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.
 

Anniversary Weekend: Local Tourists

November 2 marks our 12th wedding anniversary. Some years we've been able to celebrate by taking a little trip to someplace nearby, going out to a nice dinner in DC, or on a couple of wonderful occasions, taking a two week trip to France. This year, we're going to reach back to one from our younger, less economically able days:  Local Tourism.

Gastonomical Cooking: Brisket Breakthrough!

I'm not going to claim that I'm a Certified Barbecue Expert, but I've smoked my share of meat over the years -- mostly of the porcine variety. I've smoked pork butt several different ways, including traditional pulled pork and an Italian porchetta, all to rave reviews. I've also had good luck with ribs. But the one time I did brisket was several years ago, and it was, well, disappointing. It was okay (it was barbecued brisket!), but it was on the dry side, and compared with the excellence I'd been able to produce from Our Friend the Pig, it led me to relegate brisket to something I get in restaurants rather than try myself.

September at Del Ray Farmers Market

The Del Ray Farmer's Market is still bringing it in a big way! In fact, there's a cross-section of still-coming-in summer produce and the beginning of the fall stuff rolling in. As a result, we ended up with some heavily laden bags of corn and tomatoes, as well as apples (that I'm hoping will end up in a pie!), cider and various other goodies. Now we're sitting at home watching the leaves fall and the rain start, which may put a damper on our plan to do grilled pizza. But while we were at the market, we caught some impressive colors: