bones and teeth, helps transmit nerve impulses).<br />
<b>BLUEBERRIES:</b> anti-bacterial, antiviral, disease-fighting, anti-aging. <br />
<b>YOGURT:</b> calcium, friendly bacteria for healthy gut.<br />
<b>ALMOND BUTTER: </b> Nuts are great sources of protein and heart-healthy fats. Great, long-lasting energy.<br />
<b>CACAO: </b> raw cocoa powder loaded with antioxidants and iron.<br />
<b>MAPLE SYRUP OR AGAVE:</b> Lower-glycemic sweeteners<br />
<b>CINNAMON:</b> wonder-spice which helps regulate blood sugar, reduce bad cholesterol, fight infection, reduces pain linked to arthritis, may reduce proliferation of cancer cells.<br />
<b>KALE:</b> Beta-carotene, calcium, Vitamins A & C, chlorophyll, folic acid (helps blood cells, helps prevent birth defects, helps fight anemia), iron (helps produce hemoglobin which carries oxygen around the body), phosphorous(building block for proteins, carbohydrates and fats).<br />
<b>SPINACH:</b> Anti-cancer, memory aid, antioxidant, anti-anemia.<br />
<br />
Not bad for one beverage, huh? Drink your smoothies, friends, your body will thank you!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-14884113221996329292013-05-23T09:28:00.000-07:002013-05-23T09:28:22.797-07:00Got Milk?My dog woke me up this morning by barking and then pooping on the floor. Poor guy, he's obviously sick, and he was so distressed and upset that he'd lost control in the house like that, that he spent the next minutes glued to our sides, tail between his legs, as if trying to make sure that we knew how sorry he was.<br />
<br />
I bring this up not to be disgusting (well, not ONLY to be disgusting), but because any time he gets sick like this, which doesn't happen often, I worry that it's my fault.<br />
<br />
A while back, I started making his dog food, which he eats raw. And even though incidents, according to my vet, in which dogs become ill from eating fresh raw meat and eggs is extremely rare, I still worry that my food is what is making him sick, and I feel terribly guilty.<br />
<br />
This leads me to think about his food, and the quality of meat and veggies I feed him, and how strongly I feel about not feeding him crappy processed dog food because I want him to live forever.<br />
<br />
And this leads me to think about what I put in my own body, and leads me to wonder how I can be so careful about feeding my dog whole, natural foods, while very often I don't take the same care with my own diet and body.<br />
<br />
I am a smart person, and I know that processed foods and excess sugar and salt are not good for me, so why do I so often crave them? Why am I relentlessly tempted by breakfast cereals and bbq chips?<br />
<br />
The answer is, really, because it's a conspiracy. Walk into any major supermarket, and you will be awash in processed foods. It is overwhelming. There is the one produce section, and then, really, everything else is processed. Even the meats.<br />
<br />
I looked at a package of ground turkey recently, and noticed that it had "added flavorings". What added flavorings are they putting in plain ground turkey? Why would they do that? What is wrong with the way the meat tastes naturally?<br />
<br />
Food is a multi-billion dollar industry. Our foods are designed by teams of scientists, and engineered to make us crave them, and need desperately to come back for more, and more and more. These foods are designed with salt, sugar and other chemicals to literally create an addiction of sorts, to ensure that we continue to spend our money on them.<br />
<br />
How can I, one small, sugar-lovin' lady, compete with that? I'm only human after all.<br />
<br />
The amazing Kris Carr, about whom I will talk more another time, said something like "If the food is engineered in a lab, it needs to be digested in a lab", not in our bodies.<br />
<br />
It's an interesting notion.<br />
<br />
These food-engineering feats are insidious, and these same addictive ingredients seem to be in everything. Store-bought bread, tomato sauces, salad dressings, all contain sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, salt and often MSG. Why???<br />
<br />
Because our bodies will crave more of the same later, and we will go out and buy more of the foods that contain these items.<br />
<br />
I find it difficult not to feel utterly betrayed.<br />
<br />
Because ultimately, it's all about making someone else rich. The food industry makes money off of me stuffing my face and getting fat and unhealthy, the diet industry makes billions by making me hate myself for stuffing my face and getting fat, and the health-care and pharmaceutical companies make a fortune off of my being sick from stuffing my face and getting fat.<br />
<br />
And in all of these instances, the bottom line is that none of these industries actually give a shit about any of us. They manipulate us emotionally, physically, and chemically, and they do it all so that they can get richer and richer. <br />
<br />
Believe me, no matter what they say, these industries do not want anyone to return to a whole-food, natural diet, because if everybody did that, all of these industries would collapse.<br />
<br />
So here, folks, have some salt, sugar, corn syrup and MSG!<br />
<br />
One of the most compelling examples of the insidious tainting of our food comes courtesy of Jamie Oliver, who, at the TED awards, talked about (among other things) chocolate milk, served in schools, marketed to children.<br />
<br />
These cartons of milk have sugar and added flavorings, and he estimates that children who have school breakfasts and lunches drink two cartons of this milk a day. This gives them 8 tablespoons of sugar per day.<br />
<br />
In a rather dramatic illustration of how much sugar this daily amount adds up to over 5 years of school, he dumped a wheelbarrow full of sugar on the stage, and reminded the audience that this was 5 years of sugar from MILK ONLY.<br />
<br />
(Jamie Oliver might not be everybody's cup of tea, but it is worth watching his speech.) <br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWFZ0asfGtU" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWFZ0asfGtU</a><br />
<br />
Now, I love sugar, and I'm not sure I could ever cut it out of my diet altogether, but, as with most things, moderation is key. But how can we possibly have a fighting chance at moderation when sugar is appearing in foods and drinks that have no business being sweetened? It's like being behind before you've even started.<br />
<br />
I bought a cookbook recently called <b><i>Nourishing Traditions</i></b>, and I'm sure I'll mention it more in another post, but one of the things it brought to my attention was how so much of the processed foods in supermarkets are made of things that are unpronounceable, and often, unrecognizable.<br />
<br />
How much of our food is food? Do we always know what we're actually eating?<br />
<br />
This book does sort of a "name-that-food" feature, in which they provide the ingredients, and leave the reader to try and guess what the food is.<br />
<br />
Want to try one?<br />
<br />
<i>Ingredients:</i><br />
<i>Water, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, mono-and diglycerides, soy protein, sodium stearoyl lactylate, dipotassium phosphate, polysorbate 60, sodium acid pyrophosphate, salt, artificial flavor, colored with betacarotene.</i><br />
<br />
OK, what is it?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-28207026151193175022013-05-13T09:22:00.002-07:002013-05-13T09:22:56.448-07:00The Dark Side of JuicingYes, there is a dark side to juicing...it's called a beet.<br />
<br />
Beets are hard-core. Seriously, vicious.<br />
<br />
I'm not exaggerating. They will kick your ass. Into next year.<br />
<br />
They are dangerous. I think they might actually be Satan in vegetable form.<br />
<br />
I'm now afraid to open my crisper, because I know. There are. Beets. In. There.<br />
<br />
I have had prior, fairly pleasant experiences with beets, both roasted and pickled.<br />
<br />
Except, to be honest, that one time when I ate a whole dish of grains and roasted beets with beet juice, and the next day terrified myself with a bright red poop which made me think I was dying, until I remembered the festival of beets I had eaten the night before.<br />
<br />
But never before had I juiced a beet. Listen to me. Save yourself. Don't do it.<br />
<br />
I am trying to boost my iron intake, and the first iron supplement I took made me almost puke in the shower, so I decided to try and increase my iron levels with food, if possible.<br />
<br />
Beets are supposed to be a good source of iron, so I thought, what the hell, I like beets, let's give it a go!<br />
<br />
The first recipe we tried called for 2 beets, and since the ones we got at the market were small, I decided to use about 6.<br />
<br />
Steve texted me the next morning and told me to take it easy with the beet-juice concoction, since he had felt really sick for a while after he'd drunk his. Steve has an iron stomach, so for him to say something made him feel sick should have been a giant flashing warning light to me. I drank about 2 sips and decided to get rid of the rest, just in case.<br />
<br />
This morning, because we still had beets left, i decided to try again, this time with fewer beets. I used 2 small beets, plus a bunch of carrots, some apples and pears. It tasted delicious, and i thought the beet juice was diluted enough to not cause any issues.<br />
<br />
Cut to me spending the next hour in and out of the bathroom, almost puking in the shower yet again, and then getting in bed for half the day.<br />
<br />
This was very exciting for the dog, who happily jumped up on the bed next to me, and then spent the next hour and a half systematically and incrementally (while pretending to be asleep) pushing me all the way to the edge of the bed until I could no longer turn over without falling out.<br />
<br />
I spent a bit of time after that doing some research on beets, and here is what I learned (all according to The Cancer Nutrition Center): <br />
<br />
Beet juice is super-detoxifying, and can dump too many toxins into the liver, more than the liver can successfully process, causing a person (me) to feel ill.<br />
<br />
It can paralyze your vocal chords. Why, I do not know. Presumably to prevent a person from crying out for help. This is very important in the service of beet-domination.<br />
<br />
Beets have a strong effect on gut motility and the lower intestinal tract. This is what can cause a person (me), to poop out everything she has eaten since the sixth grade after consuming them.<br />
<br />
They are strong medicine, and can cause vomiting and general weakness.<br />
<br />
They can cause redness of the stool and urine. This actually has a name "Beeturia", I kid you not. But don't worry, the site reassures, this does not mean you are bleeding internally.<br />
<br />
Not yet anyway.<br />
<br />
You will be soon, though, if the beets have their way.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-58509585925851090692013-05-08T19:41:00.001-07:002013-05-08T19:41:28.162-07:00An Apple a Day...<br />Let's for a moment talk about bad doctors.<br />
Because they are out there.<br />
<br />
And this week I went to one.<br />
<br />
I have been very lucky in my life to, for the most part, have had very good doctors.<br />
<br />
There have, of course, been a smattering that were not so great, but this one the other day takes<br />
the cake.<br />
<br />
She is not my usual internist, she is filling in for my doc who is on maternity leave. <br />
Normally, i would just have waited for my regular doc to come back from her leave, but I wanted to talk to someone about my anemia and come up with an action plan.<br />
<br />
Right from the start, this new doc seemed to not really be sure what was going on. She spent more time hunched over her computer screen than she did talking to me.<br />
<br />
She looked at my blood work results, barely asking me any questions.<br />
<br />
She then kindly suggested that my anemia could be caused either by dietary insufficiency, or by internal bleeding.<br />
<br />
Yup, that's right, internal bleeding. She then asked me if there was a history of colon cancer in my family.<br />
<br />
She then went out of the room to do something, God knows what, ask one of the nurses what her own name was and how to use a door-knob maybe.<br />
<br />
Then she walked back in and asked if i ever take antacids. Now, one of the first things most doctors<br />
do is ask what medications people take. She never bothered, nor did she look at my chart, because if she had she would have seen everything I'm taking, one of which is a daily pill for my acid reflux.<br />
<br />
But no, I think she missed that day at medical school, along with the day when they taught bedside manner and taught that maybe you don't want to right away suggest to your patient that they might have colon cancer.<br />
<br />
She also went on to tell me all the medical risks of one of the other pills I take, including blood clots, heart attack and breast cancer.<br />
<br />
So in the span of about 5 minutes, she's given me a heart attack and two different forms of cancer.<br />
Nice work, doc.<br />
<br />
I left her office feeling like my head was on backwards, wondering what the hell had just happened.<br />
<br />
I am seriously amazed that this woman was allowed to graduate from medical school. Come to think of it, i don't know for sure that she did.<br />
<br />
Either way, I'm never going back to her, nor is Steve, so in one afternoon, she cost the woman she's subbing for two patients.<br />
<br />
It reminded me that good medical care is not a given, and that whenever possible, we should never be afraid to demand or seek out better care for ourselves and our loved ones.<br />
<br />
So I've made an appointment with a different doctor at another practice. We'll see.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, I'll have another apple, please. <br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-83784529161472939862013-05-02T17:52:00.000-07:002013-05-04T10:26:09.644-07:00The Real ThingThis morning started with a smoothie made from pineapple, cucumber, cilantro, coconut water, agave and vanilla. Yum.<br />
<br />
The cilantro came from the farmer's market, and let me say, if you haven't had really good fresh cilantro, you are missing out. This stuff was insanely, headily fragrant. It bore almost no resemblance to the limp, insipid stuff I've been getting at the regular market.<br />
<br />
I admit I am a bit behind the times with the whole farmer's market thing. Sadly, I tend to dislike most of them, because they always seem to be full of very rich, entitled, superior people waving around their all-natural hemp bags, which they had made for them personally by some poor kid in Guatemala.<br />
