Finally, a useful beer-related application for the iPhone. BJCP Styles is an application that brings the full Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) Style Guidelines to the iPhone. The contents are fully searchable. You can search for a style, a parti…

Horses at work and at play – The Big Picture – Boston.com –

Every once in a while I give myself culinary missions and yesterday I succeeded in a particularly difficult one – making Coq au Vin the proper way, out of rooster. As the recipe I used noted, “Coq au Vin isn’t chicken cooked in cheap wine, it’s rooster cooked in wine good enough to drink.” The good enough to drink part was easy, it was getting the rooster that was the problem. As the recipe conceded, getting a rooster to cook is almost impossible in the U.S. Lucky for me I know Kyle, who knew somebody who knew a poultry farmer. So for my birthday Kyle got me a rooster, plucked and everything. Not a conventional gift, but a thoughtful one.

So off I went to make my coq au vin. I used this recipe from Saveur magazine, because the recipe is designed to be made with rooster where most coq au vin recipes assume you are cooking chicken. Pictured right is the result, which we enjoyed with a bottle of Domaine de la Vougeraie Vougeot Monopole, a red Burgundy. When you make Coq au Vin, red Burgundy is your best option for pairing (all red Burgundies are pinot noirs). The wine was fantastic and reminded me why Burgundy is considered one of the best wine producing regions in the world. And to toot my own horn a bit, Rebecca said my Coq au Vin was better than the one she had in France.

If you wish to try the recipe for yourself but don’t know a poultry farmer, here are a few tips. One is cut down the cooking time from 1.5 hours to 45 minutes. Rooster is tough and requires more cooking to soften it, but cooking chicken for that long will overcook it. Second, use dark meat only, because white meat will overcook. Third, you can skip the step about pouring cognac over it and lighting it with a match because that step is there to burn off extra hairs on the rooster. Fourth, don’t be tempted to use anything to cook the chicken in but Pinot Noir. I used the Cooper Hill Pinot Noir from Oregon because it’s not super expensive but still true to the varietal. Finally, don’t be tempted to keep the vegetables that you cook with the meat. The vegetables are there to flavor the sauce. This is French cooking, and it’s all about the sauce, so discard the vegetables. But if you wish for there to be more vegetables in the final product you can add more to the mushrooms. I added pearl onions. If anybody wants any more tips on this dish you can email me directly at matt@kybecca.com.

Everyday is a hard news day at the FL-S, don’t ya know.
Accompanying the saturation coverage of Sarah Palin’s Real America Tour visit to Herkamp Park (a venue you’d think from the reporting has more people in it today than Yasgur’s Farm in the Summer of ‘69) comes this delightful FL-S featurette about the Stafford County Republican who looks just […]

 
 
1. Discuss the route your Trick-or-Treaters will be following.  Make sure this established route is in areas your child is familiar with.  You can also have your children check in with you periodically throughout the night.  Establish a return time.  
2. Remind your children to only stop at houses and apartments that are well lit.  Be sure […]

Even though I opted for the ultra simple one page portfolio site, updating by hand was a pain. So I spent last night putting it on Wordpress. I still want to bold the paragraph headings in the right column, but the CSS is complicated and I haven’t figured out exactly how to do it yet. […]

Apparently, it has been whisked away to stage Herkamp Park for today’s noontime visit of Gov. Sarah Palin.
The Farmer’s Market is a Fredericksburg institution, offering excellent quality produce to area residents and restaurateurs. 
Family farmers rely on this popular venue for their livelihood.  Certainly, they lost their income this weekend so that Sarah could make her photo-op appearance, today.
So […]

Bill Day is the Democratic challenger to freshman Rep. Rob Wittman in Virginia’s 1st district. This is the first time that VA has had Democrats running in all 11 congressional districts.
 
How would you describe yourself politically? Is there anyone or anything that’s had a significant impact in shaping your worldview?
I am a fiscal conservative and a […]

This actually happened several days before the Spotsylvania incident.
Mark Brooks at Heartland of Virginia:
This is what pure hate looks like. This is so vile, I have delayed publishing this in order to try to gain some perspective on it.
……………………………
Follow-up note: Other residents of the 5th District have reported many instances of sign destruction and defacing. […]

Even though our shoot was rained out on Saturday we managed to get some great pics on Sunday. Here’s a few. More to come after editing and retouching.