"Shop Local" Only Goes So Far

For a decade-plus, now, we've bought wines from Northgate Vineyard. Today, I'm reasonably certain that I bought my last bottle of wine from them. It's a shame, really, because I really liked doing business with them. Unfortunately, times change and, too frequently, the things that make you want to do business with people go away as part of that change. 

Such has happened with Northgate. Earlier this year they were sold. Apparently, the buyer is someone that's buying up Virginia vineyards, presumably hoping to cash in on a stong "buy local" ethos that has powered the growth of the farmers markets, distilleries and the Virginia wine industry as a whole. Unfortunately, this buyer seems to want to recover his acquisition costs inside of the first 12-24 months of assuming ownership.

While I'm a proponent of "buy local", that desire has its limits. Admittedly, when we first started buying their wines a decade ago, they were a relative bargain: you could get a really decent wine from really nice people and spend well less than $20 to do so. Even over time, as their prices trended upward, the value proposition still made their wine an "ok" buy. Unfortunately, a wine that was a bargain at $16 and an ok value at $21 falls out of the "every-day drinking" price-range when it hits $30+. And, when the retail price goes up by more than 60% in the space of three months and you no longer cut frequent-buyers the same discount you cut for occasional case-buyers, you're really asking a lot of your existing customers. I'm concerned with value. If you're wanting to charge me better than 60% more for something I've been buying for years, you need to deliver a product that has a concordant improvement in value.

Funny thing with a better-than-$30 bottle of wine: you put it into the same price-class as some really decent "continental" or California wines. Yeah, you're still nowhere near the really superior wines that come from vineyards that have been making wine since before this country even existed, but you're definitely out of the "table wine" price category and into "special occasion" territory. You're no longer a wine that I'm just going to give to a newly moved-in neighbor as a housewarming gift. You're no longer a wine that I'm going to share with friends who are just as happy drinking a bottle of Barefoot from the local 7Eleven. And, hey: if you're able to make more money chasing the "occasional wines" market than the "every day wines" market, then "good on you" ...but I can't come along for that ride. And, like I say, if you're going to price yourself as an occasional wine, you need to taste like one. Sadly, I can't say that Northgate's wines fall into that category.

What's really sad is that they aren't the local wine-producer that's going down this path. Yes, Northern Virginia (DC Metro as a whole) has a lot of six-figure earning residents. And, of those, there's a non-trivial number — particularly the younger, less life-encumbered ones — who tend to have a "more dollars than sense" outlook on buying-decisions. But, that's a group that tends to shrink over time as they discover that there's plenty of things that are "just as good or better for less" and that spending money for the sake of spending money isn't really a sustainable path, no matter what your income is.

Point of fact, my income doesn't exactly put me in the "struggling" range, even given this area's cost of living. That said, I still measure everything I buy — no matter the price — on whether the reward was worth the cost. My spending habits are more about value than raw price. I've had "special occasion" meals that, at nearly $1000, were far better values than meals that were well less than 1/3 that price.

And that's the rub. "Shop local" is really only one point of consideration in the "value" equation. There's not many people I know that are going to completely ignore the rest of the value equation just to shop local. If people are going to ignore other aspects of a value equation, they're going to do it for a status-y "name", not "it's local". To be brutally honest, I don't know that there's a single Virginia winery that has a status-y enough name to overcome normal value equations.

It really makes me wonder how successful this vineyard-buyer is going to end up being. His practices, to date, have been pretty alienating. I've even spoken to a wine-buyer for a local wine outlet that has previously carried the labels effected by this vinyard-buyer's actions. And the opinion is basically the same as mine: "nice when it was at last year's price; completely not worth it at the current price."  Worse, that buyer has to factor in seller-behaviors into the bulk-buying decisions and the seller's delivery-behavior has apparently suffered even as the asking-prices have soared.

So, "good-bye, Northgate." It was nice when it was Mark selling me wine. This new guy can go screw himself ...because that's exactly what he's trying to do to the people that helped make Northgate an attractive acquisition-target.

