dinner

Wine List

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

It happened again. We were invited to someone’s house and it was left to me to buy a bottle of wine to give the hosts; partly in appreciation for being asked and mostly as a peace offering for anything I might say while we are in their home.

I’m not good at wine. People who really like wine, and those who pretend to, make a big fuss over the stuff.  It’s as though their opinion of the wine is more important than their enjoyment of it.  We know people like that. They will declare that something is a “really bad wine” when what I think they really mean is that they don’t like it.  But it is declared with a certainty that can only lead to the conclusion that the grapes should be plowed under and all existing bottles used only for target practice.

Swanson wine bottleAnd that’s my problem with choosing wine. I can’t remember what we were served last time and whether the wine snobs liked it or not so I often decide what to buy based on the graphics and the colors on the label.  I like a clean label, uncluttered and definitely devoid of cute names.  Maybe I’m biased but I think my namesake vineyard does a rather nice job with labels.

Not that I have anything to do with this wine, though I did once get a letter offering me a discount on a case because of my last name.  But even at discount prices it’s too much for me to spend on wine.  And since I choose by the label I have no opinion whatever on the content of the bottle, though I’m told by those who pretend to know that it is definitely wine.

So there I am at the store, trying to buy a bottle of wine. I’ve long ago given up on trying to find something that our host, whoever it is, will appreciate, and I’m just hoping they won’t pour it down the drain in front of me.  And I’m completely lost. It’s not as though I haven’t bought a bottle or two of wine before, but who remembers names and even if you do apparently there’s a big difference in the vintages of stuff. I am in fear of having noses turned up as I present my purchase. All the bottles are disturbingly the same size and shape. And while I appreciate a good label, I’m not sure everyone does.  Some people actually open the bottle.  So I am reduced to reading the descriptions and that makes matters even worse.  This one is crisp, clean with overtones of berry and chocolate, so that sounds good.  But there’s another one that’s oaken and complex with depth so maybe that’s more sophisticated. 

I gather that all these descriptions are arrived upon at wine tastings by people with taste buds that can tell the difference between depth and opulent.  I’ve been to a few wine tastings and it is just the wrong place for me to be.  Inviting a scotch drinker to a wine tasting is like bringing an atheist to church; I enjoy the ritual but I just don’t get the point.

Apparently the first thing you are supposed to do is stick your nose as far into the glass as possible and breathe deeply.  I did this and snorted half a glass of wine up my nose.  Coughing, spitting and sneezing I knew immediately I would not be invited back. Then there’s the swirling, always while grasping the base of the glass so as not to sully the temperature of the wine with my sweaty palm.  One is then supposed to hold the glass up to eye level; I presumed this was to determine if I was shorted when they poured the samples but apparently it has something to do with the way the wine drips down the glass.

Finally, we actually got to taste the wine.  I watched to be sure I was doing it right.  Slurp in, almost inhaling it (without another episode of coughing and sneezing) and then swish it around in your mouth almost gargling.  Then spit it out. Excuse me, is that one that bad? But everyone is spitting it out. I’m thoroughly confused.

Two things come of this process; the description and the rating. At the store where I went to buy this bottle almost every wine had a rating from the Wine Spectator. I picked up one copy of that magazine and flipped it open. It happened to be an article titled “The Great Whites.”  Thinking it was either about sharks or racism I put the magazine back on the shelf. 

The Wine Spectator is apparently the industry standard but its rating seemed suspicious to me.  After all, I’d been to a wine tasting.  No one seemed to learn anything by spectating.  Now, if there was a magazine called the Wine Expectorator I’d give it some credence.

So I was left adrift without a lifeboat. I called my wife and asked if we could just give them money instead. Or stay home.

Christmas Traditions

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

There are some Christmas traditions I don’t miss.

