Wine, vino, mommy's juice, Chardonnay, Muscat, or Boone's, whatever you call it, it's the nectar of the gods. Archeological evidence shows wine is one of mankinds earliest food arts. Additionally winemaking in Europe dates back over 6,500 years ago. In Sedalia, Missouri, winemaking, in our family, dates back to the early 1980's.
At that time my parents had accumulated a large amount of canned Welch's Grape Juice. Made from the finest concord grapes grown in the heart of the east coast. "The story of Welch's began in 1869 in Vineland, New Jersey – when physician and dentist Thomas Bramwell Welch and his son Charles processed the first bottles of "unfermented wine" to use during their church's communion service." (Information courtesy of the Welch's Grape Juice Website. http://www.welchs.com/) Well, my dad got fed up with the "unfermented" juice and decided brilliantly to make Welch's Wine.
To this day, I'm not sure why my mom agreed to this project. You see the hardest part of winemaking is growing the grapes, and Welch's had done that part for him already. In my Dad's enthusiasm, he convinced my mom that he'd be able to make the finest wine from the cans we had stored in the basement. I'm sure he promised her it would be as good as Boone's Farm, her favorite wine for company dinner.
So after reading several how-to books on the winemaking subject, my dad set up his homemade still. It was a couple of wine bottles with plastic tubing running from them. I think the tubes were to help with pressure released during fermentation. He set it up on a shelf in our sunny yellow dining room, out of the reach of the four sets of little hands in our family. He proudly showed his winemaking display off to our friends who stopped by. They would sit around talking about how good the wine was going to be. I think he even mentioned entering it in the fair if it turned out ok.
Then as with so many early attempts at winemaking, tragedy struck. It was late one night, a couple of weeks into the project. Our family was sound asleep, tucked into our beds and dreaming happy dreams. Suddenly, we were jolted from our sleep by the sounds of exploding glass. Had someone shot out a window? Was there a car accident on the street outside of our house? Sadly, no. My dad's dreams of becoming the first Welch's Wine maker ended in a shower of glass and a spray of fermenting grape juice all over the yellow walls and white ceiling of our dining room. It looked like a grape massacre had taken place in our dining room and it smelled pretty nasty too.
My dad learned a valuable lesson: there is a reason wine producers ferment wine in wooden barrels or steel drums. That way there is no chance of an explosion during the fermentation process. My mom quickly vetoed any additonal attempts at winemaking in our house.
My dad was deeply disappointed, but for my mom it was a blessing. She'd been nagging my dad to paint the kitchen and dining room for months. After the fatal wine explosion, my dad picked up some new paint and re-painted them on his next day off. Maybe my mom really did know what she was doing when she agreed to let my dad make Welch's wine in the kitchen.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The Shout House
Date night once again looms on the horizon. It's a monthly tradition my hubby and I enjoy. We usually go out, eat, drink and be merry for a few precious kid-free hours. We look forward to it and plan it so we can maximize every minute of the date experience.
Last month we had an unexpected date night. I injured my foot and needed to get some extra rest. Good old mom came through and offered to watch the kids overnight for us. Yipee! We decided to head to the Gaslamp Quarter and have a little dinner. It was a Wednesday night, so unlike most crazy weekends, downtown San Diego was dead. We enjoyed our dinner and decided afterwards to go to the Shout House. On Wednesday evenings there is no cover and the dueling pianos are great. The guys who play are very talented and funny. It's always a pretty calm crowd on a Wednesday too.
That is usually. We'd been enjoying the music and laughing and singing along with the rest of the crowd. A new group arrives, consisting of some military guys and their dates. The girls were your typical So-Cal skanks. The ringleader was wearing a piece of black cloth that barely covered her unmentionables and a hot pink bra. She proceeded to flounce up on stage several times with requests. The musicians were getting quite a kick out of her. She was eye candy, that's for sure. At one point they started to play one of her requests and she (drunkenly?) asked if she could dance on the stage while they play it. What would you say if a cute little hottie asks if she can dance on your stage? So of course, they said yes.
She proceeds to ask all of her other girlfriends to dance too. None of them will go up there. I don't think they were as drunk as she was. She wheedles and whines, while flashing lots of skin, but still none of her friends will join her in the dance. So then she starts asking if anyone in the audience will come and dance on the stage with her? Surprisingly she gets a couple of other ladies up there too. I might have, but the foot injury held me back. One woman is a motherly type who is out for a fun night with some girlfriends. The other two are pretty much nerdy girls, no makeup, plain jeans and t-shirts, Converse high tops, cute but not sexy like miss thinnnngggg! They leave their two boyfriends sitting at the table and walk up to the stage holding hands.
