Wine for Bugs

A few nights ago, I made a yummy dinner with rice and a package of mixed greens I got at Trader Joe's. We have had these greens before and they are a yummy combo of Mustard, Collard, and Turnip greens plus spinach.

I was enjoying my meal when I took a bite and got a rush of a very strong clove-like flavor. Knowing that I hadn't put any cloves in the recipe, it occurred to me that something might be amiss, and I was curious to see what it was that had contributed such a strong flavor.

I spit out the food in my mouth and discovered something slightly black that did indeed look a bit like a clove. When I turned it over, though, I saw the green underbody and legs which let me know i had bitten into a bug! The fact that the bug was headless and partly torso-less told me I had in fact eaten half of the critter.

I have to admit i was a little bothered at first; I didn't like to think I had eaten bug-head, and i found it oddly disturbing to remember that it had had such a strong clove-ey essence to it. Then of course, my imagination took hold and I worried that I had bitten into some strange kind of clove-flavored neurotoxin found only in the Turnip-Green Doodlebug, and that soon I was going to lose control of my bodily functions and fall face-first into my rice-bowl.

When this didn't happen, of course, I found myself thinking about how arbitrary food-rules are. I was freaked out about eating a bug, because in our food culture, eating bugs is not ok. But as we know, eating bugs in other parts of the world is completely normal. Why should it be ok to eat kidney or liver, but not bug? Kidney and liver are, after all, filtering and detoxifying organs, full of waste products. Bugs are just...bugs.

We have a friend who went to Hong Kong recently on a business trip, and when he was taken out to dinner he was served fried jellyfish, fish lips and chicken feet! He said the flavor was fine, it was the chewy texture that got to him. But i take my hat off to him for trying them!

A while ago I was watching an episode of that program that followed Ewan McGregor and his friend Charlie as they motorcycled around the world. When they were in Mongolia, they were invited into the hut of some friendly folks and their families, who were all gathered around the fire, eating bowls of Llama testicles.

Yup, that's right. Balls. Mother, father and children were all happily slurping away at a bowl of balls. Ewan managed to eat a ball with no problem, but poor Charlie spit his out, saying he just couldn't do it. I have to say I wouldn't have been able to do it either!

But it's all a matter of perspective, isn't it? Of what we're used to. Everyone in that tent believed that testicles were perfectly fine and yummy to eat. The westerners had been taught that they weren't ok, so had more of an issue with them.

So many thoughts from one poor half-eaten Doodlebug....

My Wine for Bugs is a 2007 Domaine Tempier Bandol. This wine is from Bandol, in Provence France, and comes from an historic estate and is made from the Mourvedre grape. Mourvedre is most often seen blended with Syrah and Grenache in wines from the Southern Rhone in France.

In the Tempier, however, the Mourvedre takes center stage. It is a wonderful full-bodied wine with more earth than fruit; tree bark and spice dominate. We offered it at Masa's as an alternative to an Italian Brunello and served it with our Venison dish.

It also pairs beautifully with Doodlebug.

What is the most unusual food you've ever eaten?

Wine for The Solid Gold Oscars

Let's face it, more often than not, The Oscars are a train-wreck. Usually Steve and I record them and watch them later so that we can fast-forward through the embarrassing, boring, or just plain unbearable moments. This usually means that we wind up with about 20 minutes of actual viewing.

Who can stand the horrible jokes, the fake laughter, the cringe-worthy blubbery acceptance speeches and the terrifying musical numbers?

This year Steve and I skipped watching it all-together, choosing instead to watch an advance-screening DVD copy I have of The Social Network. From everything I heard about the ceremony this year, it would appear that we made the right choice. It sounds like this year's hosts were more like watching the stoned guy and the chirpy sorority girl at a college talent show.

Here's how I think we can fix the Oscars ceremony: The Solid Gold Dancers. How many of you out there remember that television show Solid Gold? It was an eighties masterpiece on which the top ten songs of the week were counted down and danced to while being hosted by the likes of Dionne Warwick.

The Solid Gold Dancers were men and women who performed interperative dances to each of the songs. I recently watched a collection of these dances on YouTube and was shocked at the fact that this show was considered good family fun at the time. Now, everyone involved in that show would be arrested. For many reasons.

I think the outfits would be the main reason. Well, the outfits and the hairdos. The outfits defy explanation. The women always wear shiny spandex leotards or short-shorts in a variety of shocking colors and the men....dear God the men....wear shiny tight pants and gold lame tank tops. The pants are so tight you can see their meat and two veg. And the shiny blue color only serves to highlight the packages to disturbing proportions.

The dances themselves are so fabulously horrible it is hard to look away. They really are just pole-dancing without the poles. The dances have absolutely nothing to do with the songs themselves, and pretty much always involve four or five women gyrating in purple spandex with two men also in purple spandex who you know would rather be gyrating with each other and their huge spandex-clad manhoods.

In one dance, one of the female dancers (who I'm actually sure was a man in drag) actually performs an entire dance number with a cigarette dangling of his/her mouth.

Just imagine the Oscar ceremony potential with these dancers!! Brokeback Mountain in spandex! The King's Speech with Colin Firth stuttering....in spandex!! Toy Story 3....animated...in spandex!!! The hosts...pole dancing...in spandex!!! I mean come on, it's brilliant! No....it's Solid Gold!

My Wine for The Solid Gold Dancers is once again not a wine bur rather my much-loved St-Germain Elderflower Liqueur. This sweet delight is made from Elderflowers gathered from the foot of the French Alps and delivered to market by men on bicycles. I kid you not.

These Elderflowers are then macerated, and blended with grape spirit and cane sugar. The result is a liqueur with a beautiful floral note as well as essences of pear, peach and grapefruit zest.

I love this liqueur when added to a glass of ginger beer, or on the rocks with sparkling wine and club soda. However you drink it, it is best enjoyed by people with big hair who dance inappropriately to Lionel Richie songs while wearing tight shiny leotards and high heels.

How would you fix The Oscars?

Wine for Comfort

The weather has been extremely overcast, rainy and chilly here in Northern California lately; so much so that they are actually predicting snowfall here in San Francisco on Saturday.

Now I know a few dusty flakes are nothing compared to the deluge of snow that much of the rest of the country has been subjected to for the past few months, but i felt it to be worth mentioning nonetheless.

Winter weather of course leads me to thoughts of comfort: comfort food, comfort clothes, comfort drink, and comfort entertainment.

When Steve and I were traveling, we each brought with us a selection of DVDs of both television shows and movies; selections that we thought might be fun to watch, but also selections that brought each of us comfort in one way or another.

I'm sure you know what I'm talking about; those movies or TV programs that, for whatever reason, fill you with a sense of calm and happiness whenever you put them on. Those movies and shows proved to be lifesavers on our recent trips.

In moments when I was feeling sick or especially nervous, I could immediately find solace in watching an episode of Gilmore Girls, or the movies Tootsie, Ghostbusters, The Bourne movies, Casino Royale, Julie & Julia (what's not to love about a movie in which two ladies cook and eat constantly?!), Back to the Future or The Lord of the Rings (although I made a grave error with this movie in only bringing the first installment, so that we were left to watch the first part of the trilogy over and over).

Since coming back, Netflix has been a lifesaver, allowing me to find solace and nostalgic happiness in such favorites as Romancing the Stone, All of Me, Fawlty Towers, Superman, Vacation, Private Benjamin, and A Room with a View.

For Steve, the comfort viewing ranges from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Jaws, Where Eagles Dare, The Thing, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Midnight Run and The Italian Job (all of which I love too).

