Category Archives: wine

This is a low-activity weekend? I’m not doing it right.

I needed a laid-back weekend, and that’s exactly what I got! Both Saturday and Sunday I was able to just relax each morning, read the news, listen to some nice music, and enjoy my coffee. It was lovely! I even slept in a bit, which is unusual for me. Definitely it was something I needed to reset myself a bit after dragging horribly all last week.

On Saturday takaza and I checked out the site for the MFF Summer Picnic (on June 20 in Prairie Spring Park, Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin). Nice fields, and the shelter is a bit cozy, but I think it will work. We also stopped to watch a neat Jet-Ski freestyle competition, part of the Great Lakes Watercross Tour.

As we were checking out the park, I got a text from fordshepherd. He, baja_hyena, and friends were doing a Wine Country tour and were right up in the area where we had toured last year. After hearing about their experiences at somewhat lackluster wineries, I suggested they check out Peju Winery, which was one of our favorites. Score! It sounds like that wound up being one of the best places they stopped at. Baja was also kind enough to send what sounds like a very tasty white port home with Ford for me, something that was very sweet and unexpected. Thanks again, Baja! 🙂

We capped off the day with a trip with linnaeus and Tom J. to the McHenry Outdoor Theatre to see Up. Wow, what a great movie! I really enjoyed it, and it was an amazing night to be out watching a movie – crisp, a steady breeze fending off the bugs, and a lovely wine and cheese spread to start the evening. Just a great evening. (Also, to paraphrase Nathan Fillion: How to test if your date is a robot. Take them to see Up. If they don’t cry, robot!)

Sunday, we met up with Paul, roho, and genet at BW3’s for lunch. R&G had just arrived from gypsypet and Charlie’s wedding in Charleston, SC. Lydia was on her thirtieth or so hour of being awake and was amusingly loopy 🙂 It was a fun lunch, and a nice spontaneous break in a very mellow day. We did a little shopping afterwards and picked up the new Boom Blox game (whee!). Later in the evening I made a batch of bagels for the week.

Then there’s this morning. Dan left for work at 5:45 AM as usual, but not long after I got a call: his car had died on the way to work. After I showered I drove down and kept him company while waiting for the AAA-summoned tow truck to show up. The truck didn’t show up until 9 AM, but that’s fine – it was nice to have the time with Dan. The car went to the Honda dealer in Gurnee, I dropped Dan off at home, since he can work from home, and came in to work. No diagnosis on the problem yet, but given that it sounded like it the engine was missing and losing power at 2,500 rpm+, I’m thinking it might be a computer issue, or maybe spark plugs, fuel injectors, or something else entirely. On the bright side, Dan’s car needed service anyway, including a fix to a sticky driver’s side door lock. I could have conceivably fixed that myself but taking apart the door looks like a bit of a nightmare.

So that’s about it right now. The rest of the week should be pretty boring, at least it will be once we get Dan’s car back. Fortunately he can commute by train if need be, so that makes the lack of a car somewhat less critical. Hope everyone has a great week!

EDIT: Sounds like the problem is the VTEC oil pressure switch, something that is apparently a common problem in 2003 Elements. It’s about a $250 fix, which isn’t too bad considering that (routine maintenance notwithstanding) Dan’s car hasn’t required any major work in years.

That Was The Weekend That Was

Wow, I’ve not been good with the updates lately. A lot of that has to do with the nearness of Midwest FurFest – I’ve been working on a whole lot of convention-related stuff, and when I’m done with that I usually just want to put the computer away and not deal with anyone or anything for a while. But it was an eventful weekend and worth talking about.

On Friday I drove down to Buffalo Grove and picked up takaza from work, then it was down to linnaeus‘ place where we were joined by darkwolph. From there we carpooled down to the United Center. You see, we had scored some tickets to a suite to watch the Chicago Bulls play the Phoenix Suns. We were joined partway through the first period by mirkowuff, as well. It was a great game (Bulls won), but the suite was swanky – open premium bar, a full buffet, and a dessert cart to die for (little chocolate cups with Bailey’s Caramel in it? Why yes, don’t mind if I do!). We did a shameful amount of damage to a bottle of Morgan’s and discovered the deliciousness that is Effen Black Cherry Vodka as well.

Saturday was much more low-key, though we were joined by roho and genet for dinner. I made a tasty pork roast with braised potatoes (note to self: next time start thawing pork roast MUCH earlier!) and we relaxed while watching some good TV and enjoying an excellent Australian shiraz.