The music starts and sexy girl starts your typical club dance moves. She is swaying and moving her arms and singing loudly with the performers. The older lady is also swaying and having fun. Then you have the geek girls...
What up until now has been a relatively innocent night, turns on a dime into the show of a lifetime. The two unassuming, normal looking, geeeky girls start to dance with each other. They aren't waltzing here folks either. No you guessed it. They are bumping and grinding away at each other like some kind of Jerry Springer episode gone wild. The noise in the place rackets up ten times as the girls dry hump each other on stage, including kissing and wrapping their legs around each other's waist. The guys in the place are going wild. Even my own faithful hubby is sitting there with his mouth hanging open and a glazed look of lust on his middle-aged face. It was the funniest, unexpected, sexiest moment I've ever had the experience to have. Of course if my husband hadn't closed his mouth and smiled sheepishly over at me, I probably would have smacked him over the head with my empty wine glass.
Needless to say, sexy girl did not get back up on stage the rest of the night. I think her ego was slightly bruised when she realized that the hooting and hollaring were for the nerdy girls and not for her. We stayed a little longer and unfortunately did not get a repeat performance from the nerds.
Gosh, I wonder what will happen at this months date night?
If you want to visit the Shout House here is their website: http://www.theshouthouse.com/San_Diego/home.asp
I hope you have as much fun as we did.
Last month we had an unexpected date night. I injured my foot and needed to get some extra rest. Good old mom came through and offered to watch the kids overnight for us. Yipee! We decided to head to the Gaslamp Quarter and have a little dinner. It was a Wednesday night, so unlike most crazy weekends, downtown San Diego was dead. We enjoyed our dinner and decided afterwards to go to the Shout House. On Wednesday evenings there is no cover and the dueling pianos are great. The guys who play are very talented and funny. It's always a pretty calm crowd on a Wednesday too.
That is usually. We'd been enjoying the music and laughing and singing along with the rest of the crowd. A new group arrives, consisting of some military guys and their dates. The girls were your typical So-Cal skanks. The ringleader was wearing a piece of black cloth that barely covered her unmentionables and a hot pink bra. She proceeded to flounce up on stage several times with requests. The musicians were getting quite a kick out of her. She was eye candy, that's for sure. At one point they started to play one of her requests and she (drunkenly?) asked if she could dance on the stage while they play it. What would you say if a cute little hottie asks if she can dance on your stage? So of course, they said yes.
She proceeds to ask all of her other girlfriends to dance too. None of them will go up there. I don't think they were as drunk as she was. She wheedles and whines, while flashing lots of skin, but still none of her friends will join her in the dance. So then she starts asking if anyone in the audience will come and dance on the stage with her? Surprisingly she gets a couple of other ladies up there too. I might have, but the foot injury held me back. One woman is a motherly type who is out for a fun night with some girlfriends. The other two are pretty much nerdy girls, no makeup, plain jeans and t-shirts, Converse high tops, cute but not sexy like miss thinnnngggg! They leave their two boyfriends sitting at the table and walk up to the stage holding hands.
The music starts and sexy girl starts your typical club dance moves. She is swaying and moving her arms and singing loudly with the performers. The older lady is also swaying and having fun. Then you have the geek girls...
What up until now has been a relatively innocent night, turns on a dime into the show of a lifetime. The two unassuming, normal looking, geeeky girls start to dance with each other. They aren't waltzing here folks either. No you guessed it. They are bumping and grinding away at each other like some kind of Jerry Springer episode gone wild. The noise in the place rackets up ten times as the girls dry hump each other on stage, including kissing and wrapping their legs around each other's waist. The guys in the place are going wild. Even my own faithful hubby is sitting there with his mouth hanging open and a glazed look of lust on his middle-aged face. It was the funniest, unexpected, sexiest moment I've ever had the experience to have. Of course if my husband hadn't closed his mouth and smiled sheepishly over at me, I probably would have smacked him over the head with my empty wine glass.
Needless to say, sexy girl did not get back up on stage the rest of the night. I think her ego was slightly bruised when she realized that the hooting and hollaring were for the nerdy girls and not for her. We stayed a little longer and unfortunately did not get a repeat performance from the nerds.
Gosh, I wonder what will happen at this months date night?
If you want to visit the Shout House here is their website: http://www.theshouthouse.com/San_Diego/home.asp
I hope you have as much fun as we did.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
T.P.ing, Cow Tipping and Other Teenaged Activities
Do you remember when you were young and stupid? Sneaking out of the house to meet the neighbor boy for a stolen kiss or taking a late night stroll through a sleeping suburb with your best friend? Did you ever crank call your friends parents and ask them if the refrigerator was running? How about cow tipping (all my midwestern friends know what I'm talking about)? Did you ever T.P. a neighbors house, car or lawn?