Vintage Virginia Wine Festival (2013 Installment)

In previous years, going to the Vintage Virginia Wine Festival has been a fun way to spend a weekend afternoon with friends. It's always had its down points (lack of shade, long lines for tastings, chaos at the wine-pickup and middling food). However, all of those were at least bearable.

This year's installment? Not so much. And, it started at the opening gates and pretty much continued throughout the day.

In previous years, there were two entrances for getting in. We parked midway between the two usual entrances - slightly closer to the one. We saw the line at the closer one and decided to walk to one we'd used in prior years. When we got there, we found "vendors only" (and similar) signs. We asked if we could still get in there (since they had the usual table full of sampling-glasses) but were informed that there was only one gate usable by patrons this year. So, we made the long trudge back to the other gate. It turns out the reason there was such a line, this year, was that there was only the one patron-gate. Two, perfectly serviceable entrances, but they were only allowing patrons in by way of the one.

Fail.

Even better? If you'd bought (and brought) your ticket ahead of time, the line to get your ticket taken was much longer than either the line to buy tickets or the will-call line. So much for being smart and getting the tickets sorted out ahead of time.

Double-fail.

In previous years, the place was organized with with trinket and other sellers arrayed along the fence at the top of the hill, interspersed with food and beverage sellers. They also had what was, essentially, an outdoor food-court. Granted, the food that was sold was middling, county fair style and quality food - nothing to write home about. That said, these food-vendors knew how to move a large number of people through their lines, sold food at a surprisingly reasonable price for what's essentially a captive audience and they gave you more than just a few morsels for the price paid.

I guess this year they were trying to respond to prior years' attendees complaining about the quality of the food. This year, they decided, "lets bring in chefs and 'gourmet' food trucks". While this would have been a great way to supplement the prior years' offerings, they opted to have the food trucks completely supplant the prior years' food sellers. Unfortunately, this caused a number of problems.

At this venue, there's a paucity of shady spots. Given that most years, the weekend they hold the event tends somehow always seems to manage to be both sunnier and warmer than normal for the time of year, the lack of shade really sucks. That said, there was at least some shade available to take refuge in. This year, all of the shady spots were occupied by food trucks. In prior years, these areas had either had cooling tents in them or trinket-sellers who didn't object to you spending time under their tents, even if you didn't actually end up buying anything. All of those sellers were now pushed to the inner area of the field and, apparently, their tend-sizes restricted.

The food trucks were also troublesome from the perspective of service pace. The prior years' "slop-slingers", while pushing middling food, pushed it quickly. If they were operating a 15 foot wide food-stand, they were servicing four to five lines in that space. This year, the food trucks each hogged up 15 feet of shade yet could each service only one line. And, because of how the food trucks operate, that one line they were able to service moved much slower than any one line previously serviced by the slop-slingers. To say that the lines were long and slow would be an exceedingly charitable characterization.

Now, don't get me wrong, lines by themselves aren't an inherently evil thing. If what you get at the end is of sufficient value - tasty, adequately filling, etc. - then it can be a worthwhile tradeoff of the time spent. However, when you're getting gouged for tiny portions of middling food and have to wait in the scorching sun and humid heat for a half hour or more, it's not a good value. It's rage-inducing.

Further, when the food trucks have displaced the cooling tents and reduced the number of places for getting water, particularly in a place where people are consuming a dehydrating substance like alcohol, it's a recipe for fainting spells or worse. Saw the medical assistance golf carts go by on more than a few occasions. Sadly, with the huge lines caused by the slowness of the food trucks' service, those medical assistance carts had a tough time getting to their assistance-targets on a timely basis.

