The time we ate that stuff and then drank that stuff It's been an interesting week or so of fun and being that this my journal de la interweb, this is where I write about it.
BBQ This past weekend, MattyJ made barbeque. When I told co-workers this, they all thought I was misprouncing things and meant that we are barbequing meat. But, no. The noun. At least the way my people would say it.
MattyJ cooked a whole pig shoulder (Shoulder? Leg? Arm? Butt?) in his grill with a bunch of woodchips and stuff. He then pulled it (BOOYA!) and mixed it with some spicy, vinegary sauce. Then we ate it on hamburger buns with coleslaw. I brought a collection of Australian shiraz to drink with it all as I had been tasked by the folks at work to come up with various food pairings with our wines (honestly, shiraz was just too big, hot, and jammy for all the food we had - I would of gone with something on the lighter side).
Oh, and a crazy lady threw pots of water at us and the cops came and Sydney was very friendly with them. Cole wrote a song titled, "Mommy! Daddy! Ha ha!".
The opposite of barbecue Last Thursday we went to a dinner that was put on by this French organization who do these elaborate wine-centric dinners. Holy and Moly! I have an almost complete roster of the wines posted on FLICKR with the photo from the event - it was wine porn. Straight up. Four course meal with a 3-4 glasses poured per course. Each wine something ridiculous (I drank my weight in first growth 1970 Bordeaux). Good times.
My most fond memory (that I can write about in public) is towards the end of the evening when they were pouring the Chateau d'Yquem and we were all fawning over it. Mrs. Robot stuck her nose in the glass and breathed in the goodness and then turned to me and said, "If there is a smell of heaven, this is it."
*sigh*
Interestingly, they also poured a 1980-something Sauternes as well. It was a beautiful amber color, but everyone still voted on the 95' d'Yquem. Not often you get to compare Sauternes.
Wine Club 2007 I've started organizing an informal study group / wine club with some people who are taking the same the class I took last year. We meet and drink wine and because many of the people are very studious, we actually learn stuff which is nice. Friday was white wine day. We brought about seven of the major whites of Europe and tasted them side by side. Doing them side by side I find makes their differences really jump out at you. Albarino is my white wine choice for summer 2007.
It was a good time.
Of note, the pal that hosted it did so because she had: an empty apartment. 100 wine glasses a big table
We all agreed it would be best to host it at her place.
UN Dining Club Tonight, we were invited to a session of the UN Dining Club. It's organized by a friend of a friend and the premise is elegantly simple: 1. They meet every Thursday 2. They try to eat every possible cuisine available - alphabetically.
They are still in "A". Tonight is Argentina (they did Afghan all ready). It should be fun.
Oh, Dream Club Last night's dream was this: It was 2008. The elections had been held and there was a tie. GWB was all like, "I'll break the tie by visiting an average american's home and talking to them".
So, he came to our apartment. I served him two glasses of champagne and a muffin. I had a system devised that the glasses represented a candidate and which ever glass he liked the best, then that person should be the president.
The nightmarish part of it (apart from the president coming to the apartment) was that we ran out of glasses and the muffin wasn't very good. Oh, and I thought I should of served him American wines.