'The "P" In "Pride" Stands For "Pride"

This is certainly shaping up to be a Long Weekend of Fine Dining!

On Thursday, my recently-graduated sister achieved employment at a local grocery store. Not the most high-falutin' job, but it's beer and pizza money and that's what matters. To celebrate, the Boyfriend and I decided to invite the B's over and cook a big dinner. Planked salmon, grilled asparagus, baked sweet potatoes, and steamed broccoli. The Youngest B provided us with a salted caramel chocolate cake, which was crazy good, and we imbibed copious amounts of Domaine Bellevue Rose that I reviewed last week. Fantastic.

Last night they reciprocated, stating that they wanted to make it back onto the blog (really) and served us a selection of interesting wines along with lemon chicken, fried rice, a type of slaw, and a creamy, pesto-y soup. Mrs. B takes great delight in making people guess what they're eating, and it took several guesses to realize that the slaw was made from broccoli stalks. I normally HATE slaw, nasty, mayonnaise-covered slimy cabbage that it is. But this was crisp and fresh and full of tart dried cherries and blueberries. Crazy good. The soup, it turns out, was a (not quite) vegan cauliflower and pesto soup. No cream, no butter, just cauliflower, pesto, and some toasted pine nuts for garnish. Wonderful.

Mrs. B is the one to introduce me to the joys of dry rose wine, and she loves it even more than I do. For this event, we were treated to the wonderfully named Barnyard Griffin 2010 Rose of Sangiovese. This wine poured a beautiful, deep magenta-pink. It was considerably fuller bodied and sweeter than the Domaine Bellevue, but where the latter is strawberries, the Barnyard Griffin is all sweet cherries. I worried that the intensity of the cherry flavor and the body of the wine would result in a cough-syrupy mess as the wine warmed, but my fears were unfounded. It was certainly sweeter than I usually go for, but it finished clean and bright, without any of the cloyingness that some people associate with pink wine. It is a fabulous pre-dinner drink.

With dinner we had several bottles of riff pinot grigio terra alpina 2009. The bottle doesn't capitalize so I don't see any reason why I should either. This wine smells a bit yeasty and minerally, and it is just a bit prickly on the mouth, but smooth flavored with just a hint of citrus on top of the slate and earth that kept it from being stodgy. I liked it considerably better when I was eating salty food as opposed to just sipping it on its own, but it's a lovely white.

Eventually the Children (I'm 24 but I'm still Children when I go to the B's house) were banished to the basement while the Adults played bridge or something. However, since the Children are now all (except for Youngest B) above the age of 21, Oldest B brought a bottle of Nocello down with him. I was not familiar with Nocello, but anything that comes in a fancy bottle with a figurine on top can't be all bad!

Nocello, as I found out, is a walnut liqueur from Italy. I am generally suspicious of nut liqueurs because I hate amaretto. The intensity of almond liqueurs sets off a part of my brain saying "WHOOP WHOOP THIS IS NOT FOOD WHOOP WHOOP PROBABLY ARSENIC" which is a really retarded response to have when you are not living in ancient Rome. Nocello sets of no such alarms. It is glazed walnuts. Sweet-sweet but nutty and and delightful. I couldn't drink much more than a sip because I was driving, but this was superb.

As I write this, my family is buzzing about in preparation to go to Charlottesville to see my cousin's play. He is an extremely talented singer, and this show should be excellent!

Graduate school has eaten my soul

...and honestly probably my liver as well.

Drinking briefly stopped being about taste sometime in late February/early March and became about getting drunk. One evening, after getting involved in some drama that I should just have ignored, I cut up someones face.

I'm pretty sure he deserved it! I'm also pretty sure I warned him I was gonna do it! But mostly I remember waking up the next morning, my mouth tasting like sandpaper and my head feeling like it was lined with painfluff and thinking the following:

"Oh god Learning Shots were a bad idea."

"Did I make out with DesignBroad last night?"

"Wait... wait... did I cut up Disaster's face? WHY DID I CUT UP DISASTER'S FACE?!"

I went downstairs and sure enough, I had both cut up Disaster's face and made out with DesignBroad. Thankfully neither one of them was particularly upset with me. We all pretty much agree that the night started off downhill when we started doing "Learning Shots," which was a drinking game with one absolutely retarded rule: drink whenever you drop a kitchen utensil. Don't do that. That is a bad decision no matter how awesome it sounds when you are cheerfully sober. Just... trust me on this. If you aren't trusting me on this, at least don't do Learning Shots with tequila. If you insist on doing Learning Shots with tequila... well then I hope your group's version of Disaster is as laid back as ours is.

I'm much better now, thankfully.

I have also figured out how to make really good sangria, the key to which appeared to be boxed malbec (reasonably tasty even without sugar, triple sec and fruit added) and blood oranges. I *love* blood oranges and I am so very very sad that I can't find them right now.

In non-drinking news, I have completed my second draft of the novel and nearly completed my first year of graduate school. I have also learned how to make muskrat pie.

You heard me right! The Boyfriend has been threatening to bring muskrat to my family's gatherings for a long while now, and finally used my family's Easter celebration as an excuse. It's delicious as all hell too. Here is a recipe!

