Kenneth rambling about food, movies, wine, coffee, sports, travel or whatever else he thinks of

Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Is it weird or creepy that I like the Dexter books? I’m glad I tried out the first one on a recommendation. I’m also glad that they differ enough from the TV show that I don’t know what’s going on and keep reading. I’m also glad that the stories are uniquely creepy to keep me engaged.

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Not much to say about this book for now- very dark- I’ll have to chew on my thoughts for a while…

I am glad that my kindle has a dictionary built in… this short novel made me feel like my vocabulary needs a lot of work.

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I enjoyed the book more than I thought I would.
There’s another reviewer who summed up quite nicely what s/he was wary of that I had the same concerns about: multi-stickered recommended book that starts off about board-room accounting crime…. but I stuck with it and really enjoyed the book.

I also agreed that there were some seemingly out of place passages about legal status and stats in Sweden, but overall those didn’t detract too much from the story.

I recommend the book and look forward to reading this author’s other work.

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This was also the first book I read electronically. I’ll have a future post about that soon. I have a lot of thoughts about various e-readers now.

This is just a quick post to show off the Nestle Aeroccino milk frother in case any of the readers who have landed here searching for my Illy Francis Francis X8 vs Nestle Nespresso posts need some info about the frothers.

Just some background- I don’t really need an auto-frother (or semi-auto) but a friend picked one up so I grabbed one too on a whim.

Short review: The frother is actually pretty fun and froths milk for cappuccinos much better that I thought it would. Perfect temp, and perfect foam. If you have a pod machine and you don’t have a frother, I’d definitely recommend picking one of these up- especially if you have guests over who like milk drinks.

On to the vids!

note- I was really really tired this morning. I have no idea why I decided to make these vids, but did anyway. Yes I look and sound like crap. Thanks

Vid 1

Vid 2

The other night I met fellow ex-pat San Antonian Jeff H. at Cav Wine Bar on Market St. to catch up and chat and to have some good wine and food.

The last wine I tried really stood out and I wound up buying a bottle to take home (the bar sells retail bottles). It was a Jenke Merlot, and I really recommend it. I think it was under $25 if I recall correctly.

Just a warning though- it has a funky/leathery/earthy bouquet that I love with my wines, and especially with my “food” wines. But I know some of you don’t like those qualities, hence the warning.

Keep an eye out for it- or let me know what you think if you’ve already had it.

thin mints and a cappa? why not?

CoCo said not to be cynical, but it’s kind of hard for me. I’m working on it though. I’m also trying not to be jaded. It’s hard to do CoCo.

I keep starting a bunch of drafts for posts but wind up deleting them because I come off as c&j. (I also come across as a dick, but that’s okay, everyone knows I’m a dick).

But when I look around the blogosphere, it seems that cynicism is in no short supply.

I’ll give you a mellow example of my own take in how I can easily be led down the dark path of snark.

I finally got around to watching District 9. It passed my 3DMT™ because I thought it was entertaining even the story wasn’t that original and a bit ham-fisted in shoving stuff down our throats.

It almost didn’t pass because my first reaction was to rip the movie apart. I think I wanted to tear it down because I had read some articles about how the movie was made, or rather, how it became to be a full feature. And I was a bit jaded about it being nominated for an Oscar.

Supposedly it was a spec film for the director to show off some ideas to Peter Jackson for a Halo movie. Those plans were scratched, but they realized that for just a bit more budget they could put out a full movie with the material they had- or by adding just a bit more.

But here’s the thing-

1) I’m not sure if that info is even true, but it’s what I remembered and

2) two movie blog posts that ‘reported’ that trivia seemed to lead you to infer that it was a lesser quality film because of that history- if the posts hadn’t been written that way, how would I have reacted?

