Wannabe Wino

I have permanently moved Wannabe Wino.

It has a new feed address:

http://wannabewino.com/feed/

Please resubscribe using this new feed!

As always, thank you for reading!

Also, if any of you are kind enough to link to me, I would appreciate if you could update your links to wannabewino.com!

I've seen this list popping up all over the blogosphere, most recently at McDuff's Food and Wine Trail. I thought about participating earlier this week when I first started seeing it, however, other endeavors got in my way. Today, however, is Labor Day, and my only plans for the day include catching up on my much neglected roaming of the interwebs ;). The idea behind The Omnivore's Hundred list is that you check off all the things you've tried, and cross off the things you would never try! The official rules are:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at Very Good Taste linking to your results.

Here's my list, things I've tried are in bold, italics (because I can't figure out how to strike-through...) are things I wouldn't eat, I put stars next to the things I can't identify, which probably means I haven't eaten them.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho*
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi*
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses*
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream (I don't like nuts.)
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet Pepper (I'd like my tastebuds to be able to taste wine..)
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters (I'm allergic.)
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda*
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi*
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float (I don't drink soda of any kind, ever.)
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (I'll take the cognac, minus the cigar, the smoke would give me an asthma attack(
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal*
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu*
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi*
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (I don't eat at McDonalds.)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin*
64. Currywurst*
65. Durian*
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini (I've had caviar, no idea what blini is though...)
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu*
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong*
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum*
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky*
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa*
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

I don't think I make a good foodie. I've only had 38 of these things and I wouldn't eat 6 of them. Further, I have no clue what 16 of them are. I'm a bit of a picky eater, but I've gotten better in recent years...

On a morning much like today in 2006, slightly hazy and overcast, with the sun trying to burn through, and at about this same time, I was headed up to pick up my bridal party to get our hair done for my wedding. The day turned out gorgeous, and everything was as I could have hoped for.

Two years ago today Matt and I were married. We must be very lucky because it's been a lovely two years filled with fun, big milestones, great friends, and wonderful family. Not to mention, lots of great wine. Tonight we will be celebrating our 2nd Anniversary at Dino in DC, a restaurant we have not tried before, but are much looking forward to.

The last two years have quite literally flown by, and I can't wait to see what next year brings. Happy Anniversary Matt!

But first an announcement. I quietly passed by 600 posts. Today marks post number 602 here at Wannabe Wino. Wow, I've been quite the busy wino for the last less than 2 years. Now onto your regularly scheduled programming :)

I, along with several other wine bloggers, among them, Tim of WineCast, Andrew of Spittoon, Sharon of Bloviatrix, Richard of A Passionate Foodie, Ryan and Gabriella of Catavino, Dale of Drinks Are On Me, and Joe of 1 Wine Dude, will be participating in a live Twitter Tasting hosted by Bin Ends Wine.

Bin Ends Wine is a retail shop in the Braintree, Ma and has recently opened up into online sales. The concept is that they offer fine wines at steep discounts, and if you are lucky enough to live in the greater Boston area, the shipping is free.

The participating Bloggers, joined by Etienne Hugel, will be tasting through 5 of Hugel's current offerings. Hugel will be right there with us, providing information and his thoughts about the wines. The tasting is on August 21, and you can read all the details here. Hugel is a high end producer of wonderful wines from Alsace, so we'll be tasting Pinot Blanc, Riesling, Gewurztraminer....yum!

The best part is, Bin Ends Wine is selling 2 bottles each of 3 of the wines for only $85, which is a steal. So you can join in on the fun! Just buy the wines, and follow me on Twitter and follow Bin Ends Wine, and join us next Thursday for our live thoughts on what promise so be some fantastic wines from Alsace.

I mentioned about a month ago that I moved Wannabe Wino to its own domain, wannabewino.com. I've since discovered that I've totally lost my page rank on Google for the blog, sad, and my technorati authority has declined to nothing.

I would really, really, really, truly appreciate it if you could update your links on your blogs to me to reflect the new address.

Many thanks for you time and help in getting some recognition for my new address.

:)

-Sondora

Bob, my Twisted Oak chicken, roosts in the chandelier in my kitchen. Despite the dazzling array of culinary delights prepared on the table below and the scintillating dinner conversation, Bob gets bored. Apparently Twisted Oak was far more entertaining than my house! He did get to go on an excursion earlier this year, for Take Your Chicken to Work Day, but ever since, he's been stuck up in the chandelier. Although he was a finalist in Take Your Chicken to Work Day, he did not win. He's been depressed ever since.

Until the other day when he overheard me mention the Wine Blogger's Conference, coming up this October. I was telling Matt that I might head up to Twisted Oak and spend two days before the WBC visiting El Jefe and Company and the other Murphy's area wineries. Since then, Bob won't stop squawking! He wants to come to CA and accompany me to the WBC.