<br />
I wind up wanting to do bad things around these people, like wave around a lot of plastic bags, shouting that they're non-compostable, or talk about how much I hate polar bears and ice, and how I'm so happy to have just bought my fifth SUV, which I enjoy idling for hours in the driveway, while spraying aerosol cans out the window. All, of course, while wearing a gigantic, Aretha Franklin-style fur coat.<br />
<br />
But recently, Steve and I discovered a great farmer's market about a mile from our house. It was small, not too crowded, and seemed to be populated by mostly normal people. There were food trucks, and live music playing, and people were dancing and having a good time.<br />
<br />
We bought some wonderful organic produce, to boot. Gorgeous ripe strawberries that tasted like candy, super-sweet carrots, the lovely cilantro, dark green kale, loads of apples. It was pretty fantastic. And about 1/4 the price of Whole Foods.<br />
<br />
One of the things we realized is that the fruit and veg we have been eating from the grocery stores, (even the good stores), bear no actual resemblance to the product that comes right out of the ground or off a tree. The real thing may not look as pretty as what you get on the market shelves, but boy oh boy, does it taste dynamite. <br />
<br />
The main thing I need to pay attention to is getting more iron in my diet. I could try an iron supplement, but I've read that they can cause nausea and constipation, both of which are the last things I need in my life.<br />
<br />
If i get any more constipated, I'll be pooping pellets, so, no thanks.<br />
<br />
I will try to do it through food first.<br />
<br />
Liver, anyone?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-41801819592194146842013-05-01T15:30:00.000-07:002013-05-01T15:30:03.932-07:00That Juice is CRAAAZY!!This morning Steve and I made a juice from kale, romaine lettuce, dandelion greens, kiwi, cucumber and apples.<br />
<br />
The recipe stated that this juice was particularly good for liver-detox.<br />
<br />
I don't know what exactly was going on with that juice, but it made me feel very strange. Sort of light-headed, and dizzy. I swear I could feel it doing something to my insides.<br />
<br />
I called Steve and he said he felt strange too, kind of high. Like he wanted to go run around.<br />
<br />
I couldn't decide if i wanted to go out and conquer the world or just lie down.<br />
<br />
Maybe it was all that extra LSD I added.<br />
<br />
It did make me think of how potent plants are, even everyday salad greens that I tend to ignore.<br />
<br />
My blood work came back.<br />
<br />
My cholesterol is a little high, which doesn't surprise me.<br />
My blood sugar is fine.<br />
<br />
The biggest issue seems to be that I am very anemic. This is not uncommon in women, and I have always been a bit anemic, but now it seems to be getting worse, so I need to start focusing on ingesting more iron-rich foods, like beans, dark, leafy greens, seaweed, and of course, blood.<br />
<br />
Being an anemic vampire is really embarrassing. What will all the other vampires say?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-46559849676533629132013-04-30T14:08:00.002-07:002013-04-30T14:08:16.050-07:00Juice This, Baby!The comma in the title of this post is very important. Otherwise it sounds like I'm advising people to "juice this baby", and that is not an appropriate use of a juicer. Or a baby.<br />
<br />
No, I am not talking about juicing babies, but rather the usual fruits and veggies.<br />
<br />
Yes, that's right, I am foregoing writing about wine in this blog for a couple of weeks, and instead will be writing about Steve's and my current adventure in healthy eating and juicing.<br />
<br />
So what has prompted this?<br />
<br />
Nothing terrible, luckily. Steve and I are both perfectly healthy, but we just started feeling like we weren't eating as well as we could. I think we also started suspecting that we weren't feeling as great as we could, either.<br />
<br />
To top it off, we saw a pretty fascinating and inspiring documentary called <i>Hungry for Change</i>. If you are a Netflix subscriber, it's currently streaming, and I highly recommend you watch it.<br />
<br />
In it, they talk about the billion-dollar food industry, and how all of the processed foods we find in our grocery stores are designed in laboratories and are specifically engineered to make sure our bodies continue to crave them, and keep us coming back for more.<br />
<br />
They talk also about our body's natural desire to feast whenever possible, to pad and protect itself in case there's a famine, but how that gets us in trouble because for many of us in this country, the famine never comes.<br />
<br />
It talks about much, much more, but i won't go into it all here right now. I'm certain to reference it repeatedly, don't you worry!<br />
<br />
This is a difficult exercise for me, this healthy eating, which fascinates me, because I am a smart person. I know the dangers of too much salt and sugar in ones diet. I know what is necessary to do in order to have a healthier body. I know how to cook, and cook pretty well. I know what I should and shouldn't buy at the supermarket.<br />
<br />
So why then don't I always do what I know is the best thing for my body and my health?<br />
<br />
I'm not quite sure, to be honest, and there are millions of others in the same boat which is why the diet industry is always booming.<br />
<br />
I admit, I love healthy foods, but I also love Annie's Mac & Cheese, and cereals (any and all of them), and Pop-Tarts, chips, cookies and cakes. And Pasta. I capitalize it because I love it that much. What a glorious food. Those Italians....<br />
<br />
There are so many aspects to eating, and why we eat what we eat. <br />
<br />
So many nights when I have eaten too many chips in the course of a day, or eaten half a jar of Nutella in a sitting, and then gone to bed, feeling terrible about myself.<br />
<br />
I don't want to do that anymore. More to the point, as I get older, I do start to realize more and more how truly extraordinary the human body is, and how important it is to treat it well.<br />
<br />
For me the biggest thing is re-framing how I think about eating; to make it more about health than about weight.<br />
<br />
One of the best points made in <i>Hungry for Change</i>, was that diets don't work because they are all about deprivation, and they force people to have to say "I can't", as in "I can't eat that anymore". And nothing makes a person want a particular food more than telling themselves they can't have it!<br />
<br />
Therefore this documentary suggested that people think more about adding than they do about subtracting.<br />
<br />
In other words, add more veggies and fruits and other whole foods. Focus on what can be added rather than on what must be taken away.<br />
<br />
Psychologically this is brilliant, and has already worked for me and Steve.<br />
<br />
So we have started by juicing, and in this way adding more fruits and veggies to our diet.<br />
<br />
I went to the doctor this morning to get my blood work done, so that I have a starting point on this adventure. Steve is going to get his done too.<br />
<br />
We are going to take photos of each other as well (no, not those kinds of photos, my goodness), to track any changes in appearance.<br />
<br />
I don't have the blood work back yet, obviously, but I will update when I do.<br />
i will also track Blood Pressure and Heart rate, to see if any changes occur there.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Today's readings (taken after blood-draw):</u></b><br />
<b>Heart rate: 73</b><br />
<b>Blood pressure: 126/83 </b><br />
<br />
Here is what we are trying to do:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Add more fruits and veggies, by<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie2wxR3UrxiQCAiXEzqF3PKkYQ7fmFJ8zBT47x_s8Q2Qu36Ly3U7GPxwuqqoc10cK72KuymYNvQn18VnylgmYgvfhT51yrk8IOAHMRLfcQpYB2CFzV1o2sSUK1VY5ay9aBPRXEYzLVvAg/s1600/first+juice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie2wxR3UrxiQCAiXEzqF3PKkYQ7fmFJ8zBT47x_s8Q2Qu36Ly3U7GPxwuqqoc10cK72KuymYNvQn18VnylgmYgvfhT51yrk8IOAHMRLfcQpYB2CFzV1o2sSUK1VY5ay9aBPRXEYzLVvAg/s320/first+juice.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
juicing our way to glory</li>
<li>Eat more whole foods (in other words, not processed)</li>
<li>Add more beans and legumes and have meat twice a week.</li>
<li>Move more (that's for me, of course, Steve is out riding his bike 150 miles every weekend, that bastard)</li>
</ul>
The picture is of our new juicer, and our first batch of juice!<br />
The juicer is awesome. You can stick a whole apple in there.<br />
<br />
<b>In the meantime, I would love to hear how you all think about food and what you eat.</b><br />
<b>Is there a single food principal that guides you? Certain rules you follow?</b><br />
<b>Do you focus more on weight, or on health when choosing foods?</b><br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-70062757784299399382012-06-24T13:27:00.000-07:002012-06-24T13:27:44.033-07:00Wine for Critters, Part INow as most of you probably know, living in an apartment or house of any kind usually involves dealing with critters of one variety or another: flies, mosquitos, bees, spiders, cockroaches, mice, etc. are par for the course.<br />
<br />
Growing up, I remember the occasional cricket finding its way into our basement, and when I was young, I burst into tears one time when I thought my father was about to kill one such intruder. Eventually, my dad managed to collect the cricket in some kind of a glass or jar and release him back into the wilds, where I imagine he was probably eaten by some other creature lurking outside.<br />
<br />
When I was about six, I spent an afternoon playdate in the woods with my friend, and the next morning discovered a tick attached to the back of my neck. I didn't know it was a tick of course; I just reached back to scratch an itch and discovered something lodged there that wouldn't move when I touched it.<br />
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I can only imagine the horror my mother must have felt when I asked her what it was. Luckily, my dad hadn't left for work yet, and he calmly announced that he was going to have to stick a burning match to the back of my neck and then pull the tick out.<br />
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I immediately dissolved into a fit of noisy tears, and I remember my dad wedging my head between his knees and lighting the match. Luckily, steady hands of a surgeon that he has, I didn't feel a thing, and the tick was successfully extracted. This was also in the days before Lyme disease, so that was one less thing to worry about.<br />
<br />
It's funny the vividness of these memories after all these years, and I remember watching my dad opening the garage door to leave for work following the tick removal and discovering that my hysterics had left a stream of tears and snot on his pants. That's gratitude for you.<br />
<br />
I have found San Francisco to be surprisingly free of critters for the most part compared to other places I've lived. Other than the occasional fly or spider, I have seen nothing.<br />
<br />
Until we moved to our house. We have seen nothing for the first year here, and then one night a while back, on the way home from work late one night, I saw three raccoons marching across the street near our house, and then, a couple of months ago, Steve came up from our garage which is also our laundry room, and announced that he had seen something run from behind the dryer to under the stairs.<br />
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This "thing" was either a mouse, or a mole, he wasn't sure. But it was small and brownish and fast. I'm not a person who is particularly afraid of mice, but still, I don't want them to start finding their way up into our living quarters. It would be better if we still had a cat, as I imagine that the dog would be useless.<br />
<br />
I grew up with mice in our basement, and I remember watching my dad removing their stiff little bodies from, and then re-setting, the snap traps. This was probably not the best idea for a surgeon, since one good snap could break a finger, but oh well.<br />
<br />
Needless to say, when Steve saw our houseguest, I immediately called in a pest control service, and they came out and put down traps of various varieties, and since doing this we have caught, exactly...nothing. Not a one.<br />
<br />
I had started to convince myself that maybe the mouse had just been a straggler, or maybe Steve had been hallucinating. It can happen.<br />
<br />
But about a month ago, when I had been lulled into a false sense of security, I went down to do laundry at about 8pm. I was standing there by the dryer, when suddenly something streaked by me. As it had before, it ran from behind the dryer and disappeared under the stairs. It was definitely a mouse, and since it startled me, I let out a cry, kind of an "Ahhhh!" Not really an "Eeeeeek" but close enough.<br />
<br />
Let's just say, I'm not going to win any toughness awards with that display. The dog heard it upstairs and started barking his head off. You'll notice, though, that he didn't come running to my rescue or anything. No, he just made a lot of noise, hoping that such a loud display would hide the fact that he was, in fact, too afraid to come down and face this creature head-on.<br />
<br />
I can hardly blame him. I went to sleep that night afraid that the mouse was going to start following me everywhere I went. In the middle of the night, Steve's hand brushed down the side of my leg, and I started awake, saying "I just felt the mouse".<br />
<br />
Steve thought I was crazy, but he's kind of used to my odd middle-of-the-night behavior. I once, in my sleep. pulled his pillow out from under his head, waking him up. When he asked what I was doing, I explained that I had thought it was a football. At the time, it made perfect sense.<br />
<br />
My Wine for Critters, Part I is a Quattro Mani Franciacorta DOCG sparkling wine. This bubbly hails from the Lombardia region of Italy, which is in Northern Italy, bordering Switzerland to the north, and wedged between the Piedmont and Veneto regions.<br />
<br />
Quattro Mani translates to "four hands" and is the product of four different Italian winemakers seeking to make terroir-driven wines using mostly Italian varietals, in this case Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Nero.<br />
<br />