By far Steve's favorite is the TV show The Rockford Files, which he watched as a kid. What could be more relaxing than watching James Garner play the nicest PI alive, one who almost never gets the girl, certainly never gets paid, and who is repeatedly getting thrown out of cars, punched in the stomach or whacked over the head with frying pans?

Since we're talking comfort and cold winter's evenings, let's add a beverage to the mix. My Wine for Comfort is not a wine at all, but a warm apple cider cocktail. I have seen it in restaurants as a Hot Apple Pie. This consists of hot apple cider, Tuaca and whipped cream. Simple, but ultimately warming and delicious.

Tuaca is an Italian liqueur which was supposedly created 500 years ago for Lorenzo de Medici, Florentine ruler. It is made from a blend of Italian brandy, spirits, sugar, citrus and vanilla. The warming and rich flavor is a perfect complement to the clove and spice of the cider.

If you are going to make this at home, don't use plain apple juice that you've heated in the microwave! Trader Joe's sells a terrific spiced cider, or you can make your own by heating apple cider (again CIDER, not watery juice) in a pan with spices like cinnamon sticks, cloves, nutmeg and allspice. Star anise can be nice, too.

Mull these together over low heat for about 15-20 minutes and then pour into mugs. Add a shot of Tuaca and top with whipped cream from a spray can (one spray into mug, another into mouth).

What better way to spend a cold, rainy, snowy evening than curled up with this delightful treat with a movie that makes you feel that all is right with the world? OK, maybe cookie dough would make it better. Give it a try and let me know.

Now I'd love to hear from you: what are your ultimate comfort movies or TV shows; ones that just make you feel good when you watch them? (I think one of my dad's will be Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

What is your favorite warm drink for a cold winter's day?

Please share!

Wine for the Love of Bathrooms

Just to keep everyone up to date, we unfortunately didn't get the condo we put an offer in on a couple of weeks ago. But never fear, we will live to search another day, and I know eventually we will find just the right place for us.

The place we made an offer on was lovely, but was by no means perfect (no place ever is). One of the issues we had with it were its bathrooms, which looked kind of like someone 10 years ago had decided to cross Santa Fe with a Grecian urn. This wouldn't have been a big deal except that the offer we made was stretching our budget to the point where we wouldn't have been able to fix the bathrooms for many many years.

I must admit i do love a fancy new bathroom; they, along with remodeled kitchens, feel like the height of luxury to me.

Even when I was younger, I was always a big fan of bathrooms. When my family would go to a restaurant, at some point during the meal I would invariably excuse myself and spend the next 20 minutes in the can.

This is not because I had odd potty training issues, it was just because I liked checking bathrooms out, seeing how they were decorated, and the nicer the bathroom, the more private the bathroom, the longer I stayed.

OK, I'm not being entirely truthful; the niceness of the bathroom did have an effect on how long I would hang out in it, but the bigger factor was how many mirrors said bathroom contained. What can I say, I was very fond of looking at myself in the mirror. I would look, I would perform, I would dance, I would do toothpaste and gum commercials. The more mirrors a room had, the more angles it provided from which I could ogle myself.

In my bathroom at home, I spent many an hour giving my Oscar acceptance speech, staring at my at-once overwhelmed and overjoyed expression as the envelope was opened and my name was called. This reaction shot was even better when I did it in slow motion to get every nuance of facial expression as I went from apprehensive, to shocked, to ecstatic, to tearful.

Invariably my bathroom-mirror-Oscar-speech was a triumph of wit and emotion, and I would tearfully thank my parents, my cast and crew and my husband (who at the time I believe was Stewart Copeland of The Police), all while looking meaningfully at the toothbrush holder and soap dispenser.

I also enjoyed enacting great dramatic scenes in the bathroom, as well as dancing. Since the bathroom I used when growing up was very small, both of these activities inevitably led to damage to both the bathroom and my own person.

Once while doing a great weepy dramatic scene, i threw myself against the shower doors in what surely would have been the Oscar-clincher for me. The shower doors unfortunately were not particularly impressed and they promptly crashed out of their ruts and fell, with an incredibly loud noise, into the shower itself.

