baking with laser-like focus and mad skill in a kick-ass black outfit
This is a fun one!
I’ve never been a rosé drinker. I was going up to Santa Barbara to visit an old friend and wanted to bring a treat for the afternoon, so I chose this wine. Partially because of its price, partially because it is from Paso Robles (a favorite wine producing region), but also because it’s pink and I’m a girl and I was going to see another girl and I just wanted something fun.
Happy Wednesday!
This week found me wandering up and down the wine section (on my break!), thinking on what to choose this week. I was looking for another bottle from Paso Robles, but not finding much we hadn’t tried when I noticed a customer looking around. She asked if we still carried the Green Fin. Why yes, we did, in both the red and white. She said she hadn’t tried the white but couldn’t say enough about the red – lots of fruit, she said, and a great deal…
Vino Miércoles!
This week we have a winner. A nice little wine that has a good price ($7.99) and a solid flavor profile, I picked it up even though I’d never heard of Refosco before. I thought this one was sort of plummy, even pruney, and was smooth without being flat. Generally when I’ve tasted what I would call “smooth” wines, they also tend to be a bit thin and unsubstantial. This one was not. I also found it a bit dry at the finish. My co-sampler (and husband) said that he tasted chocolate (I could taste that as well, although not as prevalently as the plum) and thought it was spicy and peppery.
Happy Wednesday!
I’m very excited today because Bake Like A Ninja has its first guest post! An anonymous reader has generously offered to write a bit about port, something I know little-to-nothing about.* Without further ado…
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First I’d like to thank our thoughtful Ninja host for the guest spot. I’ve never done this before so she’s taking a little risk. I’ll just get right to it.
Happy Wednesday!
Oh St. Somewhere! I love your name, love your label, love the region you come from (Paso Robles), and yet…
Yet you disappointed. You were not a dump-down-the-drain disappointment (although some of you didn’t get finished), but you were not what I was hoping for. You smelled kind of yeasty (not generally a good sign, I fear) and you were not in the least bit fruity, chocolaty or even very peppery. You were a bit sour. You weren’t awful, but oh how you were not wonderful either.
Wednesday!
Not really, but the magic of technology is allowing me to pretend, so I’m indulging.
Today we have a very nicely priced Australian wine paired with one of our favorite-things-of-all-time-to-eat – hanger steak!
If you’ve never had a hanger steak and you are a red meat lover, please try one. This is an odd cut of beef – not particularly tender, but extremely flavorful and also called a “butcher’s steak” (presumably because the butcher liked to keep this beauty to herself). Oddly enough, it’s not all that expensive, even though there is only one per steer – it was about $9 for a whole steak from our fancy-pants butcher in the Farmer’s Market on Fairfax.
Oh I never learn.
This is a bottle I picked up from work partially on a recommendation from a customer. He said it was marvelous. Maybe he didn’t say exactly that (I don’t know that anyone says the word “marvelous”), but he was pretty keen on it. In my haste to find a bottle for this week’s review without spending too much additional time in the shop, I neglected to notice something very important about this wine; it’s French. And I don’t like French wine.
We love Zinfandel!
Which is true. And this Zinfandel was good…but not amazing. It came highly recommended, so perhaps the bar in my mind was a bit high, but it just fell a little short of what I was expecting.
It was very Zin…fruity, strong but still smooth and a bit spicy, body without being syrupy. It was good at the start. But my husband noticed that the finish was kind of hollow. I think that’s what he said. Perhaps “empty” was his exact term. But you get the idea. Something about the end of the taste of the wine just sort of fell…flat.
Wine + pizza = excellence!
We’ve been making pizza together since we’ve lived together. I’ve waxed a little poetically about that before, but goofiness be damned, after 7 years homemade pizza is something that really means “home” to me. Maybe it’s because it’s so simple, maybe (very likely) it’s because my husband almost always makes it or maybe it’s because it’s something we learned to make together, I pretty much can’t get enough of the stuff.
My husband just had a birthday and his mom sent him a wonderful cookbook:
