2005 “Persia” Domaine de Fondreche
The flagship, tho is a 10 year old bottle of Chateauneuf de Pape, care of Paul Brown. Should be killer.
Bruno is bringing as yet unknown Cabernet Sauvignon.
Archive for the 'Cooking/Dinner' Category
You would think that a geek would favor going out to dinner after along week.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Friday night is Guy’s Night Out.
Saturday however is a night to stay in take care of yourself, and those you care for.
This evening I was in the mood for some spice. I went to the super market and got a pizza, and a frozen dinner. As I was shopping, I remembered how much I enjoy having plain curried veggies with a bed of rice.
So, that’s what i did this evening. Yup, It’s simple.
Prepare rice:
melt a tablespoon of butter in a sauce pan.
add 1 cup rice to pan, and mix, until the rice glistens.
add 2 cups of water to rice mixture, and bring to a boil.
simmer for 15-20 minutes.
Saute Garlic, and any kind of chile pepper.
Add mushrooms, I enjoy Poratbello’s (I cheated and bought them sliced)
Add a chopped Onion (I use a Red Onion)
Add other sorts of vegetables.
Add Curry powder to taste…
Serve vegetables on bed of rice. In-range of laptop. Yum.
Friday afternoons are generally not the time to shop here. Even though they’ve gotten some rather stiff competion here (Trader Joe’s planted a couple of stores here in about ‘02 or so), as well as the once-mighty (but beautifully humble) Natural Way in Webster, Whole Food’s got the masses bumping in each other and generally getting into each others’ way. Continue reading ‘Whole Foods - A Race to the Finish’
BACKDROP AND PREAMBLE:
In the early part of the 90’s, I was a too-young honcho at a big salt plant here. Like all young and newly empowered managers in humongous organizations, I first got brutalized by the older (and one or two level up) and more vicious killers (that mostly suffered from the ‘miniscule male member’ syndrome). An example was a punishingly low-IQ egomaniac sales manager up north at the Chicago headquarters. He wasted no time in pinning my ears back. I provide all of this to reveal the backdrop of my life at the time of this story; this was where my mind was when the story below occurs. Continue reading ‘A Delightful Farm Lady’
About a month and a half ago, I wrote a letter to a lady who loaned me a book she had. She put a mailing address sticker inside the front cover, a very smart practice, which had her address on it. Continue reading ‘A VERY Cool Lunch’
MaryMichelleWinery is beating all the odds. Located in the Illinois River Valley section of Illinois (’217′ area code; Peoria, Hardin, Carrollton, Appleton), mighty glaciers cruely scraped the entire northern part of the state eight (or so) million years ago. To grow quality grape here in sun-baked flattened dirt, well, is a miracle. Without seeing the sixty-or-so acres of grape (I talked to the Vineyard owner/demnonstrator guy when I picked up a bottle of Cynthiana) I already know the rows are likely slightly trenched to capture moiture (combatting root drying) and irrigated heavily. This company has succeeded in the s Rt 94 region of Herman, MO and branched off (pun intended) a California group to share their talents and wares with the Midwest. Continue reading ‘Fine Wine from an Unlikely Place’
There’s perhaps a total of one-hundred Nepalese restaurants in the United States, and if you remove the ones that mix Thai or Mongolian to the menu, cut that number to half as many.
Continue reading ‘Mango Pudding - The Everest Cafe’, StL, MO’
I moved into a neighborhood where there used to be a small grocery store on the corner. They closed (3 years ago), evidently the landolord decided that the property would be worth more with a shuttered store instead of an operating business. Sheesh.
So now my family and I need to drive to another store, which isn’t that far away, but is really, really, crowded. Only recently have I begun to get very nervous when I pull in and the parking lot is full, which means the store is chock-o-block full of shoppers.
I hate it.
So I decided yesterday to take advantage of the online shopping/delivery service. For a small fee, the food shows up with no effort on my part. Living on the third floor and having to not haul everygthing out of my car and up the stairs makes it more than worth it.
And I don’t have to deal with the crowds.
My recipe for meatloaf:
1/2 cup of quick oats.
1/2 cup of ketchup.
1/4 cup of minced onion.
1/4 cup of minced celery
2 tblsp. of chopped parsely.
2 egg whites, lightly whipped.
2lbs of ground beef.
Preheat oven to 350.
In a big bowl, mix the first 6 ingredients (all but the beef). Once they are mixed, add the beef, and combine thoroughly.
Place the contents in a bread-loaf pan. Brush on a 1/4 cup of ketchup in an even layer over the top of the meat loaf.
Bake in oven at 350 for 1 hour and ten minutes, remove and allow to cool for 10 minutes.
This weekend, I made Salt Baked Chicken.
Just so you know, this is the GREATEST way to make chicken of any of them. I’ve never had a better chicken.
That said, the proposition of it is INSANE. Basically, you take about 4 1/2 lbs of salt, and you heat it up in a big pan.
You have already prepsared your whole 4 pound chicken, rubbed it with Vermouth, and set it to dry for 2 hours on a rack. Then you’ve wrapped it in cheese cloth and tied the top so that it is tightly sealed.
After that, once the salt is hot, you take all but about 1 inch of salt out of the pan and place it in a temperature proof bowl. You then place the chicken in the salt, and pour the rest of the hot salt over it, you then cover this, and place it on a medium heat for an hour and a half.
It was so juicy, and tender.
I did do some things wrong tho. I could have waited for the salt to be hotter than I did. And i should have cooked it longer too.
Anyway, you need to give this counter-intuitive dish a try!
