Bringing Party Favors to Hell

What Would Rodney Drink? Why, this, of course:


(sorry about the blurriness... cell phone cameras do not take good closeups!)

I bought a bottle of this inexpensive Spanish rioja to serve with beef stroganoff last weekend since I knew my guest likes strong reds. The wine itself was excellent (dry, but fruity with an almost blackberry flavor and a spicy finish) but the label instantly made both ardent_muses and me think of Rodney McKay. ;D

We had our departmental 'Holiday Themed Employee Appreciation Event'* tonight. It was quite nice and I do feel appreciated, since I got a nice bonus that will actually allow me to buy Yule gifts for my loved ones. Since I hired the caterer and set the menu**, I knew the food would be good, but our graduate secretary is an excellent amateur sommelier and he chose some great beers and wines to go with our goodies.

I had to have a Left Hand Milk Stout because he got those since he knew they were my favorite. Then I had to try the truly excellent bordeaux he had chosen, and after that I was curious about the white bordeaux, and it was vastly better than the white burgundy I had tried once upon a time. I need to find out the vintage on that one so I can look for it myself. He also had brought in some nice chardonnay and some DuBoef beaujolais villages but I didn't try those, I'd had them before. Then I had to try a sip of the Oskar Blue's "Dale's Pale Ale" which was one of the better pale ales I have had. It has a gorgeous deep, almost orange amber color and an interestingly complex, strongly hopped flavor with hints of fruit and spice underneath. First PA I have had in ages that I wouldn't mind having again, being more a fan of darker brews.

Needless to say after all that I had to be extremely careful driving home. But I made it unscathed. ;D

*We are no longer allowed to have holiday parties, though we may have 'holiday themed' employee appreciation events. ;D

(  **menu behind the cut )

I went to the grocery store today with the kid-unit. We just went in to get a few things and ended up spending THREE HOURS! And we didn't even go down every aisle. This is because the Safeway store closest to my house is having it's grand re-opening as a new "Safeway Lifestyle" concept store this weekend. They've been remodeling for the better part of 4 months at least, and holy cow, it's pretty amazing. It's like they took a Safeway and crossed it with Whole Foods, and stuck a piece of a Williams Sonoma in for good measure.

There's a cookware/chef's needs area. There's a new organic/natural food-and-misc. section that takes up about a third of the store. They've expanded the bakery and added a bunch of in-house baked artisan breads and specialty desserts. There's a Starbucks on one end and a Jamba Juice on the other. They have a nut bar that sells every sort of nut imaginable and even some seeds (I got a container of roasted shelled pumpkin seeds which I have a weakness for and usually only have at Halloween.) There's a buffet-style take-out dinner bar with Chinese on one side and traditional American items like ribs and green bean casserole on the other. A very nice salad and fruit bar, and a soup bar. And a freakin' sushi bar. Not just prepackaged-in-a-plastic-clamshell sushi, but make-it-fresh-right-there-in-front-of-you sushi. Complete with cute Japanese sushi chefs with anime hair. Their expanded cheese selection almost rivals The Cheese Importer's. They even had Morbier, and various sheep and goat cheeses I've never seen in a non-specialty grocer before. The meat department is selling locally raised organic meats. The seafood area had tons of exotic shellfish, and even a whole (small) shark on ice. Granted that was kind of creepy, but still!

Of course, since it was the grand opening they were handing out samples right and left, everything from New York strip steak to bread, cakes, nuts, organic blueberry-apple juice, coffee, yogurt, and organic strawberries dipped in a chocolate fountain. I've heard about those chocolate fountains but this is the first time I've seen one, it was tres cool. We asked and they said that one the size they were using takes 20 lbs of chocolate, and that so far they'd had to refill it 4 times so far. That's EIGHTY POUNDS OF CHOCOLATE in two days. Yikes! Somehow I suspect they're not using Valhrona. ;D All in all it was more like a trip to a foodie theme-park rather than a grocery run. I can tell I am going to have to NOT shop there too often or I'm going to blow the food budget.

In other news, I was Very Effective at work on Friday, solving a potential problem with a job-candidate visit despite the fact that the problem didn't come up until only 45 minutes before the end of the workday, and the fact that the Chair was home sick. I had to coordinate between the candidate, the Chair and our travel agent and try to make new travel arrangements that would get the guy here without getting him stuck in that winter storm that's supposed to clobber the Atantic coast this weekend, without spending a fortune. (one of the options would have cost us a quarter of our entire search budget! Ack!) And I did it. I need to remember this when I have one of my occasional bouts of Imposter Syndrome. :)

I've also written a little bit in the last few days. Not much so far, and it may well suck, but after a months-long drought it feels really good to finally write something. ANYTHING.

Also, ( how's this for irony? )

Oh, one last thing... I saw this on lamardeuse's LJ and thought it bore linkage. I've read a few con reports of late that really made me cringe.

ETA I watched the Opening Ceremonies for the 2006 Olympic Games and... wow. Lamest. Opening. Ceremonies. Ever. Yikes. Lousy wanna-be-marching-band choreography? Plastic Cows on wheels? Roller disco? Skirt-mountain dioramas with trees and tiny skiiers? Luciano Pavarotti with dyed-black hair and painted-on black eyebrows? The only thing that was cool was the actual lighting of the torch. And the fact that the olympic rings look kinda like stargates. ;D

Brace yourself for foodie ramblings. Probably a_mews is the only person who will read this. :)

Last night my mom made a nice roast with potatoes and carrots for my birthday, and my brother contributed a marionberry pie (with requisite comments to the effect that there was no crack cocaine therein-- whereupon we had to explain the 'Marion Barry' joke to my mother). Mom also had an interesting wine, Fess Parker's Lot 41 Frontier Red. It's unbelievably oaky, but with a rich, smoky-fruity finish. Shockingly drinkable, considering how tannic it was.

Tonight the housemate took me to The Med, one of my favorite places (one of aukestrel's, too.). They serve, appropriately enough, mediterranean fare, including tapas, wood-oven baked pizza and calzones, paellas, and many other good things. The housemate had the paella-- man, that was enough for 3 people at least. There's literally half a chicken in it, as well as a whole sausage and lots of shrimp and mussels and other stuff. She brought two thirds of it home as leftovers.

I had a glass of the house red wine with an assortment of tapas: calamari fritti with spanish sauce, mussels in white wine and rosemary, pinchon maruno (lamb skewers), greek salad with white anchovies, roast garlic with balsamic onion jam and gorgonzola, and marinated shrimp with garlic aioli. For dessert we shared a thing that was like a fabulous chocolate mousse piped between two wafer-thin praline cookies and topped with cinnamon-vanilla gelato.

The Chair took us out to lunch today to celebrate my promotion and his end-of-term. (after four years, he's more than ready to give up that job!) We went to a place I hadn't tried yet, Brasserie 1010, right across the street from The Med (apparently they are part-owned by the same people, and The Med makes their desserts mmmm!). It was really, really good! Now, if listening to someone ramble on about food is your thing, keep reading. If not, th-th-thaaat's all folks. :)

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