Epic Meals


Has it really been a month since I was last a Bunco Bachelor? The calendar says, “no”, but Mrs. Second Leaf says, “*%#&@! yes!”  Tough… well, really not even an option… to argue with that!

Seeing as how I surely committed some sort of wine blogging faux pas last month by mentioning one winery but actually opening a wine from another, I was determined to make amends this time around. So the question at hand building up to this month’s dad vs. kids throw-down was how to get my hands on some of that “*%#&@!” Twisted Oak wine? Sure, I could have ordered directly from the winery but how much fun is that? Since El Jefe, the Grand Poobah of TOW (or maybe it’s the Sgt. Hulka of TOW?), slyly pointed out that WineQ was now featuring wines from Twisted Oak, I knew right where to go to get my *%#&@! fix.

WineQ is a new web 2.0 company trying to do for wine what Netflix has done for DVD rentals.  Setting up my Q on WineQ was a breeze and, before I knew it, the UPS man was handing me a box with a green WineQ sticker on it. A box of three Twisted wines: the 2005 *%#&@! red Rhône blend I tasted tonight, the 2005 %@#$! white Rhône blend, and the 2005 Viognier.

Now that I had the wine nailed down, I needed a menu to go with it. And not just any menu… a menu that would match the wine and be something my 3 daughters would actually eat. Let me tell you, the Iron Chefs never had it this difficult. My younger 2 daughters, 8 and 5 years old, are easy enough to cajole into trying new things but my 11 year old is convinced that anything other than chicken fingers must be straight out of the kitchens of Fear Factor. I needed a slam dunk.

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Labor Day PaellaMy wife’s family loves traditions and those traditions almost always involve food… really good food. In fact, if you manage to host a successful meal when they are present, it can be elevated to a new family tradition even before the table is cleared. This happened to me a few years ago when my wife and I decided to break from tradition (ghast!) and serve a traditional English prime rib dinner for Christmas. It was a big hit and we’ve been serving prime rib for Christmas ever since. Don’t get me wrong, though. I absolutely love this part of my extended family!

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