When Zeke was two years old, Dave and I got really serious about our health. Having a child made us realize how important it was to be around to see our kids grow up. Gone were our carefree twenties, when we could eat whatever we wanted, drink like a fish (without a nasty hangover) and still go to work on less than four hours sleep. We were a family unit. If we wanted to be around another forty or fifty years we needed to make some serious lifestyle changes. We decided to watch what we ate and we walked for exercise. It worked. Dave lost 95 lbs. and I lost 30 lbs.
I know you're wondering how does our new lifestyle relate to crazy teenage pranks? Let me explain: Dave and I would often walk late at night, usually around 10 p.m. We lived in a very quiet suburban neighborhood with nice sidewalks and great street lighting. It was safe. We'd bundle up Zeke and tuck him in his stroller, taking turns pushing him up and down hills and around bends. If it was cold, we'd stop by Starbuck's on our way home for a coffee. It was great bonding for our little family.
One night while we were walking, we noticed some kids in our neighborhood were having a party. Good for them, we thought, remembering fondly our own parties at that age. You know how you look back on those years through rose colored glasses and only remember the good times, conveniently forgetting the bad. So we were happy for the group of teenagers hanging out on their lawn, laughing and listening to loud music. We spent the rest of our walk talking about it and laughing at our own stories of similar times.
We stopped in at Starbuck's around closing time. We ordered our vente, de-caf, fat-free, sugar-free vanilla latte and sat outside in the chilly fall night. It was perfect. We'd walked our three mile route, up and down hills and all around the neighborhood. We were feeling good. Our coffee was the perfect non-guilty treat at the end of a long work week.
We headed back toward home, talking softly since it was almost midnight. As we walked into the gates of our sub-division, we saw four kids running down the block laughing and back toward the party. I smiled and pointed them out to Dave. We jokingly wondered if their neighbors would be calling the cops about the noise since it was getting so late. Then we rounded the corner of our block and saw our front yard....
The little jerks had been busy. They had toilet papered our magnolia tree and our front lawn. The pale paper streamers glowed a ghostly white in the night against the glossy black of the magnolia leaves.
I was pissed. Now, most of you who know me well, know that it takes a lot to get me mad. I am not a hot head. I do not fly off the handle easily. I'm a nice person, but this was too much. I took a deep breath and embraced my boiling, bubbling anger. I told Dave I was going over there and I'm going to make them clean it up. I don't think he really thought I would accomplish much, but I started to march back down the road toward the now hated party house. Dave had no choice but to follow in my wake. It was either follow me or let me face the hoard of kids all alone, and he was too much of a gentleman to do that. I told him to get out his cell and dial 911 but to wait and see if I had any problems.
I marched up to the house, husband, and baby in stroller all in tow. It's midnight and all good feelings are gone. I'm cold, tired and mad. The little pricks were going to clean up the mess they made or I was calling the cops. I start knocking on the door. No one answers. I start ringing the door bell. Still no answer, although I can see heads peeking at me from behind curtains and whispered conversations ensuing. So I start yelling at the top of my lungs that if the kids responsible for the mess in my front yard don't get their asses outside that very minute I'm calling the cops on all of them. I told Dave to hold up his cell so they could all see it. He was wisely standing in the street guarding our innocent sleeping baby and holding up his cell phone above his head.
The door cracks open and a young man appears looking a little scared, other kids are visible inside on the stairway and in the hall. I asked him if he was the one who T.P.ed my front yard? He denied everything. He swore no one from their party was in our yard. Then I mentioned the fact that we saw two boys and two girls running from our house back to their house and if they didn't make them come out right away we were calling 911 and pressing vandalism charges.
The boy's face got really pale and he immediately started yelling for his friends to get outside now and clean up their mess or I was calling the cops on them. In fact all the kids at the party turned on the four and before I knew it, two boys and two girls were in my front yard cleaning up the six pack of extra strength Scott tissue that they'd thrown on our tree, our bushes and in our flower bed. In fact, I insisted they climb the tree in the dark and retrieve copious amounts of white paper from the branches above my lawn. They cleaned it up, every last bit of paper was removed and I thanked them sarcastically for their efforts to clean up their mess. Ughhhh!!!! Teenagers!!! Then, they apologized and called me ma'am.
That's when I realized that I was officially a grownup. It was the most depressing fact of the whole evening. Of course, my husband looked at me with a new found respect. I faced down a whole group of partying teenagers and won. In doing so, I lost the rest of my youth. No more prank calls, cow tipping, t. p.ing the neighbors house or other teenaged activities for me because... I'm all grown up now.
