Cold cuts, don’t forget the mustard
“What is Romanian Christmas food?” is the question everyone asks. Well, since I did one of these things for Easter, I figured I might as well do one for Christmas. When all you heathens and heretics eat Chinese food and prime ribs and such, Eastern Orthodox do what God intended: slaughter a pig. It is rather traditional for any Romanian family of some size – well, older folk, I suppose, not kids these days… – to buy a whole pig, usually not from an industrial farm but from relatives in the country or a small farmer (we still call ’em peasants here). The pig is prepared nose to tail and little is wasted, to form a very large Christmas feast, which often results in the ambulance being called due to overeating (though never in my family).
Lard, pure and simple
So I will talk of the food I know. Other Romanians families may have somewhat different traditions. This year Christmas was a sad one as it was the first since my father passed away, but my mother and I decided to try to keep Christmas as close to usual as possible. We only got less than half a pig, though. We could have gotten a whole and frozen most of it, but I prefer cooking from fresh meat so I don’t freeze much. The pictures are not good – taken by phone and I don’t know shit about taking pictures – but the food is tastier than it looks.
The liver
The first meal of the day – usually around 9 AM – consists of what we call mezeluri, could be translated as cold cuts. This includes leber (from the German word for liver, I think) which is basically the pig’s liver boiled and minced very fine, mixed with some pig fat minced very fine, some onion chopped fine and sauteed a little in oil, plus five eggs (for the average pig liver), beaten. This makes a liver pate-like paste which is then stuffed in a pig intestine and boiled as a whole for a bit more. Toba – meaning drum – may be similar to what you call head cheese in looks. It is made from parts of the pig’s head and trotters, plus years for the gristle – gristle gives texture – boiled, chopped up roughly, stuffed into the pig’s stomach and boiled a little more. Șorici is basically raw pig’s skin, packed in salt for a few days – the pig is generally seared in order to remove the hair, so the skin may be slightly cooked in the process. Slănină is basically what Italians may call lardo – just less sophisticated, raw pig fat with a little skin attached, also slightly salt cured. Hard salty cheese and raw onion complete the meal, usually alongside bread and țuica.
Drumroll…
Caltabos
The second meal -around 12 – is of caltaboș, a thick boiled sausage. It is reasonably fatty pig’s meat minced more roughly, mixed with rice, seasoned with salt and pepper, stuffed in a piece of large intestine and boiled in a broth of mainly water, onions and a bay leaf. This is eaten hot with a squeeze of fresh lemon and some grated horseradish (fresh horseradish just grated and mixed with some salt and a little white wine vinegar). Generally, unlike sausage, the intestine casing is not eaten, and neither is the broth, which is used for cooking. Although red wine works better with pork, in my family we usually drink white with this one.
Pie’s special meat ‘n sausage
Around two or three, the sarmale come – stuffed cabbage leaves cooked with some tomato juice and wine. Red wine usually accompanies this meal, and sometimes a hot pepper to take the occasional bite out of.
In the evening, stomach room permitting, the final meal is usually some roast or grilled pork – ribs in general – and sausage. The sausage is a simple but delicious affair, a mix of fatty pork and beef with salt, pepper, garlic and paprika. This is generally eaten alongside pickles. With this part, red wine continues to be drunk.
Gogosar and friends
As dessert, traditionally it is cozonac (I mentioned it in my Easter post, it is, if I remember my Seinfeld, maybe similar to what polish call babka). More red wine here, if you can handle it, which many cannot. Cozonac goes well with red wine. The saying goes in Romania the only thing better in life than cozonac with wine is just wine.
So that is about it, did not feel like writing a longer post so this will have to do. How Romanians gain weight during the winter holidays.
Oh wait, almost forgot the picture of cozonac…
I’d fucking starve to death there.
nonsense. Cheese and raw onions and pickles are very sustaining. There is also bread and cozonac.
