Bon anniversaire!

Today, Mike and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. We decided to go all out for dinner and made reservations at Wink.

We ordered the 5-course vegetarian chef's tasting menu with paired wines. We've done this 3 or 4 times before, and it's divine. I've never understood wines going with food until we had done this at Wink. Our first course was a sungold tomato salad with parsley and a basil pesto. It was paired with a Rosé wine. It was very good. I was bummed about tomatoes this year, cuz I hadn't had any decent ones. But hurrah! Finally, some really delicious tomatoes.

Second course was a sweet corn cake with grape tomatoes, sauteed zephyr squash, arugula, and black pepper honey. This was paired with an Alsace Pinot Gris. OMG. OMG. This dish was divine. Sweet lovely heaven. The wine was paired to perfection. There was a slight honey flavor going on in the wine, that went well with the bit of black pepper honey in the dish. Delicious.

Third course was spaghetti squash with Boggy Creek Farms green beans & rapini, chicken  fried mushrooms in a brown butter sauce. And by butter, they mean BUTTER. This was really good. I especially enjoyed the green beans and mushrooms. This was paired with a White Burgundy wine. Very good pairing.

Fourth course was a hand-rolled couscous with brassica greens, truffel oil, a bit of shaved truffels, baby carrots, and grilled red onions. This was paired with red wine that I forget what it was called. It was super strong smelling, and had a very strong flavor, but went with the very earthy taste of the course. This was Mike's favorite course by far. He said it might even be his favorite course he's ever had at Wink. Oooh-la-la. Big words.

The last course of the tasting menu was an italian cheeseplate. It consisted of fior di langa, vento d'estate, pecorino stagionato, & gorgonzola naturale. I think this was paired with a 2005 Hekate Vino Passito. But not 100% sure.

We did end up ordering a desert, which we've never done before. Usually the five course meal comes with a desert, and I guess this one did (the cheeseplate), but we were wanting something sweet. We ordered the Wink Trio which consists of a sampling of their lemon meringue pot, crème brûlée, & el rey chocolate cake. I think my favorite is still their lemon merigue pot, while Mike is a sucker for any flourless chocolate cake.

We probably should have stopped with the five course meal like we usually do, but we got greedy with the dessert, so we walked out a bit more stuffed than we generally like. But still, it was one of the best meals we've had in awhile. Definitely worth the very steep price tag.

We ended the night by going to Whole Foods to pick up some Dirty Girl tomatoes that our waitress suggested. I can't wait to try those tomorrow!

Oh! Sweet Nectar Part Deux

In a followup to my Hint & MetroMint post a while back, I thought I would add that MetroMint has put out a new flavor. It's ChocolateMint. And it's friggin' divine. You might think it does not sound refreshing, but you would be oh-so-incorrect. It's very nice, light, and cool. Perhaps a good way to think of it is... it tastes like drinking a MetroMint Peppermint water after you've finished a chocolate bar (probably dark). I saw it on their website, and yes, the dork in me ordered a 5-pack to check it out. A couple weeks later, and it's already in my local H.E.B. I love my H.E.B. They are quite quick to carry some unusual stuff. Another water I've just discovered from my latest grocery store trek is Ayala's Herbal Water. OMG, delish! I've only tried two flavors so far, but I think I'm hooked. I've had their jasmine vanilla & cloves cardamom cinnamon. The ccc one was a bit strong in flavor (according to Mikey), but I loved it. Very different, very natural tasting, and plenty sweet enough without actually using any sweetener. The jasmine vanilla was a bit lighter in flavor. They also have lemongrass mint vanilla, lavender mint lemongrass thyme, cinnamon orange peel, & ginger lemon peel. I can't wait to try them all. Another bonus about Ayala is they are a carbon neutral company. Can you get much better than that?

