Sunday, February 26, 2006

A Great Saturday in Denver After my late Friday night Denver arrival, I spent Saturday morning basically sleeping and moving very slowly. Which is quite easy to do when one is staying at the most fabulous Brown Palace Hotel, lounging is definitely de rigeur! I will say though, that I was awakened at 9:30 AM by the sound of a dog barking right ouside my door. Ooooh - The Brown is pet friendly!!!! I heard the dog again at 11:30 AM and this time went zipping out of my room to meet the pooch. She was a very cute weimaranar puppy named Haley. I spent yesterday afternoon and early evening furiously geocaching. I want to get my 200th cache on this trip and my count was at 189. I managed to polish off 7 caches yesterday and by the time I finished it was pitch black. I also set a cache in the park right across the street from where we lived until I was six years old - that's when Mom and I moved to Alaska. Of course, when one sets a cache outside of one's home area, one needs someone in the area to monitor the cache. But the great thing about geocaching is that finding a babysitter is easy - even if you don't know any cachers in the area. I just looked at who had set a bunch of caches in the area of my new cache and sent them an email asking them if they would babysit my cache. They were thrilled and immediately agreed! Isn't that nifty?!!!! After my hard day of geocaching, Lucy and I met for dinner at Barolo - probably my favorite Northern Italian restaurant of all time. Man - their food is exquisite. We ended up sitting at the bar which was the icing on the cake. Our bartender was great and on the house, she poured us each of glass of La Villa by Gigliardo. The la Villa is an Asti Muscat. OMIGOD - the perfect combination of a late harvest Muscat and a sparkling Asti. It was absolutely astounding. Big time yum! The perfect topper to a great day! Now for Pictures. This is the old Elitch's Carousel Pavillion. The old Elitch's was just six blocks from our home. I loved Elitch's fabulous gardens. The new development that is now where Elitch's used to be is really depressing. No hint at all of the grand style that had occupied that same area. Our old house on Wolff Street. Pferdestellar Park - right across the street from our house. 8:23:58 AM    comment []

	Sunday, January 01, 2006

14th Annual New Year's Eve Government Hill Progressive Dinner Last night was an absolute blast. These dinners are just so much fun and at 14 years into the game, we're a well oiled machine - we all know we're doing the dinner so we don't make other plans for New Year's Eve. The only question is, who is responsible for which course? This year, a week before New Year's, Kathryn called and informed Peter and me of our assignment - the main course - in celebration of our engagement. Oh boy.. So, starting with the appetizers, here is a pictoral story of last night's fun-ness: Me with my buddy, The Penguin at Kathleen and Kevin's. The sublime salad course was at Kathryn and Steve's. Kathryn and Steve also poured the wine of the night: the Lurton 2005 Torrontes from Argentina. Omigod it was good - the most intesting white wine I've had in a very long time. And it is incredibly inexpensive: $8/bottle. It gets my vote here and now for the best wine value in the world. Anyhoo, here we are getting ready to dig in. We then trundled off to our house for the main course: Paella accompanied by a fabulous challah (baked by Peter). I chose this very traditional paella recipe and was in the kitchen most of the day. However, the work was fun and worth it - the paella was really fabulous. Here we are just sitting down. Peter did a magnificient job setting the table. The final stop was dessert and fireworks at Bernie and Sharon's. Here's Sam (in his Russian Army outfit) standing out back waiting for the fireworks to start. You can also see Steve crawling under the picnic table to grab some fireworks. After Midnight, we headed home. However, we stopped by a few houses for some more fun. One set of neighbors tramped down the snow their front yard for their annual New Year's Eve Bocci Ball tournament. The Bocci Ball Revelers: Other neighbors who held a big outdoor party around a fire pit. You have to agree, that we Alaskans know how to have fun in the winter! 10:29:25 PM    comment []

	Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Wine and Flying Pigs Tonight at the Crow's Nest bar, Jim, John, Peter, and I had the most fabulous, and rare, bottle of wine. The 2001 Cayuse Flying Pig. The Pig is a boutique red wine made by Christophe Baron - the only way one can purchase the wine is via futures. We just happened to be very very lucky that the Crow's Nest has excellent relations with Christophe. The Pig blend is that of a claret - Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Merlot. But the nose screams rhone/shiraz - not claret. It has to be the best nose I've experienced. Heavenly pepper. Heck - you don't even need to drink the wine. You can be happy just smelling it! Yum! The taste is drop dead rhone - peppers with a little bit of fruit. I was actually surprised to discover the wine was a claret and not a syrah. Very very good - my only complaint is that I thought it was a little thin - it did not have a super full body. But, relative to the nose and flavor, that is a very minor complaint! I just wish I could find a good picture of the label on-line. But alas. I can't...The jet pack propelled pigs are quite cute! 9:32:28 PM    comment []

	Tuesday, October 11, 2005

A Very Nice Birthday We just got in from the traditional birthday dinner at the Marx Brothers. It was great fun - the attendees were Mom, the Ski Boy, and Pooh ( who was celebrating his Bar exam results). As I type, I'm pretty much a beached whale - with a ton of added garlic as a result of Van's famous Ceasar salad. We had a wonderful time and I received some very cool presents. Mom and the Ski Boy are the absolute best! We had fun with the wine order - I couldn't decide on a good Cab, so I told our waitperson to "just surprise me". She rolled her eyes - and then said, "Great - I'll decant it and you can do a blind tasting". Well the wine was a marvelous 2001 Washington Cab. And I can't believe I didn't write the name down - it began with a "D". But I'll darned - I just can't find it on-line. Grrr.... A very big and smooth cab. Totally drinkable. Very high end. 10:01:05 PM    comment []