And, whose brilliant idea was it to have a cupcake truck? Really: you want to try to serve up heavy, overly-sweet baked goods in northern Virginia heat? The market definitely spoke on that one: I didn't observe a single person attempting to buy a cupcake. The only people I saw were those who stopped to see if they had any water for sale (they didn't). Otherwise, the cupcake truck sat there completely unvisited (yet still soaking up 15 feet of space that could have been used for sitting down or seeking refuge from the sun).

About the only good part of the food trucks? With everyone stuck in line waiting for food and water (the food trucks displaced prior years' beverage sellers, too), the lines for the wine sellers were much shorter this year than in prior years.

Unfortunately, the value of the shorter lines was greatly reduced by the size of this year's pours. This year's pours seemed to be maybe half the size of prior years' pours.

While this may be a positive from the standpoint of making it harder for people to get blind-drunk, it also makes it difficult to actually tell "do I like this wine enough to buy a bottle of it". And, to be honest, the reason I go to wine-tasting events is to see what wines I'd like to buy and to take home a case (or so). I'm not there to get smashed, I'm there to find stuff I want to buy. However, when you're pours are so small I can barely fully wet my tongue with it, let alone swish it around in my mouth to fully experience its flavors and textures, it's not going to make me want to buy. And saying to me, "this one has a really great mouth fill" after having poured me something that doesn't allow me to experience that feel makes me want to just punch you in the goddamned throat.

Needless to say, the usual case-plus that we've bought in previous years wasn't repeated this year. The folks we were with also bought radically less. Prior years, one of our complaints was the wait to pick up the wine we'd bought inside. Judging by the nearly non-existent lines at the wine-pickup area near the venue's exit, it wasn't just our party that was buying considerably less. If I were one of the wine-sellers, I'd be pissed at this year's changes.

I'm pretty sure that 2013's incarnation of Vintage Virginia will have seen the end of our attendance at these events.

Riding the Uni Horse

I like to say that I'm the kind of person who's willing to try anything one - twice, just in case the first experience was an anomaly - before saying "I don't like it".

For me, the one sushi, uni, fell into this camp. Uni had always been one of those things that was usefully primarily as a dare or as an initiation rite. In the DC area, the uni that is served is generally disgusting. Eating it is an experience akin to trying to eat an old, dirty and moldy kitchen sponge. I'd long ago given up on it as being fit for human consumption.

A few years ago, while on a business trip to Chicago, I discovered this wasn't exactly the case. I'd been invited to dinner by friends of my wife, Donna (who I'd brought along on this business trip). They took us to this great sushi place in Shaumburg, IL (happened to be about a 2mi. drive from our hotel - how fortuitous!). I'd ordered the omakase sushi menu. I'd asked that they not include uni in my order, given my prior experiences of it it. However, when my plate came out, there sat a sample of it on my plate. Crap. Well, it was paid for and I'm too cheap a bastard to just waste things, generally. Besides: everything I'd sampled, thus far, had been exceedingly good, so, I gave it a shot. Instead of being nasty and unpleasant, it was an interestingly complex experience. It was kind of like eating slightly-squishy sweetened sea-water (and, yes, I know that doesn't sound good, in the traditional sense, but it was rather an *interesting* experience - and, for me, "interesting" often trumps the whole good/bad thing).

With this experience in mind, I modified my stance on uni. I was back to being willing to try it, but only from places whose sushi I *really* trusted and only when it was explicitly recommended by a sushi chef I trusted.

Today, the uni was recommended by the guy at our regular sushi place. So, I figured, "why the hell not." Now, it wasn't as good as what I'd gotten at the place in Shaumburg, but it also wasn't bad. I dunno that I'd order it again, but, if it was put in front of me, I wouldn't automatically pass, either.

It Tastes Like Winter

I think chestnuts are an underutilized nut in the American diet. Previous to this fall, it had been at least two decades since I'd had anything featuring chestnut. Last month, while Donna and I were celebrating our Anniversary down in Williamsburg, we were served a chestnut icecream with our dinner. Tonight, Donna made a brusselsprout (another under-used food) hash for dinner that featured a heavy use of chestnuts.

