MT-Tarragon

Thanks everyone for the comments. Friends threw us a wedding party on Saturday and we tasted a bunch of wines. We did a blind testing with the labels covered. The sparkling wine winner was Freixenet Carta Nevada Brut NV. Personally, I preferred the Segura Viudas Brut Risera, but I was in the definite minority. The over whelming winner among the red wines was the Yellow Tail Shiraz 2004 by a 7 to 1 margin. Some comments on a few of the other wines: Vila Tinto Fundacion 2002: This wine got the best comments aside from the Shiraz. "smooth" "full-bodied" "fruity" but didn't receive many votes. Cotes du Rhone 2002: people were pretty neutral to this. No terrible comments, but no votes for it, either. Rex Goliath Cabernet Sauvignon NV: "no" and "yuck" were common comments Morande Pionero Cabernet Sauvignon 2000 : "terrible" "mediocre" "oaky" Borsao, 2003: "perfumy" "blech" "terrible" 3-buck Chuck, Cab Sav 2002: "watery" "not special" "too sweet" That's not everything, but just a sampling. The big winner, though, was the sangria. People really liked it. As a result, we'll probably get enough wine for dinner, but rely on the sangria for the rest of the night. Okay, that's wine, too, but it used even cheaper wine so that's ok. None of us are wine experts, so the comments above are the comments from people who like to drink wine, but don't consider themselves knowledgeable about them. Thanks again for all of the help. Edited to add: I should say that despite some of the wines above being called "terrible" almost every wine got at least one vote by someone who thought it was the best of the bunch. The Cotes du Rhone was in the minority that received no votes at all.

I don't know if Boise counts as "out there," but I had a great meal at Angell's Bar & Grill there a few years back -- a game plate: elk steak, quail and rabbit sausage. Mmm. Idaho Falls is a bit more "out there," but they've got Rutabaga's which was delicious. I haven't been through either place in a few years, but hopefully they are both still in business. I don't think I ever stopped to eat in Montana, so I can't help you there. Edited to add the following: You might also want to follow this developing thread to see if anyone posts recommendations there.

I'm one of those people who is not a cupcake royale fan. I understand how people can be. I'm definitely want just a little bit of frosting on my cupcake -- just enough to say that there is frosting on the cupcake. Any more than that just tastes gross to me. But I think I'm in the minority there. Frosting lovers will probably love Cupcake Royale. But they are pricey. So I think I have to stick to eating my own cupcakes.

Thank you all for your recommendations. It looks like my original information about amount of wine needed was wrong. It seems like I probably do need more like 10 cases. After examining my budget and reprioritizing a few things, I think I can do the 10 cases for around $70 per case. Whew. Taking some advice from here, I went to Esquin and looked around for wine in that range. Luckily, they said that for weddings you can return any wine that you don't use. I found a few things and am interested to know if anyone has tried them. Sparkling Wine Cristalino Brut NV (Cava, Spain) Segura Viudas Brut Riserva NV (Cava, Spain) Various Reds Vila Tinto Fundacion 2002 Red table wine from Mendoza Yellow Tail Shiraz 2004 Cotes du Rhone 2002 red wine (actually at Trader Joe's) Rex Goliath Cabernet Sauvignon NV Morande Pionero Cabernet Sauvignon 2000 from Chile Borsao, 2003 red wine from Campo de Borja, Spain 3-buck Chuck, Cab Sav 2002 from Trader Joe's (okay, I've read comments about this in other threads) We'll try to taste test some of these, but if people know that any or all are gross, let me know. Thanks again!

This is my first post over here in the wine section, and I'm a bit hesitant in making my request. I'm getting married pretty soon and need some help in making wine selections for the reception. My in-laws-to-be were going to take care of this, but I have decided to take it over. I don't have much money to spend on this, though. There will be around 150 wine drinking guests, very mixed in age and wine interest. There is not a formal dinner, but we will have a buffet offering several different types of cuisine -- mostly with a latin/Spanish flavor. We have a salsa band, so hopefully the reception will be lively. There will be non-alcoholic punch and alcoholic sangria in addition to the wine. The event will be in the outdoors in the evening, weather should be in the 70s if all is well. I read in another thread that 5 cases should be about right for this size event. Now, the problem. I've got at most $500 to spend on wine. The in-laws-to-be would have gotten two-buck Chuck, and this is what they are recommending that I get. Luckily, I think I have budget for a little better than that. Is anyone willing to give me some recommendations on wines that could be acceptable in this price range? I live near Seattle, so I do have some access to different wine stores. Since there will be some people there who will be happy with the Chuck, I thought maybe a case or two of the Chuck would be OK and allow me to spend more on a better quality or two of better wine. Then the wine-bar server be could told "if they ask for red give them the Chuck, otherwise give them whatever they specify." I don't know if that would really be appropriate, though. Anyway, all ideas are appreciated. Thanks for your time.