Some people eat mustard sandwiches …
When I was a kid, mustard sandwiches is all we had, without the bread. And we walked 10 miles to school and back, barefoot in the snow. You people and your first world problems…
“Luxury.” /Yorkshireman
I, however, would feast every day. My only lamentation is the lack of cheese… but that’s somewhat made up for with an abundance of wine.
The cheese scene in Borat was one of the funniest moments in cinema history.
Which one? The breast milk cheese scene, or the “What is this?”
The one with the titty milk and Bob Barr.
That’s the correct answer.
This one got annoying very quickly.
I have never seen that movie.
Shame! SHAME!
I feel ashamed! (but for other reasons…)
Good.
Me neither. I saw Sasha Baron-Cohen doing an interview on one of the morning shows in character as Borat, and he (the character) came across as such an asshole that i wondered why anybody would want to watch the movie.
I dunno man, this all looks pretty gross (except for the ribs and sausage). But now I know more than I used to, so good article.
I’m sorry to hear about your father, too.
it is really very tasty to me. I love eating raw pig skin and slices of liver sausage with small bits of lard.
The liver sausage looks a bit like Bavarian Weißwurst, except bigger.
And you don’t eat the Weißwurst casing, either.
I’d eat those peppers and pickles, those look yummy.
Oh come on liver pate is good and exists in most countries
I hate liver, ain’t eatin that stuff, blech!
You may be thinking of the common grilled liver and onions one might eat at a hobo encampment. Liver pâté tastes nothing like this.
My mother would spread braunschweiger on bread, then pan-fry the slices and serve it to us for breakfast. That was so freaking good
I received a gift of 5+ lbs of smoked braunschweiger this Christmas. I don’t know how I’m going to eat it all. I can go through a lb on dark rye with mustard and paper thin sliced onion over several days but then I’m good for a month or so.
Look, I was culturally enriched at the hobo encampment, so shut up your filthy rich pie hole, shitlord!
+1 kindhearted lady symbol
Yes, liver pate is delicious. I wind up eating a lot of it every time I go to Quebec.
Quebeckistan? Yet another reason for me to never eat it!
First of all, Montreal strip clubs are fantastic. Second of all, this is freaking delicious.
It may have been delicious if the link worked. Better call the edit fairy.
And it’s sugar free!
https://www.lescanardises.com/
Man, that’s some sort of furen linguage, must be commie!
Pie I would love to spend the day eating and drinking everything you showed us here today.
I am always amused by those who turn their nose up at less than refined fare such as this that is close to the earth it comes from.
Most of those same people would think nothing of popping a grocery store hotdog or other such processed good in their mouths.
I once had an aquaintinence who loved raw oysters and other seafood at restaurants but was scared to eat those that I had gathered myself sometimes the same day. A live blue crab that I had just emptied out of my trap frightened him but a plate of crab fingers from who knows where and handled by strangers was an oyster bar favorite of his.
I didn’t take a picture of the sarmale but here is a stock one
https://www.gustos.ro/assets/recipes_images/2015/12/29/218487/sarmale-cu-varza-la-slow-cooker.jpg
Want. Omnomnom
maybe next time mom makes em ill do a step by step recipe
I would read that. And then maybe even try my hand at it.
Polish cuisine has a very similar dish called golabki . The word is a diminutive meaning “little pigeons”.
Oh, I meant to add that they’re absolutely delicious.
This was a staple in my family growing up. My maternal grandmother’s parents were from Romania and Hungary. So good!
What’s the Gogosar and friends? I recognize the cornchons, and is that cauliflower stuffed into the shiny red things?
Gogosar is a cultivar of ball pepper and one of the main pickles in Romania. Dunno if you have it in the states. It is stuffed with cauliflower and not visible in the pic grapes and slices of carrot, they all pickle together in vinegar.
http://www.agro-shop.md/uploads/product/300/308/gogosar.jpg
Missed the romanian diacritic in the name it is actually gogoșar
Gogosar look like what we call cherry peppers. Italian’s stuff them with cheese and prosutto.
