Wondering what wine to serve with your holiday meals? Here are the fruits of my research over the years…and this morning’s tasting before breakfast!
This is the time of year where everyone wants to know which wine they should have with Thanksgiving dinner. Since most people don’t want to break the bank, what follows are a numbe rof recommendations that land squarely on the less expensive side of a $20 bill.
Personally, my go to wine for turkey OR ham is zinfandel. There is alchemical magic in that combination!
How do I know? Many years ago, I worked the tasting room at Ridge and so of course I brought a bottle of zin to that Thanksgiving table.
Last year, during the weekend before Thanksgiving, I convinced my husband to make a turkey AND then a ham so I could try a bunch of wines with these classic holiday meals. I came up with these three blog posts:
white and rose wines with Turkey
Since holiday meals usually…
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This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for the rain that brings the mud that brings the lotus. What are you grateful for?
No mud,
no lotus.
Thich Nhat Hanh
And no rain, no mud.
It feels like I’m slogging through a lot of mud just now–and there’s no end in sight.
May my path be furrows; let the flowers come in spring.
The lotus pictured is by Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo, one of the only westerners trained in the rare Buddhist art of silk applique thangkas. His Holiness the Dalai Lama gave his blessings to Leslie’s work and encouraged her to make images that speak to the spiritual aspirations of people across religions and cultures.
Learn more about Leslie’s work from the documentary film, Creating Buddhas: the Making and Meaning of Fabric Thangkas. See photos from Leslie’s recent trip to India here: http://journeyinindia.tumblr.com.
Related articles
- Thangka Gift from the Dalai Lama (readingsangha.wordpress.com)
- Audre Lorde: Dare to Be Powerful & Use Your Strength (compassionaterebel.wordpress.com)
I want YOU to VOTE!
Every election my son rolls, walks, or scooters with me to the polling place down the street and helps me cast my ballot. (Related: blog post about the post election party four years ago where kids weren’t allowed.)
This year, because he has science club and I am teaching today, he wanted to get up at 6am and go with me to the polls at 7am.
We assured him that we didn’t have to set the alarm for 6am and if we got dressed quickly at 7am, we could ride bikes up there at 7:15 then get back in plenty of time for breakfast and 8am school.
When I got up at 6:45am, he was already dressed and ready to go! While I had some tea and he had a bowl of cereal, we went over and marked the sample ballot in preparation for voting.
The morning was brilliant: warm, clear, perfect for a bike ride down the street to our polling p
lace–the same one, as far as I can remember, that I’ve voted at since I moved to my house in 1997.
A bunch of people were standing around outside–locked out! Around 720, we got in and they set up, then three of the ten of us waiting didn’t have ballots there! Not to assume, but I’d bet the big black guy was voting the same as us…
I had my provisional registration filled out when I realized my sample ballot listed a different polling place so we went there and got our “real” ballots. On the way, we ran into other neighbors who also weren’t polling on our street as usual.
At our new polling place on Santa Clara, they had no power and also got started late. A Democrat woman there didn’t have her ballot although others on her street were voting there. To save time figuring out where she should be voting, she used a provisional ballot.
What should have taken 10 minutes took 45–and my son was almost late for school. I have never seen so much chaos at a polling place, much less at two–maybe because I have always gone after dinner, not early morning.
Do you need to know where to vote? Here’s a polling place locator.
Experiencing anything strange at your polling place? Record it with your cell phone! Report it here: 1-866-Our-Vote – a national non-partisan hotline.
And remember, most importantly, exercise your right to vote!
Related articles
- Help! I want to vote but . . . (politomuse.wordpress.com)
Happy 5th Bloggoversary to Art Predator!
To the Reader, without whom all is Vanity. —James Hillman‘s dedication to Revisioning Psychology
On the night of the time change five years ago on November 4, 2007, my husband put our son to bed, and instead of returning to watch a movie, he fell asleep.
Not one to sit around idly, while I waited for him, I started to learn more about blogging, and specifically WordPress.
Four hours plus the bonus time change hour later (yes I watched it go from 1:59 to 1:00 again!), I had this blog, Art Predator with this same header, an about page, and a couple of posts including this one about how I became Art Predator.
This here is my 1347 post.
What Wine Predator aka Art Predator is up to in November…
Over here at Wine Predator, last month was hectic with twitter tastings and Champagne Day plus reviewing The Divining Rod for Halloween.
This month we’re harvesting wines like crazy and RSVPing to tastings and other events! I’ve got lots of exciting samples to review including the very festive Enza Proseco ($15) and a number of twitter tastings and events on the calendar. Remember, for these twitter tastings, all you need to do to participate is check out the hashtag# for the event on twitter. (And no you don’t have to be ON twitter to check out what’s happening on twitter!
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Mc Money Style: Darth Vader for Pres?
darth vader punk (Photo credit: txerra_c)
I loved PSY’s crazy K-Pop Gangnam Style video since I first saw it a month or two ago and considered posting about it but didn’t feel I had anything new to say about it. Today it has nearly 600 million views but it you haven’t seen it yet, it’s here.
When this hilarious Mitt Romney Style parody showed up (now nearly 7.2 million views!), I knew I wanted to post it on this blog but I was writing about other topics at the time and it just didn’t fit in. When Grant Marcus sent me this post about Mitt Romney, I figured it was time to publish both.