When Zeke was two years old, Dave and I got really serious about our health. Having a child made us realize how important it was to be around to see our kids grow up. Gone were our carefree twenties, when we could eat whatever we wanted, drink like a fish (without a nasty hangover) and still go to work on less than four hours sleep. We were a family unit. If we wanted to be around another forty or fifty years we needed to make some serious lifestyle changes. We decided to watch what we ate and we walked for exercise. It worked. Dave lost 95 lbs. and I lost 30 lbs.
I know you're wondering how does our new lifestyle relate to crazy teenage pranks? Let me explain: Dave and I would often walk late at night, usually around 10 p.m. We lived in a very quiet suburban neighborhood with nice sidewalks and great street lighting. It was safe. We'd bundle up Zeke and tuck him in his stroller, taking turns pushing him up and down hills and around bends. If it was cold, we'd stop by Starbuck's on our way home for a coffee. It was great bonding for our little family.
One night while we were walking, we noticed some kids in our neighborhood were having a party. Good for them, we thought, remembering fondly our own parties at that age. You know how you look back on those years through rose colored glasses and only remember the good times, conveniently forgetting the bad. So we were happy for the group of teenagers hanging out on their lawn, laughing and listening to loud music. We spent the rest of our walk talking about it and laughing at our own stories of similar times.
We stopped in at Starbuck's around closing time. We ordered our vente, de-caf, fat-free, sugar-free vanilla latte and sat outside in the chilly fall night. It was perfect. We'd walked our three mile route, up and down hills and all around the neighborhood. We were feeling good. Our coffee was the perfect non-guilty treat at the end of a long work week.
We headed back toward home, talking softly since it was almost midnight. As we walked into the gates of our sub-division, we saw four kids running down the block laughing and back toward the party. I smiled and pointed them out to Dave. We jokingly wondered if their neighbors would be calling the cops about the noise since it was getting so late. Then we rounded the corner of our block and saw our front yard....
The little jerks had been busy. They had toilet papered our magnolia tree and our front lawn. The pale paper streamers glowed a ghostly white in the night against the glossy black of the magnolia leaves.
I was pissed. Now, most of you who know me well, know that it takes a lot to get me mad. I am not a hot head. I do not fly off the handle easily. I'm a nice person, but this was too much. I took a deep breath and embraced my boiling, bubbling anger. I told Dave I was going over there and I'm going to make them clean it up. I don't think he really thought I would accomplish much, but I started to march back down the road toward the now hated party house. Dave had no choice but to follow in my wake. It was either follow me or let me face the hoard of kids all alone, and he was too much of a gentleman to do that. I told him to get out his cell and dial 911 but to wait and see if I had any problems.
I marched up to the house, husband, and baby in stroller all in tow. It's midnight and all good feelings are gone. I'm cold, tired and mad. The little pricks were going to clean up the mess they made or I was calling the cops. I start knocking on the door. No one answers. I start ringing the door bell. Still no answer, although I can see heads peeking at me from behind curtains and whispered conversations ensuing. So I start yelling at the top of my lungs that if the kids responsible for the mess in my front yard don't get their asses outside that very minute I'm calling the cops on all of them. I told Dave to hold up his cell so they could all see it. He was wisely standing in the street guarding our innocent sleeping baby and holding up his cell phone above his head.
The door cracks open and a young man appears looking a little scared, other kids are visible inside on the stairway and in the hall. I asked him if he was the one who T.P.ed my front yard? He denied everything. He swore no one from their party was in our yard. Then I mentioned the fact that we saw two boys and two girls running from our house back to their house and if they didn't make them come out right away we were calling 911 and pressing vandalism charges.
The boy's face got really pale and he immediately started yelling for his friends to get outside now and clean up their mess or I was calling the cops on them. In fact all the kids at the party turned on the four and before I knew it, two boys and two girls were in my front yard cleaning up the six pack of extra strength Scott tissue that they'd thrown on our tree, our bushes and in our flower bed. In fact, I insisted they climb the tree in the dark and retrieve copious amounts of white paper from the branches above my lawn. They cleaned it up, every last bit of paper was removed and I thanked them sarcastically for their efforts to clean up their mess. Ughhhh!!!! Teenagers!!! Then, they apologized and called me ma'am.
That's when I realized that I was officially a grownup. It was the most depressing fact of the whole evening. Of course, my husband looked at me with a new found respect. I faced down a whole group of partying teenagers and won. In doing so, I lost the rest of my youth. No more prank calls, cow tipping, t. p.ing the neighbors house or other teenaged activities for me because... I'm all grown up now.
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