Oh! Sweet Nectar

I have some weird issues with drinking enough water. I go through stages where it is next to impossible to drink water. I can guzzle diet coke like nobody's business. But water. It's like it's non-potable sludge. However, if I flavor it up with some lime or something I can usually drink the day away with it. I used to drink FruitWater by Glaceau. The same people who do VitaminWater. Back when I used to drink it, they had tons of flavors like watermelon, cucumber, grape, lime. Probably like 10 or more flavors. Then suddenly they stopped making all those, and only made 4 flavors - raspberry, lime, grape, peach. The other stinger is they are now "lightly sweetened". If there's one thing I most certainly cannot tolerate in my water is a sweetener. I get migraines, and so I'm very sensitive to sugar, caffeine, and hydration in general. So, when I say I got nuts with DC it's not that crazy because the caffeine can become too much. Anyhoo, I digress. Once my FruitWater had gone and betrayed me with sweetener, I had to find other alternatives. I can't remember how long, but it wasn't terribly quick, I discovered MetroMint water... peppermint water that is not sweetened. And they say it's not "flavored" since they use real mint. It is delightful. So refreshing. It's been a couple years I think, and now they have 3 new flavors -- spearmint, orangemint, and lemonmint. My least favorite is the spearmint, but I do love them all. At the beginning of this summer, while on a mission to get some Function Urban Detox (excellent for hangovers - drink half before bed, half when you wake) at the Whole Foods downtown I saw a bottle I hadn't seen before. It appeared to be a flavored water, so I inspect the label to see what sweetener is used or how many calories it has. And I see the most loveliest of slogans on the bottle "Drink Water, Not Sugar". I was immediately in love, so I wanted to buy everything they had. Mike, being the more sane of us, told me to just get a couple in case it tasted like complete ass. He's wise, that one. So, after we get home and I get one chilled enough (beverages have to be damn cold for me), I tried one. It was the tropical punch one. I just confirmed the love at first site thing. It was amazing. I had found me a proper replacement. It is called Hint, and it's such an appropriate name. It's water with just a slight hint of flavor. Enough to be not straight up water for my tastes. I have personally tried about 9 flavors -- Tropical Punch, Pomegranate-Tangerine, Lime, Raspberry-Lime, Peppermint, Pear, Strawberry Kiwi, and Cucumber. My least favorite was Cucumber, and not just cuz it's Cucumber. I've loved that flavor of water in the past so I was really excited to try it. For some reason to me, it tasted like plastic. I'm hoping it was maybe a bad batch or something, and I will attempt to try it again later, cuz it did seem to have some promise. I drink so much of this stuff, it's insane. I pretty much fill up a cart at Whole Foods or H.E.B., any time I buy it. People look at me funny. The last time I went to Whole Foods, the guy was kind enough to give me their case discount, and told me I should just think of buying it in cases in the future. That's a good idea. I think I'll do that from now on. I've even gotten my brother hooked on it. I'm just evil rotten that way.

Some Weekend Ramblings

Yesterday, Mike and I went to the Sunset Valley Farmers Market to pick up some veggies and other bits that caught our eye. We've been trying to go as often as we remember to go. We'd rather get our produce there than in a grocery store. It supports our local farmers and businesses and the quality is far superior to anything at the big grocers (except Whole Foods, of course). Since we've gone a few times, and we tend to go a bit crazy, I bought us a collapsible market tote from bb&b. I was kind to Mike and didn't buy the bright pink one that I really wanted. Well, we filled up that basket within the first 10 minutes and Mike just hauled it all over the place. For some reason this weekend, the market had about 2.5 times the amount of vendors as it usually does. It was huge! Alot of the extra vendors were services that were kind to the environment, like rainwater collection, and gardening, and even a couple furniture makers. We ended up getting a bunch of veggies, like usual, but with Mike's help I got bold and actually bought some beef ribs from a vendor there - Bandera Grassland. They say their cows are never injected with hormones and are grassfed, and all that other hippie stuff. We'll have to see how good they are. We also got some Maine Root Sarsaparilla. I am a sarsaparilla freak. This one was a bit mild for my tastes. I don't taste much difference compared to their Root Beer, which I had at the market. After that we went to FoodHeads. This great cafe in a house. I'm gonna write a review for that for Scratch 'N' Sniff, shortly. I'll link over to it when I do.