Hide And Seek With My Wine Geek

vino incognito

Every other month or so, I'm energized to make dinner for a small group, usually after being inspired by a recipe or eating something amazing in a restaurant that propels me back into my entertaining mode.  And sometimes, it's a special occasion that re-charges my culinary battery, (and gets me to check for cobwebs on my lamp shades).  When I finally rebound from the last dinner party, after at least a month of recovery, I relish the reunion with my favorite cookbooks or surfing the pages of Epicurious.com all over again.   It's my goal to build a menu that's seasonal, colorful, balanced, a bit ambitious, and most importantly, tasty.  And if my husband, Tom, has a say, it should be wine-friendly too.

In our house, the wine-friendly part is a given, since Tom was a sommelier in a French restaurant before we met.  His professional wine career ended in the late seventies, and now, over thirty years later, he is an encyclopedia of wine knowledge and still has what it takes to taste wine blind (not knowing what it is before tasting) and identifying its grape, vintage, or producer.   Occasionally, he can nail all three.  Back in 1982, he won The French Wine Tasters' Open because he was able to do this better than the rest, simply by drinking too much beer the night before the tasting, and waking up with a dry-mouth, and in turn a super sensitive palate..  I'm not sure if this was a planned strategy or just happened fortuitously thanks to his grad student lifestyle, but I suspect it was the latter.  The French wine snobs who hosted the event were not impressed, but c'est dommage.

check out those shoulders

This weekend,  we're looking forward to having a special wine-centered dinner for friends, initiated by Tom.  It's not often that he plans our social engagements, but when it involves drinking wine with fellow wine lovers, he jumps at the chance.  No need to worry about guests rolling their eyes when the conversation includes words like "finish" and "flabby" and "leather or spice in the nose."  And  since two of our guests are working towards sommelier certificates, and the final exam will ask them to taste wine blind,  why not organize a study group, where Tom could not only be an oeno-instructor, but also hone his skills as well?  This means we'll need skinny paper bags to conceal not just a bottle's label, but also the shape.  French Burgundy bottles, for example, have sloping shoulders vs. the squared off shoulders of a Bordeaux-a dead giveaway.   It also means I have to clear the menu with Tom;  it's key to avoid  vinegar-based and overly spicy foods, and artichokes, and preferred to have  a main course that will pair well with red wine.  Sorry, white just doesn't have the proper gravitas.  Certain types of fish could pass, but are usually reserved for the appetizer, when white wine or champagne are perfect openers.

I think I've got it figured out for Saturday: arugula and mushroom salad with grilled shrimp to start,  followed by grilled, butterflied leg of lamb with a tomato, feta, and basil salad and new potatoes with mashed peas and mint (no recipe required).  I hope it all tastes good, looks pretty, celebrates summer,  and leaves everyone feeling just right.  But if it brings out the best in the wine, so that its identity erupts from the glass and helps our guests get the answers right come test time,  then that will be the icing on the cake. Which reminds me, I still haven't decided what's for dessert.  Except that it has to be chocolate.

Overboard

our first housewarming gift, still in mint condition

I've always dreamed of owning a house at the beach.  And late last year that dream finally came true. Sort of.  It's just that the house we bought is not one we want to live in.....yet.  It sits about 100 yards from the ocean (at high tide), which is great, but is filled with hazardous materials (possible traces of asbestos in some floor tiles) and doesn't smell that good.   Also, the foundation isn't sound and  the layout is odd. No problem we thought; we'll just start from scratch and build a new one right on the very spot.   If we could ever get it started.  What's holding things up is the process known as getting a variance.  This is probably common lingo for many people, but it's been a rude awakening for me, especially dealing in beach time, which moves more slowly even than suburban time.  So, we're still waiting for the go-ahead to build the house the way we would like to, on our very narrow lot.  And we'll probably have to wait for a good part of the summer.

had to have these for my kitchen    www.wisteria.com

how cute are these?         www.wisteria.com

In the meantime, just to keep my mind off the waiting process but still on the goal, I've been buying home decor magazines to inspire me.  My plan is to copy their looks for a fraction of the cost.  I am probably the first person to buy the latest issue of various design magazines the minute they hit the shelves: Elle Decor, Coastal Living, Architectural Digest (just for kicks- there's really nothing in there that is realistic for us), House Beautiful, Veranda, Dwell (to help me stay modern and green). And then there are the blogs: Chic Coastal Living, Classic-Casual-Home, Remodelista, Inspiring Interiors, Cape Cod Designs, Things That Inspire, Beach Cottage Love, and my favorite, GardenWeb, which is actually an online forum and deserves an entire blog post to itself someday.  I've gone through way too many ink cartridges printing out pictures from these blogs and torn out countless pages from these magazines that I'm probably more confused now than when I had no vision at all.

I put these in my husband's Christmas stocking
www.seasonsofmadison.com

What's worse is how I can't resist buying a few little things here and there that I know will fit in the rooms someday: bedding (since I know what size beds we'll have);  pillows (we'll definitely have a couch or two); bowls for the requisite ice cream, mugs for coffee,  and  seagrass baskets the size of a small toddler-a must.

one of three seagrass baskets. what was i thinking?
www.wisteria.com

 One would have been enough. But  my overzealous online shopping led me to buy three, since the price was great and I could store towels in them!  Except I forgot about the fact that our lab makes sport out of stealing towels and holding (stuffing) them in his mouth, retriever that he is, so owning more than one of these baskets would drive me crazy when I was supposed to be relaxing at the beach.    And to make matters worse, I learned today that the return shipping on the extra two baskets would cost more than the baskets themselves.  No point in returning them now.   As I drove away from the UPS store with two huge boxes spilling out of my small car,  I felt like I had finally gone a little overboard and it was time to just keep dreaming, and saving money, a little longer.

            www.anthropologie.com

Wear The Wild Things Are

Yesterday morning, I met my sister on Park Avenue and 86th Street in NYC.  We strolled over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she in ladylike flats and a vintage Hermes scarf tied just right around her neck and I in my summer staple white jeans with a flowy jade green blouse.  Alexander McQueen would not have approved.  And after seeing the exhibit of clothes from five of his collections, I understand why.

photo courtesy of thehuffingtonpost.com

photo courtesy of thehuffingtonpost.com

These are clothes and accessories that are unconventional, dramatic, daring, exciting, provocative, sensual and beautifully strange.   While walking through the  dimly lit rooms, you imagine yourself moving from a jungle, to a dungeon, to a royal court, to a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream.  There was a dress made from ostrich feathers and medical slides, and another from silk and dried flowers. A headpiece of floating          

butterflies  was created from dyed turkey feathers.  Wood, leather, and mussel shells are carved, shaped and tailored to create skirts, corsets and dresses.
And it wasn't just the clothes that were awe inspiring.  There were messages throughout the galleries from McQueen himself, explaining his vision and his way of looking at the world.
 These quotes were like extra little gifts McQueen left for us, scattered throughout the show.                                                                

photo courtesy of mylifeasapearl.com

                        This exhibit confirms once and for all that fashion like McQueen's is art and deserves a place in one of the greatest museums in the world, not just on the frames of the lucky ladies who have worn his extraordinary clothes.  Maybe my sister and I can splurge on something together one day and take a walk on the wild side of fashion.  We are about the same size after all.

http://blog.metmuseum.org/alexandermcqueen/