This wine is a beautiful summer sipper, with notes of green apple, toasty bread, and lemon curd. It is absolutely delicious with summer salads and light, hard cheeses. A favorite of critters everywhere.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-1177598413473120522012-06-14T18:43:00.000-07:002012-06-14T18:45:49.122-07:00Wine for DadLast year, I devoted a post to the moms out there for Mother's Day, and this year, since Father's Day is fast-approaching, it is Dad's turn.<br />
<br />
My father, better known as Dr. Bob, or Boston Bob (my sister's father-in-law is also named Bob but hails from NY, and my father somehow didn't believe that my sister would immediately be able to recognize his voice on her answering machine, and so started identifying himself as "Boston Bob"), is quite a guy.<br />
<br />
A dedicated surgeon, he is, at over the age of 70, still working away, performing surgeries, and seeing patients. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that he's a little on the obsessive side. Once he gets a notion in his head, forget it, he will hang on and not let go until the idea either comes to fruition or has taken its last painful gasp.<br />
<br />
This compulsiveness is part of what makes him such a great doctor, but it could also drive his children a little nuts.<br />
<br />
I cannot lie: my dad was not the easiest guy to live with, but now, as an adult, with distance and insight, I can honestly say I feel a closeness to and an even greater appreciation for him and all that he has done in his life and for his children.<br />
<br />
Though I think he has always been disappointed in the fact that none of his kids became doctors like him, once he realized that my struggle to be an actor mirrored his struggle to become a surgeon, he got behind me wholeheartedly.<br />
<br />
Now on the surface, this sounds wonderful, but believe me, he most often drove me nuts with it! His favorite word in the world is "contact", as in "that person's a great contact", and he would enlist everybody he could, chase down anyone with a pulse, if he though they might, in any way, contribute to my acting career.<br />
<br />
He even, at one point, decided he was going to become my manager, and got stationary made up with "Dr. Bob's Agency" written on it. The poor man, I think he's still using that stationary to this day.<br />
<br />
If "contacts" is my dad's favorite word, then by far his favorite phrase is "buy low, sell high". I think those must have been the first words I ever spoke. I've never seen a man who's not actually a trader spend more time staring at the stock ticker or watching every existing investment show than he does.<br />
<br />
I remember the horrors of being forced to watch "Wall Street Week" as a kid. I can still hum the entire opening theme song, and I can remember the evolution of Louis Rukeyser's hairdos, and the fact that he drove me insane because he never seemed to swallow when he spoke. Seriously, I never saw him do it. I remember sitting there watching him, screaming to myself "Swallow, for the love of God, man, please swallow!!! How can a person talk so much but never need to swallow?!!"<br />
<br />
While Dr. Bob is often serious and intense, he can also be quite quirky and funny. One of my favorite illustrations of this is when, a few years ago, he got tired of the swelling squirrel population in his and my mom's backyard, and decided it was time to take action.<br />
<br />
So he bought a squirrel trap and put it in the backyard, and, low and behold, he caught one. This particular squirrel was, in my father's view, quite a guy, and my father named him Sport. He decided that Sport should be relocated somewhere green, and he chose a golf course. But not any golf course. He picked one that was at a country club which he felt was anti-semetic because it didn't have any Jewish members, and deposited Sport there.<br />
<br />
And not just Sport, for the next few months, this Jew-hating country club found themselves playing host to a burgeoning squirrel population. I only wished that my dad has dressed the squirrels up to look like hasidic jews, in little black suits, with the yarmulkes and curlicues hanging down the sides of their little heads.<br />
<br />
How great would it have been to see these upper class waspy white folks playing golf one day only to suddenly be witness to a flock of hasidic squirrels running by them, presumably on their way to Torah study, or maybe a Bar Mitzvah.<br />
<br />
In line with most men of his generation, my dad is not necessarily the most verbally communicative of people, but he certainly manages to say a lot with a few small gestures: I did a play called <i>Kaleidoscope</i> in NYC many years ago, and what did he buy me when it was finished? Yup, a little Kaleidoscope. And he got a tiny engraved plate on a stand with an image of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, as in "to dream the impossible dream". And now that I'm involved with wine, he's looking through his own cellar, trying to find bottles we might be able to drink together.<br />
<br />
But my favorite is a copy of Hemingway's <i>The Old Man and the Sea</i>, which he bought, one copy for me, and one for my sister, after a fishing trip she and I took with him on Martha's Vineyard when I was 16. <br />
<br />
Inside the front cover he wrote: "<i>To Emily and Jocelyn, I was very proud of both of you today. Always fight the good battle with equal courage. Love, Dad</i>". Somewhere out there, on that No-Jews-Allowed golf course, I know that Sport, the hasidic squirrel is saying "amen to that!" as he dodges the golf balls being lobbed at his head.<br />
<br />
My Wine for Dad is not a wine but rather a single-malt Scotch. I admit to not being a huge Scotch fan myself, but after working at the restaurant for a while, and smelling my way through our large selection, and experimenting with and tasting a few of them, I have begun to appreciate them more and more.<br />
<a href="http://www.themacallan.com/home.aspx">Macallan</a> Scotches hail from the beautiful Easter Elchies Estate, overlooking the Spey River in Northern Scotland, about 3 hours from the Edingurgh airport.<br />
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A single malt Scotch whiskey must be distilled at a single distillery, made entirely from malted barley, and matured in an oak cask in Scotland for a minimum of three years.<br />
<br />
Macallan uses new oak casks made from Spanish or American oak, some seasoned with sherry, some with bourbon, for the aging of their scotches.<br />
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They have quite a range of scotches, but the only ones I have tasted are the Macallan 10, 18 and 21. <br />
Obviously the longer they age, the richer, smoother , darker they become, with increasing notes of spice, dried fruit, vanilla and chocolate.<br />
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If your dad is a Scotch drinker, these would make an excellent gift, and an even better way to say "<i>Thanks, Dad, for driving me crazy, buying low and selling high, and dreaming the impossible dream.</i>"<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-65732568085120639182012-05-02T20:40:00.002-07:002012-05-02T20:47:32.595-07:00Wine for the Joy of RoombaOne thing I neglected to really think about before getting both my cat and dog was pet hair.<br />
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The cat I had years ago lived only to cuddle, sleep, eat, and deposit as much hair as she could on every available surface of my apartment.<br />
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This invariably included me, and the mistake of getting an almost all-white cat when I had an almost all-black wardrobe soon became apparent. The sticky tape roller became my best friend, and since mere vacuuming wasn't enough, I was forced to throw a clean sheet over my couch whenever anyone came over, in case they mistook my couch cover for a bear rug. Or a gorilla suit.<br />
<br />
Clearly I didn't learn my lesson with her, because Tuco is mostly white as well. I was overjoyed when he was a puppy, though , because he seemed not to shed at all.<br />
<br />
How fabulous, I thought. We've managed to luck into a dog that doesn't shed!<br />
<br />
Oh, how I was mistaken: little by little, the scattering of doggie hair around our house began to increase, gradually covering the rug and creating tumbleweeds that blew across the wood floors within a day or so of vacuuming.<br />
<br />
The only way to keep the house truly hair-free would have been to vacuum daily, and I'm sorry, but house-proud as I am, i just could not bring myself to do it that often. Not to mention that every time I open the closet door that hides the vacuum, the dog runs away in fear.<br />
<br />
It was a random woman at the dog park who told me about the Roomba; a small round robotic vacuum that swivels itself around your house of its own accord, sucking up dirt and hair along the way.<br />
<br />
Well I couldn't resist, I got one. And I'm not going to lie to you, I was immediately in love. I can simply press the "clean" button before I leave the house and the Roomba will toodle around the house and clean it while I'm away. The best part is it has a little docking station, and when the vacuum is done cleaning or its battery gets low, the Roomba docks itself and charges.<br />
<br />
It's pretty fab. Tuco, however, is not so sure, and the first time I took it out of its box and set it to charge on its docking station, Tuco became afraid and I had to pick him up. It hadn't even started cleaning yet.<br />
<br />
When it did, he stared at it, sniffed at it, jumped backward when it bumped into his paws, and then began to chase it around barking at it.<br />
<br />
But by far the strangest behavior occurred that night and the night after:<br />
<br />
Tuco just wouldn't settle. He ran around the house, then he stood still, staring at us pathetically, imploringly. He hid between our living room chairs, looking up at us, only to run away a few moments later.<br />
<br />
Something was really wrong: he seemed sick, and i kept taking him outside to see if he needed to poop, but once outside he seemed fine.<br />
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Maybe, I thought, in his doggie way, he was trying to tell us an earthquake was coming.<br />
<br />
He looked desperately at us, begging us to help him, but we had absolutely no idea what was wrong, so how could we know what to do?<br />
<br />
It was shaping up to be a very long and freaky evening, when Steve, clever lad that he is, had the brilliant idea to unplug the Roomba docking station. I admit, I was skeptical of this move, and the thought "oh yeah, that'll do it" crossed my mind.<br />
<br />
But as soon as the words finished forming in my head, I realized that Steve had been right. Tuco immediately seemed better. His eyes relaxed, he stopped standing and running around, and he lay down and almost instantly fell asleep.<br />
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It must have been that whatever signal the docking station emits to draw the Roomba to it must be at a frequency which humans can't hear but dogs can.<br />
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I can only imagine how it must have been driving Tuco crazy, like an incessant test of the Emergency Broadcast System, or a fire alarm that won't turn off. Try relaxing or sleeping through that. It's no wonder he was happier outside.<br />
<br />
So now I know: I need to plug in the Roomba when we leave the house, and unplug it when we get home again. After all, now that I have experienced the joy of the Roomba and a house not swimming in dog hair, I can never go back again.<br />
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Now if someone would only invent a robot to vacuum the actual dog, I would be in heaven.<br />
<br />
My Wine for the Joy of Roomba is a 2008 Tardieu-Laurent "Les Becs Fins". This red wine hails from the Cotes du Rhone Villages appellation in the Southern Rhone Valley in France.<br />
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A blend of Grenache and Syrah, this wine has nicely balanced tannins and acidity, with rich, ripe red and black fruits, tobacco, dried flowers and herbs. The 2009 is probably easier to get now than the 2008, and can be found for under $24 a bottle.<br />
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A lot of wine for the money, we serve it with squab at the restaurant, but it would also be perfect for those days when you just want to curl up with a glass of wine, sit back and watch the Roomba do the work for you. Just make sure to put earmuffs on your pooch first.<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-40889130439795275472012-04-12T17:55:00.002-07:002012-04-13T13:40:31.501-07:00Wine for the Long, Hot ShowerThere are few things in like I enjoy more than a long hot shower. Put me under the steady stream with some lavender body wash and soft lighting and I am in relaxation heaven.<div><br /></div><div>I am not kidding when I say long shower, unfortunately for our water bill. I have been known to stay in there for 25 minutes, and when I was growing up, in a house with 4 other individuals, it was a bad morning when anyone in my family let me take a shower first, because invariably by the time i was finished there was little hot water remaining. This might explain why no one in my family liked me until i moved out of the house.</div><div><br /></div><div>In my opinion, a good shower requires good water pressure, and so it should be no surprise when I tell you that I believe the low-flow shower head represents one of the lower points in our existence. </div><div><div><br /></div><div>I am all for being conscientious, but how can one have a truly great shower when the water is more like a mist than a rain. Especially when it's really cold out, it's just cruel, to have a small trickle of warm water touching one part of your shivering body while the rest goosebumps in the cold air.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>And forget about ever really washing shampoo or conditioner out of your hair. Low water pressure means an ever-present slick of hair products always clinging to my locks.</div><div><br /></div><div>My most recent shower head was more than a trickle but less than powerful, and I was distressed when suddenly the water pressure seemed to ebb to the point where I could barely get my hair wet.