As I have mentioned in a few previous posts, I just got back from my summer vacation last week and have been getting caught up with mail, laundry and all of the general back-to-school preparations. Although I am a bit sad to be saying goodbye to the summer (mainly the vacation part), I always get excited by the thought of a new school year – I feel a little like the dad in those Staples ads singing “it’s the most wonderful time of the year!”
Even though I no longer get to go back to school, Fall still strikes me as a good time to start learning something new or better yet, an appropriate time to start a new project. So what’s on my agenda for the Fall? Well, we FINALLY (it has taken us 2 years) finished off the wine cellar in the basement this Spring and as of this weekend, we built (ok, fine, by we, I mean my husband) the first of the racks for all of the wine. Immediately after it was assembled, it was filled, so now our (ok, my husband’s) new project is to build 5 more racks so we can get all the wine out of boxes and off the floor of the room. So once the shelves are finally done, my big assignment will be to organize/catalog all of the wine.
Bill's Wine Rack
Another project was inspired by one of the books on my summer reading list (yep, old student habits die hard with me). I read Julia Child’s My Life in France, a wonderful book that details the period in her life when she discovered French cooking and her passion for it. The book not only makes you want to hop the next flight to France, but it also makes you want to head straight to the kitchen and start cooking. So on my list of things to do this Fall is to buy her Mastering the Art of French Cooking and see if I can learn a few things about some of the dishes I read about in the book. I’ll let you know how that goes!
Finally, I recently discovered that some of the retailers and restaurants in my area (Durham/Raleigh/Chapel Hill) have gotten together to organize an exciting look at the 10 Crus of Beaujolais. They are calling it Ten Days of Wine. They have selected 10 wines, one from each Cru and every night a different restaurant will develop a special dish to go with that particular Cru. Isn’t that a fantastic idea? I was so excited that I ran immediately to 3Cups, one of my very favorite wine stores, and bought the 10 pack of the featured wines. So join me over the next few weeks as I also make my way through each Cru. I’ll post my notes on each wine and each Cru and then when we are done with that, I was thinking it would be fun to jump over to another region (perhaps the Loire) and do a similar type of thing. We’ll consider it a little bit of a Wines of France wine school…and who wouldn’t be excited to go back to school for that?
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