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"What do you want to do for your birthday?" the lovely Carol asked me a couple of weeks ago. Besides that, she meant.
Which birthday is this anyway? I noticed that if you change my age to another base, the digits switch places. A base-7 example: 32base7 = (3×7)+2 = 21+2 = 23
so maybe I'm 23 (yeah, right). There are surprisingly few 2-digit numbers that meet this condition.
Well, back to my lovely Carol's question. As I sometimes say, there are few things in life better than preparing a meal for people dear to me and having them enjoy it. So that's what we did. Ran over to Sigona's and got mung bean sprouts (very fresh) and some green onions. I went on to our local Key Market and bought chicken, beef, zucchini, peppers, asparagus, kim-chi, tofu and squid. They sliced up the beef for me. The lovely Carol picked up some cucumbers from the Redwood City Farmer's market. (She baked me a cake, for which I picked up cream cheese and crushed pineapple; it was carrot cake -- yum!) I also bought some special wine for the occasion.
Most of the food I prepared using the same old sauce -- soy sauce, sesame oil, vegetable oil, green onions. The cucumbers got a little vinegar added, and the beef got a little garlic. Carol took care of marinating the chicken.
The squid I cleaned (this took about an hour) then divided into two portions: the first I par-boiled and chilled with the above sauce; the other I stir-fried with the peppers, zucchini, asparagus, and an onion. Black bean sauce completed the dish. Note to myself for next time: drain squid well before trying to stir-fry!
Tofu was rinsed, sliced, drained and arranged on a small plate. Chopped green onions went on top, then I drizzled soy sauce and sesame oil.
The food turned out OK (some of my friends brought salads too); the conversation was wonderful. We shared a lot of laughs and caught up some on each other's lives. The 2004 Chateau de la Gardine (Chateauneuf-du-Pape) was great, but I wouldn't want to spend that much money every weekend, or even necessarily every month.
We had just a few couples over -- none from last year. So if you weren't invited, that doesn't mean I don't love you! But beyond a certain size the group dynamics get too complicated for me. Maybe next year....
Some time ago, I received a gift of "1999 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe" which I finally opened in July. It was pretty darned special, but I figured that another bottle like that would be very expensive. Not knowing how to get the next best thing, and encouraged by some reviews on yelp!, I headed over to K&L right here in Redwood City, which is friendly, very well-stocked, and when I arrived about half an hour ago (just before five on a hot Saturday afternoon) not too crowded.
I looked around a bit before asking (hey, I'm a guy, right?) a pleasant and knowledgeable young lady for some advice. She was relabeling the shelves, which apparently had gotten out of whack. Yes, she could advise me. I told her that I recently opened that particular bottle, and said it was very nice ("Yes, I'm sure it was," she remarked). She had some sort of accent, maybe from somewhere in Europe? Anyway, we found a 2004 or 2005 vintage/version/whatever of the same wine I'd liked, and it was like $90. Yow!
She pointed me at a 2006 wine and a 2004 also, from the same "house" (that "appelation Châteauneuf-du-Pape controllee" thing you see on wines, and on bottles of Newman's Own salad dressing). $24 for one and $30 for the other. I brought both home -- whoops, looks like they charged me $30 for each (29.99 + tax); I'll have to give 'em a call about that. Update
I called them on the phone and they credited me with the difference. Then they sent me an email (I registered with them) correcting my record of what I'd bought there. So I concur with the fans at Yelp.
The lovely Carol had a birthday recently, so I took CalTrain to San Francisco and walked a few blocks up 4th to meet her and our teen-ager at LuLu, on Folsom, just off 4th next to a Shell(?) station. I got there first, and decided to wait for them at the table. I saw them walking up to the door and dashed up to greet them. "Welcome to LuLu!" I said, and got a kiss from the birthday girl.
LuLu has an extensive wine list, and something I really liked was their "wine flight" -- "tastes", 2 oz. each -- of each of four wines from a region. I tried the Rhône valley set and liked three of them: - Syrah, costieres de Nimes, domaine de petite mas (France) 2006;
- Syrah and Grenache, domaine de l'Echevin, Côtes du Rhône Villages (France) 2006 (really nice);
- Syrah, Grenache and Carignan, Domaine de la Verrière, Côtes du Ventoux (France) 2007 (maybe my favorite)
H'm, I guess that means I'm a blend kind of guy? Those four quarter-glasses set us back $11, a fantastic chance to get a taste of four pretty good wines. Now if I spelled them correctly....
On to the food: we got the romaine salad for the table. Carol ordered the "Grilled Pacific Prawns with Chick Pea, White Bean and Green Bean Salad, Charmoula Sauce." The teen-ager got the asparagus risotto (big surprise there--not). I asked for the rotisserie lamb, which came with ratatouille. We also got a succotash of corn and... something. It was sweet and tasty.
Everything was good. The lamb was a little on the rare side. But what really excited me was the ratatouille. I'm not sure what they put in there, but every bite reminded me of a past visit to the Paris area. I can't describe it exactly, but there it is.
We didn't finish everything, and the wait-staff boxed the leftovers for us in paper-based boxes, placed in a paper sack. We did order dessert: a semifreddo with fruit, and the panna cotta. I asked for a cup of decaf coffee. It tasted great -- like coffee I've had in France -- but I think it was what one French barista called "vrai café" rather than "faux café" (I was wide awake quite early -- like two -- the next morning).
Dessert came with a candle for the birthday girl. The semifreddo -- well, I guess we aren't quite sophisticated enough to fully appreciate it. The panna cotta -- that was a different story. I took just a couple of small bites, but if I closed my eyes and forgot everybody was speaking English, I might think I was on the Continent.
Gosh, I feel really decadent writing all that stuff about Europe, and I hope I haven't oversold the place. But I'm glad we discovered LuLu. The service was terrific. It's not an economy kind of place, but it's a lot cheaper than a ticket to Europe, and you don't have to speak French.