</div><div><br /></div><div>I called the plumber out in case there was something suddenly wrong with the pipes, and imagine my surprise when he informed me that the problem lay in the shower head itself. He removed it from its arm, and showed me the inside filter that had flipped on its side, blocking water flow, and also showed me the green restrictor, which has tiny holes which restrict the water flow. It is this little piece of plastic that makes it a "low-flow" shower head. The plumber told me that these teeny holes can easily become blocked by as little as a grain if sand, making water flow even less forceful.</div><div><br /></div><div>Imagine my joy when he further informed me that this restrictor could be removed, thereby giving me a shower head with unimpeded water flow! Finally, I thought, a proper shower with some oomph to it!</div><div><br /></div><div>But, I questioned, wouldn't this make our water bills skyrocket? You probably won't even notice the difference, he assured me, because the stronger water pressure usually equals shorter showers.</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, I thought, we'll see about that. </div><div><br /></div><div>It was with great anticipation and excitement that I got into my shower the next morning. So imagine my surprise when I found I had entered a chamber of terror rather than my peaceful shower.</div><div><br /></div><div>To say that I now had increased water pressure would be an understatement. The force of this shower blew me halfway across my bathroom the first time I turned it on. I had to fight my way back against it while covering vital organs.</div><div><br /></div><div>The noise of it obliterated all other sounds including those of my shocked and agonized screams; the drain couldn't handle the amount of water and within 15 seconds I was standing in a foot and a half of it; and within about 6 minutes, all the hot water was gone.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's true that the force of the water rinsed out all of the hair products i used since the 5th grade, unfortunately it also removed large clumps of hair. I sometimes shave in the shower, but now I don't need to, since the needles of water ripped most of it out by the roots. I used to wash my face in the shower, but I stopped since I was afraid that I might lose a nostril.</div><div><br /></div><div>The plumber was certainly right about me taking shorter showers. I'm in and out of there as quickly as I can be because I'm now terrified of it. I approach it like a lion tamer, complete with stool and whip. Or like a boxer, bob and weave, baby, bob and weave.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sadly, it is back to the low-flow for me. I may emerge from it with hair that is greasier than it was when I got in, but at least I leave with all my body parts accounted for, and that is no small matter.</div><div><br /></div><div>My Wine for the Long, Hot Shower is a little concoction I whipped up myself at brunch with Steve a few weeks ago.</div><div><br /></div><div>We were at Presidio Social Club in the Presidio, one of my favorite spots. For those of you in the Bay Area it is worth a visit for the ambiance and the mac & cheese alone.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have become enamored of rose champagnes and sparkling wines lately, and am on a mission to try as many as I can and find the best ones. At this brunch, i decided to try and add a little something to the California bubbly I had ordered by adding a shot of St. Germain Elderflower liqueur to it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Success! It was absolutely delicious. The elderflower added a slight sweetness and floral quality to the lightly berried bubbly. Yum, yum and yum. Try it with your favorite rose sparkler and let me know what you think.</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, if you have a rose Champagne you think I should try, please let me know!</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-38148626882064017802012-03-21T11:56:00.005-07:002012-03-22T14:27:30.344-07:00Wine for Doggie Communication<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiwJOm5XqO6qx_orKPOLxnl-FZ0AI4UAfAPCS26qDwexw9qPqAEQBVV6O0QiT21n5y6PUZwf3zNcQ6ebNt3ayessqSh0h6juMQ01Wkn3J_p4Huv23aZ6Hs8bGx5jfUeXTzkq01HmKg7FE/s1600/Tuco+stare.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiwJOm5XqO6qx_orKPOLxnl-FZ0AI4UAfAPCS26qDwexw9qPqAEQBVV6O0QiT21n5y6PUZwf3zNcQ6ebNt3ayessqSh0h6juMQ01Wkn3J_p4Huv23aZ6Hs8bGx5jfUeXTzkq01HmKg7FE/s320/Tuco+stare.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5722836044619124242" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>As anyone who has pets can tell you, after a while you develop a certain understanding with your pet, a way that you communicate with each other, verbal and non-verbal cues you pick up on so that you can understand what the other wants and needs in a given moment.</div><div><br /></div><div>Watching and interpreting Tuco's signs and signals is an ever-amusing and evolving sport, and seeing how he interprets us is even more so.</div><div><br /></div><div>For example, Tuco's peeing style: I always thought that all male dogs cocked their legs to pee right from the get-go, but I have since learned that this is not the case.</div><div><br /></div><div>Much of the time Tuco just kind of stretches his back legs out slightly and dips his hips and pees like that, kind of splay-legged, both back paws on the ground. He has quite a devil-may-care stance when he does this, in my opinion, a kind of "A-hoy Matey!" attitude.</div><div><br /></div><div>When he is trying to send a message to other dogs however, be it on a walk or at the dog park against a shrub or tree trunk, then he cocks his leg. He does this with quite a bit of exuberance, shoving his leg up as high as it will go standing on the tip of his other back paw, I assume for maximum coverage.</div><div><br /></div><div>The problem with this is that he lifts his leg so high and lifts it with such a sudden movement that he often teeters over mid-pee, and then has to try and recover his dignity and make sure the other dogs don't suspect that he just fell over while having a wee wee.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the pee on the tree is always a clear message to other dogs that he was there.</div><div><br /></div><div>In other ways he makes himself clear to us:</div><div><br /></div><div>It's pretty clear when he stands by the door of the house that he needs to go out to pee, or when he won't leave the kitchen that he's telling us it's time to eat.</div><div><br /></div><div>He seems to understand us much of the time, too. When we say "sit", he sits. When we say "In your place", he runs into his crate. When we say "Do you want your breakfast (or lunch, or dinner)?" he runs into the kitchen, tail wagging.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are a few things that seem not to be quite so clear. Most dogs will become apoplectic when asked if they want to go out, or go for a walk, or go to the park. Tuco, however, when we ask him any of those questions, simply stares at us, maybe giving a slight tail wag, and then runs away from us as soon as he sees the leash.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is made more confusing by the fact that when I ask "Do you want to run an errand?" he is delighted and wags his tail no end and can't wait to go. Running an errand usually involves me driving somewhere and leaving him in the car while I go to Trader Joe's or Target. This seems, however, to be no end of fun for him for some reason.</div><div><br /></div><div>The fact that he runs away from us when he sees the leash is the oddest thing by far, because this is a dog that LOVES to go to the park and run and chase the ball, and in the mornings, when he needs to go somewhere to run, he lets us know it in no uncertain terms.</div><div><br /></div><div>It begins with him rolling around on his back, teeth bared, making odd snuffling and snorting noises. It then progresses to him staring at us from a distance. And staring. And staring. He then moves closer. And closer. Still staring (see photo above). Then he puts his chin in one of our laps. And stares.</div><div><br /></div><div>If that doesn't work, he moves on to the windows, raising the shades noisily with his snout and staring longingly outside. Then back at us. Then back outside.</div><div><br /></div><div>If this still doesn't produce results he then progresses to operation-squeaky-toy, during which he picks up a variety of squeaky toys and pillows in turn and obsessively squeaks them, so that there is no possibility of ignoring him and no way we can hear the television, or ourselves think.</div><div><br /></div><div>If that also fails, then he brings out the big guns: the chew toy. This is a dense, hard, plastic object which he will pick up and fling around the house, causing it to crash loudly against our hardwood floors. He will do this until our heads explode, or our floors are dented, or we finally, finally, take him out.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once in the car he paces around the back, whimpering, whining and groaning like Chewbacca until we finally get to the park, whereupon he flings himself dramatically against a tree to announce his arrival with a pee, loses his balance and falls over.</div><div><br /></div><div>My Wine for Doggie Communication is a 2009 Yves Leccia Domaine d'E Croce Patrimonio Rouge. This is red wine from the Patrimonio appellation in Corsica. The wine is made from 90% Niellucciu and 10% Grenache.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now if you have never heard of the Niellucciu grape varietal you are not alone. I had never heard of it either! In fact, I just made it up.</div><div><br /></div><div>No, that's not true either! Fact is, there is some dispute about the varietal itself, with some people claiming it is indigenous to the island of Corsica, while others maintaining it is a clone of the Sangiovese grape from Italy.</div><div><br /></div><div>Regardless of its origins, the wine is yummy. It can be something delicious and surprising to bring out for guests who tend to like Pinot Noir, but might like to try a wine that is unusual and probably unlike anything they've had before. It is not an overpowering wine, with lots of bright, juicy red berry fruit, notes of rose soap leaves and a pronounced essence of damp stone.</div><div><br /></div><div>I got it from <a href="http://kermitlynch.com/">Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant</a> in Berkeley, CA for around $28/bottle, and if you want to try it they ship anywhere in the US that allows. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-85273305896265579762012-03-01T16:15:00.004-08:002012-03-01T17:05:04.787-08:00Wine for The OscarsI confess, this year i did not watch the whole telecast, partly because Steve and I were at the dog park trying to exhaust our puppy menace for the evening, and partly because, well, to be honest, i just can't bear it anymore.<div><br /></div><div>How many more years can I sit there watching the telecast through my fingers, Steve and I frozen in horror saying things like: "Oh no, no, don't....don't look at it!! Don't look!!! Mute it, for the love of God, mute it now!!!!!!"</div><div><br /></div><div>I so want to love the Oscars, and there are so many reasons why I should be able to, but so much of it is just bad, so, so bad sometimes. </div><div><br /></div><div>And now that presenters have started directly addressing the actors who are nominated: "Rooney, your performance was so scary, it made my shorts get tight and my knickers grow long. You are, indeed, the girl with the boxy bangs in....The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", I just cringe and want to crawl under my chair.</div><div><br /></div><div>Is it just me that finds this horribly embarrassing? Does anyone else think it's just too much? Or am I simply The Girl with the Phobia of Direct Address?</div><div><br /></div><div>I do love the glamour, and the beautiful dresses and jewels, but I'm sorry, what was happening with Angelina Jolie's leg and voice? She looked like she was trying to do Jessica Rabbit singing "I'm a little teapot", showing us her handle and her spout. Why, why, why would she keep standing like that? It just was so odd.</div><div><br /></div><div>And the woman needs to eat. Seriously, that is not attractive, or healthy. When she gestured with her arm it looked like a half-eaten chicken wing.</div><div><br /></div><div>I unfortunately missed Billy Crystal's opening monologue and the black-face schtick he's getting so much flack for, so I can't comment on either, but i can say that he really, really, really needs to stop with the plastic surgery now. Like right now.</div><div><br /></div><div>His face is so shiny and stretched, he's starting to look like a woman. Or a man in drag as Irma Bombeck.</div><div><br /></div><div>I know no one wants to look old, but plastic surgery like that doesn't make a person look younger, it makes a person look like one of those alien-dolls people can squeeze to alleviate stress, so the eyes bug out and everything looks stretched and distorted.</div><div><br /></div><div>A woman came into the restaurant one night who had had so much plastic surgery on her face that she was starting to look like a Picasso, with a nose where her eye should be, and half her face on the back of her head. It wasn't pretty. And when I gave her wine to sniff, I had to hold the glass up to her ear, because that's where her left nostril was.</div><div><br /></div><div>Enough's enough. I have no problem with people trying out injections and fillers, to see if they can't plump things up a bit, but some of these surgeries just make people look like aliens.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm sure Meryl Streep and Glen Close have used some sort of line-fillers or something, but overall they look like they are aging gracefully and elegantly, and above all, allowing themselves to still look like real people.</div><div><br /></div><div>So Billy, you're such a funny guy...but be careful. If you don't stop with the knife now, in a few years, when you are still hosting The Oscars, some guy in his eighties is going to be watching you, cackling and saying "Now THAT is one funny broad!".</div><div><br /></div><div>My Wine for The Oscars is 2005 Bru Bache L'Eminence from the Jurancon, in Southwestern France. This is a very interesting and unusual-tasting wine. Wines from this area are made from more unusual varietals like Gros Manseng, Petit Manseng and Corbu, but the real thing that sets this wine apart is the fact the it has been deliberately exposed to oxygen, so it takes on a sherry, apple cider-like quality.</div><div><br /></div><div>The wine is sweet, but still bright with acidity, and is what we pair at the restaurant with our foie gras.