Food, Friends & Wine

 

COVID19 continues to spur creative alternatives to our holiday traditions. Our most recent example was suggested by our good friends, Jackie and Rob. They proposed instead of joining them at their house for dinner, they would drop off our dinner and gifts (and pick up their gifts). Then we would do FaceTime, while enjoying dinner, followed by opening our gifts. While nothing can compare with face-to-face gatherings, this adaptation worked very well.

Our dinner consisted of homemade chicken escarole soup and lasagna with meatballs and sausage. A tin of homemade cookies was a wonderful dessert for the night (and several nights to come). Naturally, we enjoyed a couple of New Jersey wines that paired very well with the dinner. More about the food and wine below.

As most (if not all) of you will agree, 2020 has been a memorable year (albeit for mostly negative reasons). It has been the year of Zoom and Doom. FaceTime and alone time (more than even introverts like me would like). But I am lucky to have a lovely and loving wife, who has made this time much more positive. We both have our ups and downs, but have been able to boost each other when one of us is down. Love and wine have been our daily companions on our path to the light we can glimpse on the other side of the COVID tunnel. Technology has helped us connect with family and friends and that has been a life-saver.

Speaking of friends…back to our wonderful meal and wine.

Soup

This soup was a wonderful homemade version, with lots of chicken, spinach, beans, and carrots in a tasty broth.

Entree

Below is a photograph of one of the plates of the lasagna, meatballs, sausage, and gravy. The photo cannot do this dinner justice.

Dessert

Below is a photo of the assortment of cookies (minus several that we have already eaten). They include chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, peanut butter cookies, and chocolate covered layered cookies. Yum!

Wine

I chose to pair a bottle of Barbera and a bottle of Sangiovese with this dinner. I actually opened the Barbera during our happy hour, so I opened the Sangiovese just to be sure we had enough wine with our dinner. The wines came from Hopewell Valley Vineyards on a recent trip there.

• Hopewell Valley Vineyards 2019 Barbera-This is a wonderful estate-grown and produced Barbera with classic notes of cherry, lively acidity and rounded tannins.
• Hopewell Valley Vineyards Villa Neri Sangiovese-This one was actually produced in Tuscany and was estate cellared and bottled. It is a beautifully balanced, smooth wine with notes of ripe cherries.

Thanks, Jackie & Rob! Cheers!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good flight (of wine, of course)!

Last Minute Gift for Yourself

Download your copy of New Jersey Uncorked at Apple’s iBook app. Get it for $9.99 with coupon code Fall2020.

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