I think gogoșar tend to be quite larger
Think Bell Peppers, that’s what they sorta look like
well yes ball pepper was a typo I mean bell pepper
The peppers look like the cherry peppers we have here, I typically buy them stuffed with cheese in olive oil. There are 3 or 4 different colors, but one is red.
Where’s the Khlav Kalash and crab juice?
and a nice glass of virgin blood.
The virgin blood is hard to come by, what with all the vampires in Romania.
Right next to the Mountain Dew.
Ewwww. I’ll take the crab juice.
The Cozonac is probably the same as makovník and orechovník in Slovak and polish American households. We call them simply poppyseed and nut roll. My mom still uses my dads grandmothers recipe, they are delicious with butter.
The Sarmale are great. Are they stuffed with ground pork and rice?
yes, sarmale are pickled cabbage leaves filled with ground pork rice and spices, some extra cabbage added on top and some pieces of pork belly and tomatoes and wine, and put in the oven for a few hours. Cozonac is manly with walnut, cocoa or Turkish delight (rahat in Romanian) as filling
spices in the meat are salt pepper and paprika, and in the pot allspice is usually added and bay leaves. I have no idea if bay leaves have any flavor but Romanians add them a lot.
I have no idea if bay leaves have any flavor but Romanians add them a lot.
Fresh (or recently dried) ones yes, the ones that have been in your spice rack for a few years none at all.
My mom has a bay pliant in a pot that actually produces sufficient leaves
I’m kind of surprised bay laurel does well as a potted plant. They got pretty big where they grew outdoors when I was a kid.
outside in the right climate it is a tree but it can survive small in a pot
looks like this
http://www.mgonlinestore.com/bay/laurusnobilis06.jpg
I notice you don’t use garlic. Coincidence? I think not.
the sausages have garlic.
All the garlic gets hung around the doorway or from belts, doh!
I thought they put an onion on their belts, as was the style at the time.
OK, so Sarmale is basically polish stuffed cabbage, which I like.
Some of that sounds pretty damned tasty. The liver dish sounds (and looks) especially tasty.
Both sides of my family come from Slovakia. It’s interesting that some of the food is similar. We have stuffed cabbage (on any occasion), and eat various types of sausage. At Easter, we used to have cut up ham, sausage, meat pie, hard boiled eggs, and some sort of “cheese” made from eggs. This was served cold, with horseradish, and I think that was because the church service was so long there wasn’t time to make a hot meal.
At Christmas, we’d have bitter mushroom soup and pierogies. Unfortunately all my grandparents have passed away, so we don’t get the hard core ethnic food anymore.
Kevin, my dads family is the same way. My grandfather cooked one day of the year on Christmas evening to make his mushroom soup. He picked his own mushroom (poppinki) and made his own sausages ank pickles.
My dads younger sister, my mom, and some of the grand kids kept part of the traditions alive. We should put together a cook book for the family before the recipes are lost forever.
My grandmother used to make a cream-based soup that had shredded pumpkin in it. The pumpkin used was still green. That recipe has sadly been lost.
So do you have a meat-grinder or do you just run things in the food processor?
Meat grinder. But it is an old one and manual, and it has several knives, several platees with different sized holes and some funels for sausage making.
I googled and, off course not this type brand, but as a general concept this
https://www.amazon.com/Weston-Grinder-Sausage-Stuffer-36-1001-W/dp/B000BQSW44
I got a Romanian buddy of mine a meat grinder as a wedding present. His wife wasn’t particularly excited, but he started showing up to everything with sausage, so I’m guessing he was pleased with it. He raved about the Chinese market’s intestines because they were so well cleaned he just had to rinse them and could go.
My mom cleans all the intestines and stomachs and such until they are perfect. I don’t know if I will carry on the tradition…
My parents once got a electric meat grinder but they were not pleased with the results and preferred the manual.
Off course people with the skill and the time in Romania chop meat with a cleaver. You pay extra for cleaver chopped sausage at the butchers
You pay extra for cleaver chopped sausage at the butchers
Probably worth it. My friend worked in the meat processing industry (I gave him a copy of The Jungle and he was…shall we say triggered) in Romania and it sounds like the mass produced stuff is so heavily stepped on with soy and other fillers as to not be worth buying.