There's just something nifty about chestnuts. They've got this lovely, delicate, earthy-sweet flavor. It lends itself well to both sweets and to savory food-stuffs.

Tonight's hash was something that Donna just winged. Basically, she took her usual brusselsprout hash, and enhanced it with white wine and chestnuts:


Ingredients:
• 10 chestnuts
• 2 pints fresth brussel sprouts (trim, cut in half, then slice thin)
• 6-8oz crimini mushrooms (sliced)
• Penzeys Fox Point seasoning
• dry white wine (recommend a sauvignon blanc)
• extra virgin olive oil
• butter (a good, rich, European-style is best)


Chestnut prep:

1. Slice an X into the flat side of each chestnut
2. Scatter nuts onto flat baking sheet and roast at 425 degrees for 15-25 minutes
3. Let cool enough to handle, then peel.
4. Chop chestnut meat into crumbles and set aside

Mushroom prep:

1. Sauté sliced mushrooms in large skillet in a mixture of olive oil and butter
2. Season with fresh-ground black pepper and liberal dash of Fox Point seasoning as they cook
3. Cook till browned
4. Remove mushrooms to bowl and set aside

Cook:

1. In same skillet, heat and melt 1Tbsp. of butter and 1 Tbsp. of olive oil
2. Add brussel sprouts and saute till they edges begin to brown (about 8 minutes)
3. Add half cup of white wine and let cook till wine is mostly gone.
4. Season to taste with more Fox Point.
5. Add in chestnuts and mushrooms, stir well and heat through
6. Serve

The hash worked very well with a nice, rare sirloin (in our household, we generally use bison, but standard beef would likely do, as well. Garnished with some locally-sourced dark cherry tomatoes. Served the meal with red wine (the Vicious Petit Sirah's cranberry notes were a very nice complement both to the hash and to the sirloin).

Brusselsprout/Chestnut Hash with Bison Sirloin

Lunchtime Atrocities

Where I work, most days of the week, there are very limited food choices. Basically, you have the option of eating down in the building cafeteria, walking over to the commisary (that's ½mi. walk from the exit of the building, which, itself is a ⅓ of a mile from my desk) or going off campus.

• The building cafeteria has several "food" options: Subway, a Chinese food place (it's a chain, too, I just can't remember it), two other sandwich shops, a hot foods concession, a burger stand, a salad bar and a pizza concession.
• The commisary is a ½-mi. walk from the exit of my building. And, since I work in a large building, the walk from my desk to that exit is ⅓-mi. walk). Down there, there's another subway, a pizza concession, a Starbucks, an icecream shop and a couple other low-grade concessions. If I wanted to walk further still, there's a Burger King
• The closest off-campus location is a ten-minute drive ...and that's after you've walked out to your car. And, given the parking situation on campus, you could easily have walked a half mile or more to get to you car (and, if you're in one of the "close" spots, you won't want to lose it over lunch, any way). That location is full of higher-end chains, but still chains

I'm not a big fan of chain food, in general. So, if I'm going to eat chain food, I try to minimize the insult by at least restricting myself to cheap chain food. Subway's cheap and it's convenient. Notice, I don't use the term "good".

Usually, what I get is the seafood sub. I order the 6" sandwich made with the Italian herb&cheese bread. I get it with American cheese, lettuce, tomato and a ton of hot peppers. Frankly, the hot peppers are the only thing with any flavor on it. Yes, I could order something with more flavorful ingredients, the problem is, those other "flavorful" ingredients have an awful flavor. So, I go with the filling but flavorless wonder.

