Night of wine and butter

[celticdragonfly]

My, what a dinner.

Inspired by the Bujold list's recent discussion of alcohol, where different types of people store it, and then a side track on cooking wine versus regular wine, I made spaghetti with red wine in the sauce tonight for a late dinner. I have a couple of these little individual bottles of merlot, come in a four pack, single serving size. Part of it goes into the sauce, the rest into a wineglass shared between selenite and I.

I also did some food geekery for selenite. He likes bread and butter. We always forget to take the butter out of the fridge at the start of the cooking process, and then he ends up having to microwave a stick to be able to spread it. So I decided to make butter for him. Yep, I made fresh butter. Heavy whipping cream, a bowl, and a hand mixer. And patience. He was pleased. "That's fresh!" he said. I offered Jamie the buttermilk. He seemed dubious about it.




Homemade butter. It actually worked. It was very nice, even. We had lots of bread and butter with dinner.




Here's Jamie cheerfully enjoying his spaghetti.

He was wearing some of it on his head at one point, but took it off before I could get to the camera.

Why yes, he DID get a bath before storytime. They both did.




Here's Maggie proudly showing off that she got HER spaghetti on the FORK!

Then she forgot about that and proceeded to play with it for a while with her hands.



What I'm finding disconcerting about all this is how much I was enjoying the glass of wine. (Well, half-glass, split between us.) I noticed this at my birthday dinner recently. It surprises me. I was never a big one for drinking. My family generally only has wine on special occasions. College age, when everyone around me was urgently wanting to drink, of age or no, it didn't interest me all that much. I did drink at the quarterly end-of-term parties of my community service organization, wine coolers or my own pitcher of mixed drinks (hate beer, especially nasty cheap beer), but it was for the relaxing effect, and I didn't enjoy it for the drinking of it. Didn't do much of it. I've rarely touched it since then.

Now, of course, I've been restricted from it much because of the babies and nursing. Jamie's big enough and nursing at a lower level, so I don't worry about up to a glass rarely.

But now I'm finding that when I have it, I really enjoy it, enjoy the taste and the feel of it. When did that happen? Did my biochemistry change? With age, or with having the kids? I'm feeling rather cautious about it, too - growing up, I had my family which had it rarely, and I'd heard of people who drank regularly - i.e., alcoholics. I wouldn't want to be like that! selenite points to his parents as counterexamples.

Comments

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

Heh. When I was first offered a beer, in Germany, the very phrase that sprang into my mind was "The Demon Rum."

I seem to have survived the aquisition of a taste for cider, though it can get expensive.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Tastes do change. I'm enjoying red wine now and I used to hate the stuff. Now, I often prefer it to white.

I don't drink near as much as I ought, considering my upbringing. My parents were the sort to have beer or wine with dinner and a glass before or after, so it's kind of surprising that I never got the taste for beer and I didn't pick up wine until my 30s. I still don't drink much, but I think if I were doing more actual cooking I'd do so. It doesn't quite feel right to debate whether a cabernet or a merlot would complement the Wendy's Chicken Strips better.

[firedrake-mor.livejournal.com]

My dear, I love you, but you are worrying way too much.

Enjoying a glass of wine, even a lot, doesn't turn you into an alcoholic. Many people, like my father-in-law, enjoy wine and even stronger drink frequently, and he's healthier than I am, and he's 75! It's not enjoyment that makes the alcoholic. It's an addiction, an inability to do without it, that is the issue.

As for tastes -- your tastebuds DO change as you age. That's known.

Enjoy your wine. Studies have shown that a glass of red wine a day improves cholesterol, helps the heart, and provides needed antioxidants (so does grape juice, but it's not as much fun!).

As the old saying goes (paraphrased), if the gods didn't want us to drink wine, grapes would turn -straight- to vinegar . . .

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

"As for tastes -- your tastebuds DO change as you age. That's known."

And chemical changes happen after pregnancy. I experienced this even though I never managed to carry longer than 12 weeks. Boy, was a ticked off when a hair permanent failed to take a whole week after miscarriage. So much for a pampering beauty day... well anyway, back to the subject at hand, that is, YOU. Developing a taste for wine no more makes you a wino than a gourmet is a gourmand, far less bulemic, if you take my meaning. Enjoy!

taste and biochemistry

[p-o-u-n-c-e-r.livejournal.com]

Tastes change, and so does your body's reaction to stimuli -- Also, you learn what "works". Part of the problem for some drinkers is that they can't find the sweet spot between feeling the knots loosen and losing all feelings ... If you can establish your own -- half a glass of 10% by weight wine or full pint of 5% by weight lager beer or jigger of 40% sour mash whiskey -- proper medicinal dose, then enjoy it.

And if you don't like the taste or the effects, don't bother.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

I made butter in exactly that same way as part of my genericwinterholiday feast. It works amazingly well, and is much simpler than one might think.

Sadly, that wasn't what I was *trying* to do with the whipping cream, and it really didn't "go" with the fruit cocktail or the pumpkin pie.... :-(