The takeaway from years of friendship was “Don’t eat bologna, ever. I don’t care what country you buy it in, what the laws are. Do. Not. Eat. Bologna.”
funny enough soy in salami was a thing that greatly upset people in communism as a symbol of bad food. Now soy meat replacements are becoming popular.
After the 1989 regime change, the newly “democratic” leaders, most of them high ranking communist party officials, were challenged by some Romanians who had lived several years before the revolution outside Romania. One of the slogans used for the stupid voters was “they’re not one of us, they are bourgeois, they did not eat soy salami” because if someone is to lead you out of communism it is not those with experience of non communist society but the old party apparatchiks . Naturally.
My grandparents had the hand cranked one. I always thought it was better than what comes out of my Kitchen Aid grinder.
A buddy of mine has an ancient manual crank grinder. He takes the handle off and clamps the chuck on his cordless drill to the crank. It works well.
I have a hand crank grinder. Haven’t used it in several years, now I want to break it out.
This feast looks really good.
Sorry about your father.
When my grandfather was alive, he would always raise hogs for slaughter around Christmas. We would usually slaughter 7 hogs and he would give one to each of his kids for christmas. We made what he called while-hog sausage. I have also heard it referred to as dinner sausage.
Basically, it’s sausage made from the good cuts of meat. Hams, loins, chops all went into the grinder. PA had a oxygen cylinder that he had cut the head off off and installed a removable lid with a nozzle. He put a piston in the bottom of the tank and installed a variable foot peddle valve. The valve controlled water flow to the bottom side of the piston. We would fill the tank uo with the ground sausage and then put the lid on. Pushing the foot pedal would allow water into the bottom side of the piston, pushing the piston up and forcing sausage out the nozzle and into the casings.
We would make several hundred pounds of link sausage and then put it in an outdoor smokehouse for smoking. My uncle still has his recipe. It’s the best sausage I’ve ever had. I’ll have to get the recipe from him and post it here someday.
not a big fan of smoked sausage, I generally prefer unsmoked. But those seem like huge quantities, but it depends on family size. I had a famly of three and we god a pig that was always on the small side – 120 kg, and it was still a bit much. But we preferred a smaller less fatty pig because the skin was tastier and the fat was thinner to make those pictured slanina pieces of salt cured fat
The sausage was not just for a Christmas meal. It was my grandparents gift to theor kids every year. Each kid would end up with 100 lbs or so of sausage to put in their freezer. As far as family size goes, there are a bunch of us. My grandfather had 7 kids, 27 grandchildren, and 20 great grandchildren when he died.
“(fresh horseradish just grated and mixed with some salt and a little white wine vinegar).”
I love fresh horseradish. I don’t think I have ever put it on sausage. I’ll have to try that.
Not on the standard sausage, on the boiled thick one 🙂
Polish kielbasa, particularly krienya(?) and Myśliwska are almost unimaginable without horseradish, although I, – mutt that I am – also like them with real wasabi.
I am sorry to hear about your father Pie. That’s rough.
It is remarkable to me how many Americans find food like this distasteful yet it is nearly identical to what their grandparents or great grandparents ate. They had an expression for eating this kind of food: Living high on the hog, which means living well.
wait are you calling Romanian food primitive? old fashioned? passe? them be fightin words
Or he’s calling a lot of modern American palettes effete.
^This x 1000^
Living high on the hog refers to eating the more choice cuts which were indeed high on the hog.
I agree with you With an
So many would turn their nose at this because they know what’s in it and where it came from but would have no problem with a processed hotdog from an American grocery store.
Rustic food to me is the best.
There are a few things I won’t eat, but pickled pigs feet are one of them.
Thanks for the cultural enlightenment! The leber sounds awesome.
Unfortunately, this was the wrong post for me to read right now. The Mr and I got home at 11pm after Ubering back from the St Paul train station. We got ready today to go out to lunch, since our cupboards are fairly bare (we’ve been deliberately working through our food to empty things out a bit).