Now, under normal circumstances, the combination I choose would at least have some flavor

• Seafood normally has flavor, but Subway's seafood salad is just chopped up faux-crab with no discernible spices and flavorless mayo (I assume it's mayo, but it's just as likely some kind of semi-edible bonding agent).
• The bread I choose claims to be "Italian herb and cheese". As near as I can tell, the "Italian herbs and cheese" Subway uses were chosen more to provide texture than flavor.
• American cheese, while normally mild, typically has flavor. Subway's? Not so much. It's mostly just a textural thing that provides a bit of filling - a very small bit of filling, given that they take one small square of cheese, cut it into two triangles and lay the triangles end-to-end, long-sides on a common axis, so as to give the appearance of covering the whole sandwich. Much as Mario's cake is a lie, so is Subway's cheese.
• Lettuce can have flavor, it's just that most sandwich places seem to choose to use iceberg or other basically flavorless lettuces. I don't know what token greenery Subway actually uses, but it's flavorless.
• Tomatoes... I loves me some tomatoes. As a kid, it used to boggle my mind that they were technically fruits. As an adult with a very nice garden in my yard, I almost find it hard to believe that I was ever confused about whether they were a fruit or vegetable. With Subway's tomatoes, the only confusion I have is, "is this actually food?" I mean, today's tomatoes were literally white (granted, it was a pinkish white, so, it had the suggestion that they were distantly related to the bright-red, flavorful tomatoes I've had elsewhere, but it's only enough of a hint to make you buy into them maybe being tomatoes). Their texture and flavor, however, I could replicate by cutting the bottoms off a styrofoam coffee cup, splashing them with ink from a red pen and tossing them on my sandwich.
• The only saving grace is the hot peppers. I don't know why the sandwich makers always boggle at me when I ask them to pile them on (sometimes saying things like "take what you think is an obscene amount of hot-peppers, then double it" to try to give them a picture of how much I want). Now, you'd think that canned sandwich peppers were canned sandwich peppers. Growing up, it didn't so much matter which brand was on the jar, the crushed hoagie peppers were zesty. I dunno where Subway gets theirs, but it definitely isn't from Talaricos. Yes, they too are gutless versions of the food substances they pretend to be.

Oh well. It saves me the hassle of having to go off campus and it makes my stomach shut up. Though, in truth, I don't know whether my stomach shuts up because it's been sated or because it fears that I'll assault it with another wave of utterly indifferent food.

Irresistible

Not a generally a candy fan, but, I have a hard time not powering through a bag of good jelly beans.

Food or Toy?

So, after a nice, spicy dinner, a bit of sweet often goes well. For me, a frequently-preferred sweet is a nice, freshly-peeled navel orange. So, I reached into the fruit bowl and gathered one up. As I started for the living room, I realized, "oh, it's time for my evening meds." Not wanting to carry the orange with me back to the kitchen, I tossed the orange at my couch before heading back to the other end of the house. Well, my aim was a touch high (actually, I was trying not to clobber my cat with it as he lazed away on my couch). The orange hit the top of one of the back-rest pillows and then started rolling downward and off the couch. It tumbled to the floor and rolled its way to a stop along the one wall. Cira had seen all of this transpire and was immediately captivated by it. I was just going to fetch it up after taking my meds, but decided that it wasn't worth risking her trying to treat it like a chew toy in my absence. So, I reached down, plucked it up and tossed - properly, this time - onto the couch where it came to a stop next to my lounging cat.

I'm not sure Cira knows whether this orange is food or a ball: either way, she's not happy it's not in her possession. When I came back from the kitchen, she was sitting in front of the couch, head cocked, staring intently at the mysterious object and whining. The whining was not diminished by my picking it up to peel it.

Once I finished peeling it, I figured, "offer her a piece so she knows it's food and not some toy I'm withholding from her." Turns out that oranges are one more bit of human food she's not sure she wants to accept as beggings.

Stupid daig.

Tastes Like Box

The problem with most food out of boxes is that they taste like they came out of boxes.

Reserved Terms?

It seems that, somewhere along the lines of my cultural acclimation, I have come to associate certain expectations with the term "custom". And, while I realize, at a rational level, that "custom" is a fairly generic term, I can't help but think of the various TV shows centered on "custom choppers", "custom hotrods" and the like.

