Acetio | Blogma

We once again found ourselves at Your DeKalb Farmers Market, this time late at night (they close at 9, so 8 o'clock is late) so we missed the after-work crowds.

YDFM is not really a farmers' market, but it is the best grocery store I've ever known.

The shopping pattern is as follows:
Check out the nuts
Check out the sauces and jams
Check out the pasta and flour and beans
Tracy goes to the spice section and Matt goes to the wine and beer section

Today I found a 2006 Cycles Gladiator Syrah for $8.
(The picture is grabbed from their site - it isn't from the bottle I bought)
At first I thought it was French, simply because the label has a picture of a bicycle, but it's Californian ("Central Coast"). The label said it got a 93 on the wine rating scale they use, and my rule is if it's under $10 and over 90% on the scale, then I should get it.

I did and it's quite nice.

When I was a kid we would scoop the pumpkins a few days before Halloween and save the seeds and wash them and toast them in the oven and put salt on them and eat them. And they always tasted like pencil shavings. They were too difficult to shell individually so we ate them with the shells, and the shells were woody and tough and inedible.

I admire vegetarians.

I admire people who have convictions and are willing to make sacrifices in their lives in order to live by a code. Sort of like Dexter.

I have to admit, I post the wines because I think their labels are attractive.

but I tried a 2007 Gabbiano Chianti and found it very nice.

As of today (November 18 2008), Belgian InBev has completed its takeover of Anheuser-Busch (A-B), one of the oldest and most iconic American brands, becoming the largest brewer and fifth-largest "consumer-products" company on the world.

This has resulted in a windfall for Senator John McCain's wife, Cindy.

We still haven't gotten the kitchen entirely in order and I've been relying on the jar of instant coffee we got when we were living in the hotel for a week.

I hadn't had instant coffee for years, since I was in Europe, where instant coffee isn't scorned the way it is in the U.S. In fact, after trying it again, I much preferred it to anything I could get at a gas station or similar place where coffee sits for hours on a warming tray.

I took a walk through the local cemetery (the Vanderbilt plot has a lovely view) and on the other side was a Kroger's grocery. Some people here seem to have opinions about which is better, Kroger or Publix (northern chains don't exist here) but they seem pretty much the same. You can sell wine in grocery stores in Georgia, which is a big improvement over New York or Delaware.

Something I had never seen up north was this:

Tom sat at a cafe, sipping coffee from a mug, looking at the local
paper without actually reading it.

He hadn't eaten yet and looked around for somewhere to get a bite. The
cafe only served cookies and what they called scones, but he didn't
want that sort of thing. He could see a donut shop and a deli at the
end of the street. Tom could imagine what they had to offer, and knew
none of it would satisfy him.

There were at least two each of taco joints, Chinese take-out
holes-in-the-wall and pizzerias within a couple of blocks from where
he sat, but having eaten at all those places in the past, he knew he
wouldn't go back except out of desperation.

Chocolate and Orange is one of the less-appreciated yet more delicious flavor combinations.

Many agree on its gustatory appeal, but other than a few brands of orange-flavored chocolate candies, there is very little on the market to excite my tongue the way I wish it to be.

Ever eager to experiment, I wondered the following:
"What happens when you mix hot chocolate with Tang?"

I could have mixed Tang with chocolate milk, but from experience I know that mixing acidic beverages with milk often curdles it, leaving it unpalatable and gross.