Fuji FinePix XP10

I got this camera for Christmas. I did all sorts of review reading and research to decide where the price/performance sweet spot was for a water & shock-proof camera. I love love love my G11, but I'm afraid of hurting it when I take it sailing and climbing, and as a consequence... I don't. So I wanted a small competent little rugged camera. Everything seemed to indicate the Fuji XP10 was going to be it. Unfortunately after three days of testing I'm sorely disappointed and it's going back. Its low light performance is horrendous. In bright conditions its focus, sharpness and color reproduction are embarrassing. My Samsung Vibrant's 5MP camera takes better photos both inside in low light and outside in bright light. I'm depressed.

Brun-uusto cheese

Best baked cheese ever! Paired with Bogle Petite Sirah and maple syrup. To die for!

Kraemer Sharp Cheddar

When we went to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving Dan and his mom went out and bought a bunch of cheeses that we subsequently shipped out to California -- we're not ones to risk the fate of our cheese in the hands of the TSA! We haven't tried them all yet, but so far the Kraemer Sharp Cheddar from Watertown, WI is definitely the best cheddar and possibly the best cheese I've ever had. I'm blown away.

Lucky Star 2008 Chardonnay

Not a fan of Chardonnay myself, but this one showed up at home recently. It's sweeter than the Central Coast Chardonnays I'm used to, and as a consequence a little less boring. I liked it chilled, and it cooked well, too. Wasn't blown away or anything, but it was good juice.

Cantina Zaccagnini 2007 Montepulciano d' Abruzzo

I'm not a huge fan of Italian wines, but Dan seems to prefer them. We've had our fair share of duds, but we've come to love this one, at about $16 from Lazy Acres. It's nicely dry and balanced, and goes well with anything Greek I care to throw at it.

Wente Vineyards Southern Hills 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon

I've had many lovely bottles of wine since my last wine review, and, since they're largely forgotten, they'll have to go unremarked. But I'm trying to get back on the horse, so here I am.
My wine-knowledgeable friend Jeff brought the Wente Vineyards Estate Grown Southern Hills Cab over for dinner the other night. We paired it with Greek bean soup (φασολάδα) and freshly baked bread. It was stellar!

Tour of Fancy Milk Chocolates

The population of Greece can be bisected cleanly down the middle. Based on what earth-shattering criterion? you ask. Based on whether they prefer Ion or Lacta milk chocolate! I am an Ion girl myself.

There is a fantastic purveyor of fancy foods just up the hill from us, called Lazy Acres, and we do almost all of our food shopping there. It carries probably a dozen brands of fancy chocolates, of which I am a huge fan, despite the incredible discipline I display when consuming it. While I realize that high cocoa dark chocolate is probably the standard by which to judge a chocolate maker, I happen to be a fan of milk chocolate myself. So I'm going to give myself a tour through the expensive milk chocolates that Lazy Acres carries and let you know what I think here!

A note about my taste in milk chocolate: I tend to prefer the very smooth, non-acidic, non-liquory type, so you'll see that bias reflected here. Also, I am less a chewer and more a melt-in-the-mouth'er.

Here we go!

Dagoba -- thumbs down, too much liquor, too little milkiness
Newmann's Own -- thumbs down, too much liquor, too little milkiness, and a funky fattiness
Endangered Species -- thumbs enthusiastically up

More coming...

Also, if anyone would like to sign me up for a chocolate of the month club, please do :)

Two fabulous reds

The 2007 Benzinger Estate Obsidian Point Cabernet Sauvignon (a wine from biodynamically grown grapes) is simply amazing.
Also the 2007 Chris Ringland Shiraz from Barossa Valley in Australia is the best Australian Syrah I've ever had.

Online recipes that work!

This is a selection of recipes that Dan and I have been blown away by over the last three months:

• Bacon wrapped dates (we made this for the New Year's Eve party)
• Paella (we've made this three times, the first was epic, the other two blew away our respective families -- pair with a dry white)
• Lemon Creme Brulee (we have a very prolific lemon tree in our back yard, so we've tried a lot of lemon variations to tasty-sounding recipes. This one is a consistent winner, and had my mom mumbling to herself for a couple hours)

Food blog inspiration

A disproportionately high percentage of my friends are foodies and I LOVE it! A small selection of their blogs to get you inspired:
Erica's: Apricosa
Dmitrii's: Cucina Bizzarra
Pradyut's: The Crazy Chef

Almost Meatless

Almost Meatless is a cookbook that was recommended to me by food-ethics conscious climber friends. I picked it up because the philosophy of cooking with a little meat, and in a way that doesn't centerpiece the meat appeals to me. It's what I do anyway! So far we've tried two lamb recipes: ragu with home-made gnocci, and albondigas with oatmeal. The latter turned out great, the former however was no less than a revelation. So based on our experience thus far, the book gets a thumbs up!