Today, I got a sandwich from the Wholefoods sandwich counter. I got one of their daily specials. However, Wholefoods frequently uses red onions, which I have an allergy to, on their sandwiches. Indeed, such was the case for the specialty sandwich I wanted to order today. Thus, I asked the sandwich-maker to substitute raw white onions for the grilled red onions that are part of the sandwich's normal recipe. Now, I don't know whether it was this substitution that warranted it or that it was a daily special, but, the price label on my sandwich's bag said, "custom sandwich". Seeing that label almost immediately prompted me to wonder if I should expect the sandwich in the bag to have some kind of flame paintjob or ridiculous amounts of chrome.

Wasted Weekend Redeemed?

Ok, so, this weekend has been an utter waste. I mean, two days into a three day weekend and all I've accomplished is sawing a lotta wood (figurative). At least Donna was able to do something constructive in the form of tonight's dinner: a pan-seared pork tenderloin that was then liberally sprinkled with Penzies Bavarian seasoning and then slow-roasted and served with a nice pan-sauce of white wine, shallots, chicken broth and dijon mustard. On the side, she served-up a nice mix of roasted julienned carrots, parsnips and sweet potatoes tossed with olive oil, italian seasoning, bosari salt, and garlic/pepper mix.

Right now, she's in the process of making pastry to house the moca/dark-chocolate custard she made, earlier. Gonna be eclairs for for desert and breakfast.

 

That's *One* Way to Warm the House

Cold weather/house means Donna's in a baking mood. Tonight: apple pie!

Makes You Hungry

When the pool's next to the kitchen and your balcony overlooks the pool, your balcony smells of bacon in the morning.

Another Successful Turkey-day

Donna loves to cook. She loves to make big, complicated meals. When it's just her and I eating, it's usually hard to justify the kind of effort and cleanup that such proclivities entail. So, occasions like Thanksgiving gives her a real chance to shine.

It doesn't come without real effort and hard work, however. Thanksgiving meal preparations are a multi-day affair. Before we left DC, she'd had to do some last minute marketing (going to farmers markets to source fresh food stuffs). She also mixed the doughs for the pie crusts she would be rolling-out once in Carlisle. She made a fresh loaf of challah bread to be used in the turkey-day stuffing and in a breakfast bread-pudding. Lastly, she did her whirlwind packing of all the cooking supplies (knives, specialty pans, etc.) she would need for this year's spread.

That was Tuesday. Wednesday, she made the pies. This year: two pumpkin pies and one pecan pie:

Pies!

The pumpkin pies were made from freshly (home) processed pumpkin purée. The pecan pie (or, as my mom frequently refers to it, "peekin pie") was made from pecans she and I had freshly shucked and flavored with her homemade vanilla extract (vanilla beans steeped, for over a year, in Ezra-B 10 year old KSBW). Pies done, she cut up half the loaf of challah bread and made an awesome bread-pudding (also flavored with the homemade vanilla extract!):

Fresh Bread-pudding

I imagine that, when she gets around to it, she'll post the recipe(s) on her blog.

The turkey-day sweets out of the way, she began her preparations of the turkey. Now, there's just the three of us, so, we don't bother with a whole turkey. We just get a couple drumsticks and a small, half-breast from a local farmer. For three people, it still manages to turn out to be a lot of meat. At any rate, over the years, we've discovered that brining turkey's is the key to ensuring that they're extra moist and flavorful. Sourcing from a good, local farm also helps a lot.

