January 4th

January 4th

The stress of not having a stove or oven was starting to build. My wife and I had started making jokes about it. “Mmmm, some biscuits would be great, if only we had an oven; we should have a roast chicken, oh, wait, we don’t have an oven.” I like to “rough” it without a stove or electricity occasionally (my wife likes to say that I’m playing “Pioneer”), but it gets old pretty quickly. Plus part of the fun of playing Pioneer is telling the neighbors how well you’re eating during a blackout. Without the one-upmanship of bragging, it’s actually not as much fun as I remember it.

I had vowed not to resort to microwaved food but finally did break down. As part of a New Year’s resolution, I had decided to actually write what I eat every day, and, though I am tempted to leave this particular entry out, I can’t because it’s too early in the year to break a resolution (don’t ask about how the dog walking resolution is going). My wife had shown herself to be the imminently more practical of us when it came to the stove/oven fiasco. She had purchased some frozen food for just such an occasion, perhaps knowing what would happen in a weak moment. So instead of some incredibly inventive “I will not be thwarted by the lack of a stove” meal, we had frozen four cheese cannelloni from Trader Joes. Honestly, it was better than I had expected and, sad to say, better than some cannelloni I’ve had at “Italian” restaurants on the west coast.

In order not to give in totally to the circumstances, I did open a 1996 Gigondas Domain du Cayron from Michel Faraud with it. You could argue that it’s casting pearls before swine to open a wine like this with frozen cannelloni, and maybe it is, but maybe it’s what made the cannelloni passable. IN any event, it was a delicious wine. Grenache gets knocked an awful lot as a work horse grape of very little complexity, but it’s an incredibly food friendly grape. When grown in the right areas by growers who care it’s got intense fruit and a wonderful spiciness. It may be my favorite all around grape for food (including some of the amazing and inexpensive Garnachas from Spain). This wine was perfectly mature and tasted like it was at its peak. It had good red fruit notes, a hint of tobacco/smoke and a signature spiciness that seems present in most well made wines from the southern Rhone valley. It made the cannelloni seem OK and it was fantastic on it’s own.

When will the new element for the broiler arrive?