Lunch Lessons Learned Today

As I'm home and searching for jobs, I am now making lunch out of what we have in the pantry at the moment, and trying not to subsist entirely on Fiber One™ bars (or their Special K equivalent which have extra warnings for fibrousness) and fifty-cent ramen. This would be easy except that I am lazy and occasionally suffer from what I call "food aphasia," which is where I look into a fridge at raw ingredients and say, "how does this become food"?

Today, I made food in two steps. I cooked up some Uncle Ben's "Country Inn Mexican Fiesta" rice, adding a can of Goya red kidney beans for complete protein-icity. I then heated up a Quorn cutlet with some of Mark Bittman's tomato chutney.

Lessons learned:

• Quorn is good with tomato chutney.
• Uncle Ben's "Mexican Fiesta" is about as Mexican as the taco stand at McFadden's on Cinco de Mayo (the Hawk & Dove in Southeast also has a similar stand on offer, but McFadden's manages to keep its ground floor from smelling like urine, thus making it a classier establishment despite the Georgetown frat boys). The rice is also pretty tasteless.
  
• The "Mexican Fiesta" rice does not go that well with tomato chutney.
• However, it tastes great mixed with the extra-spicy version of Bittman's onion chutney that the Sherbs cooked up for our Sunday hot dog party.

That's lunch. Now back to the job hunt.

(Everything But) Strawberry Wine

It was time again for The Sherbs and I to head out to Virginia's wineries, and this time, we hit two of the more upscale establishments, both in scenic Delaplane, home of the Delaplane Strawberry Festival.

1) The Barrel Oak Winery is most notable for its dog-friendliness policy; one can bring one's dog right up to the bar for tastings. They also had some good wines; we bought their norton and a late harvest viognier, the latter mostly so we won't feel guilty drinking the late harvest viognier we already have.

2) The Vintage Ridge Winery is a swank place. Go for a tasting, and you get a sit down experience with plates of small cheeses, crackers, and meats, plus a dessert selection. Plus, they're pretty liberal with the pouring. We bought the syrah (which, unlike some, did not have a controversial name making us less likely to drink it) and the "Summer Night," which was a vidal blanc.

The Vintage Ridge Winery also sells some of the condiments they put in their tasting plate; we bought the Virginia Chutney Company's "spicy plum" chutney, which was awesome, and Golding Farms "pepper trio" mustard, which will change the way we eat cheese sandwiches forever.