If you’ve decided to have friends over for food and wine so you can try a new recipe, you may find yourself browsing the aisles of your local bottle store.
You see dozens of wine varieties, and all with varying price tags.
Some can be low as $20 – or even lower, and some can cost hundreds of dollars. Where does this price variety come from?
When you are providing someone with a present or gesture, more often than not they contain wine and chocolate.
For some reason, these two items are “go to” gifts, especially if you don’t know the person very well.
Even though they pair as gifts, you will very rarely see them appear together on a restaurant menu.
There is no denying that Sauvignon Blanc is one of the most versatile wines available. You can find it at almost any restaurant, and it’s abundant in bottle stores and online wine shops too.
However, there’s every reason to believe that its versatility to pair beautifully with almost any dish is down to the significant variety available.
Below, we outline the various Sauvignon Blanc option from different parts of the world.
Even though you may hate the thought of cleaning up the carpet after a spill of red wine, there are some health benefits to be gained by drinking it.
In fact, many people like to drink it anyway, whether it has health benefits or not.
If you are worried about your carpet, you should simply learn the best way to do it and keep cloths on hand so that it is quick and easy to do.
In fact, soaking up and stain immediately with paper towels is a good start, but if the stain doesn’t come out you can always get the professional cleaners in. Meanwhile, stop worrying about it and enjoy your relaxing meal with that nice wine.
While most people are familiar with wine, they may not be so familiar with how it is made. In fact, it is a fairly simple process of fermenting grapes that produces wine, but the difference between red and white wine is due to the presence of the skins during the fermentation process of red wine. It is the skins of red or black grapes that give red wine its colour.
When the whole grapes are crushed the skin tends to rise to the surface. They are pushed back down several times a day during the fermentation process so that they remain in contact with the liquid.
The sugar content
Grapes must be picked when ripe so that the sugar content is stable. Traditionally, grapes were picked by hand; these days many larger vineyards have their grapes picked by machine. In warmer climates they are often picked during the night. They then have to go through a process to remove the stems and any leaves or sticks. This too, is done by a machine that also lightly crushes the grapes.
Continue reading “The Difference Between Red and White Wine”
In November of 2006, the New York City Department of Health issued a citywide ban on the use of trans fats in restaurants. Another directive has been to post calorie counts on menus as well, but we’re not dealing with this subject today. It’s the fats issue that has me preoccupied.
First, let’s get our facts straight. Trans fats cannot be seen, nor bought at the market. They are technically known as trans fatty acids, and are part of some other fat or oil that can in fact be bought.
Fats are made of chains containing mostly carbon and hydrogen (there may be as many as 24 carbons in a chain). Each carbon has four bonds, and each hydrogen has one, so a single carbon atom can hook up with four hydrogen atoms. In a saturated fat chain, each carbon atom hooks up with two hydrogens and one other carbon (except the first and the last ones); in other words, saturated fats have only single bonds between carbons.
A mono-unsaturated fat has one double bond between two carbons only, and therefore is missing two hydrogen atoms.
Polyunsaturated fats have two or more double bonds between three or more carbons, and they are missing even more hydrogen atoms, which makes them liquid at room temperature.
Hydrogenation or partial hydrogenation is an industrial process that forces hydrogen back onto the carbon chain, thereby artificially saturating it again. It is that process that causes the appearance of the trans fats.
Pretty much all of us who get into “healthy eating” do it, at least for a while.
It’s an inevitable part of the process. We do judge others by what they eat, and harshly most of the time.
Like when we are in line at the supermarket with our paper goods and light bulbs, and look at what’s in the baskets of the other customers — “Aw, gawd, how can they EAT that junk! And their poor children . . . !”
I have been teaching for more than thirty years that we should eat according to the tradition of our ancestors, in addition to other concepts.
Much of my work was based on a book I read in 1967 called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration,by Weston Price, a dentist.
Dr. Price traveled the world over in the early ‘30’s, studying the diets of eleven different population groups and the condition of their teeth.
Continue reading “New Concepts in Diet II: The Old Traditions”
The hold on the mind is so tenuous.
I’m always amazed to see how well people communicate, make decisions, implement plans, and generally do things, considering that it all depends on a fleeting neurotransmitter, a capillary that remains open, a couple of neurons that speak to each other.
The tenuous hold can wobble with a simple fever, not even so high — 101′ or so — which disturbs the sleep and confuses the brain, giving rise to all manner of babblings and strange irrelevant thoughts.