My father came running, wondering what the hell was going on, and I immediately made something up about falling into them by accident. He was still mad at me, but a lot less mad than he would have been had I said that I was in the midst of a stunning performance and would he please not interrupt me again.

Another time I was doing a very exuberant and expressive dance routine which involved me kicking my foot against the toilet and bursting the blood blister I had on my toe. That was not as good as the time I was doing a dance-kick routine in the kitchen and broke my toe against a kitchen cabinet, however.

Then of course there were the dramatic weeping shower scenes necessary to every 80's movie drama. For me such scenes meant me trying to make myself cry in the shower until I had used up all of the hot water and had to explain to the rest of my family that it wasn't my fault they all had to take cold showers, it was just that it took me a very long time to rinse conditioner out of my hair.

Then there were the bathroom Today Show interviews, but don't get me started on those.

Needless to say, I don't spend nearly as much time in bathrooms anymore, certainly not public ones, though I will admit that every once in a while I still can't resist the occasional bathroom "I'd like to thank The Academy".

My wine for the love of bathrooms is a Domaine de Durban Muscat de Beaumes de Venise. This is a wonderful sweet dessert wine from The Rhone Valley in France, and is a type of wine known as a Vin Doux Naturel.

This means that lovely sweet, ripe, Muscat a Petits Grains grapes are fermented, but about halfway through fermentation, grape spirit is added which yields a wine that is naturally sweet and relatively high in alcohol.

This wine is sweet without being cloying, and has a light, fresh and wonderful floral quality, like honeysuckle and orange blossom combined with dried apricots and peaches. It is an absolutely delicious way to end a meal, and goes really well with fruit desserts. And Academy Awards.

Wine for Putting in an Offer

Making an offer on a house is a little bit like asking someone to the prom. You spend a long time imagining your dream date, and once you find him (or her), you spend a while feeling sick at the thought of asking if said dream date will want to go with you, if they have already been asked by someone else, if they are waiting for someone better to come along, and how to make it clear to them that you are the best option for a prom date they are going to get.

The whole issue of what you're going to wear, whether or not you should rent a limo, or what you're chances are of getting lucky at the end of the night all have to wait until later.

The lead-up is the worst part; pacing back and forth in your room, deciding on just the right moment to ask, and of course, how best to phrase the invite, checking your breath. Then finally, taking a deep breath and just going for it.

Then once the question is out there in the ether, there is the pause, that awful pause while you wait for them to say something....preferably yes. That pause where you wonder if they are pausing because they are so excited by your invite they can hardly breathe, or pausing because they are thinking of the six other people they wish had asked them before you, or pausing because they don't know how to tell you that that horrible zit on your nose has just burst.

All this is to say that this morning we put in an offer on a lovely condo, and we are currently waiting to hear if our offer will be accepted. There are two other offers on the table from two other buyers, so we'll see if we wind up being the ones they want to dance with or not.

My Wine for Putting in an Offer is a 1975 Petrus. Now this is not a wine I will probably ever be able to actually be able to buy, as it would cost about $2,000 a bottle. But one of the wonderful perks of my current vinternship at Masa's Restaurant is getting to taste some extraordinary wines.

This particular bottle was brought into the restaurant by a man who was celebrating his 60th birthday and had saved the bottle since he purchased it 12 years ago for this very occasion. He and his wife were extremely sweet; he even wore a tux. He was so excited to share the wine with Alan, me, and the chef.

I had never tasted such a mature wine prior to this, nor a wine from such an iconic house. Chateau Petrus is one of the legendary Chateaux of the Pomerol region of Bordeaux France, known for making some of the most wonderful Merlots anywhere.

This wine had an amazing nose of cherry, evergreens, cedar, earth and mushroom, with a lovely round mouthfeel and slightly drying tannins at the finish. The palate was a rush of milk-chocolate-covered cherry followed by tobacco and earth.

