Friday, December 27, 2013

Welcome to Philly!

Since we always come from the south, our perfect reintroduction to Philly comes as we get off on the Broad Street exit, head a little ways north, hang a right on Passyunk Avenue and up to the Italian Market section in South Philly on 9th Street. Today, we departed from our usual MO of getting a cheesesteak from Pat's or Geno's and instead hit Paesano's, one of chef Peter McAndrews' several Italian places in Philly (and maybe not the last one we'll sample this trip!), where we split an Arista (pulled suckling pig, Italian long hots, broccoli rabe and provolone) and a bowl of Italian wedding soup. Both quite excellent! After that, we took advantage of the sunny and not-too-chilly weather to take a stroll through some of the market's more iconic shops and sights. Here are a few photos from our walk:

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Happy Holidays, Philly Weekend and Other Things

It wasn't intentional for the blog to go dormant for nearly a month, but between the holidays being hectic and a spike in the workload that made me disinclined to spend *more* time sitting in front of a computer when I wasn't working, here we are. It's Christmas Day and I'm finally getting some time in front of the personal laptop while the oven does its magic on the roast beast.

Monday, December 2, 2013

The Accidental Wine Collection, Part Deux: Stat-Geek Edition

After going through the organizational exercise I described in my previous post, I was reminded that one of the interesting (dare I say fun?) things about having a collection of any kind is being able to analyze what you have and draw conclusions. Sorta reminds me of when I collected baseball cards as a kid -- I'd organize them and analyze them to figure out what gems I had (like my 1971 Johnny Bench or my 1978 Eddie Murray rookie card) and how close I was to my annual goal of collecting every member of the Reds and the Yankees (my two favorite teams at the time). I could spend hours messing around with that. I did.