2007 Red Diamond Merlot

I was pleasantly surprised by this Merlot the other day. It's inexpensive, delicious and very stable. It remained consistent in taste and aroma over the customary 3 days or so it takes me to finish a bottle. I picked up a second bottle, so we'll see if it's also consistent across bottles, as it's common for cheaper wines not to be... Extra points for the label, which is unusually classy for a wine this price.

Blind Dog Midnight Run Cuvee

This Paso Robles red nearly didn't make it home with me (from Lazy Acres) because I don't like gimmicky labels (e.g. the "jarhead" wine also at Lazy -- leave your politics out of my wine!). However I was really really glad I took it home, as it turned out to be one of my favorite ~$15 wines I've tasted. It's the kind of sunshiny, jammy red that I like and Dan doesn't. I have to agree that such a wine has its place, and that it lacks the gravitas that one sometimes chooses a drier or more tannic wine for. But this one was fun and simple and easy to drink, a bit like fruit juice, so it gets high marks from me.

Boutari Moschofilero (Μπουτάρη Μοσχοφίλερο) & the Hungry Cat

For her birthday we took my mom to the Hungry Cat, a restaurant I've been wanting to try for a while now. The rationale, by the way, was interesting: she wanted crab, but the only other place to get fresh crab in town is the crabshack on the pier, and we had too many people for that. I would never have thought there would be only two places serving whole crab in SB! Anyway, she had the local crab and my dad had Alaskan crab legs. Hers was apparently tasteless, but Dan and I both thought my dad's was amazing! I had Hope Ranch oysters, Savas had the burger and Dan had the home made chorizo with mussels (which I will have to try my hand at). We paired it all with the Boutari Moschofilero, a dry white wine from Southern Greece, made by a Northern Greece vineyard (incidentally owned by the mayor of Thessaloniki, my home town). The wine was really really good, but in general I expect Greeks to make better white than they do red, so... In any case, I needed a martini with my oysters, but it would have been anti-social to indulge myself. Next time ;-) Overall it was an amazing outing!

Municipal Winemakers 2008 Bright White

We had this with the paella we made for my parents' visit, and not only was it a great pairing, but it also garnered high marks from the Greek contingent. Very nice!

2004 Rosenblum Santa Barbara Syrah

O'B brought this bottle as a housewarming present, and just by the way he presented it I figured I should set it aside and try it later. So we opened it last night to accompany my Greek chicken (which turned out badly, for various reasons) and we were blown away. This wine reminds me of the Longmorn Scotch that made me rethink Scotch. It is very smokey and extremely smooth, just like the Longmorn. The color is a very dark purple, and it's got quite a bit of sediment. It has a lot of ripe dark berry taste, in a good way. I drank half the bottle and didn't even notice it. The next day it was as if it had never happened.

Patagonia Huckleberry approach shoes

Patagucci
Originally uploaded by slampoud

Back in August I made a last minute purchase (at full price, to boot) of a pair of Patagonia Huckleberry shoes. These represent my first Patagonia item of any kind, mostly because their stuff is typically too expensive for me to afford (though now that I've read "Let my people go surfing" I understand why that's the case a little better). This pair was meant to replace my 5.10 Prodigy approach shoes, which had two problems: the soles were showing crazy wear after less than a year of use, and they were too wide to be comfortable. Even as I was trying shoes on, I was impressed with the fact that Patagonia sizes came in increments of half a Euro size. This meant I could get a nearly custom fit, which is a huge deal to me, as my two feet are nearly half a US size apart, causing me a world of hassle. With no break-in period whatsoever, I wore the Huckleberries on my entire trip to Greece, plane to plane, so to speak, with a 2000m full backpack & climbing rack ascent in-between. They fit better than any approach shoe I've ever tried, and I love them. However... and this is a big "but": excellent hiking/backpacking shoes though they are, they are not, in my opinion, sticky enough to be good approach shoes. My confidence on slabs is seriously diminished over what it was in the 5.10s. Ditto my traction on any kind of ice, as I found descending the Owen's gully a couple weekends ago. This is to be expected, I suppose, since the Huckleberries have more durable, hence less sticky rubber soles, compared to the Stealth C4 on the 5.10s. So it seems I've struck the heart of the trade-off: sticky rubber vs durable rubber.
Even though I love these shoes in every other way, the lack of stickiness is a huge con in my mind. What I wanted was specifically an approach shoe (which is what the Huckleberries are advertised as). Tremendous fit! Clearly superior workmanship! But if the approach shoe don't stick ... well, then, what's the point?