Holiday Wine Club!

We had our Christmas Wine Club at my friends Kelly and Jonathans house this past Tuesday. As always it did not disappoint! Their house was festively decorated, there was a fire in the fireplace, there was Christmas music on the radio. They set a pretty table with some really beautiful placemats, and it was just so fun!
We had salmon with caperberries (my first caperberries EVER!) and tarragon (I think) and potatoes made with maple syrup and cloves! So delish! I went back for seconds, and may have even sneaked thirds!
Our class was on dessert wines, so they were pretty sweet. (We tried a sauternes, eiswine, vin santo, tokaji, and a muscat.) The vin santo tasted like a sweet port, and the Mom made a banana tarte, and I made a baked brie (that acquired a hole somehow in the oven so all the cheese melted out! what a disaster!) and Kelly made a really tasty chocolate cake, that was only semi-sweet and really complimented the dessert wines.On top of all that we had a couple meat and cheese plates and crackers! You cannot imagine what a lovely evening it was! Ahhh...so Christmassy! Here are a few photos of the festivities!

A Wine Club Thanksgiving!

Our Fortified Wines

Last night was Wine Club night again, and it was my mom's turn to host. She put out a beautiful Thanksgiving spread, complete with fancy (and I mean FANCY!) hors d'oeuveres. See the photos below for the details. My favorites were the deviled quail eggs with caviar! So tiny, but so delish! Our class covered fortified wines, i.e. wines that have had spirits added to them halting the fermentation process and increasing the alcohol content. Fortified wines include, ports, sherrys, and Australian Muscat. Most of them tasted somewhat how you'd expect, but the "fino" sherry caught us all by surprise. It smelled wonderful but it tasted briny and sort of salty and...quite frankly gross. It was a little like sparkling water, with the same mineral quality mixed with pure alcohol. Anyway, you won't fine me ordering that off the menu ever. I'll stick with the sweet cream sherrys. We learned that wines began being fortified after the English boycotted French wines in the late...1700's (I think, I can't remember). England started getting their wines from Spain and Portugal, but half the time it was no good by the time it reached England. So they started adding grape spirits to the wine to stop the fermentation (which if it continues too long produces vinegar) and voila! they had a wine that could withstand the journey, and practically NEVER  went bad. Ports come from Portugal, sherry from Spain, and of course Muscat from Australia. 

After class we (the guests) made fun Thanksgiving bouquets to take home while mom finished cooking. We had a wonderful and hearty (thank goodness, because I'd just sampled 6 fortified wines!) Thanksgiving dinner! We had cranberry stuffed turkey, brussel sprouts with apricots (OK, ok, I admit I am not the biggest fan of ye'ol brussel sprouts because I find them to taste very bitter. But the way she made them, the outside leaves were SUPER delicious, especially with a bite of apple and almonds!) And there were sweet potatoes as well. So tasty. I even had seconds!

The night was topped off with pumpkin mousse and homemade gingersnaps dipped in white chocolate! It was such a great "party"!

I'll tell you, I don't even miss the parties I used to have in college. Kegs full of cheap beer and 7 different kinds of potato chips. No sir! This is how I roll now. Beautiful, thoughtful food, a little education about what I'm drinking, and plenty of time to sip and enjoy with friends. What a night! And what a perfect meal to get in the holiday spirit! Thanks mom!

Dinner Party Success!

I had my Leif Erickson soiree last night, and it went off without a hitch! It was super fun! I really like making up new recipes and trying things out. And I was finally able to use my little amuse bouche dishes I got from my mom from France 3 or 4 years ago! For those of you who don't know what amuse bouche dishes are (I certainly did not before I got them) they are little single appetizer dishes, and they come in all shapes and sizes (see the white dishes below). The food came out pretty well (see above for menu, and below for photos). My idea with the food was a more sophisticated version of classic "bar" food, (i.e., wings, pretzels, hot dogs, etc.) since we were drinking beer. And we tried a bunch or really neat beers too. The most unusual was called Saison de Buff, and it was made with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. And boy could you taste it! It wasn't something I'd drink a bottle of, but the small glass I had paired well with my cheese appetizer, and I bet it would be great for cooking.
We also tried a couple pumpkin ales, and a few other seasonal beers. It's clear why they are considered fall brews. They were all of the darker variety, and nutty, with hits of fall spices, and even a little smokiness. I generally prefer IPA's, but it was nice to change things up a bit. And I have a couple extra bottles left over that I am going to save for Thankstoberfestoween! Hooray!

We ate, and drank, and even watched a History Channel documentary about Leif Erickson! All in all it was a really fun night, and a nice first ever Leif Erickson Day celebration!
Here are some photo's from the "party" (lol, there were really only three of us, my mom, my friend Kelly and I.)

Ambiance

The Menu

My pumpkin patch!

Da Beers.

A nice pair.

Pretzels and Honey/Thyme Brie dip

Cheers!

Cheezy

Thanksgiving meatballs and gravy.

Learning about Leif 

Buffalo pinwheels on cole slaw

Hot Dogs!!!

Chicago style;)

Bad picture but delicious Pumpkin Soup!

Cinnamon roll and home made grapefruit sorbet/ice cream.

Wine Club

Here are a couple photo's from last night's wine club. I did not host or make any of the delicious dishes below. But I sure enjoyed eating them along with learning about sparkling wine!  We even had the privilege of seeing a bottle "opened" using a sword! (Well, saber actually. You can see the bottle in the middle of the first photo is missing it's top!) Niiice.