The Search for a Great Wine

So, I am far from a wine connoisseur, but a girl's gotta start somewhere, right?  I've been getting tired of my same old "go-to" value wines so this year I am going to try some new wines each month and let you know what I think.  I'll confess that the first wine I tried I bought for the name and the label.  I'm a sucker for cute marketing.  The Beach House white wine is from South Africa.  It was a value at only $12.99/bottle.  I thought this wine was good, but not great.  It has a nice citrus flavor, but I didn't love it. 

The second wine I tried was Wizards Cranberry, which is from Les Trois Emme winery in western Massachusetts.  I chose this wine because it's local and sounded appealing.  It's their Cayuga White that has cranberry flavoring added to it.  At first taste I thought it was pretty tart and the tartness seemed a bit overwhelming.  I couldn't finish my glass and was very disappointed.  This wine too, was only $12.99/bottle and if you like a really tart wine, then you'd probably like this. 

So, this month's selections were a bust, but I have high hopes for next month!

Do You Fondue - Part II

After making fondue at home with the kids, I just had to go to The Melting Pot!  I loved the atmosphere and modern decor.  The low lighting and intimate seating enhanced the experience and the smell of the restaurant was mouth watering.  Our server was super nice and patient explaining the menu and the four courses.  The drink menu was a variety of specialty martinis.  I got the yin and yang martini, which was both delicious and beautiful with vanilla vodka, white chocolate liqueur, chocolate shavings and a bit of ice cream. 

It tasted more like a dessert than a martini and I couldn't taste the alcohol at all.  It also didn't taste very sweet, which I was happy about because it looked like it had the potential to be super sweet.  I liked it a lot and will definitely try to recreate it at home because it looks so impressive!

Our first course was the spinach artichoke cheese fondue and it was out of this world.  Super gooey, super cheesy and something I will definitely make at home in our fondue pot!  We had bread, veggies, tortilla chips and apple slices to dip.  This first course was a huge hit with everyone!

The second course was salad.  We got the Caesar salad and it was delicious.  My husband had the tangy house dressing on his and said it was the best dressing he's ever had.  We also enjoyed the Parmesan encrusted pine nuts that were on the salad.  They were surprisingly sweet and crunchy and were a nice addition to the salad.

The third course was my least favorite and I honestly think I would skip it next time.  They have a variety of combinations of chicken, shrimp, beef, duck, pork, pot stickers, etc. that you cook in the fondue pot.  You choose your cooking style and we went with Coq au Vin which is burgundy wine infused with fresh herbs, spices and mushrooms.  We got the land and sea selection, which was chicken, shrimp and beef.  I was impressed with the different sauces they give for you to dip your cooked food in because otherwise the food would have been far too bland.  This course was just o.k. in my opinion and I could've done without it.

Dessert was phenomenal.  I mean, truly outstanding.  It "wowed" all of us!  We got the basic milk chocolate to dip and we were presented with strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, cheesecake, brownies, red velvet cake and rice krispy treats.  Oh my goodness!  Delish!!

All in all, I really enjoyed my night out and would definitely go there again.  It's super fun and super yummy and I would also encourage anyone who really enjoys this restaurant to purchase a fondue pot of their own and recreate the recipes at home!

Home Front

Let me start by saying a big thank you www.ReadingGroupGuides.com and Kristin Hannah for providing such a great book club contest. We were so happy to win and it was the perfect kick-off to the beginning of our 5th year of Booktini Book Club.


We’ve read a couple of Ms. Hannah’s books in the past, Night Road and Firefly Lane, and while we enjoyed those books, we agreed that this book was even better! The story is about a woman named Jolene and in addition to being the mother of two young girls and the wife of an attorney, she is also a pilot in the National Guard. Her marriage isn’t what it used to be and before she has a chance to work on her relationship with her husband, she is deployed to Iraq.  The only thing that makes this bearable for Jolene is that she is there with her best friend Tami, who is also a pilot in the National Guard.

There is so much that civilians, like myself, do not know or understand about war. After reading this book I realized that soldiers who survive their tour and come home, need to continue to survive that tour for the rest of their lives. They don't come home and get the luxury of forgetting everything they've seen and experienced.  I always thought of myself as a strong woman like Jolene in a lot of ways and to see her so broken and her family so helpless was heartbreaking and very eye opening.

This was a story about love and loss and finding the courage to pick yourself up when you think you’ve lost all hope. And yes, I needed a Kleenex at the end.

Pillars of the Earth

I love reading historical fiction. The first time I read a book of that type, I was a junior in high school and my history teacher assigned the class to read Centennial by James Michener. Oh, how I loved that book and those characters. I enjoyed it so much that I don’t know why it took many years after reading Centennial to start reading other books like it!