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is golden in color, and sparkles in the glass. Perfect for a toast on Oscar night. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-33402463854849113562012-01-26T15:53:00.000-08:002012-01-26T16:56:47.914-08:00Wine for Rowing my Way to GloryNow I am well aware that it has been a ridiculously long time since my last posting, and really, there's no excuse for it, so I won't make one.<div><br /></div><div>We instead will pretend that I have been filling your in-box with wonderfully pithy posts for the past two months, making you laugh and cry and toast my name each time you read them.</div><div><br /></div><div>In that vein, we will just pick up where we've left off and jump right in:</div><div><br /></div><div>A few weeks ago, I turned 40. That's right, I did. And my husband got me a present. A big one, for a big birthday.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now what do you think a beloved husband might get for his adored and adoring wife on such a big birthday: diamonds? a surprise trip to Maui? A humongous bouquet of flowers?</div><div><br /></div><div>Nope. What i got was a rowing machine. For exercise. Like the ones they have at a gym.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now I know that getting someone a piece of exercise equipment for her birthday might seem a bit like putting a can of deodorant on a smelly French-teacher's desk (I didn't do this, of course, but some other kids in my school did. Mean, I know, but boy did that woman really need to take the hint.).</div><div><br /></div><div>And to get such a machine for your wife on a big birthday might sound as if he's saying "Happy Birthday!! You're 40! Please God do something about that ASS!!!!!!"</div><div><br /></div><div>But I promise you he's not saying that at all. Doesn't mean he's not thinking it, mind.</div><div><br /></div><div>But before you start sending him hate mail, let me tell you that I asked him to get it for me, crazy as that may seem.</div><div><br /></div><div>As many of you may know, I hate to exercise. Try as I may to convince myself otherwise, I really just hate it. I know it's good for health and well-being, and over the years I have tried various machines and classes and dvds, only to come once again to the inevitable conclusion that exercise is a terrible form of torture and punishment and should be avoided by one and all.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of everything I have tried over the years, only two forms of exercise have ever really stuck: walking and rowing. Steve finds it very funny that the only gym machine I like happens to be the one that almost everybody else in the gym studiously avoids.</div><div><br /></div><div>But I do like it; the smooth motion, and the fact that it's kind of a one-stop shop. It gives an intense cardio workout and pretty much works every muscle in your body (ok, not EVERY muscle, but you know what I mean).</div><div><br /></div><div>And since I did just turn 40, and am a bit concerned about the fact that I am getting older and at some point in the future, my boobs may wind up in permanent conversation with my knees, I decided it was time to take decisive action and try to get in better shape.</div><div><br /></div><div>Knowing there is no way I can get myself to the gym, I decided to bring the gym to me! Or one piece of it anyway.</div><div><br /></div><div>This rowing machine is pretty. Very pretty. Plus I can watch movies while I'm rowing, and it doesn't get much better than that. If i can just figure out a way to eat popcorn and drink a glass of wine at the same time, I think i will really be able to change how I feel about the whole exercise thing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now the hard part begins: actually getting on the thing and rowing away several times a week, one week after another.</div><div><br /></div><div>No doubt, I will need some help and encouragement along the way. And wine. Of course, wine.</div><div><br /></div><div>To that end, my wine for rowing my way to glory is an Italian digestif called an Amaro. These are after dinner drinks made from spirits that have been distilled with secret recipes of fruits, spices, flowers and herbs. Traditionally they have a sweetness offset by a bitter finish.</div><div><br /></div><div>My favorite one of the moment is Meletti Amaro, from the Adriatic Coast of Italy. A beautiful caramel amber color, the Meletti secret recipe includes saffron and anise and is deliciously sweet with a gentle bitterness at the end which is enticingly addictive.</div><div><br /></div><div>The best part is, you can find it online for $16.99 a bottle at <a href="http://www.klwines.com/detail.asp?sku=1038144">K & L Wines</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Trust me, try it once and you will be hooked.</div><div><br /></div><div>This stuff is so delicious that, when I served it at my house recently, one of my guests loved it so much, she wound up carrying the bottle around the house with her, kind of like a security blankie, never letting it out of her sight.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now that's Amaro!</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-11253470198637699182011-11-17T12:27:00.000-08:002011-11-17T14:29:58.483-08:00Wine for PepeOn Monday, my friend and co-worker Pepe passed away suddenly.<div><br /></div><div>No one, not even Pepe himself, had any idea he was so sick.</div><div><br /></div><div>He had been feeling under the weather for a while, and had a variety of different symptoms, one of which was a lump in his lower abdomen.</div><div><br /></div><div>A couple of weeks ago, he went to the doctor, who diagnosed him with a hernia, and scheduled him for surgery last Monday.</div><div><br /></div><div>During the surgery, they discovered that the lump was not in fact a hernia, but was actually a very swollen and infected lymph node.</div><div><br /></div><div>During the rest of the week doctors conducted a number of tests and discovered that he had a very advanced and aggressive form of Lymphoma, and this past Monday, he was scheduled to go in to see his doctor to discuss their plan of attack.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pepe lived alone, and when his friend arrived at his apartment this past Monday to take him to the doctor's, he discovered that Pepe had died.</div><div><br /></div><div>He was 47 years old.</div><div><br /></div><div>This whole turn of events is so shocking and so sudden, I can't quite wrap my head around it. How can it be possible that he is no longer here? How could everything have gone downhill so quickly; how could he have been at work one week and dead the next?</div><div><br /></div><div>I keep picturing him at work, taking orders, sneaking chocolates off the candy cart when he thought no one was looking, panicking when the restaurant got too busy, humming to himself while he ate his pre-shift dinner, and going behind the curtain so no one in the dining room could see him to do various dance moves and strange stretches for us. He loved to talk about movies and was always asking people if they had a "black swan" inside them, and proclaiming, when he was in certain moods, that he himself was the black swan.</div><div><br /></div><div>He was from Mexico, and his whole family still lives there, and he would often talk about how he wanted to go back there one day and maybe open a restaurant or bar. He was single, and he would often ask me if I thought it was too late for him to find love. It's never too late, I would always say.</div><div><br /></div><div>When he left at the end of his shift last Saturday, he was looking forward to his surgery, because he was so excited to finally feel better. We all were excited for him, too, and hugged him good-bye, saying how he was going to have a new lease on life after it was all over.</div><div><br /></div><div>Like most untimely deaths, it is hard to make sense of it; hard to have it feel real. Hard, of course to not think about ones own life and health, as well as the importance of living in the now.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is so cliched, I know, but there is no doubt that this kind of sudden passing makes me think about my own life, and health, and the fact that ultimately, none of us knows what the future holds.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is always this assumption that there is tomorrow, and a day after that, and a day after that. We assume, or at least, I do, that life stretches on, and there is time, always time, to do the things we want to do.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pepe's death reminds me that that is not always the case. We don't know how many tomorrows we have left, and it is worth it to try, in as much as we can, to live our lives the way we want to be living them now. Make the decisions we have been putting off until "one of these days", go places we want to go, share things with people we have been putting off sharing, eat that gelato you've been depriving yourself of, allow yourself to forgive and move on, take risks, be brave, you get the point.</div><div><br /></div><div>Above all, selfishly, Pepe's death makes me grateful, and thankful. Those are not emotions we are expected to have or express very often. We live in a culture that is all about wanting more. We are expected to live in a space of "never enough", of permanent dissatisfaction. We are never rich enough, famous enough, thin enough, young enough, successful enough, what have you. To be grateful is seen as laziness, as stagnation, how dare you be happy with who and where you are?</div><div><br /></div><div>But Pepe has made me think, and the fact that next week is Thanksgiving allows me to put a certain frame around it: I am thankful, indeed.</div><div><br /></div><div>I am thankful that I have wonderful parents and family; thankful that I have an incredible husband and amazing friends; thankful that I have an adorable puppy, a roof over my head, a job, and food to eat. I am thankful that I am healthy. I am thankful for good food, chocolate, and, of course, wonderful wine.</div><div><br /></div><div>I hope, this season, you will allow yourselves to feel thankful, too.</div><div><br /></div><div>Below are a few suggestions for wines that will enhance your Turkey-Day feast:</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.schramsberg.com/wines/brutrose.html">Schramsberg Brut Rose</a>. A California sparkler that is a delicious way to start the celebration.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>2009 Champalou Vouvray "La Cuvee des Fondraux"</b>. A beautiful white wine from the Loire Valley in France made from the Chenin Blanc grape. This off-dry wine is juicy and citrusy, peachy and honeyed with heavenly floral notes.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.canihanwines.com/default.aspx">Canihan Family Cellars</a> Pinot Noirs and Syrahs. You can't go wrong with any of these Certified Organic and award-winning wines from this family-owned Sonoma Valley winery. Pinot Noir is particularly good with turkey and cranberries, with its luscious cherry fruits and smoke. Visit their website to order directly.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.skipstoneranch.com/wine/">Skipstone Ranch Winery</a> Oliver's Blend. I have tasted the 2005 Oliver's Blend, but I believe the current release is 2008. These wines are also organic and hail from Geyserville, CA. Cabernet Sauvignon-based blends, these wines are full-bodied, elegant, smooth and rich. </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://kermitlynch.com/our_wines/patrick-bottex/">Patrick Bottex "La Cueille" Bugey-Cerdon</a>, France. This sparkling, sweet Gamay is a delightful and festive way to finish a meal. A gorgeous pink color, with sweet red apple and raspberry notes.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.niepoort-vinhos.com/en/ports/pdfs/COLHEITA_1998.en.pdf">Niepoort Colheita Port 1998</a>. When you have finished eating and are sitting on the couch exploding your zippers and popping off buttons, this is the time for an after-dinner drink. And in my mind, there is nothing better than Tawny Port. I am in love with this stuff. Sweet, with notes of dried fruit, apricots and figs. I can't imagine a better end to an evening.</div><div><br /></div><div>You can find most of these wines through <a href="http://www.wine-searcher.com/">winesearcher.com</a> <a href="http://kermitlynch.com/">Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant</a> or through their respective websites.</div><div><br /></div><div>Have a Happy Thanksgiving. I wish you good food, good drink, and good company.</div><div><br /></div><div>To Pepe, I wish you good night, "[and] flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."</div><div><br /></div><div>You will be missed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Cheers.</div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-44529213157599017342011-11-11T13:27:00.000-08:002011-11-11T13:29:53.341-08:00Wine for Having More Money than SenseThanksgiving approaches, and with it arrive new incarnations of the beautiful <a href="http://www.williams-sonoma.com/">Williams Sonoma</a> catalogues. Their Thanksgiving editions are always adorned with a picture of the most spectacular-looking turkey on the cover.<div><br /></div><div>This bird looks gorgeous; perfectly browned, crispy-skinned, dotted with herbs and spices. It is the Thanksgiving turkey of my dreams.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is not the turkey that I cooked several years ago for our friends Bonnie and Chang, which turned out to be just a little on the rare side when we started carving it and putting sloppy piles on a plate.</div><div><br /></div><div>Luckily, neither of them cared, and they encouraged me to just toss the whole mess back into the oven for a while, which I did. It cooked; we ate, and nobody got sick.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nor would this pictured bird taste like the one I made the year after that, which had brined for too long, or in too much solution, and was so salty it was almost inedible.</div><div><br /></div><div>Although, let's face it, that turkey on the cover is probably not even a real turkey; it's most likely made of plastic and photoshopped to look real, in which case it probably does taste like crap.</div><div><br /></div><div>But I digress. I was admiring the Williams Sonoma catalogue in its entirety, not just the cover. I love to look through these catalogues, if only to wonder who is buying some of the items in it. Some of them just seem so ridiculous.