Soy Sauce Packets & Epiphanies: "quality" boxed wine...

wine. here we go again. i'm in the liquor store picking up a bottle of 'cheap' white wine the other day. i, as most chef's do, keep a bottle in my fridge for cooking. in culinary school, the chef-instructors always told us "never cook with wine that you wouldn't drink." it makes sense. but at the same time, i'm not going to go and make coq au vin with a bottle of opus one. not in your wildest dreams. so i tend to go for the middle of the road; a few steps above sutter home, and a giant leap away from franzia in the box. so i pick up a bottle of cypress chardonnay. i'd had it a few times, it's a good bottle of wine, and it's on sale for $18 - i'm happy. so i'm walking over to pay for my bottle and i overhear these two ladies talking about wine. the one lady has a bottle of beuhler white zin. in her hands, and the other has...not even kidding here...a box of almaden blush wine. the lady with the bottle, (who obviously knows more about the length of my toenails than about wine) asks the other lady if what she has is good to bring to a dinner party. box lady replies..."that's not worth the money, almaden is the best white zin. you can buy." (funny, that's not what she was buying!) she continued..."almaden is the same as sutter home...they just call it almaden because it comes in the economy pack." economy pack? is that what they call box wine? i thought it was called 'white trash gourmet.' i'm not knocking it, i'm guilty of having a box in my fridge once in a while, but even while i'm drinking it, i know that it's shit and shouldn't be called wine. for some odd reason i felt pity on this lady. little miss economy pack wine went over to pay for her goodies and i went back to save the dinner party lady from being totally embarassed upon arrival at her yuppie party. i went over and showed her a nice 'foxy lady blush wine' from hunt country vineyards up in the finger lakes of ny. (beautiful winery and amazing wines, by the way.) $7.99 a bottle, pink gold. i'mnot really an advocate of pink wine, but this shit is outstanding. i explained to her that miss economy pack was spewing bullshit from her lips, and gave her the lowdown on the bottle she was now purchasing, so she could impress her volvo-driving yuppie-buddies at the party. she picked up 3 bottles, thanked me and went on her way. i did my good deed and laughed all the way home. see what i'm dealing with here people? in south jersey box wine = good, bottle = bad. i'm stuck with a whole lot of people who are......whatever the opposite of gourmet is......oh, thats right...'white trash gourmet!'

TO RETURN:

the story behind ssp&e:

so i'm not sure if you're anything like me, but being the 'off the cuff cuisine' chef that i am, i try not to let anything go to waste. you know, when you bring home some bk or mickey d's, and after consuming your poor excuse for food, have ketchup packets or sauce shots left over that you throw in the door and forget about. same goes for chinese food, and you know they always give you enough sauce to put out a fire at the pentagon with your order. you throw them in your refrigerator door and forget about them. then one day you're trying to impress some last minute guests that have decided to stay at your place for dinner and all you have in your 'gourmet' kitchen are some ramen noodles, frozen veggies and some leftover grilled chicken from last weekend's cookout. the makings of a superb, on-the-fly stirfry. but wait, OH SHIT!, how are you going to make a sauce for your stirfry with no sauce? you look in the fridge and all you see is a bottle of ketchup, french's mustard (i use the term mustard loosely when describing french's), and a jar of pickle juice. oh no, what to do, what to do. then you bust open the butter holder, that invariably has never seen a stick of butter in it's life, and VOILA! soy sauce, duck sauce, hot mustard! packets, but instant chinkychow sauce nonetheless! each one of those packets, collected over time, came from a meal, inevitably eaten over conversation, an argument or during a lone lunch of self-reflection, came from a time and place in the past. as are our lessons learned. we learn through the years how to cope, how to inspire, how to teach, and how to live. we don't always remember those lessons, as we throw condiment packets in the fridge we throw life-lessons into the back of our heads, until one day we find ourself in a situation where it becomes relevant and we pull them from the back of our minds as to not waste the advice and lessons of the past. the moral of this story, and the linking of it to my blog- our life experiences are our 'soy sauce packets,' our hidden links to our experiences of our past...

e·piph·a·ny - noun - a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience. [www.dictionary.com]

the epiphanies that we experience in life, questions or situations that we find ourselves in, and don't know how to resolve, can most often be solved my raking our brains in search of a 'soy sauce packet.' an answer to a question. a solution to a problem. and so this, this blog, is simply an ever-expanding culmination of soy sauce packets in my butter box, and the epiphanies that have helped to make room for more butter in my fridge...

Soy Sauce Packets & Epiphanies

Linkbar

"quality" boxed wine...

Thursday, November 15, 2007

0 comments:

Post a Comment

About butter:

the story behind ssp&e:

from the churn:

more ssp&e:

where it all began:

Copyright Fair Use Notice:

Our Blogger Templates Web Design