So what do you think, dear readers? Should Bob get to leave his roost and come to CA?

I first read about Wordle over on Good Grape, then saw it again this afternoon on Wino Sapien and decided I had to check it out for myself. Wordle will take the feed from any RSS site and create a word image aggregation of the terms used frequently on your blog.

I present the Wannabe Wino Wordle:

Welcome to the new Wannabe Wino!

It took me all day, and I'm partially bald from tearing my hair out, but here is the new version of the site to go along with my new address!

I hope you like the changes, and I will still be tweaking things in the next few weeks as I play with the new template, but this is it. I welcome any comments or thoughts, as always!

I've been remiss in letting you know that Dr. Debs of Good Wine Under $20 has posted her round up of White Wine Varietals from WBW #46. You can check out all the details here, but the quick breakdown was that 43 bloggers participated and nearly everyone liked their wine. So get out there and try some Rhone whites for the summer!


Second, the next WBW has been announced! Our hosts this month are Erin and Michelle of Grape Juice and they have chose the theme "Brought to you by the letter "S."" By that they want you to choose any wine in the world directly associated with the letter "S." So choose a South African Sauvignon Blanc, or a Seghesio Sonoma Sangiovese, or whatever your heart desires so long as the appellation or the grape or the producer, or something else directly related to the wine starts with "S." Find all the details here.

And finally, the current biggest event in the wine blog world is the Wine Bloggers Conference! Hosted by Open Wine Consortium and Zephyr Wine Adventures, this promises to be the event to meet and greet and learn with all your fellow wine bloggers. The event will occur in October in Sonoma County, lots of good wine will be poured and I for one am very excited to meet the folks that I've been interacting with for almost 2 years now! (Crossing my fingers, it looks about 90% odds that I will be there!)

Hi there. Wannabe Wino has graduated to its very own domain name and is now located at www.wannabewino.com. I'm still redirecting from Blogger, so you can reach me from all old links, but I'd certainly appreciate it if you updated how you get here. And if you link to me, I'd very very much appreciate it if you could update your links to me!


I might be trying some other new format changes around here, so please stay tuned.

And I apologize profusely. I just now realized that I have not responded to comments since March 31. I could offer you every excuse in the book, but the truth is simply that I got busy and have of recent found it very hard to find the time to blog, let alone do anything else. I believe things have calmed down (at least I hope, as I sit here in Atlanta for work yet again, staring down the barrel of another potential few weeks here, then two weeks in St. Louis....) though I can't make any promises.

With nice weather springing up, we have refocused on house projects at the WannabeWino Casa, not to mention that spring brings weddings, reunions, bbqs, and other events that have seen me traveling frequently and not attending to my duties as a wine blogger.

Again, my apologies, and I will attempt to step up both the posting, responding to comments, and commenting on other blogs. Though, as usual, I am always reading, the darn firewall just prevents me from actually using my lunch time or breaks to visit and comment!

Thanks as always for reading and sticking with me.

Sonadora

We have a flooded basement. In the 30 years since this house was built, there has been no water in the basement. We've had days of rain before and never a drop of water in the basement. It's been raining here since Thursday around 9pm, and it first flooded on Saturday morning. Not too much, but two spots. This morning, there is at least an inch across the whole floor and two inches at the low spots. Trying to sweep it down the drain is like herding cats....impossible. Especially because it's still raining.

But the wine appears to be on safe ground for the moment. Hopefully it stays that way. Our sump pump is shot, it's not working at all, so I'm trying to figure out if I should get it replaced, or if that's even part of the problem.

Sigh, the joy of homeownership. At least the wine's safe.

I am currently experiencing technical difficulties of an earlier than anticipated/scheduled meeting this morning (come on folks, it's before 6am my time, this is way before I am usually up and ready to go for the day) variety and of an internet connectivity variety.

Please stay tuned, I do have a review of Vino Italiano for you for the first meeting of the Wine Book Club, and I hope to be able to get to a WiFi spot after my conference this evening and post it for you.

My rubber chicken came to work with us today, and hopefully had a good time. He got a little bored on our 40+ minute commute into the city and tried to drive, but Matt was having none of that.

Now, I'm not sure how many of you have ever walked the streets of a major city carrying a rubber, chicken, but for some reason, people seem to stare at you while you do. And all my poor chicken Bob wanted to do was see the sights! It also makes people talk to you, something that doesn't happen a lot here.



First he (my chicken is a boy, he's a little confused as to why he's a chicken) got a gander at the Washington Monument on his walk to work. He wasn't that impressed with the size, but I explained to him that it's much bigger than it appears.


