Whining, Dining, Wining: a rant, a salad, and a wine festival.

I typed out the following paragraph and realized keenly that my house is wicked weird. THIS IS HOW WE ROLL.

There is nothing that pisses me off more than having a bad chardonnay, and I had a bad chardonnay this weekend. I thought–”Oh, one cup can go into delicious risotto, and then I’ll drink the rest, nom nom.” The wine wasn’t good even when paired with the risotto that it went into (mushroom and sweet onion, if you must know.) Thankfully, Gloria and Frazier let me drink their chianti (straight from the bottle like a champ), and while I was slaving over the risotto, Gloria shoved a piece of prosciutto in my mouth. Friday’s hasty wine-and-cheese party yielded the following life lessons:

1. It doesn’t matter what you put on them, these Pepperidge Farm Butter Crackers are crazy delicious. I think at one point, I gave up on dignity and just started wrapping Italian cold cuts around them and shoving them in my face-hole.
2. Try things from your local grocery store’s wacky “gourmet food” section. Our Safeway sold us delicious Italian cold cuts and this unsubtle but definitely-got-the-job-done spinach dip.
3. Don’t trust a ho Chardonnay that you haven’t tried before. You can get lucky with a store-bought shiraz easily, especially if you look to Australia. You can even nail a good merlot or chianti or pinot grigio. For some reason, I’ve spun the roulette wheel for chardonnays and each time I come up bust. I’m looking at you, Francis Ford Coppola. I recovered, though. See below.
4. When you get your friends drunk and feed them, they can’t shut up about it. In honor of pleasantly drunk Gloria, here is the salad she couldn’t shut up about (adapted from The Pioneer Woman’s adapted salad).

Easy Caesar Salad

• 3 romaine hearts
• 4 garlic cloves
• 1/4 cup olive oil, plus 4 tbs olive oil
• 2 1/2 tbs mayo, mayo and mayo.
• A lemon
• 1/4 tsp worchestershire sauce
• 1/4 tsp salt
• salt and pepper and parmesan cheese to taste
• Oh, also some bread that you like to make into croutons.

1. Get a food processor or blender and process the crap out of your garlic cloves and the 1/4 cup of olive oil. Mumble incoherently at your housemate about how awesome that crap smells. Strain the oil into a receptacle, then save half of the super-minced garlic.
2. Juice the lemon. Mix the juice with the mayo, the reserved garlic, the worchestershire sauce, and the 1/4 tsp salt. Hit it with a fork until it’s mixed and citrusy and delicious.
3. Pause. Do yourself a favor. Make yourself some croutons. Cube the bread you got into… cubes… and then toss it with that olive oil you saved. Grind some salt and pepper over it, then toss again. Then put it all into a skillet over medium heat, and shake it around while you’re doing the rest. The croutons should be crispy, warm, and a little brown on the outside. Your housemate will flip her shit, I promise.
4. Pro-tip: Don’t ever cut your salad with a knife. Apparently, this makes it brown faster. Take your romaine hearts and tear at them with your hands.
5. Toss in the remaining olive oil (the 4 tbs, but really it’s just a matter of taste) and the salt and pepper to taste. Toss the salad.
6. Put in the mayo dressing. Toss the salad.
7. Put in some parmesan. Toss the salad.
8. Throw in your croutons. Toss the salad.
9. Watch as your housemate rolls on the ground, babbling about how awesome the salad is. (Don’t toss the salad.)

Now, for wine.

This past Sunday, Gloria, Mr. Murphy and I attended the Reston Wine Festival (sponsored by GM and the 2010 Buick LaCrosse–I promised.) It was a LOT of fun. There were great vendors and sweet swag. Giant gave me a free reusable bag, and GM gave me a free wine stopper. They also had this sweet augmented reality thing for the LaCrosse, which I probably could have played with for hours. The future!

But wines. It was nice walking around with Mr. Murphy, who took everything with a pleasantly open mind. We usually went for the drier wines first, and ended up picking several great winners–highly recommended, if you can buy wine around or from Virginia.

The great hit of the weekend (two bottles procured) was the Cabernet Sauvignon from Unicorn Winery. Peppery, fragrant, but still light enough to drink straight, it had this wonderful tannic flavor that bounced straight off the palate and did fragrant flips inside your mouth. I’m serious, guys, there’s a flavor party here, and everyone’s invited. The wine hawker did himself a great service by pointing out the $1 lamb chop stand nearby–this wine paired divinely with a meat. Soon, it will be deployed with Steak au Poivre.  Honorable mention: Unicorn’s Traminette, a wine invented by Cornell University, caused much consternation. I think it was only the cab sauv’s food pairing that made it victorious.

I cannot say enough good things about Vino Curioso, which after the Clifton Wine Festival, is a personal favorite of mine. Their Chardontage–a blend of four different chardonnays–is still one of the greatest beverages of all times. It’s definitely got the flavor of a white wine, but it’s got the intensity–the oomph, if you will–of a powerhouse bordeaux, all sound and fury, signifying you having a great day. Not only that, but their wine sellers are very invested in the brand, and each of their wines has a character and a lot of personality. A wistful sigh and a pleasant wine seller actually got me 20% off two bottles, which is why I ended up going home with their Snake’s Den cabernet sauvignon as well. The Snake’s Den got all-around approval, but a mixed review. Mr. Murphy thought it was like a delicious blow to the face, while Team Asian Girl thought it went down smooth and vibrant, like a dark velvet.

There were so many other delicious wines there, so I’ve only focused on things good enough to spend our collective and limited funds. The last of my purchases was from Fabbioli Cellars, which we loved in spite of ourselves. Fabbioli, unfortunately in my opinion, sells mostly dessert wines, which were definitely too sweet for the iron-like palates of Team Asian Girl. However, the great surprise of the afternoon was a potent rose, a blend of a white and red wine where you could actually taste the blend. I bought it almost entirely because of the guerilla assault on my senses–I really did not expect anything to come out of a rose, despite having been exposed to Fabbioli before.

That’s what I got! Thank you, GM for sponsoring our trip, and Great Grapes, or whatever the Reston Wine Festival was actually called! Next year, mo money, mo food, mo wine.