Assorted Wines

Right before I left for Israel, I spotted a nice groupon for wineinsiders.com. I never used groupon before, although of course I'd heard of it. Since I've taken to drinking wine very regularly, I decided to go for it (the deal was $25 for $75 worth, a $50 saving) and joined groupon just for this deal. I didn't get around to purchasing any wine until after my trip but I ended up getting the 28th anniversary mixed 12 pack. It's very exciting to have so many wines delivered to my door; I don't own a car so I always have to grocery shop rather carefully (my arms are pretty puny). I used to lean toward drinking beer, and to be honest, the size of a beer bottle suits my tolerance more than the size of the typical wine bottle. But in Philly, I had a corner store that stocked many excellent beers, and here in Portland I have to walk a ways. So wine is for home and beer is for going out. So far I've only tried the pinot grigio and I can't say much about it because oops, I know nothing about wines. So I'll be honest and just say that I don't find it that special but it is nice to have with dinner.

And speaking of dinner!  Tonight I fixed a favorite standby of mine, pasta with garlic and cheese.  I guess it's probably a standby for everyone, I'm not special.  I like it because in addition to being super fast and easy, it also delights the taste buds.  The directions are:

Boil some thin spaghetti or linguine in a pot until al dente.  While the pasta is cooking away, grab a few cloves of garlic and chop (imagine your bowl, imagine how much garlic you'd like to see in your bowl, number your cloves accordingly).  When the pasta is near done, heat a dollop of olive oil in a little pan and cook the garlic a bit.  Grate a bunch of parmiggiano reggiano cheese.  Fish out the pasta with tongs, toss in the garlic and olive oil, the grated cheese and sprinkles of salt.  Fin.

I recommend eating this rather quickly because I think the cheese gets kind of weird after a little while.  Cook's Illustrated could probably explain why to you, but I'm a bioengineer/biologist, not a food scientist so you'll be getting no explanations from me.