This is a bit late, but there was an interesting article in the Seattle Times a few months ago about when to go to work and when to stay home.

Also, what kind of fish have you tried? Growing up my mother used to buy some kind of generic little white fish fillets from the grocery. Her only method of cooking them was rolled in crushed saltines and baked. Occassionally I'd get a breaded, deep-fried fish stick at school or at someone else's house. Based on this upbringing, I didn't much care for fish. Then my first employer after college had a company picnic and grilled halibut steaks. Wow. I discovered that fish could be delicious. Unless you have tried a wide variety of fish, saying that you don't like it is like having mutton and deciding that you don't like meat. There is a vast difference between marlin and trout, or halibut and catfish, or Salmon and tuna, etc. If you haven't tried a grilled marlin or halibut, I'd give it a try. You could always grill a salmon and cover it with raspberry beurre rouge, or a lemon-thyme dipping sauce, etc.

From Thomas Keller: culinary perfection personified in the Seattle Times Early that day, over breakfast at Le Pichet, Keller likened a meal at the French Laundry to a ticket at the World Series, which fans gladly pay hundreds for. "Do you question the quality of that experience?" When you go to a Thomas Keller restaurant, you pay to taste the culinary art at its highest level. Keller spun out ideas for furthering that experience even more. "My goal is not to have a menu at the French Laundry. You go with complete confidence in the food, the service, and the wine. What the hell do you need 850 selections of wine for? You're eating dinner." The idea of no menu is interesting to me. I've never been to the French Laundry, but if I did (and I hope I will) I'd probably go with their wine pairings anyway. Sadly, I'm no wine expert, and I think I would trust them to make the pairing for me. I could see if I were a wine expert how I might not like someone else making choices for me, though.

I don't agree. But I would agree that a character fault is far worse than a physical fault. Calling someone a hyprocrite is an accusation, usually based on something the person has said or done. It is an invitation for the accused to explain the apparent hypocrisy. To instead reply with a childish insult is an indication that the accuser was correct and that accused has no defense for his/her actions.

I think that I would keep "The Making of a Cook" by Madeleine Kamman. It has a lot of great information on how to do things, as well as recipes. I can tweak recipes, or come up with things of the top of my head, but if I don't know how to do it I can look it up in this book. If I were just looking for recipe lists, I'd probably keep "The New Basics Cookbook" or "The Complete Meat Cookbook."

Oh, I thought they meant Starbucks.

When I was growing up, my mother would make danishes on Christmas morning and Easter morning. For other holidays she would make what we all called cherry-go-round, but of which no one else I know has ever heard. I still don't know what to call it, but for Christmas I received a copy of The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion. That book has the same recipe but called "a filled coffee cake." Among the fillings in the book is not listed our cherry filling, but the rest is the same. Anyway, I have made danishes before for holidays for my fiancee and her family. Recently for a brunch party I made cherry-go-round for the first time since I've lived here in Seattle. Everyone loved it. Now I've been told that I just have to make it for Easter by my fiancee for her family. It is my fiancee's favorite pasty now. So perhaps it will be a new tradition.

I've never eaten it myself, but I've always heard that swan is tough and stringy, requiring a long, slow cooking process to make edible and usually covered with a gravy or sauce for flavor reasons. I believe it is one animal which departs from my usual rule of "the cuter it is, the more delicious it must taste."

Well, we hadn't reached the "30 minutes after dessert is done" mark. I guess it was even more irritating because we were within minutes of leaving when the onlookers started marking their comments. The effect was to make us want to order up another bottle of wine, but we didn't. We left pretty soon after.

I would have to agree with Jason that bagel halving is a crime against humanity, or, at the very least, a perversion of all that is good and holey. There is a perfection to the whole bagel (or doughnut) which is destroyed utterly by these wrong-headed vivisectionists. The circle, rotated in three dimensions, is a beautiful representation of eternity and perfection. Those who would desecrate the delicious symbolism embodied in the bagel should, indeed, be sentenced to an unending doom of eating only microwaved pizza-bagel bites. I grew up in the bagel-forsaken midwest. I tasted my first bagel in New York City while attending college in upstate New York. Ah, sweet nirvana. I have since moved to Seattle, truly the bagel-hell of the continental US. Things have improved slightly in the last ten years. When I first arrived here, the benighted bagels tasted like soap. Yes, soap. Thankfully most of these soap-bagel shops have gone out of business in the intervening years to be replaced with shops which produce merely uninteresting and tasteless bagels -- or at worst heinously-ingrediented bagels, bearing flavors which no right-thinking individual would ever consider combining on a single food item, much less on the beloved bagel. Someday, perhaps, a New York-worthy bagel will pass these bereft lips. Until then I will be bagelless in Seattle.