4)  Flocked Christmas Trees.         My Dad used to buy Norway pine trees covered with “flocking;” white snow-lik-appearing carcinogenic toxic asbestos laden flakes that were supposed to make the tree look like it had been out in the snow, I guess.  But it had “flock” in places it had never had snow; all over the trunk of the tree and every needle covered top and bottom to about pencil width.  Those pencils from first grade width.

We didn’t put lights on the flocked trees.  We put floodlights on the floor that shone up onto the tree.  And we had colored discs in front of the spotlights that rotated and changed colors.  Red and blue and orange and, curiously enough, green.  Yes, because of the floodlights, one fourth of the time our white tree was green.

3)  Fruitcake. Enough said.

2)  Snow.      OK, not truly a tradition, but if you grow up in Minnesota it’s a fact of life. And I hated it. Every flake, collectively and individually. 

    I’ve included it on this list because of the idiots who complain that “it’s just not Christmas without snow.”  Well, the temperature in Bethlehem on December 25 will range from 45 to 48 so it will be Christmas without snow out there in Christmas-land.  Deal with it.

Snow is worthless.  Nothing that you need to shovel out of the way serves a useful purpose.  It’s wet and cold and horrible.  Animals slow their breathing and heart rate almost to the point where they are dead just to avoid going out in the snow.  There will be those who say snow is “wonderful” because you can go skiing.  The only good thing about snow skiing is the fireplace and the brandy in a warmed snifter when you’re done.

You simply must go skiing?  Buy a boat.  You don’t need to wear nine more layers of clothes and be treated for frostbite.

1)    Lutfisk.  This will take a little explaining. No, this will take a lot of explaining.

Lutfisk is Swedish for “inedible glop.” It’s dried cod, soaked in lye and “seasoned” by any animal that happens by the bricks of fish stacked up on the sidewalk outside the grocery store.  In my hometown we bought our Christmas lutfisk I think somewhere around June and then soaked it in water to leech out the—shall we say “impurities”—so that we might be able to eat it without suffering dysentery and ameobic meningoencephalitis.

Since we were destined to have to have the stuff, we were fortunate to have Swedish neighbors with whom we shared Christmas Eve and who would buy and prepare the glop.  She soaked it in water and changed the water every fifteen minutes.  The leeched water was picked up daily by hazmat workers in orange suits who transported it in lead-lined vehicles to dump sites that would later show up on the EPA superfund cleanup list.

It was also fortunate our neighbors prepared the fish because, if we were going to have to have it, we certainly didn’t want it in the house any longer than possible.  The only thing worse than the lye-infested toxicity of the glop, was the smell.

You might be getting the idea by now that this is nasty shit.

Regardless every December 24, our Swedish neighbors would show up with a stoneware pot of lutfisk.  And every year without fail she would say how good the fish was this year.  It was nice and firm, she would say.

Lutfisk is firm in the way grape jelly is firm.

Come dinner time my father, my brother and our neighbors would scoop this “food” onto their plates and hope it wouldn’t slide off onto the floor.  They were so excited about it.  At least my father and the neighbors were.  Genuinely excited.  My brother I think was just trying to fit in and be “a good Swede.”

I figured there hadn’t been a good Swede since Alfred Nobel and fitting in has never been my strong suit, so Mom would make a steak or pork chops or something for me and her.  Mom was German and while Germans aren’t known for culinary delights either – which you would know if you had ever tried what they jokingly call potato salad – she had the good taste to know that lutfisk is not fit for human consumption.

Truth be told, if you can get by the smell and the consistency, lutfisk by itself doesn’t really have any taste.  Most of that has been leeched out and transported across state lines along with the lye and the rest.  The flavor, such as it is, comes from the half pound of melted butter and two cups of “cream sauce” that every diner has to pour over it to mask its smell and enable them to choke it down while pretending to enjoy it.

So lutfisk is a tradition I don’t miss.  It’s not only a horrible dish; it’s a heart attack on a plate, provided you can keep it from sliming off your plate.