kerewin's whine cellar

He Said, She Said

My Brother-In-Law (the one married to my sister, not the one married to my husband's sister) said something interesting today. He said, "Man, I think your family is obsessed with food."

He might have said that because around Christmas we start in early about what food we should have, what should go with it, and what new techniques we read about, to mention a few. It might also have to do with the fact that I (and probably my sister too, I don't know, I am not paying attention) totally freak out joyfully when we get some new kitchen thing. Seriously, in the last year, I have received copper-bottom stainless steel pans, steel pan rack, cast iron griddle, cast iron tortilla pan, 3-4 recipe books, bowls, glasses, canned tomatoes, canned pickles, canned peaches, many bottles of wine......I know I have left some out but a year is a long time to think about.

He is right, we ARE obsessed. I am taking it as compliement, and I think he meant it as a compliment. We are foodies. We love everything there is about food. My parents sometimes call me right after their first tomatoes are ripe on the vine, chatting on their cell phone, slurping tomato off the vine with salt shaker in hand. I couldn't have been more excited when I opened a belated Christmas gift today to receive The Wine Lover Cooks With Wine.

We are proud of our ability to cook. Food is glorious and magical. What a gift my parents bestowed upon us when they taught us to utilize all of our senses when in the kitchen. I have to say I wasn't too fond of the early use of free labor when it came to washing the dishes, however. Still, I give credit to my mother who allowed us free and easy access to the kitchen. Bravely, she also let us toss together whatever we wanted in our spare time. Fresh garden strawberries, cool whip and ice cream? Sure! Homemade cookies? Why not? Those Jiffy box brownies with Jiffy white frosting...oh wait! don't forget the red and blue food coloring for a spectacular purple tone. We still talk about how good those where to this DAY.

I still remember the first time I tried water with lemon peel in it (Marie Calendars, of all places). I wish I could make the chicken noodle soup with those DIVINE egg noddles from that restaurant so close to my Mom's old work. How I miss the roasted shallot bread from the 74th St Alehouse. Oh man, I would KILL for that spicy Chicken that my mom and I used to get from that Chinese restaurant in Spokane, what was that name again?

I am a good cook and I owe a lot of people for that, my mom first and foremost. Secondly my old roommate Kate, who was ALL about the kitchen and homemade things. I owe her for her daring with salad dressings and because of her I pretty much refuse to buy any bottled vinaigrettes. I also owe each and every cook I ever worked with (and dated), I owe both of my grandmothers who had skills that filled the others gaps, and my Aunt for her fabulous chicken salad recipe, not to mention that thing where you mix chicken tenders with cream of mushroom soup and serve over rice-a-roni. Divine.

I love every gadget in my kitchen that makes it easier to pretend I am a from-scratch cook. I love food. I think my sister does too, and you can tell from our conversations. I am SO lucky to have my family. Addicts the lot of them. To food, to enjoyment, to life.

Are We There, Yet?

A picture the Hub took last year of my hyacinths. How I wish Spring was here now.

N.E.D.'s response

my wish for peace on earth

(After a long walk up many hills in Barcelona, we arrive at the Parc Grüell to a spectacular view of the city)

My heart goes out to all those affected by the horrible earthquake and tsunami all across Southern Asia and East Africa. I hope that all missing be found, safe and sound. For all who lost their lives I grieve with all friends and family.

Click on the picture to donate via amazon directly to the Red Cross.

Pretty good for a guy who drank half a pint of port every morning

(long dock to the middle of nowhere on Orcas Island, WA)

"If you are going through hell, keep going." Winston Churchill

Who the hell is Barbara Winter?

"When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught how to fly." Barbara Winter

Oh! and I forgot.....

I am forever sending emails off only to realize, "Oh! I forgot something" and then having to send a backup email right after. Then realizing that I have forgotten something ELSE and having to send yet ANOTHER email, after awhile I just leave it out, because......How stupid do I really want to look?

So, how could I ever have forgotten that Quetzl loved to sit in boxes?

Quetzlcoatl

So when we had Fatbody we had another cat, Quetzlcoatl. Also a beautiful, loving kitty. We adopted him from some people who just didn't want him anymore. He was 9 months old and spraying their apartment. So we got him fixed and never had a moment's trouble out of him. Since I had been digging through old cat photos, I ran into a lot of the supermodel Q and thought I would post them.

I'll get the sad side note out of the way, a month after we put Fatbody down, Q was hit by a car, thus proving that we lived on far too busy a street to ever let our pets outside again. Because they were wonderful kitties and because we were in deep mourning, we waited about 7 months before we adopted two homeless kitties that had been found wandering the streets together, a little posse. Oso and Ixtapa can never replace FB and Q, but they are fantastic in their own right, especially in the winter when they get on the bed and curl up into each other.