He didn't realize that the walk to work is 14 blocks, and he got tired, so he took a break on this lion while trying to see if any muckety mucks were at the Capital Grille this early.







My chicken was utterly unimpressed with my cube, which may be the crappiest one in the office since I was last hired in my group, so he took off and wandered the building. Bob found himself at a podium and tried to give a speech, but unfortunately government minions don't seem to understand "chicken."


Ack! The FBI!! Bob has some %$#* in his past, let's get out of here!














Freaking A! The Department of Justice. I acted nonchalantly for Bob's sake, and told the Justice Agents who guard the building that Bob and I were on a scavenger hunt. They nodded and understood when I told them the prize was wine, or maybe they just like my new hairdo....



















Bob was ready to run now, so we skeedadled out of there as fast as we could, but Bob got distracted by this engraving on the front of the National Archives. Hey, who can blame him? He's a chicken, and it did have the word seed in it. And harvest, bonus! But we were far enough away (in Bob's mind anyway) from the really scary government agencies, so he mellowed out .















Finally, it was time to go home, and Bob took in one last sight, the Capitol, as we waited for Matt to come out so we could go home.







All in all, it was a long tiring day for Bob, and he was happy to get home and go back to roosting in my kitchen chandelier, where he's been chilling since his long journey from Twisted Oak to my house.

Thanks to El Jefe and the Twisted Crew for "Take your Chicken to Work Day." I had a lot of fun with Bob, and my coworkers got a good chuckle over my chicken companion.

Last year I put up a post asking what to do with the neverending bag of corks that accumulates in my kitchen pantry. I mentioned some of the things I had done with them, place cards for our wedding, a cork board/dry erase board, and that my mom had purchased a cork reindeer ornament at a craft fair for me.

Since then, one of the search terms I see most often is some combination of "reindeer," "cork," and "ornament." Sadly, I don't think any other information exists on the internet about these things, and I feel bad for the people that keep ending up here looking for for instructions on how to make such a thing.

So this year, I took pictures for all those of you who arrive here looking for reindeer. This doesn't look that hard to make if you are at all crafty and have a glue gun (this is how non-crafty I am, do people actually still use glue guns?), some corks, a bit of twine, ribbon, and googly eyes!

Have at it folks. If you make one, send me a picture and I'll post your version up here. I'm thinking about going into the cork ornament reindeer business myself, but have no clue what I'd do with an army of cork reindeer.

As I've said before I'm not too big on resolutions. I rarely keep to them, and never feel accomplished. I, however, did set some "plans" last year, with the encouragement of Dr. Debs who had asked what our wine resolutions were. And again this year, she has the same question.

Looking back on last year, I set some general goals, which were to buy a house and go to Oktoberfest. We got the house, which then sort of got in the way of any travel plans.....owning a house is expensive! This year, I don't so much have any plans in the general sense of my life, as I also managed to get a new job this year that I really enjoy, we got the house, we're making good progress on fixing it up, and I'm generally pretty content!

As far as wine goes, I had a few plans last year.

They were:
1.) Decant wines more often: Honestly, I'm still not great about this. Pity too, we have some really pretty decanters!

2.) Convince Matt I need a bigger wine storage area: Well, we bought the house and now I have the whole basement to take over if I want, and it keeps at a pretty constant temperature, so I'm hunky-dory with that one for now.

3.) Try some non-California Reds: I think we did okay with this one, especially helped along by WBW. WBW got me out to try lots of new things this year, and Italian reds have been calling my name ever since Dr. Vino's Go Native WBW theme.

4.) Learn something new about wine every week: Well, this was actually a really easy one. I learned something new about wine almost every day this year, simply by drinking new things and reading my fellow winebloggers posts. Thanks for all the help everyone!

5.) More logically pick my everyday wines: Totally failed on this one, but ultimately, that was a very good thing. I tired tons of new stuff this year and was more willing to try just about anything!

So what about 2008? What will that bring in the world of wine for the Wannabe Winos?

1.) Read more. I'm really excited that Dr. Debs has started up the Wine Book Club, I really hope it will get me off my rear end and encourage me to plunge into my ever-growing stack of wine and food books!

2.) Cook more with wine. I rarely cook with wine, except for a few reduction sauces. I got several cooking with wine cookbooks for Christmas and I hope to take full advantage of them!

3.) Visit a new area of CA Wine Country. I'm 90% sure we are heading up to visit El Jefe's territory in early April, so hopefully this one will be easy!

4.) Continue building a relationship with wine merchants so I keep getting great advice on what to buy!

Check back in next year to see how I made out with this year's plans!

Do you think a blogger like me would qualify for press credentials at a wine tasting event? I would love to attend the DC International Wine and Food Festival, but am unsure if I would be considered "press."

You can find the press policy here.

Anyone have any thoughts?