</div><div><br /></div><div>At least, they do at first. Take, for example, their omelette pan. This pan is a rectangle with three segments, to enable a person to make an omelette that is perfectly folded in thirds.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, is this necessary? Is it such a terrible thing to eat an omelette which has only been (God forbid) folded in half? Is it so hard, really, to just use a spatula?</div><div><br /></div><div>This catalogue, I scoff initially, is for people with more money than sense. I mean, come on. Does anybody actually need these things?</div><div><br /></div><div>But then, invariably, something happens. I flip through the catalogue, I look at the pictures of the different wares for sale, and the pictures are all so lovely, and the descriptions of the items are all so intriguing and confident, and the actual merchandise so perfect-looking, that i find myself suddenly thinking, well yes, actually, I need them.</div><div><br /></div><div>I want the omelette that has been perfectly flipped in thirds. And how have I survived all these years without the potato scrubbing gloves? I, like an idiot, have been using a vegetable-peeler!!</div><div><br /></div><div>Or what about the all-in-one avocado tool, or the tomato corer, the tomato knife, the pineapple slicer and dicer, the melon knife, the banana slicer, the mustard scooper, the donut cutter???!!</div><div><br /></div><div>I mean for God's sake, I've been using a regular knife and spoon all these years!! What have I been thinking??!!</div><div><br /></div><div>I need that egg-waffle pan, and the filled-pancake pan, and the waffled-pancake pan, I mean come on!!!! I need waffles, and pancakes...and the Darth Vader spatula with which to flip them.</div><div><br /></div><div>And what about the toast tongs? I mean, what kind of a moron removes toast from the toaster with her fingers?? Wake up, people, that toast is hot!!!</div><div><br /></div><div>Not to mention the meatball grill basket. I cannot tell you how many times Steve and I have fired up that Barbeque, and decided that instead of hot dogs, hamburgers or steak, what we really wanted to cook over the burning coals were meatballs.</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, you can imagine the nightmare of trying to get those meatballs placed just right over the grate, making sure they don't fall through and ignite in a fat-ball-of-flame. But then when I've made them bigger, the number of times I've burned my fingers, catching those suckers as they roll from one end of the grill to another, falling over the edge where I then wind up chasing them around the deck, trying to keep them out of the dog's mouth long enough to get them back on the grill and into perfect cooking position.</div><div><br /></div><div>All the while shouting at Steve, "dammit, man, I need a basket for these meatballs!!"</div><div><br /></div><div>My Wine for having more money than sense is actually two wines. <a href="http://www.huet-echansonne.com/Accueil/indexen.html">Domaine Huet</a> Le Mont Vouvray Sec and Demi-Sec.</div><div><br /></div><div>We have these wines at the restaurant at the moment, and I believe the Sec is 2010 and the Demi-Sec is 2007.</div><div><br /></div><div>These wines hail from the Loire Valley in France, specifically from the Vouvray appellation. The grape varietal is Chenin Blanc, which yields a lovely, floral juicy bouquet. The sec is supposedly dry and the demi-sec is off-dry.</div><div><br /></div><div>I say supposedly because the sec still has a little bit of sweetness to it, and could certainly not be called a bone-dry wine.</div><div><br /></div><div>These wines are just delicious, and the demi-sec especially makes a lovely aperatif wine, but we also serve it at the restaurant with a beet salad and a roasted squash appetizer, any dish that has a bit of natural sweetness to it.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think it could be delicious on turkey-day alongside your sweet potato casserole and cranberries.</div><div><br /></div><div>Just make sure you are using your special sweet-potato-mashing-gloves and marshmallow tongs. From Williams Sonoma, of course.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-81575544928542425222011-11-04T11:29:00.000-07:002011-11-04T13:59:20.754-07:00Wine for Chateau Margaux<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ9l1fgw9yDZ5yk1yTjDXHowJz3jKWqw6nrGxfVlk9H3qX9c64SE1SBlH-Lov2ZbVrLMNXcAPzocdFzF6DKFYzdcLU4JIc2vMAms5RYeJ9awxfNYnvMdfyk3OihrYNbjjx2lSrsFbp1M8/s1600/1989+margaux.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ9l1fgw9yDZ5yk1yTjDXHowJz3jKWqw6nrGxfVlk9H3qX9c64SE1SBlH-Lov2ZbVrLMNXcAPzocdFzF6DKFYzdcLU4JIc2vMAms5RYeJ9awxfNYnvMdfyk3OihrYNbjjx2lSrsFbp1M8/s320/1989+margaux.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5671248088625449634" /></a><br /><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Last week a group of 8 friends in their late forties came to the restaurant for dinner. I had been warned that they would be bringing a few bottles of their own wine, but I was unprepared for what actually arrived with this group.<div><br /></div><div>Apparently, periodically they all get together and pick a theme for the evening. This particular night's theme was <a href="http://www.chateau-margaux.com/Website/site/eng_aufildessiecles_lhistoiredu_naissancedudomaine.htm">Chateau Margaux</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>For those who may not know, Chateau Margaux is one of the most celebrated wine houses in the Bordeaux regions of France, known for Cabernet Sauvignon-based blends.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Chateau dates back to the 12th century, and by the end of the 17th century, the Chateau's lands covered 254 acres, one third of which remains devoted to vine-growing today.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thomas Jefferson himself deemed Chateau Margaux the best wine of Bordeaux in 1784, saying "there cannot be a better bottle of Bordeaux."</div><div><br /></div><div>Chateau Margaux was deemed a First Growth in the 1855 Classification ordered by Napoleon before the Second Great Exhibition in Paris. The classification system was based on how much the wines cost at the time, with the most expensive receiving the First Growth classification.</div><div><br /></div><div>Today those first growth wines still command astounding sums, which added to my amazement at the array of vintages this table brought. They brought 10 bottles of Chateau Margaux between them, with representatives from the 2000, 1997, 1989, 1978, 1966 and 1955 vintages. Some vintages had multiple bottles. All told, about $7,000 worth of wine. That's retail. To buy all those bottles in a restaurant would cost two to three times more than that at least.</div><div><br /></div><div>They opened all of the bottles at once so they could compare vintages from youngest to oldest. </div><div><br /></div><div>My boss opened and decanted all the bottles, and was given a small glass of each to taste himself, and since he got to taste, that meant that I, too, got to taste.</div><div><br /></div><div>This was a little bit of wine-geek nirvana. I won't bore you with a discussion of each vintage, but instead I'll tell you about the one which was the clear winner of the bunch. While the 2000 vintage is the most lauded of all, it was the 1989 which was drinking in all its glory.</div><div><br /></div><div>This wine was exactly what I imagined the perfect Bordeaux should be: a gorgeous nose of dried and stewed cherry, tobacco, leather, coffee, earth and smoke and a beautifully balanced palate with a lingering cherry tobacco finish. I could have sniffed and sipped that wine all night.</div><div><br /></div><div>All in all, not a bad day at the office.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-40717832183272535462011-10-28T10:22:00.000-07:002011-10-28T12:00:32.419-07:00Wine for Creatures of HabitMy father recently suggested that in this blog, I spend more time on food and wine pairings and less time on "psychic revelations about my youth".<div><br /></div><div>This suggestion caused me to ponder....which caused me, of course, to have a psychic revelation...</div><div><br /></div><div>I am so used to the way I write this blog, it is a kind of ritual, so to speak. And it made me think of how much we, and other animals, are creatures of habit.</div><div><br /></div><div>I brush my teeth the exact same way, every time. I have a specific way i wash my face, put on my various creams and hair products, put on my make-up, and if I try to do these things in a different order, I inevitably forget one of the items, like blush, or the eyeliner on one of my eyes, and I wind up looking a bit...odd.</div><div><br /></div><div>If Steve and I go to Half Moon Bay, one of our favorite places in this area, we always go to the same place and do relatively the same thing. One day Steve suggested going to a different beach, and i immediately felt agitated. "But...but...that's not what we DO!!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Our puppy Tuco, is, we realized recently, even more of a creature of habit than we are.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the weekdays, Steve gets up around 6am, takes Tuco out for a pee, and gives him his breakfast. Then he puts Tuco back in his crate and leaves for work.</div><div><br /></div><div>What Tuco doesn't understand is the concept of a weekend. So even though Steve doesn't need to wake up at 6am on Saturday and Sunday, right around that time, Saturday and Sunday, there goes Tuco, barking away to the sound of his interior alarm clock, telling us it's time to give him his breakfast and take him out. Because that is what we normally do every day.</div><div><br /></div><div>The same goes for the ritual around actually eating his food. As soon as Tuco hears the sound of a Tupperware container being opened, or the sound of his metal bowl on the counter, he comes running into the kitchen, where he lies on the floor and waits for his meal.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once we have finished preparing the food, we have him go into his crate and lie down, then we say "OK!" and he runs out, and either sits on his mat or goes right to the place-mat, depending on where we have put his food.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then he eats, and when he has finished, we give him an extra lick of food off the spoon, and out of the measuring cup. Then mealtime is over.</div><div><br /></div><div>The other night, Steve was already asleep, and I started to prepare Tuco's lunch for the next day, thinking it would be fine since he'd already had his dinner. Boy, was I wrong.</div><div><br /></div><div>The second he heard that Tupperware open, there he was, by my side, staring up at me with those eyes. I tried to ignore him, figuring he would remember he'd already eaten and go back to snoozing in his bed.</div><div><br /></div><div>I finished preparing his food, put everything away, put Tuco in his crate, and tried to get in bed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Tuco went berserk. I was violating every part of the ritual...this is not how we do things!!! What was I doing??!!</div><div><br /></div><div>OK, I thought, I'll give him one of his little frozen treats in his crate, and after he eats that, he'll go to sleep. Wrong again. As soon as he finished that treat, the barking started again.</div><div><br /></div><div>And that was when I realized it wasn't about the act of eating; it was about all of the rituals we do surrounding the eating. Those were what he needed to do.</div><div><br /></div><div>So that's what we did. I let him out of his crate, and then I had him go back in. Then I said "ok" and he ran out, and I gave him the tiniest bite of food, let him lick the spoon, and put him back in his crate. Where, perfectly contented, he went to sleep, ritual completed.</div><div><br /></div><div>The final one I'll mention is our trips to Peet's coffee. There is a Peet's a couple of blocks from our house, and almost every day we walk Tuco there, sit outside with him and enjoy a drink. He loves going there. He skips ahead as we get closer, head up, and beelines straight for an outside table.</div><div><br /></div><div>The problem comes when we try to walk him on a different route, or indeed, try to take him somewhere other than Peet's. He knows the different routes to get there, and if he senses we are not going that way, he will lie down and refuse to move. Be it in the middle of the sidewalk, or the middle of an intersection, he will lie down and not budge, so your options are to pick him up, drag him across the pavement like a sack of potatoes, tempt him with irresistable treats, or turn around and walk toward Peet's.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have tried them all, with varying degrees of success. I have run ahead of him with an open can of baby food, which is effective but messy; and I have pulled him, but people look at you strangely when you walk around dragging a limp dog behind you, and I have tried to pick him up, but often he just lies down luxuriantly and waits to have his belly rubbed, which is very cute to the passing motorists who laugh at me stuck there in the middle of the road with my prone pup, but a bit frustrating for me.</div><div><br /></div><div>So often, he wins, and we head over to Peet's. It is, after all, what we do.</div><div><br /></div><div>My wine for Creatures of Habit is a 2005 <a href="http://www.skipstoneranch.com/estate/">Skipstone Ranch</a> <a href="http://store.skipstoneranch.com/product/2005-Oliver-s-Blend?pageID=195262FF-91E5-0AA9-27D4-DF9C2C382490&sortBy=DisplayOrder&">Oliver's Blend</a> red wine blend from </div><div>the Alexander Valley, CA.</div><div><br /></div><div>A relatively new winery, the 2005 was their inaugural vintage, and is a Bordeaux blend of predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with small amounts of Malbec and Petit Verdot.</div><div><br /></div><div>This wine is ripe and fruity, but not overly so, with beautiful black and red fruits along with earth and spice. What is so nice about this wine is its round plush mouthfeel and balance. Neither alcohol, acid nor tannins shout out to be heard. Instead they all work together.</div><div><br /></div><div>A while back, at the restaurant, we had a delicious venison dish, with a dried cherry sauce. I think it was cherry, there may have been some other berries in there too. But the sauce was kind of sweet and fruity, and that is what I would want to eat while drinking this wine.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, since i can count on no hands the number of times I have had venison with cherry sauce in my own home, I would also just drink this wine by itself. With Steve.