Years previous, when she was preparing dinner for five (Mom, Dad, my grandmother and Donna and me), we usually did the (small) whole bird thing. This required putting an entire turkey into a brining bag and letting it sit, over night, in a cooler out in the garage. This year, with it just being two drumsticks and a half breast, it was only two, large resealable Ziplocks tossed in the fridge:

Salty bird ...in the bags, that is

This morning, she got up and resumed preparations. Mom was scheduled to work at the nursing home and wouldn't be back till after 15:00. So, it was to be a late Turkey-day meal. Having stayed up the night before with the prep-work (and then some pre-vacation sewing!), Donna slept in till after 10:00. Wasn't long after that (and a slice of fresh bread pudding) that she got into the actual cooking phase. On the menu:

• Brined turkey rubbed and stuffed with herbed-butter
• hashed brussel sprouts with onions, garlic and bacon
• fresh cranberry relish
• horseradish mashed potatoes
• herbed, baked stuffing
• fresh, scratch-made biscuit
• gravy

No, I don't have the recipes for any of it. Hopefully, she'll make a post on her blog detailing it all. All I can really do is document it all. In the end, this was what ended up on our table:

As per usual: an excellent spread

All in all, a great way to get back into a family holiday.

Comm Errs at the 7Eleven

Most mornings, I need breakfast to get my day going. Overall, I try to get my breakfast at home, as what I can put together there tends to be better for me. However, some mornings, there's either not the time to put something together or there's not ingredients. On those mornings, if I'm actually working at my cubicle, I will either stop in at the 7Eleven near my office or one of the McD's on my commute-route.

Today, was a 7Eleven day. Most days, when I avail myself of 7Eleven for "food", I either go for the Jamaican spicy beef patties or one of the small hotdogs. That morning, there were no small hotdogs - only the large and jumbo dogs and corn dogs. So, I opted for one of the beef patties.

I paid for my stuff, got in my car and headed onward to my office. Upon getting my laptop set up, I commenced to opening my 7Eleven "bonanza". Much to my chagrin, my spicy beef pattie was, instead, one of the unwanted ginormous hotdogs. Oh well. At least I was only charged for the patty rather than the uber-dog. Still: : how does "spicy beef patty" get translated as "gargantuan hotdog", 7Eleven?

Woke Up With a Hankering...

This morning (sorta: it was still about three minutes to noon), I woke up with a taste for yesterday's leftovers. Donna had made a pasta dish of our last, big tomatoes from the garden, wheel-pasta, salami and some other assorted stuff. Was damned tastey and was looking forward to it.

I came down to look for it in the fridge and didn't find it there. Instead, I eventually found it on the kitchen island where it had been sitting since yesterday afternoon. Granted, it was covered, but I was still a little shakey on eating it.

So, I had my morning pills and grumbled my way back out to the living room to sit down and stew in my no-breakfast-having hunger.

Donna came down and said, "no, I left it out intentionally. There's nothing in it that would spoil and refrigerating would have screwed up the tomatoes." So, we both had a bowl of it. I'm not dead yet and feeling no noticeable ill-effects. So, maybe it will be ok.

Good Food; Bad Website

I love Stachowski's products, but their website is rubbish. I mean, I'm pretty sure it's put together by the guy who runs their market stands. Nice guy, but, clearly not a graphic designer or marketer by trade.

You Call This a Snack??

Ok, clearly I've gotten old. I'm sitting here in a house full of sweets and junk:

• there are left-over homemade cupcakes that Donna made for a party, yesterday
• there's a couple of fruit hamantaschen with my name on them
• there's a similar number of rugelach waiting for me
• there's part of a bag of Jelly Belly jellybeans
• there's two boxes of assorted gumdrops
• there's even a mostly-full bag of Cheetos sitting on the end-table, next to me.

But, what did I end up having as a late afternoon snack? I had the below:

Sunday Snack

That's some slices of french baguette for dipping in the extra garlic hummus and a plate of vegetables (tomatoes from the garden, cauliflower from the farmers' market and pickled peperoncinis). What the hell am I thinking??

Dreadful Minutiae

So, this is the part that people hate about social media: updates about stupid thing. Today, the stupid minutiae will be "what I had for breakfast".

As I've indicated before, we're big into the fresh/slow/organic food thing. Well, Donna is, I'm just sorta along for the ride.

