Saturday morning, Bruce and I went to pick up the van. We discussed dinner.
He planned scallops in some kind of lemon butter something sauce, endive something or other cooked in red wine and port, wilted spinach, and buttered noodles for the kids.
cause they won't go near the green stuff
So off I go to the ginormous wine store.
It's been a really long time since I've bought wine.
A bottle of red and a bottle of port for the endive.
We'll take the leftover wine to Sister Halona's on Sunday. No problem.
I have no clue about what kind of wine to buy.
I thought of Laura, who chooses her red wine based on how pretty the label is.
I don't find pretty, but I do find super cute.
Eleven bucks. Sold.
Off to find port
On the way I spied a label with my all time favorite symbol.
I'm a sucker for this.
Cute Home Grown Rain Boots goes back on the shelf for Fair Trade sustainable blah blah blah.
7 bucks to Chilean grape pickers.
YAY
whatever
Mia and I look at the wall of port. ports.
ooohhhh mommy this one please this one we have to get this one
and Pleasant Valley is right down the road
3 cheers for local port
Whatever. Port is port. Right?
And Bruce only needs a little for the red wine braised endive thing.
And Mia likes the puppy.
insert creepy thumb sucking perv incident here
Long story longer... I get home with the wine.
Bruce takes one look at the Chocolate Lab port and reads the back label.
i did not do this in the wine store
...grape wine with natural chocolate flavor and caramel color added...
...unabashadely unsophisticated with the familiar fruitiness of lush ripe native grapes...
...delightful hint of chocolate, it is as unpretentious and approachable as friendly puppy...
Chocolate Lab port is flavored with chocolate. And caramel. And dog breath apparently.
Chocolate and carmel do not go with endive and scallops.
At least not on the same plate in the same course.
sigh
Then we couldn't find a corkscrew.
It's been a really long time since we've opened a bottle of wine in this house.
There used to be an abundance of corkscrews here at Chez Brucie but no more.
We looked in drawers. Attic. Basement. No corkscrews anywhere.
we don't have wine glasses either
Bruce tried to jam the cork into the bottle but no luck.
So back to the wine store for a dollar corkscrew.
The sustainable fair trade chilean wine had a cork so damn tight we couldn't get it out.
Even with the dollar corkscrew.
So BACK to the wine store for a bottle of red with a screw top.
Between the 2 of us, we made 5 trips to the wine store.
That's 5 times the trips we've made in the last 18 months.
Shoot me.
I think the Universe is trying to tell us something.
There's a metaphor about Chileans and tight spots somewhere, but I'm too tired to be clever.
ReplyDeleteI think we've all learned a little something here. I've learned not to let my kids talk me into buying wine featuring a dog and the word chocolate on the label.
ReplyDeleteChocolate and alcohol do NOT mix. At least, that's what my stomach always says.
Buy wine at the grocery store, where the labels are less enticing?
ReplyDeleteSister, I'd have purchase the exact same bottles for the exact same reasons. Since when does chocolate NOT go with everything in the universe? I'd eat chocolate covered cockroaches if that were all I could find.
ReplyDeleteI've made enough trips to the wine store for your family and mine put together, toots. Was the chocolate wine any good?
ReplyDeleteLove you mucho.
Whenever I need to cook with something alcoholic, I just buy the generic cooking sherry, or table wine-because I am not worldly enough to know the difference between good wine and bad (either to drink OR to cook with, because the way I drank wine was to swig until gone, taste not being an issue when numbness was the goal), and I am cheap.
ReplyDelete