Dog Days of Summer
It is awful outside. As I write this its ~ 95 out and humid. This type of weather is unacceptable to me but I remember days like this as a child so nothing is new. It actually seems cooler as I remember a yearly 100+ stretch and we didn't have ac back then. No I'm not that old. AC came out in the sixties but were huge and very expensive. I remember our first one. It was 220v took two people to lift and was noisy. Now a 10k btu unit is so light I can move it easily - how times have changed.
This sort of weather causes me to change my eating patterns. Pasta- no effin way am I going to boil 5 gallons of water in the kitchen. Bbq - nope too hot outside. Beef-you are kidding. Salads, Lebanese food, lunchmeat fit the bill as there is no heat involved.
I actually hate salads so bitter greens, vinegar, oil just don't go well with wine to me. I make my own dressing so its oil and vinegar based. So no creamy stuff to ease out the vinegar and I like those bitter greens so it looks like mineral water here.
Lebanese food. Now I love this stuff. I really owe the man who owned Byblos Donair by the university. I credit his food for getting me thru as it was sooo good. Hummus, taboulli, baba whatever is all so good and just works in this heat. Does that got anything to do with the heat in Lebanon. Well I haven't been there so I don't know but I think the sales of skis aren't high there. Now I've had some wine from the Bekaa Valley and it was quite good, but a red today just doesn't work for me. Olive oil, grape leaves, parsley, chick peas: hmmm, I have to go for my favorite--- vinho verde. Now you can't say that Portuguese and Lebanese food is similar but they both feature a lot of olive oil and fresh things and besides both are hot so it may work. Vinho verde is the cinderella of the wine world. Cheap cheerful slightly bubbly and it just cuts thru oil for me. I just love it and best part is that the cheaper ones taste better to my pallet,
Now with the Italian cold cuts and cheese well one has to bow to reality. I can't think of any white that can keep up with a hot calabrese or even a good prociutto. There I will have to have a red but I have a box of sanagiovese in my wine fridge so that'll be it. I'll just chill it a little more than usual and put on a Felini movie. Yup that will do. Well they do keep showing seria a footie on the tube and as the out come was decided in advance watching old games wouldn't be that bad.
In these troubled times we all have to improvise. But that's the fun. Don't take out the wine book and go by some ‘expert's' view on what goes with what. Its what tastes good to you. I was drinking gamay noir with salmon years ago when ‘it wasn't' done (at least nobody told me so I thought I was a rebel) but it worked for me. Face it, would you rather drink a nice Chianti with fish rather than 2 buck chuck? I mean the whole idea is to enjoy
