While in Australia last year, discovered, and soon became addicted to, Vegemite. This is neither here nor there except that when I ripped through the small amount I brought back with me, I needed a place to score some more!

Although it’s made by Kraft, it never caught on in the US and thus, is hard to find. I find this odd, especially here in Wisconsin, where the fact that it is a byproduct of the beer making process would ensure it’s popularity. Not so. Cheese curds yes. Yeast extract no.

Anyway, I was able to get some online but it’s expensive and the shipping is murder! I tried calling all the gorcery stores in town… no go (though some do cary Marmite (Vegemite’s sweeter cousin)). Then lo and behold… my friend Gina produced two 150g jars of the delicous brown ooze… from World Market no less. As the folks from OZ would say: “Good on ya’ World Market”!

Addiction pacified.

I’m going to pretend that it’s only been a few days since my last post and throw down a little wine review. If you can’t hang with that, then up yours hippie!

Since I no longer have access to my beloved BevMo, I’ve been forced to find a new source for my wine fix… the nice folks over at Steve’s Wine Market offer up a lovely, upscale establishment for me to score my junk. This is where I scored a 2004 Cousino Macul Antiguas Reservas Cabernet Sauvignon. Two words: “it good”. It comes from Chile, part of that “other America” down south… It’s pretty big and round and has a nice sweet fruit splash and a decent amount of depth. My guess is that the snobby-wine-tweakers would rate it in the high eighties… something like an 88 and I think that’s where I’d put it too. It’s the $12 bottle of wine that drinks more like $20.

Personally, I’ll be keeping a bottle of this in the cellar (okay closet)… but as always, your milage may vary. Oh, and by the way, on this same trip I also picked up a 2004 Wishing Tree Shiraz… which left me wishing I hadn’t. Mostly because it totally blows… mostly.

Okay, clearly I’ve been drinking a lot lately… this is my third post in a row about wine. Well tough…

Is there a better shiraz out there for under $16? One can only hope… This one blew me away and IMHO, deserves at least the 90 points it got from Wine Spectator. I found it a few BevMo runs ago but it’s now it’s part of my standard rotation. highly recommended. It’s absolutely fantastic. Juicy, fat and fruity…

Yet another BevMo score… this last trip worked out nicely. This is a pretty amazing deal seeing as it’s only $8.99. Our friends at over Wine Enthusiast gave it 89 points and named it a “BEST BUY”. It’s certainly a best buy but 89 points may be a bit generous. Still, it’s got more depth than most $20 bottles and is just dang good.

As my friend Russ pointed out… when we turn 30, we no longer worry about drinking alone. Of course this is absolutely true but I would add this… alone or not, there is no reason to drink bad wine…

No April Fools Day joke here… the 2003 Fallesco Vitiano is a damn good bottle of wine for only $10! I picked this up on my last BevMo run, mostly because Wine Enthusiast gave it high marks and they always come through for me (Wilfred Wong is an overrated pussy!). It’s fat, juicy and smokey. Yumm!

You’d be a fool not to try it… (sorry)

I lived in the south before moving to California (which I call the “me state”). In Nashville, I was introduced to Krispy Kremes, to which, I happily awarded “Champion of Donuts”. So when I heard tell of another donut–a California donut–said to have no equal… well, needless to say (though I mention it here for completeness), I was extremely skeptical. See, the “me state” likes to believe itself the best of all things… to which it is, more often than not, incorrect. That said, know this… Stan’s Donuts, here in lovely Santa Clara, CA, makes the greatest donut I have ever eaten in my life… by a long shot.

Now… why? I’m not exactly sure. They seem to be cooked at a high temperature… like a good steak would be. In fact, like a medium rare steak would be seared on high heat to lock in the juice, a Stan’s Donut seems to be heated quickly to allow some of the dough to not fully cook. I would say Stan’s Donuts are indeed cooked medium rare. Crispy outside, gooey inside and drenched unevenly with yummy sugar glaze. While you eat one, you can actually hear yourself getting fatter (TB)!

