What can I say? Things have been busy over here on the icy east coast. It’s hard to keep up with photos, coherent ideas, etc. But it’s 2011. The new year. In fact as I write it is now midnight as we leap into the year of the rabbit. Seems like a good a time as any as to give this blog a fresh start. So let’s start. And…..GO!
The Super Bowl is coming up this weekend. Some teams are playing some game with an oblong ball and there may be some worthwhile commercials. But mostly there is an opportunity to make a meal out of my favorite group of foods: appetizers. Chicken wings, nachos, dips of many flavors and colors, essentially anything fried and bite-sized. Like many of you, I will be primarily drinking beer–but that’s not to say I won’t sneak in a bottle of Classic Vintage Brut for me and a couple other VIPs to partake of. (Apologies for the dangling ‘of.’ Oh shoot, there I go again.) Gasp you may, but for me sparkling goes best with salt and grease. Actually, scratch that. There’s little sparkling doesn’t go with—er, which with sparkling doesn’t go. You don’t even need to really like what you are eating in order to have a good meal when a tasty sparkling is involved. I am reminded of a recent dinner.
Myself and a buddy met to make dinner late one Sunday night. Gnocchi had been in the plans but after we had finished our respective leftover work (ok, he was working, I was rereading American Psycho) we were both too tired and too hungry to wait for potatoes to boil. So we went another way. Jambalaya! Down to the corner store we went (a bodega for those in the know; for you west coasters who haven’t come into contact with one, think of a gas station convenience store and add some produce). Rather than wait for chicken to cook (we were seriously hungry) we decided to go for sausage instead. So we bought sausage, rice, celery, garlic, oil, beer and an onion and shivered back to the apartment kitchen. After a half glass of Joy! Cuvee we were strong enough to start chopping and cooking. I chopped. He cooked up the sausage. Then, tragedy struck.
“Shoot!” I heard behind me. I wiped the onion-induced tears from my eyes and asked, “What?” fearing that I’d see a nasty burn or bloodied cut – but it was far worse than that. “It’s vegan!”
In our rush to eat we had bought vegan “sausage.”
“Try it,” I was urged. I did. If you can imagine what oats and undercooked grits seasoned by instant ramen flavoring would taste like then you would have an idea of what this sad excuse for “meat” was like. So we abandoned the “sausage.” That meant what once was Jambalaya was now essentially a mildly Cajun rice pilaf. We poured a couple more glasses of sparkling and sat down to dinner – on the floor since a kitchen table and chairs is still in the works at said apartment. We ate some rice. We poured more wine. He went for seconds of rice. I drank more wine. And you know what? It was one of the better meals I’d had in a while. Filling, warm and accompanied by a deliciously briochey sparkling wine. The perfect winter meal if you ask me.