I just recently finished Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. I chose the audio book version (32 CDs) since I was in the midst of reading a couple of other books at the time. On the surface Pillars of the Earth is about the building of a cathedral, but you don’t have to look too deep to see that it’s about so much more. The novel follows 3 different groups of people: 2 noble families, a Prior and his monks, and a builder and his family. All of their stories manage to seamlessly intertwine into a wonderful novel that spans several decades in the lives of these people. I enjoyed all of the characters who were so well developed by Mr. Follett, that I felt I knew them as well as my own family. A recurring theme throughout the novel is the balance of power between church and state, rich and poor, and the righteous and the immoral.

I am planning on renting the DVD to watch the characters I feel I know so well come to life. If you’ve read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts!! 

Do you Fondue?

My daughter, Julia, decided the other day that we NEED to get a fondue pot.  Well, I have never had fondue so I was intrigued.  One of my goals for 2013 is to try new things and I thought this fit the bill nicely.  Maybe I was too young when fondue was all the rage decades ago, but apparently it's trendy again and we jumped right on the bandwagon eager to get our hands on some skewers and something warm and melty!!

I did some research and it's amazing how many different types of fondue pots are out there and also the price ranges!!  You can get some pretty fancy ones!  Having never had fondue, I didn't want to invest a lot of money for our little adventure and found this one in Target:

It has great reviews and everyone seemed very pleased with it's performance and it's easy to clean (that's always a bonus!).  It also has a "break-away" electrical cord for those of you with little ones or are just clumsy so you don't burn yourself. 

Now, being the fondue novice that I am, I thought that you just put a bunch of cheese in the pot and let it melt away.  Wrong!!  So wrong!!  Thank goodness I came across this important information during my research, otherwise our Fondue Night could have been tragic.  Just tragic.  What I discovered is that fondue is really a combination of cheeses, wine, spices and sometimes cream or milk.  Who knew?  So, I figured we'd start with a basic cheese fondue recipe that I found online (I can't seem to locate the recipe online again so I don't have a link to it).  It got great reviews and was supposed to mimic one of the great fondues served at The Melting Pot.  Have you been?  I hear it's a great night out and loads of fun, but not too kind to your wallet!  The hubby and I are planning to go soon so I'll tell you all about it!

The kids helped me prepare the fondue and we cut up french bread, sausage, apples and broccoli to dip.  It was soooo good and so much fun!  We had a lot of laughs and loved dipping our skewers into the melty goodness.  I was skeptical of the recipe when we were making it.  We used 6 oz. of white wine (sauvignon blanc), 1 clove of minced garlic, 1 lemon squeezed, 1 cup of Gruyere shredded,1 cup of muenster shredded, a few dashes of freshly ground pepper and a few dashes of nutmeg.  Delish!

 

I think I will be purchasing this cookbook to try some new recipes for our future Fondue Nights!

Do you have a fondue pot?  Do you have favorite fondue recipes to share? 

Getting Ready for 2013

Booktini took 2012 off from blogging, but we're ready to start up again in 2013!  We will be bringing you book reviews, organizing tips, product reviews and lots of fun stuff!  

We will be reading Home Front by Kristin Hannah for our first book of 2013.

We've also selected these books for 2013:

• Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
• Four of a Kind by Valerie Frankel
• The Shortest Way Home by Juliette Fay
• The Light Between Oceans by ML Stedman
• Blackberry Winter by Sarah Jio
• Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
• Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel
• Isabel's Rhapsody by Laura Spinella

A few of these books are by authors who have participated in one of our book club meetings for a previous book they've written. I've provided links to their blogs so you can check them out.  We've also left a couple of slots open in 2013 for any "must reads" that suddenly come along!  Remember Gone Girl this year?  Yeah, those are the runaway hits we like to leave room for!  

Are you in a book club?  Do you pick all your books for the whole year or do you do it moth by month?  I think most of us in Booktini are "planners" and like to have a list for the year with some wiggle room.  Most of us will read other books as well, along with some audio books too.  I am currently listening to Pillars of the Earth right now by Ken Follet.  I love historical fiction and decided to listen to this after listening to his novel Fall of Giants, which is the 1st book of the Century Trilogy.  The 2nd book came out this year, Winter of the World and the reviews were so great that it sparked me to listen to the first novel.  I loved it and plan on listening to Winter of the World next.  Do you listen to audio books?  They make my commute to and from work much more enjoyable.

Night Road

The Booktini gals were lucky enough to win copies of Kristin Hannah's book, Night Road, back in December.

A few of the Booktini gals are Moms of teenagers and this was a tough read for them.  The story is one of tragedy, guilt and redemption and how the events of one night can change lives forever.  For the reader it begs the question "what would you do?"  We all discussed what we would have done, but we all questioned whether it would be the right choice.  As a parent, you want to teach your children to do the right thing, but realistically you know they aren't always going to make good choices.  How do you keep them safe?  How do you forgive?  How do you go on? 

We loved all the characters and I think Lexi was every one's favorite.  What an amazing girl!  We also recommend this book to all the moms and teenagers out there.  It's a great book that will lend itself to some great discussions.  I'd really love to hear a review of the book from a teenager's perspective. 

Special thanks to Kristin Hannah for this fantastic book club contest!

Next month we will be discussing The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

-Christine