Take one muskrat and cut into muskrat bits. Soak in saltwater for two days to get the musk out. Season and cook muskrat by your method of choice fully. Set your sous chef to picking the muskrat from its bones. Muskrats have lots of bones and you don't want to crunch on them. While he is picking the muskrat, finely chop two carrots, one large onion, and one medium celery stalk. Saute your vegetables until they are appropriately squishy. Add salt, cracked black pepper, and sage to taste. Add the shredded muskrat bits and heat them through.

While the muskrat and veggies are blending their flavors in a bizarre orgy of taste in your pan, grease a muffin tin and squish some dough into the cups. Our dough was leftover pizza dough which had yeast in, so we had to blank-bake them first. If you have to do that, line the dough-cups with some wax paper and fill with uncooked rice. When that is done, sprinkle some muskrat and veggies into each cup, but don't overfill.

In the pan you sauted the muskratty veggies make a quick roux, one tablespoon of butter to one tablespoon of flour (muskrats are oily little devils, but they shouldn't give off a lot of fat to make the roux with. Even if they did... pour it out and just use butter. Your guests will thank you). Add a cup of hot water mixed with a tablespoon of beef Better Than Bullion (it's expensive but it makes the best damn gravy). Add pepper, and sage to taste, you won't need more salt. Fill the muskratty cups the rest of the way with gravy, put into 350 degree oven and bake for about 15 minutes, or until the crust looks crunchy. 

Yesterday I went to a wine tasting, and so I will have tasting notes up soon enough! In the mean time, I suggest that you all make a muskrat pie and absolutely do NOT take any Learning Shots at all during the way!

OH GOD THESE RIBS ARE SO GOOD SKAFDIWRHKSA

I literally made that sound when eating some ribs made by the Boyfriend this weekend. It was impossible for me to eat those ribs without making little happy sounds the entire time. They were so tender you could cut them apart with a set of tongs. The dry rub was the same one he usually uses, so at first we weren't sure why these were even better than they normally are. We determined that it was because he took them out of the smoker after two and a half hours, and then put the suckers in the oven for the next three, putting a mop-sauce on them every half hour or so. This took a normally fantastic recipe into the orgasmic territory.

I love ribs.

I also love wine, as we all know, but ribs aren't really a wine food, right? WRONG! If you are making spicy, dry-rub ribs, then you want some Black Box Pinot Grigio.

That's right.

Boxed wine.

Most wine drinkers will turn up their nose at boxed wine, but I know better. Have you ever ordered beef burgundy at a restaurant? Even chances that the Burgundy used was from a box. Or perhaps you got a white-wine sauce on your pasta. Probably from a box. Boxed wine is awesome for chefs, because it fits easily on a rack and generally provides a nice, even, "winey" flavor. 

That's all well and good, Stark, but you don't drink cooking wine, do you? Well, yes I do because I don't bloody well cook with wine that I wouldn't drink, but that's beside the point. Black Box actually produces some very pleasant wine. The Pinot Grigio is light, citrusy, and just sweet enough to cool your mouth after a bite of something spicy. It is not cloyingly sweet, nor is it sour, but it also lacks complexity. It's lightly sweetened lemonade, which is exactly what I wanted after eating those utterly fantastic ribs. 

At the moment however I am not sitting in a fabulous house overlooking the Assateague bay, I'm in my house in Bolton Hill, sitting next to a plastic cauldron and arguing about sociology with DesignBroad and Mr. India. This would be less pathetic if I were not sitting across from DesignBroad right now. 

I am drinking a glass of Venta Morales Tempranillo, which is "extremely quaffable" according to DesignBroad. She's right. It's a light to medium-bodied red with a nicely peppery flavor and no aftertaste to speak of. It is not heavily tannic, which I appreciate. Again, not particularly complex, but quite pleasant.

Tomorrow I'm going to show the schizos at work The Great Pumpkin. That should be pretty cool. Until then, continue drinking!

Strawberries! And kiwis!

When I planted my strawberries I had this bizarre impression that I was going to have enough berries to make tarts and shortcake. This would be true, but instead every morning I go out to water them and I pick the one or two ripe berries and eat them right there.


They are incredibly delicious.

This was the best decision.

Speaking of Fruit Decisions, my boyfriend went insane a few weeks ago and came back from Home Depot with two thornless blackberry bushes, two blueberry bushes, and a male and female kiwi.

Okay. I can get behind blackberries. I *love* blackberries. And blueberries are good in pancakes and muffins. But kiwis? "Do those even grow here?" I asked him.

"Sure! They grow in New Zealand and we're at a comparable latitude!"

"...You're full of shit."

"Yes but this will work! Now help me build a trellis!"

So we built a kiwi trellis, which was basically a 5' high box without a lid that he plans to string wires across. This entire time a little sandpiper who decided to lay her eggs in the old garden was cheeping and flopping about like she had a broken wing to get our attention away from her eggs. Go away, dumb little sandpiper. We do not care about your eggs. Of course, because we wanted to put the blueberries in a place even nearer to her next, we were unable to put those in the ground. But we did manage to plant the blackberries and build a serviceable trellis for the kiwis (really).

He's going to have a much more badass garden than I am. But that's because I'm trying to move out and mom and dad don't want me to wreck the yard with a tiller. Of course if we get the apartment in B-More that we're looking at...

THERE WILL BE CHERRY TREES.