We finished off the weekend on Sunday with the last MFF staff meeting of the year. Everything seems to be well in hand and I am extremely happy with all of the work everyone has done so far. I’m looking forward to what is sure to be a very exciting and enjoyable weekend. We have some nice surprises, a lot of great programming, and some nice little extras that I am sure will please everyone. After the meeting we returned to Mi Mexico for dinner and I was gratified to see that my rave review which appears in the Restaurant Guide holds true – great food, great services, and a great value.

And here we are in the last full week of work before the convention. I have a slew of small projects to wrap up; my goal is to have all projects and everything we will need for the convention in hand by Friday so we’re not fretting about any last-minute items. Hopefully I can avoid more mornings like today, where I woke up at 4 AM fretting about some emails to be sent out and never really got back to sleep. I’m thinking it will be an early night for us!

Fun With Twitter And a Relaxing Evening

Well, I seem to have gotten on the Twitter bandwagon. I’m really not sure how much I’m going to use it personally, but you can follow me at http://twitter.com/DuncanDaHusky. Oh, and I can assure you that I will not be copying my tweets to LiveJournal. I’m not much a fan of that approach.

More interesting, though, is that I have established an official Midwest FurFest Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/midwestfurfest. I have found a very handy service that we can use to load up with notifications like “The Charity Auction will begin in 15 minutes in Ravinia DEF” well in advance of the convention. Additionally, we can also send out notifications of programming changes and, um, whatever else I can think of 🙂 I’m definitely very new to Twitter, so if anyone has suggestions about how to best use the feed, I’m open to ideas!

Last night, after a very hectic week at work, we were joined by roho and genet for an extremely relaxing evening featuring cheese fondue, some crusty bread, a couple of bottles of excellent wine, and chocolate fondue for dessert. After that was a screening of the Big Lebowski episode of Ace of Cakes, followed by the latest episode of Iditarod: Toughest Race on Earth. That show is really amazing, and it always really lifts my spirits. If you haven’t seen it I would highly recommend it – the cinematography is great, and the narrative is very well put together. This is definitely one of Original Productions’ (Deadliest Catch, Dirty Jobs, etc.) better shows. We saw Roho and Genet off at around 11:30 PM, then stumbled off to bed ourselves. Throughout the night my body reminded me why drinking several glasses of wine is a bad thing. Note to self: stock up on Rolaids.

So today I’m off to Chicago to do some shopping. I’m not sure how long I’ll be around, but we’ll see how the day goes. I suppose I’ll also swing by the MFF storage locker and pay for the coming year as well. Off to shower now!

California Birthday Trip: Days 3 & The End

The last day’s pictures are here.

Monday was The Big Day, my birthday. Honestly, I couldn’t think of anything we could do to top the two days prior, but I was looking forward to seeing what was in store. The day’s plans were a mystery to me, (except for dinner), so I had no idea what to expect.

The first stop of the day had us up and out of the house by 9 AM. Following a 45-minute drive to Santa Rosa (and a little bit of confusion in directions), we arrived at our next stop, one that was a genuine surprise to me: The national headquarters of Canine Companions for Independence. linnaeus‘ mother has raised several puppies for CCI, so when he found out we would be nearby, he suggested a tour there. Really, this was a most amazing and humbling experience, and I am so glad that we went there.

CCI trains and provides assistance dogs to disabled children and adults, all at no charge. They use black labs and golden retrievers exclusively, and the level of care and training that goes into each dog is simply astonishing. We got to take a tour of their grounds and offices, and see how they train the dogs after the puppy raisers initial training, lasting
6-8 months. This is followed by 6-9 months of training at the CCI facility before the dogs are paired with a client, either as a service or companion team (opening doors, picking up dropped items, etc.), a hearing team (alerting the client of a ringing telephone, etc.), or a facility team (therapy dogs). I was extremely impressed with the facility and with the friendly people who worked and volunteered there.
After the tour it was back to Napa. We grabbed a tasty lunch at a local burger joint then it was on to the next surprise: a day spa! It was quite delightful: I got a 75-minute massage followed by a pedicure; takaza got a facial, roho and genet each got pedicures and Lydia also got a manicure. Even Paul, who got pulled away by work for a few hours, was able to get a nice paraffin hand treatment. My massage was divine, and when Paul rejoined us he brought a bottle of wine for everyone to enjoy as well. Our manicurist, Babs, was delightful and we had a lot of fun bantering and hanging out.