But neither of our cars would start! It’s 0 degrees, not that bad for Minnesota, but we havent driven them since Thursday, and I hardly have driven mine this month at all with all the travel that my alter ego RoadSplosives has been doing.
So now I either have to throw together a watchagot stew (not easy because we even used up the staples like onion and potato), or we have to bundle up like Ralphie and walk 3 blocks to the local pub.
I need a replicator that can make me a Romanian Christmas feast on demand.
A battery charger sounds like a good investment.
Yup, the Escape is being charged as we speak. Expedition is up next.
I have 3 kids who are prone to leaving the car doors open all night.
Solution: Optima deep cycle battery
Expedition has an Optima Red Top. It sparked right up after a mere 20 min charge, so we are being fed now.
Going to stop by the local grocer on the way home and get meat and sour cream for Kashmiri Rogan Josh. I use sour cream instead of yogurt for the low carb benefits.
My kids used to do that often – my solution was changing out the dome lights with LED ones. You can find them on ebay that fit right in . They draw so little current and the light was brighter too.
Wait… which of you is Tulpa?
TULPA ARE LEGION.
Just what I’d expect Tulpa to say.
Just a simple battery tender works great for cars that sit a lot. Cheap, too.
Canned food, my dear. Canned food. I keep a rotating stock of primarily tomato soup, split pea soup, chicken noodle and canned chicken ( to add to the chicken noodle soup). Cans will keep for two to five years and I keep enough on hand to feed us for two months. We just polished off some split pea soup with bacon in it. Simple, fast, delicious and satisfying.
We have some stuff in cans. I just went and checked. Tuna, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, heart of palm, asparagus, black beans, lima beans, corn, oysters, black olives, tomato paste, and some hotdog sauce. I wonder if this can get me through the Trumpocalypse? You know, it’s really sad that I just inventoried our canned stuff. I’m bored, home alone, wifey is working, I haz a sad.
For amusement, perhaps take the labels off the canned goods?
Yeah, I’m sure my wife will find that highly amusing.
Don’t take them off, just switch them around. If you’re tired of your stew being cooked woth the same ingredients everytime, this will fix that problem.
Yeah, definitely need to work on the restocking of the pantry. I’ve just been such a road warrior lately that I’ve neglected my domestic goddess duties. I need to make some better lists for the Mr.
He shops, plows, mows, and cleans, I earn and cook. That’s the deal we struck.
We have to shop more often these days because of diet change, salad greens don’t last that long. We both cook, but my wife puts me to shame, so I mostly prepare salads and let her cook. Today I’ll cook something because I’m WFH and then I’ll be sitting around drinking beer and/or bourbon while she’s at work.
I like this domestic goddess title, I need to try that on wifey and see if she likes it better than domestic engineer.
I think it was Judy Tenuda who introduced Domestic Goddess into my lexicon.
I’m slowly trying to teach the girlfriend how to shop off of a list, instead of going into the store, and coming home with snack food and cookies. A shared Google doc makes it fairly easy to keep an up to date list. The hard part is trying to get her to realize that you have to plan what you’re going to cook (at least in general terms) before the weekend.
Erm, may I suggest a Google Keep shopping list instead?
I find it a bit more manageable than gDocs for shopping lists and it has nice integration to Google Assistant “Ok Google…add celery and pistachios and personal lubricant to my shopping list” is handy as all get out.
I started on this route before Google Keep was a thing… and the girlfriend is about as close to a luddite as is possible in the modern world. She just started paying bills online in the past year, she was still writing and mailing checks.
Although she is trying to use the Google Assistant… I got a text from her yesterday that said, “Text [Nephilium] on my way home.”
Yeah… you may be lucky, my wife may as well have her phone and iPad surgically implanted. It’s hard to get her to put one of them down even while watching a movie.
I love Google Keep. I’m a list freak anyway, and the checkboxes are awesome.
I’m a semi-prepper. We could live for a while on what I have stockpiled, including water. (I also do my own canning, so there is that.)