This morning's breakfast was an average kind of breakfast: scrambled eggs with peanutbutter and jelly toast.

The eggs: We don't have chickens of our own - though Donna periodically lobbies to change that - so the eggs are externally-sourced. This morning's eggs were from one of the local farmers that sells at one of the markets we regular hit. They were just your basic, brown "organic" eggs. However, I spiced them up a bit: I chopped in some chili-peppers grown in the front bed (that I'd picked the other day) and some onions picked last month (Donna grows onions and garlic between our rose bushes - apparently helps keep the weeds at bay). I mixed in some sea salt and mixed, fresh-ground pepper and some mustard bought at the local German market. I also like to mix milk in with the eggs, as it makes them a bit fluffier when scrambled. The milk was from a local bottler and bought at the Whole Foods on Duke Street (in the Old Town section of Alexandria). I then topped them with some of the ketchup Donna had made in the annual tomato-processing run. So, was pretty zesty and the homemade ketchup gave it a nice, bright, tomatoey taste.

The toast: This was a bit more of a cheat. I still haven't fully weaned myself from the Jiff "extra crunchy" variety peanutbutter. That said, the jelly was a nice homemade jelly and the bread, itself, was some of Donna's homemade bread. 

So, yeah, "mundane," but still mostly good for me.

Quit Yer Bitchin'

So, in recent weeks I've frequently seen the nofoodtaxes.com commercials, and, this morning, a news story came on about how NYC is asking that Food Stamps impose nutritional restrictions on their use.

Now, to start, I am not a fan of the government telling me how I should or am to live my life. So, I can understand people being against nutritional value-based taxation to encourage good eating habits. At the same time, the government of this country has been imposing "sin taxes" on things like alcohol, tobacco and other deleterious items pretty much since the founding of the country (hell, Kentucky bourbon might not have come into existence had it not been for such policies).

I get that people love their sodas, snack cakes, etc. However, much like cigarettes and other industrial consumables, these products have been optimized by their makers to make you crave more of them. So, of course if you eat or drink them you want to be able to continue to eat or drink them. But, whatever. More power to you if you want to eat or drink yourself into the grave.

At the same time, with what NYC is asking, it's not quite the same as seeking to tax bad nutrition out of existence. All it is is saying, "not on my dime". You, as a Food Stamp user are free to buy what you want ...with your own money.

People that have been on WIC have been faced with these restrictions throughout their participation period. It's part and parcel of the program's goals (to promote good nutrition).

People that are receiving Food Stamps are also almost exclusively receiving their medical care through government subsidized/paid medical programs. As such, nutritional choices they make that negatively impact their health directly increases their need for using that assistance. So, by allowing Food Stamps to pay for bad nutrition, tax-payers end up paying twice: first for the foods bought and again for the medical care used to treat food-related health problems (e.g., diabetes). And, if you want to be REALLY honest, tax-payers are getting hit three times when you factor in the farm subsidies allocated to the food industry to produce cheap, calorie-dense things like HFCS. But, I digress...

At any rate, it just "makes sense" to put conditions on "help". If my goals are to help you survive and/or thrive, I'm not going to want my help to be self-sabotaging. I don't want one helpful act I've undertaken to create a requirement for another helpful act. WIC is basically an example of how it can be (philosophically) "done right". Perhaps the Feds should just be consistent and put the same/similar restrictions on Food Stamps that they do on WIC.

Curries from Home

So, you take some spices (mango powder, ground pomegranate seeds, ground coriander and cumin seeds, cayenne pepper, sweet paprika, kosher salt and punjabi garam masala [fresh-mixed and toasted])...

Then, you mix it in with new potatoes, chilis, onions and tomatoes - all fresh from the garden - and ladle it over rice. Bake up some papadams and grill up some lamb sausages. You get a nice, spicy, filling meal...

Unfortunately, NCIS was on and I loves Abby. So, ate on the couch rather than at the table. Thus, the pillow and laptop in the background. =)