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's kind of what we do.</div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-30603248314284647212011-10-21T10:55:00.001-07:002011-10-21T10:55:52.403-07:00Wine for Why I Can't See the Movie Contagion, Part TwoI think my obsession with cleanliness really took hold when I lived in Brooklyn. One trip on the NYC subway should be enough to male anyone want to take a Silkwood shower.<div><br /></div><div>First there are the close quarters in each individual subway car. Especially at peak travel times, there is not a sneeze or a cough that is not shared by one and all.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then there are the poles on each subway car, which you have to hold onto when there are not enough seats to go around. These poles are invariably greasy and slimy, and do you know why? It's because many people have sneezed into and/or licked their hands and then gripped these poles. You and I then get on the subway, grasp these same poles, and then hop off the subway and get a bagel, which we, of course, eat with the self-same hands that have just been touching the Ebola pole.</div><div><br /></div><div>Add to this the fact that I once saw a man cutting his toenails on a subway car, and you can understand why my ideas of what was clean suddenly changed drastically after time in NYC.</div><div><br /></div><div>People sometimes think it is odd that I don't wear shoes inside my house, and that I ask visitors to remove their shoes as well. I was raised in a house where we didn't wear shoes inside, so for me it has always been the way things are, but I continue to do it, because when I lived in NYC and walked around those streets, I realized how much disgusting matter was on those streets, and how much of it probably adhered to my shoes.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I thought about how, if I walked into my bathroom with those filthy shoes, I was transferring that filth to my clean bathroom floor and then stepping in that dirt when I was nice and clean from the shower, I vowed to never wear shoes in the bathroom or house again.</div><div><br /></div><div>Have I taken it too far? Probably. Especially when you consider that once you start really thinking about the nature of dirt, germs and transference, the realization hits that nothing is ever really and truly clean. </div><div><br /></div><div>And there is mounting evidence to show that all of this cleanliness, and use of anti-bacterials is in fact creating stronger and stronger bacteria and viruses and weakens our immune systems.</div><div><br /></div><div>But even though I know this, I also know that, were I to sit through a movie which spends two hours focusing on the minute and insidious ways in which germs spread and transfer, with disastrous results, I would be unable to resist the temptation to carry Clorox wipes with me wherever I go, and wipe down every one and every thing I come in contact with.</div><div><br /></div><div>And let's face it, that might just be perceived as odd.</div><div><br /></div><div>My Wine for why I can't see the movie Contagion, Part II, is not a wine at all, but rather a recipe for macerated strawberries. </div><div><br /></div><div>I bought some beautiful organic strawberries from Trader Joe's the other day, and I took a few handfuls of them and cut them in quarters.</div><div><br /></div><div>I put them in a bowl and added half a tablespoon of super-fine sugar, a tablespoon and a half of Cointreau and a couple of tablespoons of chopped fresh mint.</div><div><br /></div><div>I mixed it all up and covered the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge overnight.</div><div><br /></div><div>They are absolutely delicious, goo enough to just gobble up with a spoon. Or, my favorite, spooned over vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt.</div><div><br /></div><div>a flavor that is sweet, refreshing and, of course, clean.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-38001181169626448192011-09-29T11:36:00.000-07:002011-09-30T10:33:03.373-07:00Wine for Why I Can't See the Movie Contagion, Part OneI am, admittedly, a bit of a clean freak. Especially when it comes to bathrooms and kitchens. I have gotten a bit of a reputation at work, where I am constantly wiping down liquer bottles and spraying Windex on the bar.<div><br /></div><div>One of my co-workers has told me that I can't see the movie Contagion because I will wind up walking around in a plastic bubble, or refusing to leave my house.</div><div><br /></div><div>At the very least, I told him, I'm going to start spraying everyone who approaches me with Lysol.</div><div><br /></div><div>I wasn't always so clean. In high school, I went through a dirty phase where my room was a mini-dump. It wasn't full of dirty food-plates or bugs or anything, but rather piled ankle-deep with clothes and magazines.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>When friends came over, rather than actually clean up, I simply threw my bedspread over the offending pile, and hoped no one would notice.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, what actually happened was that one of my friends came running into my room, and the moment her foot hit that bedspread, which covered a slippery pile of magazines and catalogues, she went flying. It was like she was on a slip and slide, only instead of sliding on a film of water, she instead went sailing on a sea of Seventeen Magazines and J-Crew catalogues.</div><div><br /></div><div>I would like to say that that moment caused me enough embarrassment to force me to finally clean up my room, but I'm not sure it did. My mother would probably remember.</div><div><br /></div><div>All I know is that my parents actually had to fumigate my room when I left for college. It was that bad.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I moved to Los Angeles, my apartment was kept clean, but my car became the repository for all things paper and discarded. Again, there were no dirty food or drink containers, but the back seat filled almost to the window with newspapers, magazines, school notes and papers I no longer needed, empty shopping bags and who knows what else.</div><div><br /></div><div>A guy I was dating got in my car for the first time, looked in the backseat, and said "You know, if I'd seen that first, I'm not sure I ever would have gone out with you."</div><div><br /></div><div>The exterior of the car didn't fare much better. From the time I left Boston with my friend Maria, and drove the car cross-country, to the time I sold it 4 years later, I didn't wash it. Not once.</div><div><br /></div><div>I lived in a neighborhood with abundant street parking, and so that car sat outside, all year, under trees, covered in bird poop and pollen.</div><div><br /></div><div>Only when I was about to sell it did I finally wash it, and my sister and i took it to a carwash and watched as it went through the jets of soap and water, and watched as the guys who buff and dry the cars actually worked on it and laughed. Actually laughed at how dirty it was, even after the washing.</div><div><br /></div><div>The paint had gone from a bright, shiny maroon, to a dull version of the same color. It had certainly lost its luster. But that car had bigger problems: it would only go about 45 mph on the freeway before the engine light would come on (25 mph if I was driving uphill); the windshield wipers went on one day and wouldn't go off; and the passenger side window rolled down and then steadfastly refused to roll back up. So honestly, i didn't feel too bad that I had neglected to wash it.</div><div><br /></div><div>I fear this post is getting too long, so I will leave off here for today and continue next week with part two: the clean streak begins.</div><div><br /></div><div>My wine for why I can't see the movie Contagion, Part I is a 2005 Domaine Drouhin "Laurene" Pinot Noir from Oregon. We carry this particular wine by the half-bottle at the restaurant, but if you can't find this vintage, i highly recommend you try any of their Pinots.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Drouhin family lives and makes wine both in the Dundee Hills of Oregon and Beaune, France, in Burgundy. Their Oregon Pinots balance beautifully the fruitiness of Oregon with the earth and slightly more reserved character of a Burgundy. The 2005 is quite rich, but still bright with acidity, fruit and spice. </div><div><br /></div><div>Personally, I also really like that all of the Drouhin wines are made by Veronique Drouhin, one of the small number of female winemakers out there.</div><div><br /></div><div>They have a wonderful website for <a href="http://www.domainedrouhin.com/en/index.php">Domaine Drouhin Oregon</a>, where you can get info about the family, the estate vines and the wines themselves. I highly encourage you to try one.</div><div><br /></div><div>Just remember to wash your hands first.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-38170795374654394762011-09-22T20:46:00.000-07:002011-09-23T10:53:41.323-07:00Wine for Our Puppy-Child<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNT4CLNesLLjn96PeI7eWcS6tKjWrXPyGJmzN7kmibRoBUsC1-DSE0EIQuD8uYP3HVSWY-oL5R0JrST4JYwsc4h8_ZxtuYfm5y3yK_n8FhjtwaHRB9uOPak4Ris1Bv0l5o1phta1bhqe8/s1600/IMG_1738.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNT4CLNesLLjn96PeI7eWcS6tKjWrXPyGJmzN7kmibRoBUsC1-DSE0EIQuD8uYP3HVSWY-oL5R0JrST4JYwsc4h8_ZxtuYfm5y3yK_n8FhjtwaHRB9uOPak4Ris1Bv0l5o1phta1bhqe8/s320/IMG_1738.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5655614597880402562" /></a><br /><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The longer that we have Tuco, the more it seems to me that the experience of having a dog from the time he's a young puppy really is very similar to that of raising a child.<div><br /></div><div>Not just in the amount of time and energy they require, but also in the way in which both force us as adults to re-experience the world with them, go through a whole variety of firsts and milestones with them: first car-ride, first bath, first night alone in his crate, first trip to the doctor/vet, first shots, first day of kindergarten, first time away from Mom and Dad.</div><div><br /></div><div>All the experiences we take for granted and no longer even think about, suddenly illuminated as new, confusing, exciting.</div><div><br /></div><div>We gave Tuco a baby carrot to eat the other day, and he had no idea what to make of it. He ran around it, he sniffed at it, he picked it up in his mouth and dropped it. Steve finally went over to him with a baby carrot of his own, and showed Tuco that what he did with it was to bite it in half. Tuco immediately did the same. And there is was...yum...carrot...a whole new thing to eat.</div><div><br /></div><div>We also have begun taking him to the beach. So many new smells and sensations that I no longer notice half the time. To me now, the beach is a whole entity, one solid concept. But watching him at the beach, I suddenly saw again all of the parts that make up the whole: the sand, and how different that feels to stand on than sidewalk or grass; the bits of shell that litter the sand, along with all of the different pebbles, all of those will smell different to Tuco; the bits of seaweed everywhere; the smell, sound and feel of the water itself.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then there was the surprise on his face when the cold water rushed over his paws; the foam on the surface of the water which he tried to eat, the feeling of the sand sliding away underfoot as he waded deeper into the water; that sense of excitement and fear at the force of a wave; and the accomplishment of pulling a ball out of the water and bringing it back.</div><div><br /></div><div>Just like kids, puppies lose their teeth, and go through adolescence. Tuco is just entering this stage of his development, and already we see moments of willfulness (why should I sit, Mom?), and bossiness (I want my food! I want to go out and play! I want to walk here, I don't want to walk there. Sine i don't want to walk there, I will lie down in the middle of the sidewalk. Go ahead...drag me.).</div><div><br /></div><div>Just like with kids, we as parents have to introduce them to the world: how we walk down the street, how we meet other people and dogs, where we poop and pee and where we don't; how we behave when someone enters our home.</div><div><br /></div><div>Just like parents of actual children, Steve and I are watching as Tuco's natural talents and abilities come to the fore. He is part Border Collie, a herding dog, and in the last few weeks, that herding instinct has made itself known to all of us.</div><div><br /></div><div>He doesn't even know why he's doing it, but when we're in the dog park together, and another dog runs by, or can be seen running in the distance, Tuco takes off after him, swinging in a wide arc, always staying a certain distance behind, steering the other dog one way and another.</div><div><br /></div><div>And can he run. He flies. He's only 7 months, and already he is faster than just about every other dog in the park. And it is an absolute joy to watch him run. Because you can see that he was made to do it, you can see that when he is running he is exhilarated, and free, and when Steve and I watch him, I think we then feel some of those things, too. </div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, there are those lovely, quiet together moments. Tuco hangs out in the kitchen with me while I cook. And it's not that he's hovering by me, waiting for scraps, because he never gets any.</div><div><br /></div><div>He just lies on his mat quietly, sometimes watching me, sometimes sleeping. He just wants to keep me company. And it reminds me of when I lived at home, I liked nothing more than sitting with my mother in the kitchen while she made dinner; sometimes I was helping, sometimes just telling her about my day.</div><div><br /></div><div>Granted, Tuco is not chatting with me about his day, but it is that same experience of togetherness, of sharing, that makes me think of my mother, and makes me feel oddly comforted.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't mean to suggest that having a dog is exactly like having a baby, but it strikes me that there are a lot of similarities, more than I ever imagined, and i must say I am delighted by it.</div><div><br /></div><div>My wine for our puppy-child is not an individual wine but rather a category: Cremant d'Alsace from Alsace, in northeastern France.</div><div><br /></div><div>These are sparkling wines often made predominantly from the Pinot Blanc grape, and they offer an absolutely delicious and less expensive alternative to Champagne. While they may not have the finesse and richness of Champagne, they are bright, crisp and refreshing, as well as easy to drink and extremely food friendly.