A Bit Too Much Rosemary

To quote Britney Spears...DING DANG Y'ALL!*

After the lovely Kitty and I checked out the matinée of Get Him to the Greek (which was a really good movie, by the way), we dropped in on our friends at Colony Wine Market and picked up a few bottles of my new favorite wines made by Chris Ringland and R Wines. This guy does something very special with grapes and I have loved every wine of his that I have tried. Tonight we picked up bottles of Luchador, Strong Arms and Southern Belle. All of these Shiraz beauties have different notes and bite. Kitty loves the jammy and solid Luchador and with the roasted chicken we ate, it was a perfect pairing. My fave is the Southern Belle, a kick-in-the-head, fruity, alcohol bomb that really needs red meat or BBQ to stand up to it.

We got a late start to dinner and I made a compound butter of rosemary, garlic and bacon. It was the first time for this combination and I really overdid it with the rosemary. It gave the breast meat a piny twinge that was overbearing. I want to try this again with about half as much rosemary. I think it will be a winner when I get the mixture figured out. Oh well...you can't win 'em all.

*That is a quote from my favorite Britney, the plump, on drugs, pink wig-wearing, paparazzi car-smashing, Britney who proudly served Doritos to her toddlers and let them wash it down with Dr. Pepper in their bottles. She had the best grocery store feet I've ever seen on a pop star. Man I miss her.

A Beautiful Gift from Sidney

As many of you know, Kitty's father Sidney passed away recently. He had been ill for quite some time, but the end of great lives is always a sad occasion. He and Lynn had recently moved from a house in the country, out side of Drew, Mississippi, to a house in the big city of Cleveland, Mississippi. The new house was right next door to the library (where Lynn works) and right behind the Episcopal church. If they had a grocery store and a wine shop in the same block, they would have never needed a car, except to take the dogs to the vet. They kept the old place near Drew and today, Kitty, Lynn and I made the trip out there to pick up some furniture and other odds and ends. I managed to throw my back out lifting the first piece for furniture and luckily it was the only heavy one. JT, a big man in his 60's who had once worked for Sidney, did the rest of the heavy lifting and even managed to whip a nest of wasps into a real frenzy while removing a window unit a/c.

This was the first time Kitty and I had been out to the old house since they had moved. I felt a deep sense of regret that I hadn't had the opportunity to go back out there with Sidney and dig up a truckload of the native plants that were all around the place. While I was gingerly moving some sticks out of the way for the moving van, I spotted some wild garlic plants and asked Lynn if I could pull up a few. She told me to take all I wanted and I ignored the searing pain in my back as I pulled up about two dozen plants. They were still a little green and milky, but I figured I wouldn't have the opportunity to get back up there any time soon. We loaded them in the back of the moving van, next to the bed, the mattress, the dishwasher and the formerly wasp-filled window units and made one more walk around the old place. Kitty cut a few branches off of the big Bay Tree behind the shed and I spotted an anvil that I would seriously like to have in my workshop. Kitty got her bays home. I had to leave the anvil for another trip.

When we got home, Stuart, Kitty and I cut the bulbs and tops from the garlic and stuck them in some loose soil in the big planter on the porch. I know the bulbs will take root and I hope some of the tops will do the same. While separating the tops and the roots, I noticed that the lower half of the stalks were quite tender. I bit into one of them to check for bitterness and was delighted to find that they had bright, yet earthy taste like a cross between a ramp, a green onion and garlic. We were so tired from moving that we had discussed getting takeout for supper, but the taste of the wild garlic changed my mind. Instead of some protein-in-a-box nightmare, I got in to the kitchen and whipped up a hearty soup with the garlic stalks as the star.

As you can see, it turned out beautiful. Thanks Sidney.

Bon Appetit
~Tom