As part of my day job, I write book reviews for our email newsletter. Rather than have these disappear into everyone’s Deleted Items, I’ve decided to post them here as well. I hope you enjoy them, and please feel free to leave your comments.
Christmas Cheer and Cheese
Last night, we hosted about a dozen friends for an informal Christmas get-together. Since we were opening up some wine, I went in search of some interesting cheeses to pair with them. Though I love cheese, I have to admit that I’m no expert. I went with the recommendations of the helpful guy at Alex Farms. He helped me pick out three cheeses for our party, none of which I’ve ever had before, but now I’m hooked. Here’s what we had:
- Langres – this was a soft and rather pungent cheese, and it went well with our sparkling cava and the other white wines. It is actually made in the Champagne region of France.
- Fougerus – another soft cheese from the Brie family, wrapped with a fern leaf, giving it a distinctive flavour. Good with our red wines.
- Mimolette – a very distinctive looking cheese, with a hard outer rind. This is a northern French cheese closely based on Dutch Edam. The wheel of cheese looked like a cross-section of canteloupe, with a bright orange colour. Very dry and tangy, like very old cheddar. My favourite, especially with bold red wines.
I was in charge of both the wine and cheese, while Brooke was in charge of the sweets. Ask me about how the cookie budget actually surpassed the wine budget this year…
Get Your Twangers Out
I find it almost impossible to believe that this was actually broadcast to children. But then again, it was the 1970s and anything was possible.
With Distinction
Back in the fall, my work buddy Brian and I enrolled in the Intermediate course offered by the Wine and Spirits Education Trust, a UK-based organization that offers certificate and diploma programmes on the way to the prestigious Master of Wine designation.
Each week, for eight weeks, we swirled, sniffed, and sipped wines, taking copious (or not so copious) tasting notes. We learned about each of the major wine regions of the world, and learned a methodical process of tasting and describing what we’d tasted. At the end of the eight weeks, we wrote an exam.
Though the course is offered through the local Independent Wine Education Guild, here in Toronto, the tests had to be sent back to Jolly Old England to see if we tipsy colonists had passed muster. Today, I was proud to receive in the mail my very first wine certification, the “WSET Level 2 Intermediate Certificate in Wines, Spirits and Other Alcoholic Beverages.” The best part? Since I scored 96%, they printed “Pass with Distinction” on my certificate.
The next level, the Advanced certificate, is being offered in January, but I know it will be much tougher. It’s 14 weeks long, and the exam contains a tasting component. Though my head is now chock-full of wine knowledge, I still consider myself the owner of a wobbly set of tastebuds. I have much more tasting (and spitting, if I know what’s good for me!) ahead, so I think I’ll wait until next fall to take the next level.
Write About It!
The Real Live Preacher hits another one out of the park.
Which caused me to want to write about something that happens to me sometimes. Not very often, but often enough to keep me on the “glass half-full” team. More than many things, this is why I am a Christian. Well, it’s why I’m a theist. The Christian stuff comes from somewhere else, possibly. What am I talking about?
Well, it happened most recently last weekend. I’d spend Friday night “holiday” partying with the GTABloggers, talking and laughing and drinking into the wee hours with a group of people I’ve grown to love. But it didn’t happen there.
On Saturday morning, I reluctantly woke about five hours after I’d crashed into bed, to accompany Brooke downtown. She was running in the Santa Shuffle, a 5K race to support the Salvation Army. I was being a good husband, showing my support for my closest friend and life partner. But it didn’t happen there, either.
It happened after she’d raced away from the starting line. I had about half an hour to wait for her to finish, and I went back inside, into the warmth of a nearly empty food court, where I sat with my coffee and listened to my iPod.
Sometimes I think music is like prayer. It’s a language to express things that can’t possibly be expressed any other way. Words and music blend together to speak about something much much bigger than any of our individual lives. I’ve noticed a certain earnestness and emotional vulnerability coming back into the kinds of music I listen to lately. Irony and cynicism are being stripped away and it’s now ok to be hopeful again. I call this the music of crazy optimism. It’s one of humanity’s most enduring traits. Hope. Longing. And it always speaks to me. Basic truths I try not to forget: life is so so good. And we’re all connected somehow.
I was listening to Modest Mouse‘s Good News for People Who Love Bad News (actually, the title has a sort of double meaning, I guess) and something about these lyrics from “Float On” just made me a bit weepy.
I backed my car into a cop car the other day
well he just drove off, sometimes life’s ok
I ran my mouth off a bit too much, oh what did I say?
well you just laughed it off, it was all ok
and we’ll all float on ok, and we’ll all float on ok, and we’ll all float on ok, and we’ll all float on anyway.
I’m not really expressing it well, am I? Well, that’s why we have music, I guess. Go and listen to some that you love.