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

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

Although I rode most of this week, I had taken about two weeks off from bike commuting due to weather. Well, half weather and half after work plans like hanging out with friends at Burger Bar, Rickhouse and wine bars in the ferry building and The Embarcadero.

So not being on the bike means I’m taking my lovely Muni Express to and from work. On the bus recently I *plowed through* some books. I had picked up a bunch of books at Green Apple over the holidays and the rainy bus rides allowed me to really catch up. It was quite nice actually.

But at the back of my head I started to feel guilty health-wise. I was starting to feel lethargic. I was anxious for a break in the SF rain. But at the same time I felt that I was enjoying my books and that was more important. Well, maybe not important, but maybe a feeling that reading books was a more valuable use of my time.

I was back on the bike this week and trying to read at home at night. I felt healthier… but I wasn’t keeping up with the reading. A classic tradeoff.

What do you guys do? I know Angie can’t read on her bus- she’s too popular. But she reads at home- Jodi does as well, I follow her (and Tessa) on goodreads.com and I know they read a ton of stuff.

No, it’s not about coffee… it was originally serialized in the newspaper and one could supposedly read one chapter while having a coffee (not sure if that’s true, but I’ll take it).

Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I should probably think about the book for a while before making final judgement, but I wasn’t that fond of it. I came to this author via one of his other more famous titles and was a bit let down.
But that said- I did strangely enjoy the craft behind the book– the writing style and especially the way the author wrote and presented the conversations.

View all my reviews >>

I’m always impressed with people who take the time to bounce ideas off their friends or peers- mostly because I don’t take that time [see that post below about my thoughts on Those Who Save Us as an example (or any of my dvd 'reviews')].

It’s not an theme per se, but this has come up a lot recently- almost randomly…

I had been loosely following the Team Coco debacle on tv.gawker.com and somehow came across a link early last week of Patton Oswalt giving a radio interview on Comedy Death Ray Radio (link).

I don’t really know much about Patton Oswalt, I like his bits and voicework, but I haven’t seen him live or anything (although I did hear him on an NPR podcast last week talking about Big Fan also)… but I was impressed by his answer to the show’s host about his thoughts on Leno.

He says he had been talking about that with his peers for hours that day… and then also compares Leno’s rise to Nixon’s as described in the Perlstein book Nixonland.

I haven’t read that book but I did add it to my ‘to-read’ list.

I’m not saying I don’t have peers to bounce ideas off of, I do… but maybe my interests don’t match up right. For example, I know damn well that it’s pointless to discuss Audition or Old Boy with Kuz, but we meet in the middle on other things.

Some people can bounce ideas off each other online pretty well- I see really well described forum posts/threads like this frequently.

But online discussion is one area that I’m not comfortable with. Well, I should clarify, that it’s a one-way street. I get good ideas, but I add little to meaningful discussion. I have a tendency to write too quickly and fire off missives without putting reasoning behind it. I think I prefer the in-person “arguing and refining my argument” method (mostly because I’m wrong a lot).

I don’t know where I’m going with this post, but maybe I need to get out more, or start a book club…