This was his standard supermodel pose, I think he must have known when we had the camera out.

He loved to lay on his back, just hanging out. He was the least spooked cat we ever had.

Just your typical Summer day.

It was around Christmas time and we were babysitting some friends' child so they could go to a work party. Of course, since we are responsible adults, we thought a little Powerpuff Girls was exactly what 9 month old Maddie needed! When we came to the episode with the evil cat, Q just stood in front of the television watching, and occasionally reaching up to try to touch the other kitty on the screen.

She was a day tripper, one way ticket, yeah

So I was reading about a curious flea cure for dogs and it reminded me of the time my cat Fatbody had fleas. So I wrote out the story, and then emailed it to the person in question. Now, I assume this person gets a LOT of internet traffic and consequently a lot of emails. So you could say that I was:

1. A total Star Fucker
2. Psychotic Internet Stalker
3. Seriously interested in sharing my funny story
4. All of the above minus C.

However it IS a really good story, so I just copied and pasted it here for everyone else's entertainment. Although the dog story might be a tad funnier, since you can't hear the VERY IMPORTANT sound effects required for a complete telling of the story. That doesn't stop me from telling it, however.

Here is Fatbody on the "kitty chair" the styrofoam chair the Hub once drug home from a garage sale. Good ole FB took it right over.

Oh the things we do to our animals in the name of science. Your story about poor Chuck reminded me of something I did once to our lovely cat, named Fatbody. Yes, Fatbody. When my husband (then not even an acquaintance) adopted the poor, homeless stray, he and his roommate at the time did a cursory exam and decided it was a girl and named it/her Nelly. Then they took it to the vet and found out (oops, didn't look hard enough!) it was a boy. For some really really stupid reason they decided a good male cat's name would be Scoop. Well, having previously been homeless this cat wouldn't turn down a full bowl of food even if he was gorged, and the boys didn't know to portion his meals and he got chunky, rather quickly. This was around the time that they had an unhealthy fascination with Full Metal Jacket and started calling him Fatbody, as in, "You are a disgusting Fat body, Fatbody!" and the name stuck.

What does this have to do with the pet story? Not much, I just got sidetracked by the funny name story.

So a couple of years later, the man and I moved in together into this cute little house that was turned into apartments and everyone around had tons of cats and lots of yard space so we let the cat roam where he may. Of course, the area was CRAZY with fleas. Turns out Fatbody was allergic to fleas and they bothered him so much that he would chew his fur off, so he got all these sad patches on his flank. And yes, fleas. GROSS, right?

Fatbody also had these amazing claws of death and the FASTEST reflexes of any animal I have ever seen. We used to sit on either side of him and toss a ball back and forth as FAST as possible and he usually was able to intercept it. Then there was the time he started pushing the ball back to us, as if to play catch with us. It wasn't a fluke because he did it over and over and over until you wanted to burst with joy. There I go getting all sidetracky again. Anyway, a good old flea bath was out, unless you wanted to lose a limb or something, so I went to the pet store. The ORGANIC pet store, of course. They sold me this spray that comes along with a little comb. You spray, flea death, you comb the flea death out. Sounds charming, doesn't it?

This is when we were moving from the apartment to the house, Fatbody laying on, what else? a food box.

The spray wasn't supposed to harm the cat in any way and compared to the flea bath stuff they tried to sell me, it seemed like a good compromise, if a little more work. Stupid, stupid me, I forgot that at that time we were using a spray bottle (filled with water, of course) to help discipline the cat from clawing things to pieces, or jumping on the table. So I sit on the floor with my legs out in a V and park the cat in the middle and put an arm around him to keep him from running away and start spraying. NOT a friendly response. Yes, lots of fleas were losing their lives in the valiant war, but HOLY MOLY, the amount of fleas that poor kitty had on him. Then Fatbody started this deep, deep growling that I could FEEL. MrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRooooooewwwwwwww. Shit. Could the death claws be far behind? Did I mention I decided to undertake this task on a day that 'then boyfriend' was at work, and I was all alone and self-sufficient? I tell you, the ways in which I am incomparably stupid are too numerous to count.

"Okay" I tell myself in my head, "just take it easy and you can both get out of this alive." So I continue to lightly spray the poor kitty, who just hunches down and takes it like he knows he is getting punished for something he didn't do. Then the hissing starts. The turned head, looking at you, ears down, full out, "HHHHHHHSSSSSSSS." Birds for miles started to fly South.