After everyone was properly relaxed and such, we stopped by Oxbow Market to search for some good local olive oil. We found a couple bottles that were quite delicious. We also stopped by a very nice wine and cheese bar and had a couple pints of beer, which were quite tasty. We were quite amused to chat with the bartender there and find that she was from the south side of Chicago.

We ended the day with dinner at Bouchon Bistro. My food was quite outstanding: I started with an appetizer of cassoulet with duck confit and garlic sausage, followed by the Gigot d’Agneau (roasted leg of lamb served with flageolet beans and a thyme jus) and for dessert a delicious creme caramel. Brendan’s boudin blanc was excellent, and the desserts, especially Dan’s dark chocolate mousse and Lydia’s blood orange pot de creme, were outstanding. Unfortunately, the service was only mediocre (long waits, confused orders), and Dan and Lydia’s steak frites were quite lacking for the cost. Still, it was a great experience and I am glad we went. It was a wonderful way to finish off my birthday.

Alas, all good things must come to an end. Yesterday (Tuesday) we packed everything up early, leaving the house at 7 AM, and drove down to San Francisco International (by way of the San Mateo Bridge, on Babs’ advice, which I’m sure saved us some headaches). We made it there in plenty of time, though our flight turned out to be two hours late departing (one hour of that spent sitting on the tarmac). We got into O’Hare at about 7 PM, and picked up our luggage just in time to miss the Metra train home. Rather than waiting the 90 minutes until the next train, we opted to catch a cab, and I’m glad we did. We saw Brendan and Lydia off at about 9:30 PM, and got to bed at 11 PM.

So here I am, back at work, and quite exhausted. I’m told we have one more experience this evening, courtesy of a certain panda. That should be quite fun as well!

California Birthday Trip, Day 2

Yesterday’s pictures can be found here, starting just after the silly picture of our In-n-Out receipt.

We were a bit slow to get started on Sunday morning, more due to the general lack of morning people (besides myself 🙂 We piled everyone (me, takaza, linnaeus, roho, and genet) into our Saturn Outlook and drove off southward, to explore San Francisco. The drive through Napa and Sonoma Counties there was spectacular, and we saw lots of things that would have been fun if money and time were no object (i.e. open-air biplane tours!).

After a short one-hour drive, we arrived at the Marin Headlands, just on the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge and a place for amazing views of the bridge, the bay, and the city. We wandered around there for a bit, enjoying the refreshing breeze coming off the ocean and the great weather, then it was back to the car to venture into the city. Unfortunately, the GPS’s directions were rather…confused. We wound up taking a couple of wrong turns that led us to some astonishingly steep streets that taxed our SUV a bit. It made for entertaining driving, and a steady string of expletives from me. We combined the GPS directions with a handy map we had picked up and eventually found our destination: Magnolia Pub and Brewery at Haight and Masonic.

The beers were fantastic, and the food no less so. They had some nice sampler glasses, and we took advantage of the fact that February is Strong Beer Month; I started out with a trippel, a doppleweizen, and an imperial stout. Did I mention we hadn’t had any food yet that day? Man, I’m a cheap date. Dan loved the house-brewed grape and orange cream sodas, and Lydia found their root beer delicious. Then came the food! My Dungeoness crab crepes were pretty good, but Dan’s buttermilk biscuits with ginger sausage gravy, Lydia’s cheeseburger, and Paul’s salmon boxty were even better. The real winner was Brendan’s pizza with the incongruous combination of coconut-braised pork, tikka masala sauce, and mushrooms, was just divine. Another round of beers followed and by the end we were full and happy.

After lunch we wandered around the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood for a few hours, enjoying the street musicians and the little shops. Brendan almost picked up an expensive synthesizer widget, but the price wasn’t quite right. Afterwards we adjourned to an amusingly socialist coffee house, then it was back to the car. The original plan had been to stop by Joseph Schmidt Confections, but we had to drop that plan in favor of a quick tour of Fisherman’s Wharf (which we didn’t actually explore because 1.) no parking to be found, and 2.) wall-to-wall tourists). Somewhere in there we also got horribly lost and heading south on US 101 unwillingly, but we got turned back around and back on course.

On the drive home, we managed a brief stop in Novato where we met up with partran. We had a fun but all-too-brief visit as we did some shopping in the local Safeway and picked up stuff for dinner. He gave me a lovely birthday present, a couple of cheeses from Fair Oaks Farms. We had a chance to catch up a bit and chat, and it was great to see him.