What makes this parody so powerful to me is the way it works with the original. Gangnam is where the 1% live in Seoul, Korea; Gangnam style refers to the lifestyle of the wealthy who live there. This version manages to parody Mitt Romney and the 1% who he represents through clever images and lyrics including references to his Olympic horse write-off, his distinguished hair, his benefit hopping, his call to wealthy ladies, his youthful running mate Ryan struttin’…and more.
Hope this gives you a laugh and motivates you to vote! Tuesday’s election is only a week away!
Guest Blogger Grant Marcus:
AMNESIA? ROMNESIA? OR VOTERMESIA?
DARTH VADER FOR PRESIDENT?
How anyone making $250,000 per year and less can vote for Mitt
Romney (Mc Money) this election makes no sense at all. Read more…
What’s better for a Halloween beverage than a wine made by a real witch? Yes, Marc Mondavi is a water witch and his new wine is called “The Divining Rod.” Read on for our review of the Cabernet Sauvignon and unoaked Chardonnay!
If you listen carefully, these witches seem to say that Winemaker and Water Witch Marc Mondavi’s Divining Rod #wine draws you in to drink! Yes, that’s right–how many wines do you know that were crafted by a bona fide witch??
If you’re looking for a great wine for your favorite witch or warlock for Halloween or other fall festivities, you can’t go wrong with either the Chardonnay or the Cabernet Sauvignon for under $20 (both on sale right now at Vons for under $15!)
After a long day at work, I opened the 2010 Divining Rod Chardonnay from the Santa Lucia Highlands to pair with my pasta and shrimp. It was room temperature but I opened it anyway to have a…
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Happy Champagne Day! A toast to you, my readers and subscribers! Come to the Jolly Oyster at the Ventura State Beach and celebrate with me or check out the interactive map in the blog post for Champagne Day events near you!
Corks will pop and bubbles spill from California to London to Sydney during the Third Annual Global Champagne Day Friday October 26, 2012.
Join Wine Predator for our second year at the Jolly Oyster located at the Ventura State Beach off Harbor at San Pedro (take the Seaward exit).
Show off (and please share!) your bottle of Champagne and enjoy 2 for 1 oysters between 3pm and 6pm! The event is free and parking plentiful for $5 per car.
While the best party in the world will be at the Jolly Oyster, you can celebrate the 3rd annual #ChampagneDay anywhere!
To participate, get some champagne (which only comes from the Champagne
region of France–any other bubbly wine is sparkling and lovely but NOT champagne). Share what’s in your glass October 26th 2012, post photos, tasting notes, experiences or videos on any social media site, and be sure to add…
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on remembering gauvin 1961-2012
photo of gauvin by Cole Smothers
Late Fragment by Ray Carver
New Path to the Waterfall
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved,
to feel myself beloved on the earth.
If he was listening in with me on Sunday October 14, 2012 to the crowd of 200 at Ventura’s Bell Arts Factory, the late Warren Gauvin would certainly have felt himself beloved.
A who’s who of regional poets, painters, photographers and sculptors joined friends and family to tell stories to celebrate the life of the mixed media and performance artist who went gauvin (uncapitalized) and who died on Monday, October 8, 2012 of Hodgkins Disease, just a few weeks shy of his 51 birthday Nov. 26.
Friends covered the walls of the community room with his artwork to raise funds for expenses; the celebration featured video of his performances, slide shows of his artwork, singing by his brother, and remembrances. Read more…
gauvin: “i couldn’t see the bored”
I always loved this mixed media artwork of gauvin’s …the inventiveness of it and the message…
It was my favorite so you can imagine how pleased I was when he gave it to me as a thank you for believing in him… and for being his friend…and for all I had done for him.
that’s Eartha Kitt in the right corner sitting in for gauvin’s mom…and there’s a red rooster in the far right bottom…
My nearly nine year old son is fascinated by the mixed media–how he incorporates the pieces of toys and that he’s actually painting, screwing, and gluing the parts onto a chalkboard.
You can imagine my disappointment when he told me he wanted it back. I was afraid he’d try to sell it to get drugs. He finally told me he wanted to give to his mom…that’s her down there in the right corner at the house (probably sitting on the edge of the bed with her red bedspread).
We made an arrangement for mutual friends to ship it to his mom. But that didn’t happen before he died.
I so can relate to this piece that I selfishly still want it. I will offer it to his family on Sunday at the Memorial. If they want it, I will freely give it to them. If they don’t want it, I will offer to buy it back.
I spent much of yesterday afternoon researching this post–taking photographs of the piece, looking for the original of the Eartha Kitt image, listening and watching videos of gauvin, Earth Kitt and Chuck Willis to choose which to feature in this post. I also listened to hours of Nina Simone today: gauvin was a huge fan.
Here’s gauvin doing a piece about his mother:
And here’s Earth Kitt doing the St Louis Blues:
Finally, Chuck Willis “What’s Your Name”:
3150 Loma Vista Road, Ventura, CA 93003
Related articles
- r.i.p. mister warren gauvin b.11/26/61: celebration of life this sunday (artpredator.wordpress.com)
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