What's the solution? His name wasn't Fatbody for nothing, so I went and got a bowl of food and got us back in our V formation but I plopped the bowl of food in front of him and went back to work. At this point I didn't really even need to hold him since the lure of food was good enough. Still, all the while I was spraying him, (spray, comb, wipe, spray, comb, wipe...at this point we were both rather soaked with this environmental spray shit I bought) he was growling that deep deep growl. However, he was also eating, punctuated by a turned head hiss. I can't even recreate the sound here in type, let me just say it is a big hit at parties and I have friends who to this day still make the noise when we are hanging out. Something like, "MMMnnmmm grrrr MMMMnnmmm grrrrr HHHHHHSSSSSS." Nope, you have to hear it.

Here he is, before the flea incident, laying on our back dech, the lazy head resting on the doorframe.

I finally just gave up, we were both soaking wet, unhappy and on my side a huge degree of guilt from using a flea death method that echoed the punishment we were giving him when he was bad. When The Hub came home from work (then boyfriend, of course) we came to a better solution, we went to the vet's and got him some of those drops that work for 3 months at a time. Poor, poor Fatbody.

That cat had many adventures, jumping out a 2nd story window, losing an eye, getting diabetes, hypoglycemic shock trips, hypothyroid radiation, a couple of trips to the emergency vet.....yet everytime he bounced back all fat and sassy. [Funny side note: Whenever he had a surgery, or a hypoglycemic episode and had to hang out at the vets for a couple of days I would call and check up on him. The nurses would always say, "Oh he seems to be doing great, he's just eating a ton!" I never realized until the cats we have now that when an animal isn't feeling good it doesn't eat. Good ole Fatbody, always eating.

This is Fatbody and half of the Hub's old roommate, the one who guessed the sex wrong. Man that cat was loooong and he so loved that chair.

He was so, so sweet and in February of '02 when we had to put him down, I cried hard for hours. I miss you darling Fatbody, you were SUCH a lover. We were really lucky to have you in our lives.

It Wasn't a "Put Your Hands In The Air" Type Thing

Well that was an interesting afternoon. I was stuck for 2 hours in an HR meeting for my company, then I went to a fabulous lunch at a fabulous restaurant with two of my wine industry friends. Yes, of COURSE we had wine.

On our way out the door we ran into another wine rep/friend and had some good convo, which led me to the thought that I hadn't talked to yet ANOTHER mutual wine rep friend lately, so I got my cell phone out of my little purse. We were walking out of the restaurant, so I slung the strap over my head and to my other shoulder. Then deciding that I wasn't going to call that friend after all, I went to put my cell phone back.

NO PURSE.

None, gone. We walked the half block back to the restaurant in a daze and the whole time my friends were asking me where I could have left it, I was thinking to myself, "but, but, but.....I put it over my shoulder!" Still, I was in shock and wasn't 110% sure, you know how habitual stuff tends to seem a lot like Groundhogs Day (THE MOVIE, DUH).

Then we step out and this hired limo driver guy asks us if one of us lost a purse, cause he saw some guy bend down and pick one up and wander off. I remember putting it over my head on the opposite shoulder, it couldn't have just slipped off, so it had to be a slash and grab thing.

How is this possible? I have travelled extensively in many countries with lots of thievery warnings; Argentina, Southern France, just recently in Spain. I haven't EVER EVER EVER ever been robbed before. How come it just happened in my own city?????????

Just a few days ago the thought was spinning in my head about those other countries and robbery and how the people in those cities weren't worried about their belongings. I was relegating all those stories into some idea of Urban Thief Legends. Speaking of urban thieves......sigh.

So I have finished calling the police (not like it matters, I never saw the guy), and cancelling credit/debit cards, I visited my bank, and now here I am, cardless, cashless, driver's license-less...............my ass is screwed for at least 5-10 business days. What an idiot! At least I tanked the car up yesterday, not that I should be driving.

BAH!

Weird side note: When you call the companies to report lost or stolen cards the customer service people always say, "Oh my gosh! I am sorry, I hope you are ok!" and all I could think was, "Hey, I was lucky. I didn't even know I was getting robbed, save your sympathy for the people who really need it."

But then I thought, "Hey! I was the victim, a little sympathy can't be such a bad thing." That was when I started to tear up, just a little. I am a little bummed and a lot pissed off. Oh yeah, when you get robbed, and you go to your bank and they ask you if you need to take any cash out for the next few days, the correct answer is, "Yes, yes I do." Because if you don't get out the cash you will find yourself driving home thinking about how you need to go get a new driver's license that day, since you intend on driving the next few days. Oops! How are you going to pay for that new driver's license? Guess what, you aren't.

So here are my two post-robbery tips: 1) Take the sympathy, and 2) Take the cash.

oh yeah one more thing - how come when you call the credit card companies about your stolen card the first thing they ask is the account number.........huh?