Stan’s shop is not exactly pretty… in fact, it’s a dump… and you better get there early or they’ll be out! But get there you should. And don’t look for their website… they ain’t got one. But you can see what folks around the web are saying about Stan’s…

From the moment I awoke this morning, my stomach was sending me hints. The hints eventually turned to demands… eggs would be necessary this morning. And knowing better than to disappoint him (yes, my stomach is male), I set off for my favorite diner.

I hadn’t gone out for a proper breakfast in some time. This is mostly due to my single-ness I suppose… I had even intended to bring a book to read to kill the time between sitting and paying. It turned out to be dumb luck that I forgot to bring one.

Being single does have some advantages. With a line out the door of people waiting for a table, I casually walked right past them and took a seat at the counter. I sat next to my single brethren and sister-en whom where all busy eating or watching the TV mounted to the wall behind the counter or reading the book they had remembered to bring. While my waitress failed to notice she had one less vacant chair, I was eyeing the multitude of plates being pushed from the kitchen–each seemingly heaped with more egg-tastic goodness than the last. My stomach insisted on three changes of mind before I actually ordered… as it turned out, today I would discover Eggs Florentine.

Oddly, for thirty plus years, Eggs Florentine had been known to me by name alone. I had no idea they were just Eggs Benedict with some spinach stuck in there. Something new everyday… Well, with my order placed, book-less and not interested in TV without audio (though it was Wolf Blitzer… and the lack of audio seemed an improvement really), I began one of my favorite pastimes… people watching.

The counter in a diner on a Sunday morning is something to see. It’s like a feeding frenzy back there! I sat and watched the waitstaff become a blur of Hawaiian shirts and black pants as they taxied the stacks of plates off to their next destination. The cooks, in classic, crisp, white chef-coats, provided a constant beat of clanking, pounding, hissing and whisking noises. Quick and precise movements obtained through excessive repetition–elbows and shoulders bumping to prevent full-on collision–chatter, seemingly (and in some cases actually) in a foreign language, leaving only tone and volume as hints to their meaning. As I took it all in it occurred to me how similar to a stage this counter was–the waitstaff and cooks so much like actors and musicians–together, performing a highly choreographed play. And myself, just another member of the paying audience.

Then suddenly my meal appeared. It actually startled me. I realized then how much I had been enjoying the “show”.

Oh, and Eggs Florentine… yummy.

I’ve been on a real wine kick of late… actually for most of the last year. I figure I’d start sharing some of my favorites here… feel free to email me with yours.

• Mark West – Pinot Noir – 2003
  This is my favorite of late. Big fruit, strawberries, light… Killer.
• Cellier des Dauphins – Cotes du Rhone – 2003
  The guy at BevMo recommended this one to me. It’s really smooth with great fruit and tons of tannins. It makes me crave cheese… (I’m drinking it as I type).
• Papio – Cabernet – 2003
  A nice little cab… not fantastic but very good. This has become my default table wine. It’s only about $5 at BeMo and Trader Joes. Smooth and spicy… less fruit that I usually like. A deal.

At the risk of encouraging Joe to forward more stories to me, Here’s an interesting look at the lengths the beef community is willing to go to get us all to buy more of their products. “The challenge is getting people to think of other ways to eat beef,”. It turns out that they want us to eat “Cheeseburger Fries“; beef and cheese pressed into fry shaped chucks that they unfortunately dubbed “Fingers”.

From the article:

Developing a beef-based alternative was a process that took about two years. According to Tony Mata, the technical coordinator of the association’s research and development branch, the final shape of cheeseburger fries was almost an accident. “There’s an interesting twist to how this product came about,” he said. “We were actually working on a cheeseburger by the slice.”

From the I’m glad I didn’t think of that first file… I can’t decide if this is disgusting or beautiful… From the folks at In-N-Out Burger comes the 16 patty burger…