Are you a gardener?
We eat our fresh food from the fridge each week, supliment it with semi stockpiled canned food staples from the pantry, and meat from the freezer bought on sale.
My wife and I split cooking duties. She makes killer soups, veggies, and salads. I’m great cooking proteins and sides.
The food saver is one of my favorite inventions. Any time I make too much BBQ, chili, stew, or anything it gets frozen. We can defrost or microwave a meal in a pinch.
I could use a chest freezer.
The one traditional food my dad’s family had on Christmas eve was cannibal sandwiches, I’ve seen it referred to as tiger meat or steak tartar in other places. Basically it’s raw ground round with raw onion on rye bread.
My best friend growing up was originally from Milwaukee, and that’s what they ate on Christmas. Along with whiskey.
“cannibal sandwiches”
In Soviet Russia, sandwich eat you!
It sounds a lot like steak tartare.
Man, this beer is sure going to taste good when it gets cold. For now, there’e bourbon. Cheers, shitlords! Don’t any of you work?
Oh, and in other news:
THE PATRIARCHY CANNOT BE DEFEATED!
Bwahahaaahhhhaaa! Toughen up, snowflake!
I dunno. If I woke up to find a bright red veiny cock taking up the entire view from my apartment window I’d be…displeased. And I like the sight of cock about as much as anyone.
“I’d be…displeased”
Yeah I know, me too, but I still found it hilarious.
.. and maybe more.
Damnit, 6! You changed your avatar! How are we supposed to know who anyone is? Next thing, you’re going to be putting something chipperword @#!!* in your posting name! BTW, has anyone seen Ken lately?
I might go back to claymation me.
It’s just a bit too hard to put a topper on top of a claymation monster, and I was feeling left out.
Nah, I like the new one.
Perhaps.
“its [year #], get over it”, has become one of those expressions extremely popular among the very stupid
oh god, and another one
‘Raising awareness’ has become a catch-all excuse for LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME versions of lefty activism
because the world wasn’t aware of dicks before
Bring consciousness usually just means they bring attention to themselves by rubbing everyone’s nose in shit. They are that kid from the seventh grade that would fuck with you in ridiculous ways before running off laughing hysterically, and just like that kid they know who they can get away with needling and who they cant.
Wait, no one is screaming ‘TOXIC MASCULINITY! OH MUG GAWDS!’? I have yet another disappoint.
I always make fun of them by stating my case with an earlier year. “don’t you know…? come on its the 90s. “
It was used to great effect by Edmund Blackadder though.
http://blackadderquotes.com/blackadder-i-episode-3-the-archbishop-full-script
(fuck google)
For the TL;DR’s
Graveney: …and I have committed adultery…
Edmund: Well, who hasn’t?
Graveney: …more than a thousand times…
Edmund: Well, it *is* 1487!
Blackadder is the best.
What beer? I’m going to start drinking soon. I’m off this week. The only work I’ll do is around the house. I’ll start drinking with some wine.
After today, WFH, I’m off until the 2nd. Lots of time to drank and tomorrow is my bday, drank drank drank.
Happy birthday, y’old fart.
Happy Birthday!
Thanks, it will be happy, I will make it be happy!
Happy Happy Joy Joy! to you!
Thanks, Yusef. Now, all you snappers get off my lawn.
Happy birthday!
Yes…Whats the beer? I just walked though a supermarket I’ve never been to, so much beer, to much work.
Heineken, of course! What else than the world’s very best beer! I’m sitting here now staring at a bottle of Woodford Reserve and thinking I should have a shot since I just bought a replacement bottle along with the Heineken. But I still have 30 minutes of work left, sigh…
Del Toro would be proud.
I just got a bottle of that for Christmas from my sister and brother-in-law. The girlfriend got me a bottle of Glenlivet Nadurra cask strength. Forget inventorying the beer cellar, I need to inventory my liquor.
The Woodford is really good for the price. It’s about the cheapest thing I have outside of my Chivas Regal 12 yr old.