But probably the most wonderful thing about tasting this wine was knowing that this wine had been waiting in bottle essentially since I was born, having its own journey, going from France to any number of any other countries to wind up in the US where it was purchased by our diner, who then kept it in his home for 12 years (when I was living in Brooklyn), only to be opened and shared by total strangers at a San Francisco restaurant a few weeks ago.

That wine waited almost my whole lifetime to be uncorked and drunk at this man's 60th birthday celebration, constantly maturing and changing in the bottle. That is one of my favorite things about wine: they take their own journey, and they are a part of the journey we take.

Wine for a Little More Crazy

This post is brought to you by The Department of You-Can't-Make-This-Shit-Up.

As I mentioned last week, Steve and I have been bombarded by the crazy noises from the upstairs and downstairs neighbors. This week, one of those neighbors has taken us on a fun-filled tour of that crazy.

Our upstairs neighbor, if you remember, is the one who, starting at 10 pm every night, decides to either jump up and down, or Riverdance her way to glory, or just pick up every piece of furniture she has and then drop it on the floor.

Steve and I were baffled by what could be causing such a ruckus. Well, last night, he found out.

Our laundry room is in the garage where there are also storage lockers for each unit. Steve was getting his laundry out of the dryer when he bumped into our upstairs neighbor, who was getting some things out of her storage locker.

This woman asked him how we were liking the building and if we were finding it noisy at all. Steve confessed that we were hearing a lot of noise from her apartment and were wondering what was going on.

She then proceeded to explain. Her boyfriend, she said, had recently bought her a tropical fish. Immediately I wondered, is it the largest clog-dancing fish in the world? No, it is not.

This fish needs to be in warm water or it will die. Apparently, neither she nor her boyfriend have ever heard of fish-tank heaters, so she warms the water in the fish tank by placing....wait for it....hot water bottles all around the tank.

Now, while this is exceptionally odd, none of this explains the loud banging, but don't worry, it ain't over yet!

This woman also collects rocks....lots of them. And to anchor the hot water bottles in place around the tank, she has built a wall around the tank with these rocks, and then she wedges the hot water bottles between these rocks and the tank.

Now, you only have to picture a pyramid of oranges at the grocery store to see what is happening. She pulls one rock away to make room for the hot water bottle, and another rock falls. She replaces that rock, and two others roll to the floor, and so on, and so forth. I am waiting for the day when one of those rocks smashes the glass of the fish tank and water comes dripping through our ceiling, or else she will drop a rock into the tank itself, killing the fish.

Let's face it, I think the latter scenario would be the best thing for everyone, especially the fish.

According to Steve, she explained all of this while making nutty wide-eyed faces and sweeping hand and body gestures, as if she were a Kabuki actor or a member of Mummenschanz.

When she had finished the tropical-fish-rock-wall-hot-water-bottle story, she then warned Steve that she would be making a lot of noise that night (it was already 11pm) because she was bringing everything from her storage locker up to her apartment, because her storage locker had been broken into.

When God calls, she said, you have to answer. And apparently you must answer after midnight.

When, you might ask, did this break-in/God-call occur? Well I'll tell you:

Seven years ago! That's right. That God-call came in seven years ago, and clearly, midnight on a Tuesday seven years later was the time to answer.

I'm pretty sure that this woman is the one who is smoking the pot I frequently smell, and I guess to a habitual pot-smoker, taking action seven years after an event is actually considered a speedy response time.

I don't hold out much hope for that fish; it will be hungry, and ten years later she will drop some food in the tank and wonder why it's upside-down floating in the tank of hot-water bottles.

My wine for a little more crazy is a 2009 Maxime Magnon Rozeta from Villeneuve des Corbieres in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of Southern France. This wine is made from around 65% Carignan with Grenache and Syrah rounding it out.