	Monday, May 16, 2005

The Best News of the Day Oooooh - the Supreme Court got it right! The Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for states to prohibit consumers from ordering wine from out of state! Big Yea!!!! Those laws drive me nuts. They're right up there with state owned liquor stores. For example, it is beyond hypocritical that Utah (which for all intensive purposes is a Mormon state) liquor stores are state owned. The state disapproves of drinking but yet decides it wants to make money off of it. Oh - and those state liquor stores stock absolute swill on the wine front. 8:33:54 PM    comment []

	Monday, January 03, 2005

New Year's Eve Progressive Dinner As promised, I've got several pictures from our 13th Annual Government Hill New Year's Eve progressive dinner. This year's shots aren't as eclectic as last year's pics. I was sort of fading as a result of the flu and just wasn't as aggressive on the photog front as usual. However, Steve more than made up for my lackadasical effort. He took a bazillion pictures. Hopefully he'll send some of them my way. Speaking of Steve, you're going to see a lot of him. For some unknown reason, he was in most of my shots. Appetizers! First up was the Appetizer Course, which was held at Chez Ski Boy. Kathryn G. and I teamed up to serve: Crab Slather on Toasted Baguette, a Caribbean Guacamole, Shrimp Skewers, and the piece de resistance, a killer Caribbean pizza topped with Boursin, ricotta, mozzarella, and provolone cheeses, garlic, shrimp, and papaya. It was over the top incredible. The libations consisted of beer or Gloria Ferrer Extra Brut. Here's Steve and Peter. Steve is thumbing through the calendar that he had just received from Kathryn E. Bernie, and Allison. Salad Course The salad course locale was at Kevin and Kathleen's (home of the penguin). We had a delightful mesculen green salad with prosciutto, fruit, and candied walnuts. I drank the wonderful Kim Crawford Sauvingnon Blanc. Kevin and Kathleen also arranged for easy fireworks viewing right outside their dining room window. As we ate, we had a great view of the annual fireworks display set off in the small boat harbour. We didn't even have to stand outside in the cold! It was perfect. The Main Event! We tromped our way through the snow and over the hills to Kathryn, Allison's and Bernie's for the main course. And what a main course it was - it was exquisite. It was delectable. It was the best ever. Baked bananas and mangos. A rice pilaf with dried cranberries and other goodies. And an amazing marinated grilled chicken. Kathryn's cooking philosophy was to cook with alcohol in each dish and wow! Was it amazing. Those bananas and mangos were amazing. And the chicken. The chicken may be my favorite grilled chicken of all time. I've got to get the recipes!!!! The wines were also stupendous - two Steph total favs in the blended white wine category: Evolution and the Caymus Conundrum I was a completely happy camper! Here's The Ski Boy, me, Melissa, and the Flamingos at dinner. This is before the fabulous eats have arrived. But we're very happily sipping the Evolution. Steve and Kathleen. I told you Steve was going nuts with his camera! The Finale! We staggered our way down to Mike and Melissa's for dessert, a few very tame fireworks (sparklers), and a toasting of the new year. By this point in the game we were all pretty beached and not necessarily inebriated, but we could perhaps see it from there. But we rallied for the Death by Chocolate cake and the Apple Pie pizza. Peter is going to propose to Melissa - he died and went to heaven over the apple pie. By this time, I was pretty much done in on the libation front. So I have no idea what wine was served at dessert. I believe there was a port and a late harvest reisling of some ilk. But the fabulous desserts themselves would have certainly outshone the wine! All in all, it was another wonderful New Year's Eve. I think our New Year's Eve tradition is the best in the whole world! 8:28:59 PM    comment []

	Monday, December 13, 2004

A Ski Boy Birthday Dinner at Sullivans! Oooooh - Peter and I just got back from his birthday dinner at Sullivan's and Hewey's LCD is still functional! Yipeee! We had the most fabulous dinner at Sullivan's - one of our big time buddies, Jim Dunlap joined us. A very fun night of steak, fabulous wine, gifts, and totally entertaining conversation. Jim and I are so going to Hell - but at least all the fun people will be there. The Ski Boy raked in quite a gift haul: custom handmade cards (including one made by Clemmie), snowmen to whazooo, Red Sox books and CD's from son Pooh, and a very handsome Italian sweater from the Slat Rat. We were also visited by a fellow diner/GCI'er bearing a mystery glass of wine. One sniff told us that it was a truly special wine. The Slat Rat schnozz correctly identified it as a high California Cab. But I couldn't get beyond that point. As it turns out, it was an exquisite Chalk Hill Cab - vintage unknown. Oh my - it was sublime. And we were already drinking another wonderful wine, the 1999 Dominus Napanook. We were definitely completely happy campers on the fermented grape front. The perfect capper to the evening was coming home to two inches of fresh white snow and taking the Clemster out for a late night constitutional in the new snow. Only special people get two inches of wonderful new snow on their birthdays! 10:34:15 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 Stephanie A. Kesler. Last update: 2/26/2006; 8:27:33 AM.