My go to is Bulleit, do to stupid Ohio pricing laws, the liquor stores have the 1 L bottles priced about $3 higher then the 750 mL bottles… so I refuse to even consider purchasing the 750 bottles.
I keep seeing the Bulleit, but I haven’t tried it, although it appears to be very popular. I was thinking about stocking up some Buffalo Trace because of the price, someone told me it’s very good for the price. Right now I’m out of Blanton’s because of my generosity. Just saw a bottle when I bought the Woodford, $79, no way. I’d pay up to $70, but after that it’s just price gouging, $65 is more in line, fucking greedy capitalists!
Damn, my wife has a lot of wine. I keep telling her she has to drink some of this. How long does wine last anyway? It can’t be more than a couple of years before it goes bad.
It depends on the wine. Others here know more about wine than me, so I’ll defer to their knowledge if they want to correct me. Some wines like Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz should last years if stored properly (cellar temperatures and out of sunlight). Some wins like Beaujolais should be drunk right away.
I’m just guessing that it depends a lot on alcohol content? My wife likes sweet wines, which are almost all very low alcohol content, like 8-9%. I have no idea how she’s going to drink all of this before it goes bad, and I don’t like wine at all. Is there a Goodwill store for wine?
Is there a Goodwill store for wine?
I don’t think so, but I’ll volunteer my house.
Most of those wines – I’m assuming they’re white – will get a bit dryer with age, but they won’t go ‘off’ if you rack them, but they might fall outside her sweetness range. As long as they’re real wines, and not things like tawny ports, sherry and Madiera.
If that’s what she’s hoping to keep for a rainy day, let me know, I can probably find a home for them, especially if you have something like a Pingus Ribera Del Duero, 2012. Port is one of the few drinks where I can easily justify drinking ridiculously expensive booze. Especially when someone else is picking up the tab.
Rack it on its side if it’s under cork, out of the light.
Avoid extremes of temperature and wine will last 10 years if red with no problem. Whites – I wouldn’t rely on more than 5 or 6 years. You don’t have to have perfect wine vault storage.
None of this is gonna be grand cru, so you really ought to drink up within 5 or 6 years, although we had a bottle of a really good Sangiovese from ’98 that we demolished on Sunday night.
The sugar content isn’t really relevant, but as DEG says ‘green’ wines like beaujolais won’t age into great wines if you keep ’em. You should drink that kind of stuff quickly. For wines like Gewürztraminers, Muscats and Reislings, they’ll keep, but they won’t improve.
Thanks, 6. Most everything she buys is moscato, red or white, and sweet reds and a few roses. Maybe I should buy her one of those little fridges that you can lay the bottles on the side.
Well, reds should be kept near(er) room temp, at a consistent temp if possible.
It’s light more than heat that will affect them over the short (years) term. A wine fridge is fine for the whites and the roses, but if they’re for her own consumption, just chill them in the normal fridge when you need to. If she’s buying and not consuming, a corkscrew and some nice glasses would be a better gift.
Ah, thanks so much. I now know 100% more than I did about wine storage. I’m looking at the little fridges, I see one with 18 spaces, should be plenty because she doesn’t typically buy white except for moscato and sounds like the reds are ok where they are, there’s no sun, does normal LED house lights effect the wine also? We typically keep the in house temp at around 68-70F.
She has a really nice corkscrew, I love that thing. And glasses, omg, too many.
LED lighting? I have no idea. I guess it’s possible that particular wavelengths are particularly damaging.
We keep our wine in some cheap racking in our pantry. Dark and keeps at a pretty consistent 60 deg, which is probably too warm, but we don’t usually let the wine hang around that long (although there was nothing at all wrong with that bottle of Sangiovese that had been hidden in the corner since about 2010).
I looked at more than a few houses that placed a wine rack over the oven hood. No thanks.
There is a certain pleasure in having a few bottles of good wine on hand, just in case. From time to time i’ll pick up a mixed case of wine when one of my buddies in the biz emails me with a hot tip on some good deals.