I skipped out seeing District 9 in the cineplex because of that inference. Looking back I realize now I would have had a good time. It was on my to-do list for the holidays (along w/ Avatar, which I still haven’t seen)

I would have had a good time, but I would still rip on the film – in a good-natured way though. (Seriously- why was Christopher the only alien who was smart? Why did his kid have big old sad dog eyes? To make him more available emotionally?)

But go rent the film, it’s pretty good. It’s not Oscar worthy at all, but it’s still fun.

Liked District 9 but want to watch something else? Go rent the original Alien Nation with James Caan and Mandy Patinkin (not the TV show).

While you’re doing that, I’m going to try to read fewer movie blogs.

-Oh, and re: item 2 above–

And does it matter? It’s kind of cool that a dude had a project about to be shelved but had it get a second life. Hey, at least he’s creating content.

I went to a Gigondas/Vacqueyras  tasting at Kenny & Patrick’s recently and thought I’d throw up some notes from the evening in case any of you were interested.

The wine is mostly Grenache blend and is referred to a lot as “The Poor Man’s Chateauneuf du Pape”. Good enough for me as I like Grenache, and I’m poor! For those that aren’t familiar with the name or style, take some time and grab a bottle or 12 the next time you’re shopping. There are some good deals out there- especially if you’re a Grenache or Frenchie fan.

We did a blind tasting again and rated wines on a 100 point scale. The top 3 wines in the night were all $20, and there were a few in the $15 range.

My chicken-scratch scrawled notes:

-would like/prefer any of these with food (as opposed to just coming home for a glass)
-in a straight-up tasting they weren’t distinctive from each other greatly and will probably have a very tight scoring range
-similar characteristics were: slight astringency in the finish, thin but well-structured with good balance – good old-world characteristics

The top 3 (out of 18) were:
2007 Domaine Notre Dame des Pallieres ($20)
2007 Andrieux & Fils ($21)
2007 Domaine Le Couroulu *
*I brought this last one, it’s a Vacqueyras, and was $19 at K&L

I recommend all of them - although I did write down that I prefer them with food a lot more, so take my notes with a grain of salt (or side of lamb)

OTHER STUFF:
Personally, I’m trying to get away from scoring wines I did in the past- I prefer Dave’s method of “recommended” (or not) that he has on his blog.

Last night I opened a sparkling Torrontés and was quite impressed with it. It’s light and sweet. It would go great with dessert, but it was a nice & fresh way to start off some appetizers of cheese and other things. There was just enough acidity to complement the cheese well. I’m a big fan of Torrontés in general and hadn’t heard of a sparkling version. It was an interesting change of pace.

2008 Familia Schroeder “Deseado” Sparkling Torrontes Neuquen Patagonia $15 – recommended

I’ll have some more notes soon, but these were the most interesting standouts for February so far.

So last Tuesday I was riding home after work in my typical neon-yellow blinky getup when a funny thing happened.

As I was pulling up to stop at Divisadero I noticed an extremely stylish woman about to cross the street. She caught me looking and I smiled I tipped my hat helmet (as a proper Tejano would do).

I thought- hrm, she looks like that popular bike-blogger and coffee drinker Meligrosa. But I didn’t think it was her because she’s normally with her trusty blue bike, Frenchie, and she wasn’t tonight.

But it was her!

So, I tried to say “hey there, I like your blog, keep up the good work.”

But what I *think* came out of my mouth was “hurrrrrr durrrrrrr I liek ur blogggggg”.

“Smooth move, ex-lax” – I told myself.

Either way, she smiled back and kept on going to do whatever it is the stylish youngins in SF do and I rode through the Panhandle and the park and the rest of the way home to eat the rest of my leftover empanadas and play with my new thumb war lucha libre gift!

But apparently– I didn’t make as bad an impression as I feared.

my new luchadores!

I downloaded LED Football for my iphone and was playing it on the bus on Saturday night on my way to a party.

A cute girl sitting next to me asked what I was playing and I showed her the phone- proudly one could say… and I started to tell her about everyone having one of these games when I was a kid… and then I realized that the game was older than she was. Uggh