I was thinking of starting a separate thread for this question, but I think that it fits here. I took my fiancee to dinner at Harvest Vine last night along with another couple. It was a great evening. However, as we were lingering over our coffee and Jerez there was another group of four (two couples) waiting for a table. They interrupted us twice to ask if we would be leaving soon and loudly talking to each other saying that we had been there too long, implying that we were being rude for not immediately getting up and leaving. Needless to say, my dining companions and I thought that this was inexcusably rude and told them so (to no effect). My question is, do you think that there is a length of time you can spend over dinner after which you are being rude to people waiting for a table? I know that Harvest Vine is a popular spot and people frequently wait for a long time for a table. My feeling is that if I were to wait so long at a restaurant for a table that I felt like harrassing the seated customers, I would leave and go someplace where I could be seated more quickly. I've eaten at Harvest Vine quite a few times and one of my dinner companions has eaten there often enough to be called a regular - recognized by the people who work there - and neither of us have ever felt any pressure from the restaurant staff to leave so that they could turn the table. I've only seen waiting people ask seated people if they were leaving in a bar, and even then it was much more polite than the people last night. Anyway, I appreciate any comments on this. At Harvest Vine, do you commonly linger over your dinner? Or do you feel like you need to leave as quickly as possible so that the people waiting to get in can be seated? Have you ever asked a seated table if they would leave and/or imply that they were rude to be seated for so long? Would you be angry/insulted if someone did it to you?

I have a few <a href="http://www.greatfrenchknives.com/">Thiers-Issard Sabatier stainless knives</a> which I then got sharpened by <a href="http://www.bladesmiths.com/">Bob Kramer</a>. I am very happy with them. They cut extremely well and are comfortable in my hands, which are not large. The professional sharpening is not at all expensive and not required very frequently.

North Seattle Community College's continuing education is having a class this summer called "Cheesemaking and Fermentation Made Easy." I don't know anything about the instructor, Linda Conroy, but the class info can be found here: http://at-campus.net/nsccsched/index.html?...t/course_70.htm

McCarthy and Schiering is close to the U district up at 65th and Ravenna. 6500 Ravenna Ave NE Seattle, WA 981151 Cross Street: 65th Street Phone: (206) 524-9500 They carry a lot of Northwest wines and some European as well with a lean toward German and Australian. They have a good reputation.

My fiancee and I enjoy car camping also. Usually, this occurs at fairly primitive sites -- no running water (maybe a river or creek), no permanent fire pits, etc. So I usually cook over a wood fire with a folding grill. All cooking occurs in one of two cast iron pans or the coffee percolator (fire driven). <p>I like to make good stuff ahead of time, toss it in the cooler mostly ready to go and then apply fire when hungry. One of my favorites is stuffed cornish game hen. Prepare the hen any way you like and just wrap in a couple of layers of foil. Apply fire. Those do take a while to cook, though. Marinated flank steak is an easy one, too. Saffron rice is surprisingly easy over a campfire, too. We always love creek potatoes - slice your potatoes round-ways, chop some onion, add two or three slices of bacon; wrap the whole in aluminum foil and place on the coals until done. Good with a variety of spices, too. Breakfast is usually oatmeal or egg dish and sausage or bacon, although french toast, pancakes, et alii have been done. And, of course, coffee. I'm not a big coffee drinker, but when camping I've got to have it.<p> It's interesting seeing what other people are doing for food outside, too. Cooking over a wood fire takes a little practice, but it's not all that hard really.

I just stopped by Cheese Platters today. Joyce and Maria were very nice and helpful. I picked up some Sweet Red Pepper Gouda, some Edam and a little bit of ciresa. We also tasted a very creamy and delicious Humboldt Fog goat cheese, a very nice rosemary manchego, a tasty Rembrandt aged gouda and a few others. They have applied for their liquor license in order to sell wine as well. The address is: Cheese Platters 121 Lakeside Avenue Suite 100A Seattle, WA 98122 206-382-1133 Basically they are right across the street from Daniel's, in the same block as the Blue Water Bistro and the Leschi Market and Starbucks. They don't have a really large number of cheeses, but I really enjoyed my visit there and plan on going back often. Hopefully they'll get some nice wines in as well. -Matt

I haven't seen horse offered as food here in the USA, but I know for sure that there are companies here that raise horses for slaughter and ship the meat to Europe for consumption. The company I work for has at least one as a customer. They don't like to advertise what they do. -Matt

<p>Is the food really worse than Bolivian food? Not that the food was awful in Bolivia, but it was typically pretty bland stuff -- meat, cooked; rice, plain; onion salad. <p> I was thinking of honeymooning in Costa Rica, but you're all scaring me. I was thinking of dropping in at the <a href="http://www.cerrocoyote.com/">Coyote Mountain Inn</a> which is supposed to have good food and even cooking classes. Has anyone been in there or known someone who has? <p> -Matt

For a Brazilian themed restaurant, I'd have to with<p> <i>Bikini Attar</i> <p> as a good (bad) restaurant name.

Sadly, it looks like neither I nor my fiancee will be able to make it. <weep> So you can take us off the list. On the up side for everyone else, more space for you! -Matt