For about a year, 4 or 5 years ago, I used to drink a glass of red a night along with the meal, trying to imitate the sophisticated, thin elegant people in the bistros and tapas bars of Europe, but all it did was made me put on weight and develop a complexion like Steve Bannon, so I gave that up. But I did end up knowing a fair amount more than I used to about red wines.
I’ve managed to lose 30 lbs now without giving up any alcohol consumption. Although I do plan to lighten that up quite a bit to manage the next 20 lbs I need to shed.
Well, you need *some* carbs, even on a keto diet. I plan to devote all my carb intake to booze.
That’s definitely where most of my carbs are coming from. Although, remember greens and veggies have some carbs and we do eat a little fruit. I also supplement heavily, so I’m pretty sure I’m not lacking in any nutrients, my energy level is way up from what it was and I sleep better now. Blood pressure way down, sugar level much more stable.
Also, I’m not doing keto, it’s more like paleo. So I don’t suspect my body is in ketosis much of the day.
Sorry about your dad Pie. I hope you and your mother had a good Christmas.
/going OT here
I’m curious what the impact of this may be on the state/local level. Can I predict that schools will be crying about not having enough money in two years due to spending all the money they got early?
You can never go wrong about predicting that government school officials will complain about not having enough money. Predicting their reasons for complaining is another story.
Not sure. I keep seeing people on leftist sites like DU advising everyone to do this. But these are not exactly the people who I would take advice from, on anything. One thing for sure is that the real estate markets in these leftist states are extremely over inflated. One way or other, these type of enormous bubbles are going to have to pop eventually.
I keep seeing people on leftist sites like DU advising everyone to do this.
Holy hypocrisy, Batman!
In a sane world, it wouldn’t make any difference, since the annual budget isn’t changing. The tax bill is the same regardless of when you pay it*. But, we don’t live in a sane world. So, yes.
* = Unless you pay late, when the government so kindly charges you “interest”; however, you may note that the government does not pay you “interest” when you give them your money early.
Also, how many people have mortgages today where there taxes are not in escrow? Just curious if that’s still a common thing. And if your home is paid for, stop complaining, you guys voted for those high taxes, now pay your fair share! Just like you keep telling everyone else to do.
I have a coworker who pays the taxes himself, the bank servicing his mortgage doesn’t do it. Also, when we converted the mortgage on he previous house into HELOC, we paid the taxes ourselves.
Well, hopefully, you don’t own property in a high tax state. There’s no way in hell I’m buying a fucking outhouse here in MD, not worth the price, or the taxes.
Well, I do own in MA. And we also bought a house and sold a house in 2017 and the new one is in a different town with higher taxes. Plus there are other complications. So I have no idea how the tax picture will look like. We’ll need the services of a serious tax preparation business this year.
No escrow here. Pay taxes and insurance directly. I’m not even sure how you’d be able to prepay taxes before the once a year property tax bills are sent out.
So the article about preparing SALT taxes listed Texas as one of the high state taxes where this is a thing.
I love liverwurst so I assume this would be good.
? great intro to old world cuisines I typically have little exposure to. thx Pie
CBS to pass the rest of the afternoon away.
I would eat damn near everything listed. Thanks for the lesson, Pie.
Sorry about the old man. Christmases get easier after the first.
Thanks, Pie!
A lot of this reminds me of the rustic fare many French people still eat to this day; loves me some good country paté, ferinstance, even though I’m not a fan of liver the way my Mom used to make it (yes, fried with onions — possibly the worst way to cook liver I can think of…). My Grandmama and Grandpapa, on the other hand, could cook up a storm at Christmas!
Going to the brother unit’s tonight to eat post-Christmas comestibles — a 9 pound standing rib roast, cooked medium-rare, with all the trimmings. And wine. LOTS of wine. Meanwhile the spousal unit and I are still snacking on the remainders of the Christmas turkey. For a woman who normally doesn’t like eating lots of protein, the amount of turkey she can put away in turkey sandwiches for several days oughta leave her looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. ???