After rushing around all day, the evening was blessedly low-key. Dan cooked up some tasty garlic and mushrooms in butter as an appetizer. Brendan braved the darkness and an unfamiliar grill to cook up some yummy steaks. We polished off another couple of bottles of wine along the way, and finished the evening with apple pie and ice cream. It was a great ending to a great day.

And now we have today – yep, it’s my birthday! Thank you so much to everyone for their kind birthday wishes 🙂 What’s planned for the day? Beats me! We have the “morning event” and the “afternoon event” and somewhere in there we hope to have the opportunity to taste and pick up some of the local olive oils. I do know that dinner tonight is going to be amazing though, as we have reservations for Bouchon, Thomas Keller’s bistro not far from here.

Time to shower and start the day!

California Birthday Trip, Day 1

So we started out the day somewhat slowly. As everyone worked on waking up and showering, I drove over to Napa Valley Coffee Roastery and picked up caffeine for all of us addicts. We were joined shortly afterwards by rasslor, brophey, and shadowolf. Lunch was the first item on the day’s agenda, so being that this was many of our group’s first time in California, we had to stop by a restaurant that had the seal of approval of both Alton Brown and Anthony Bourdain: In-n-Out Burger, conveniently located just a few miles away from our rental house.

It was…well, it was a fast food restaurant. I’m thinking that my order would need a little tweaking to find what on their menu really appealed to me; the burger with everything included a monstrously huge slab of onion that unfortunately made it seem like an onion sandwich with a side of burger. The fries were quite tasty, though, even if I didn’t order them “Animal style”.

After lunch we drove up California Route 29 to St. Helena to the Culinary Institute of America – Greystone. The huge, imposing building was beautiful! I was also amused at the trees that were heavy with lemons just outside the entrance. Inside, we browsed through their gift shop and I got a latte as we killed time before the cooking demonstration. We spent an hour watching the chef make a Valentine chocolate torte with a raspberry coulis. I’ll admit I didn’t learn much new, but it was fun to see some of the techniques I’m familiar with and hear the chef touch on some of my favorite authors (like Harold McGee!). After the demonstration everyone got to try the torte, and it was rather tasty.

After the demonstration there was more browsing through the gift shop (and, I admit, making notes for later Amazon purchases) and admiring the herb gardens. Then it was time to hit a few wineries. Since it was right across the street, we decided to make Charles Krug Winery. After tasting several wines, we picked up a Sauvignon Blanc, a Cabernet Sauvignon, and a Zinfandel. On the recommendation of the Krug staff, our next stop was Peju Winery. This was a fantastic experience – we had a good group of people doing the tasting with us, and the guy pouring the wines not only knew his stuff, he knew how to keep things entertaining. Paul, Brendan, Bob and I tasted six different wines, and he even did a small vertical tasting to allow us to compare some of the wines. We picked up a bottle of Provence (a nice red/white blend), two vintages of Syrah (including a 2003 that Brendan thinks may have been their last bottle) and a Cabernet Sauvignon. (During the tasting, Lydia relaxed in the car and Dan, Mike, and Ray hung out and enjoyed the lovely weather.

After the tasting, we were all pretty tired (and some of us a wee bit tipsy), so we returned to the rental house. We dispatched Paul, Mike, and Ray to pick up munchies while Bob and I walked the two blocks to the Foothill Grille to get a copy of their menu to see what we could order for carryout. Once we got everyone back, we called in a rather complex eight-entree order that they nailed precisely, and we had a great evening of chatting, noshing, and killing two bottles of wine 🙂 It was a fantastic evening and I had a blast.

More to come tomorrow!

Duncan’s Subjective, Opinionated, Simplified Beginner’s Guide to Wine

So, a few days ago, blaireau_bougon asked a simple question with a complicated answer:
Exactly how do you train a palate on wine? I’ve had various wines in the past, and I’ve never figured out what was “good” and what wasn’t…

I’ll preface this by saying I’m not an expert on wine, and likely never will be. But over the years I have learned how to appreciate it, so I reckon that counts for something. First off, the simple answer to the question of what is “good” and what isn’t: if you like it, it’s good. Really, that’s all that matters 🙂 That’s true if it’s a box of Franzia’s Chillable Red or a bottle of 1984 Cote du Rhone. Now, if you want to explore, to find out what you like, well, that takes us down a whole other path entirely…

Pull up a chair and let’s talk about wine…