</div><div><br /></div><div>Try a Lucien Albrecht Cremant d'Alsace Brut or Rose Brut. Price ranges from $13-$28 a bottle.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-65721164956051187382011-09-16T07:42:00.000-07:002011-09-16T07:43:36.966-07:00Wine for Doggie DooDealing with any baby naturally entails a lot of encounters with matter of the fecal variety. Babies poop. A lot, I've heard.<div><br /></div><div>So it is with puppies. It is not so much the number of poops our beloved Tuco does per day as it is the quantity of matter per poop. We are literally talking piles of poop. For a rather small 30-pound dog, he must generate his own body weight in poop every day.</div><div><br /></div><div>And these are not what I would consider small-dog bowel movements; one such poop looked like it should have emerged from a 1200 pound walrus. Passers-by looked at us as if to say, "wow, that's one big turd!"</div><div><br /></div><div>The euphamism "building a log cabin", is not just a catchy phrase. He seriously could be living in a poop-house of his own making by now.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then there is the whole business of his being afraid of his own poop. I think we have finally cracked this mystery: sticks and mulch. In his poop.</div><div><br /></div><div>We cannot seem, no matter how hard we try, to make him not eat every stick and piece of mulch he can find. This wouldn't be such a problem if not for the fact that these items don't digest in his tummy. They do, in fact, pass right through. Literally, you can see them right there in his poops, whole hunks of sticks and mulch.</div><div><br /></div><div>Those bits must hurt like hell coming out, so I can hardly blame him for trying to get as far away from them as he can.</div><div><br /></div><div>While dealing with doggie poop is not always fun, dealing with baby poop is not much better. People will comment that the advantage babies have over dogs is that they eventually deal with their own poop, while dogs pretty much leave their owners grabbing handfuls of the stuff many times a day for the next 15-18 years. And this is unfortunately true.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, I must say that by far the most terrifying poop encounter I have ever had was with an infant for whom I was babysitting.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was in my early twenties, and the baby was only a few days old, and his mom and I were there with him, at his changing table.</div><div><br /></div><div>The diaper was off, so he was bare butt to the breeze, when suddenly, there was a poop explosion. Really there's no other way to describe it. Poop just projectile erupted from his bum, and sprayed everything in a ten-foot radius. His mother and I both shrieked in shock and jumped back to what we imagined was a safe distance.</div><div><br /></div><div>The baby bicycled his legs, cooed and looked delighted.</div><div><br /></div><div>His mother and I stood, frozen, looking at him, and then at each other in muted horror. Then slowly, very slowly, we inched back closer to him.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was like we were both members of a bomb squad, approaching an explosive device: had the bomb fully discharged its load? Was there going to be a secondary explosion? What about shrapnel? Could we approach now? What could be considered a safe distance? I for one, wanted to put my flack suit back on, or at the very least, a Haz Mat suit.</div><div><br /></div><div>I distinctly remember thinking, $10/an hour is not enough for this.</div><div><br /></div><div>I almost hesitate to recommend a wine this week, lest it be known at the dog-doo wine, but recommend I shall.</div><div><br /></div><div>The wine for this week is a 2006 Kumeu River Estate Chardonnay from New Zealand.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now i confess, I am not normally a fan of New World Chardonnays. That buttery, oaky thing is just not for me.</div><div><br /></div><div>But this Chard is different: it's ripe and tropical with peachy, nutty minerality. It's super refreshing and bright and kind of reminds me of a rich Sauvignon Blanc. It's really nice with seafood.</div><div><br /></div><div>So throw away that poop bag, pour yourself a glass of Kumeu River and enjoy!</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-45853521079940205612011-08-19T11:40:00.000-07:002011-08-19T12:10:23.077-07:00Wine for Being Afraid<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMVFN8SgSGrzl-JmnATbYlcNwJAmzM_uo39SMbeaU62OqeCypxIibkuUO4xjDcbhtfM18kVJb2rW10JCpYuObA1G0qe_2m3GNrZ7AvblMJtc6Fp8MlT_l0FnOZlgL93Z1whWueTjkKKvI/s1600/IMG_1668.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMVFN8SgSGrzl-JmnATbYlcNwJAmzM_uo39SMbeaU62OqeCypxIibkuUO4xjDcbhtfM18kVJb2rW10JCpYuObA1G0qe_2m3GNrZ7AvblMJtc6Fp8MlT_l0FnOZlgL93Z1whWueTjkKKvI/s320/IMG_1668.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642646459933275970" /></a>
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<br /></div><div>One of the reasons Steve and I wanted a dog was for the relaxing, healthy benefits of pet ownership.<div>
<br /></div><div>Especially for me, who has been known to wrestle with anxiety, the idea of stroking a pet in a quiet, soothing manner, was in itself comforting. To have a gentle, peaceful relaxing creature by your side every day, to calm me by its mere presence, held a great deal of appeal.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>And so it is with great irony that I now share that we somehow chose a puppy who seems to suffer from....you guessed it....anxiety.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>How we did this, I'm not sure, he didn't seem anxious when we chose him, but there you have it.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Now I am the first person to fully understand anxiety, but I have to admit that some of the things that frighten Tuco are really beyond me.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>For starters, the first few weeks we had him, he was afraid of other dogs. I found this odd considering he came from a litter of six pups, and was, himself, after all, a dog. But apparently this is common, and now he plays with the best of them, but i will never get out of my mind the vision of him running away from a tiny three-month-old pug who came to say hello to him in our puppy class.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Some other things he is afraid of:</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Garbage barrels. This again is not uncommon, considering they make a lot of noise when rolled out onto the sidewalk.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>His new treat dispenser: it is a red, honeycomb-shaped device which wobbles if you hit it with a hand, snout or paw, and dispenses a treat out of a small hole in one side. It scares him. I don't know why.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>His harness: Tuco is the only dog I have ever met who is not excited to go out. Really, not even a tail wag. When he sees us take out his harness, he runs away, tail between his legs, and we have to coax him out with treats.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>This one really baffles me because we only ever take him fun places in that harness: the dog park, daycare, walks. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>But wait, you may be thinking, you probably take him to the vet in that harness! Well, yes, we do, but here's the kicker: he LOVES the vet. Loves it there. We live around the corner from the vet, and often on our walks we go right by it, and we can't walk by it without Tuco going inside. He pulls me, strains against the leash, running to get in.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>He has to go in, and once inside he is beside himself with delight. He gets low to the ground, he wags his tail so hard you think it will fall off, and he flops over and presents his belly to everyone who works there. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>Even when he sees the vet himself, he is delighted. Remember, this vet is the man who just a few short weeks ago was jabbing Tuco with a vaccination needle and grabbing his man-parts. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>He also has, inexplicably, become afraid of his own poop. Now on the one hand I can understand, sometimes I'm afraid of it, too. But you'd think since it's his, he wouldn't fear it. But he seems to. Midway through the poop's exit from the ole chute, Tuco will suddenly turn around and look at his rear end as if to say "what the hell is THAT?!" and start running away from it. Needless to say, this leads to some rather interesting poop-dispersal patterns in the yard.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>I know I'm one to talk about being afraid of random things. Once when my parents left me alone at home for the evening, I spent the last hour before their return huddled in a corner, because I had seen someone walking in the backyard and was convinced he was going to break in. Only when my parents finally came home did I realize that the ax-murderer I had seen was in fact my own reflection in the glass porch door.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Like mother, like puppy.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>My wine for Being Afraid is a 2007 Vezer Family Vineyard "Franci" Black Muscat. The Vezer winery is located in the Suisun Valley of California near Napa. Franci is the name of the Vezer's 10-year-old daughter.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>This Black Muscat is a sweet dessert wine, with lovely floral notes of lilac and carnation as well as plump blackberry and blueberry. It has a bright, lively acidity which keeps is from being overly sweet, and it will pair beautifully with black and red fruit desserts, as well as sorbets and anything chocolate. It is also yummy enough to be a dessert in and of itself.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>You can order it online from the Vezer Family Vineyard website for $24.95 (375ml).</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Just don't bring it to my house unexpectedly: it might scare the dog.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1154516082308349072.post-9418922722554978312011-08-04T15:04:00.000-07:002011-08-04T16:59:11.497-07:00Wine for Wine's SakeJust for a refresher, I am currently the Asst. Sommelier and Bartender at a Michelin-Star restaurant, and every once in a while, I have a night at the restaurant that reminds me of how lucky I am to have this job, and why I love working with wine.<div><br /></div><div>Periodically, a group of gentlemen rent out the private dining area of the restaurant for an evening of food and some extraordinary wine.</div><div><br /></div><div>They each bring their own offerings, which we open, possibly decant and serve. My boss at the restaurant, who also happens to be the Master Sommelier there, is an excellent teacher, and he is always incredibly gracious in making sure I get to taste almost all of the wines that we open.</div><div><br /></div><div>On this particular evening, the wines sampled included a 1990 Trimbach Clos St. Hune, a 1929 Chateau Bouscaut Blanc, a 1959 Chateau Ausone and 1982 Penfolds Grange.</div><div><br /></div><div>But by far the most extraordinary offerings came at the end of the evening, with the sweet wines. First up was a 1906 Chateau D'Arche.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let me write that vintage again: 1906. I almost can't get past the date. This wine is 105 years old.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 1906, the San Francisco earthquake struck; Mount Vesuvius erupted; the Victrola, the first phonograph/record player was manufactured; the first officially recorded powered flight in Europe took place; SOS became an internationally recognized distress signal; the first radio broadcast occurred; the tuberculosis immunization was first developed; the first feature film was released; and gangster Bugsy Siegel, last emperor of China Pu-Yi, German war criminal Adolph Eichmann, writer Samuel Beckett, director Roberto Rossellini, entertainer Josephine Baker, screenwriter Billy Wilder, Estee Lauder, actress Louise Brooks, and director Otto Preminger were born.</div><div><br /></div><div>This Chateau D'Arche, is a sweet dessert wine from the Sauternes appellation near Bordeaux, France. The wines are made from a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon grapes, all of which have been affected by my favorite Botrytis Cinerea, or "Noble Rot".</div><div><br /></div><div>The combination of sugar, alcohol and higher acidity makes for wines that tend to age well, and let me tell you, this wine has aged gloriously.</div><div><br /></div><div>Over time it has darkened from its usual golden straw hue, and the nose and flavors have developed to those of raisin, prune, caramel, creme brulee, rum, port, butterscotch and toasted nuts, with a lively and bright acidity. It was heaven in a glass.</div><div><br /></div><div>The final wine was one with an even more extraordinary history: a 1931 Massandra Collection A-Danil Tokay.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Massandra Winery and cellar was built near Yalta in the late 19th Century under Tsar Nicholas II, to provide wines for the Tsar's summer palace, and specializes in sweet and fortified dessert wines.</div><div><br /></div><div>The cellars took three years to build, with miners blasting deep into a mountainside to create a labyrinth of 21 tunnels, with air shafts providing consistent cooling and spring water adding the perfect humidity.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Massandra Collection consists of samples of wine from every Massandra vintage as well as other European collectibles.</div><div><br /></div><div>So impressed was Stalin by this collection in later years, that when he heard of Hitler's impending arrival, he ordered the entire Massandra collection moved to secret locations in the Ukraine.</div><div><br /></div><div>This 1931 Massandra Tokay has held up beautifully. Though it didn't have the lingering acidity of the Chateau D'Arche, th flavors were still rich and complex, with a sweet. meaty, lingering prune flavor alongside caramel, dulce de leche and butter pecan.</div><div><br /></div><div>Tasting both of these wines was really an amazing, possibly once-in-a-lifetime experience, and overall, a pretty good day at the office.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0