The Free Lance-Star reports that tonight’s storm created some frantic moments at this evening’s riverfront concert when the heavy rains and high winds roared through town.  I was indoors at a southern Stafford restaurant when the continuous growl …

Here’s a cool link for viewing satellite pix of the tropics, including time lapse movies of “Hurricane Alley”.  Another neat product courtesy of the U.S. gov’t!

After posting quite a few delicious low-point dessert recipes, I thought I would post a wonderful recipe that can be enjoyed as a meal for lunch or supper. It’s incredibly tasty, healthy, and has very few points for no-guilt enjoyment! :)Chicken Kabobs…

Our July climate is typically hot, sticky, and somewhat monotonous, so the next several days should come as no surprise.  After tomorrow’s pre-frontal temperatures reach 98 degrees or so the highs will drop back down into the lower nineties where …

In a previous blog post, we discussed our unfortunate and frustrating experience with the brake failure on our 2005 Ford Escape Hybrid (“FEH”). More specifically, the failure of the regenerative braking system due to a defective master cylinder and hyd…

This nifty trick, requiring Firefox and the Adblock Plus extension, will block Facebook from your computer, except when you are on the Facebook site, or using the photo uploader on Facebook. Personally, I recommend not hosting your photos at Facebook. Use PicasaWeb or Flickr and link to them from Facebook. That way you don’t lose […]

This past April I took a trip to Spain (partially solo, the other part with my brother Luke) and explored as much as I could of Madrid and Barcelona. No trip of mine is complete without looking up hot restaurants and exploring the food. Did I tour wineries? Nope, this trip was about anything but work. Of course I can’t help notice things that relate to work along the way, and this is a topic I knew I had to blog about when I got back: Wine Lists.

One would think that being in a country that produces so much excellent wine would mean that every place I went would have wonderful, interesting wines. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many of the places I went to eat the wine selection was mediocre at best with lots of mass produced juice featured prominently. While this seemed surprising at first when I thought about it made sense. These wines have known brand names, most restaurant owners know little about wine (this seems to be universally true) and putting together a great wine list is serious work. It requires wine knowledge, research, good relationships with small distributors, the aptitude to bring in wines in multiple styles and price points and a little bravery to feature wines that need to be explained to be appreciated. One exception was Bar Mutt in Barcelona. The food was divine, the wine list fantastic (recognized many of our labels) and the service dismal. Oh well, can’t wine them all.

So the next time you visit an independent restaurant with a great wine list keep all that in mind when you order a bottle. A great wine list is a thing to be appreciated all on its own.

This past April I took a trip to Spain (partially solo, the other part with my brother Luke) and explored as much as I could of Madrid and Barcelona. No trip of mine is complete without looking up hot restaurants and exploring the food. Did I tour wineries? Nope, this trip was about anything but work. Of course I can’t help notice things that relate to work along the way, and this is a topic I knew I had to blog about when I got back: Wine Lists.

One would think that being in a country that produces so much excellent wine would mean that every place I went would have wonderful, interesting wines. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many of the places I went to eat the wine selection was mediocre at best with lots of mass produced juice featured prominently. While this seemed surprising at first when I thought about it made sense. These wines have known brand names, most restaurant owners know little about wine (this seems to be universally true) and putting together a great wine list is serious work. It requires wine knowledge, research, good relationships with small distributors, the aptitude to bring in wines in multiple styles and price points and a little bravery to feature wines that need to be explained to be appreciated. One exception was Bar Mutt in Barcelona. The food was divine, the wine list fantastic (recognized many of our labels) and the service dismal. Oh well, can’t wine them all.

So the next time you visit an independent restaurant with a great wine list keep all that in mind when you order a bottle. A great wine list is a thing to be appreciated all on its own.