This wine is also produced using Carbonic Maceration. Often called "whole grape fermentation", instead of crushing berries so the yeast can react with them and begin fermentation, whole grape clusters are placed in a vat with a layer of carbon dioxide so that fermentation occurs from the inside of the grape.

This creates ethanol as well as wines with fewer tannins, less acidity and a lighter, fruitier flavor.

In the case of the Rozeta, that fruit flavor of cherry, redcurrant and cranberry also takes on notes of watermelon Jolly Rancher. It is a light, fruity, fun wine that is easy to drink. With or without rocks and hot-water bottles.

Wine for Crazy Neighbors

Now that we're back from the holidays, and steaming ahead into the new year, Steve and I have returned to the task of trying to find a home to live in.

Being in our current building provides a constant reminder of the importance of good soundproofing, as well as the pitfalls of living in a building with multiple neighbors.

No matter how nice the neighbors may seem, in apartment buildings like this, there is always the feeling of being just a little too close for comfort, a sense of crazy lurking just behind those closed doors.

In a previous building, there was the constant smell of marijuana wafting through the halls and open windows, and I always found myself wondering who it was who was smoking pot ALL THE TIME?

And I'm sure everybody out there who has ever lived in an apartment building knows all about "The Cooking Smells", the ones that emanate from one particular apartment but somehow stink up the whole building. These cooking smells never seem to come from the apartment that is making apple pies all day. No, the cooking smells always seem to come from the apartment whose occupants eat only fried fish and cabbage with egg-fart sauce.

In this building, we are currently in the middle apartment, which means we get the noises from both upstairs and down.

The sounds from upstairs begin at dinnertime and sometimes continue until midnight, with such a cacophony of banging, dragging and rolling that it boggles the mind. Steve and I just look at each other and wonder what the hell is going on up there?

Is she rearranging the furniture every single night? Is she repeatedly jumping down from a very high ladder? Is she practicing for Riverdance? Is she bowling??!! What on earth would cause one woman to make that kind of a racket?

The downstairs neighbor is even more exciting. He plays what I assume must be movies which consist only of massive explosions which shake and rattle our whole apartment to the extent that the first time it happened I actually thought we were having an earthquake.

He also seems to be a rabid Bruce Springsteen fan, and plays The Boss for several hours a day, often the same song over and over. This guy is a lawyer who lives alone, and when the Springsteen concerts start, it is hard not to imagine him like Johnny Depp in Blow, snorting a gigantic line of cocaine off of his lawbooks and then passing out on the floor while the same Bruce song plays over and over again.

One night, the music was so loud that Steve and I could barely hear the movie we were trying to watch. I summoned my courage and went downstairs to ask him to turn the volume down. I knocked. Nothing. I knocked again. Still nothing. Several more knocks, and still he didn't come to the door.

I couldn't help myself; all I could imagine was that he couldn't hear me because he was downstairs in his secret dungeon lair where he was sewing himself a woman-skin-suit and telling his latest captive plump-girl to "put the lotion in the basket".

Either that, or he was wearing his mother's clothes and dancing with her shriveled head while the rest of her body lies decomposing in his bathtub. Come on now, tell me you wouldn't be thinking the same thing...

My wine for crazy neighbors is an Armida Winery 2007 "Il Campo" Estate Field Blend Dry Creek Valley. This Healdsburg-based winery produced this blend from estate-grown Zinfandel (75%) and Petite Sirah (25%).

I recently shared a bottle of this wine with Steve, my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, and it was a big hit with everyone. It's rich and fruity with a lot of dark blackberry and currant flavors as well as raisin, spice and a perceived sweetness which adds to the plump fruitiness of the wine. We actually drank it at a Brazilian restaurant which specializes in all different skewers of grilled meats,and it went surprisingly well.

Not as well as it would go with Bruce Springsteen and a woman-skin-suit, of course, but one can't always have the perfect pairing.