December 20, 2022 Lunch - beef sausage, asparagus, couscous, onion, mushroom and brie omelet. Dinner - cheese, Charcuterie, and olives, with wine

December 20, 2022 Lunch - beef sausage, asparagus, couscous, onion, mushroom and brie omelet. Dinner - cheese, Charcuterie, and olives, with wine

I did not eat until lunch today.  I was a little shaky but managed to make a beef sausage, asparagus, couscous, onion, mushroom and brie

I drank a cup of sweetened Earl Grey tea with lunch.

Suzette picked up Luke at the airport and drove to Total Wine where she bought a wonderful bottle of Italian Vermouth for the Manhattans we planned to serve in the evening and a bottle of grain alcohol.

When they arrived Suzette poured the grain alcohol into the large bottle full of the lemon peel left from the last batch of limoncello

Dinner - we invited Doug and Crystal over for a glass wine and cheese and charcuterie.

I put a Herman Wiemer Reserve Dry Riesling in the fridge to chill that blended grapes selected from three vineyards and contained .8% residual sugar in a wine that was 12.7% alcohol by volume; a very dry yet fruity wine

Crystal brought a lovely goat cheese and bacon cheese ball covered with almonds.  We filled a cheese board with slices of Jarlsberg and Gouda and wedges of goat cheese and Stilton and a container of Boursin. On another platter we laid out the contents of a package of Becceta Cured salami, ham, and prosciutto. Suzette also put out four types of olives, two black, a dried black and a green cracked olive.

 Suzette also toasted round slices of French baguette.

Luke arrived with Suzette at 3:30. Luke heated and ate the PPI pork stroganoff while I made a double recipe of pouring custard with 15 egg yolks and 1 cup of sugar until smooth and then combined and heated  with 4 cups of milk and 1 cup of heavy cream scalded. Then Luke added 2 tsps. of vanilla and I stirred the combined liquid with a whisk until it started to thicken, which took joy about 15 to 20 minutes because of the extra egg yolks. I ate a few T.’s of custard to check its consistency and it was delicious.

Suzette poured the pouring custard into a pitcher and put it in the garage fridge and she and Luke brought in the cheeses.

At 5:00 we made a cheese board with slices of Jarlsberg and Gouda and wedges of Stilton, brie and goat cheese and a Boursin round.

On the metal pallet that Jeff and Kathy gave us for Christmas one year I laid out the contents of a package of cured salami, ham and prosciutto.

Suzette filled one ramekin with German deli mustard and the other with homemade basil mayonnaise.

Suzette also sliced thin rounds of baguette and toasted them in the oven.

Suzette also rinsed and dried six red wine Baccarat flutes and four Baccarat white wine flutes and four large martini glasses

Doug and Crystal arrived a bit after 6:00 with the aforesaid cheese ball coated with almonds and Rosemary sprigs stuck in one end that made it look like a pineapple on a 8 pointed gold colored platter surrounded by multi-grain crackers.

We started by making Old Fashions with 2 oz. of Barrett Rum/Rye whiskey, 1 oz. of vermouth and a dash of Angostura bitters in a shaker filled with ice.

I uncorked the bottle of 2019 Baldwin Family Reserve Pinot Noir to let it open up.

We sat in the living room and Willy arrived and after a few minutes of greetings, he and Luke went to dinner together.

We talked about their impending trip to La Paz Bolivia to spend Christmas with their son-in-law’s family and a proposed trip into the Amazon floodplain in Bolivia.

Everyone enjoyed the Old Fashion with the smooth rum/rye and Suzette’s wonderful maraschino cherries.

When we finished our drinks we moved to the dining room and Suzette lay out the trays of cheese and charcuterie and Crystal’s cheese board and I poured the flutes with 2019 Baldwin Family Reserve Pinot Noir.  The wine was powerful with a dried cherries after taste that mellowed into fruitiness after the bottle was open for a while. You could tell that the wine was still young.  The current release by DePonte of this wine is their 2017.

Everyone enjoyed drinking from the Baccarat crystal flutes.

Doug and Crystal enjoy good wine and it was a pleasure to share this wine with them.

After we had had several pours of the red I asked them if they would like try a Riesling and they agreed and I opened the Wiemer Reserve Dry Riesling, which has less that 1% residual sugar.  I was blown away by this wine it was a lot like Gruet’s Rose Savage made from Pinot noir that is equally dry. Both wines express the characteristic of the grape in a profound manner, perhaps because they have been fully fermented, any extra organic elements in the sugar have been converted to alcohol.

I enjoyed the Riesling more than the Pinot.  Doug made an interesting comment.  He said he was surprised how well the Riesling paired with the creamy Jarlsberg cheese.  I responded, “Perhaps that is due to the mInerality /acidity in the wine complementing the creamy butter fat of the cheese.”

The boys returned with enchiladas that we put in the fridge for breakfast with an egg and they joined us and poured flutes of Pinot and liked it.

We all talked and sipped and nibbled until 9:30 when Willy left and Suzette gave the rest of the bottle of maraschino cherries to Crystal and they gave us the rest of the pineapple shaped goat cheese and almond cheese ball.

I loved the evening of conversation and gracious living with a good drink and two bottles of good wine.

Bon Appetit