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Christmas Present for a True Wine-o

Each year, I rack my brain for the perfect Christmas present for Chris. He's actually very difficult because in addition to Christmas, his birthday is a week later, so I have to get all the good gifts out of my system in one fell swoop. This is not always, or ever, easy!

This year, with help from my brother, I got Chris a very good and unique gift: a wine barrel top lazy susan, and a bottle of wine from the same winery.

Yes, that's right, a top of a wine barrel, turned into a lazy susan. A very cool gift, because this is a used wine barrel top, which means when you turn it over, it's stained with the red wine that was aging in it. And the winery I got was Pahlmeyer, but the man who makes them has a bunch of different brandings on the wood, mostly the barrel makers but some wineries as well.

In case you're interested, here's the listing:

Wine Barrel Top Lazy Susan

Then since I got him a barrel top from Pahlmeyer, I decided a nice Pahlmeyer bottle of wine would go quite well with it! I checked out cellartracker.com (and if you haven't been there before, you must go!) and looked at ratings of tons of bottles of wine. I finally settled on a bottle of 2005 Pahlmeyer Jayson Pinot Noir. I found it for purchase online, had it shipped, and voila! A perfect gift for a wonderful wine-o!

Split Pea Soup and Pyrador Pinot

Since the fam left after Thanksgiving, we were left with a lot of vegetables. I think we thought we would use far more carrots, onions, and celery than we actually did. Well anyway, since Chris was working late late late this week, and I was alone to fend for myself in the kitchen while still using some of the refrigerator contents, I decided to make some split pea soup! I had never made split pea soup before, and I didn't have ham (or anything pig-related), but I had everything else. But, thanks to allrecipes.com, and my Droid on the train ride home, I came across a ham-less split pea recipe:

Split Pea Soup without Pork


Ingredients

* 1 pound dried split peas
* 1 stalk celery, diced
* 2 large carrots, peeled and diced
* 2 (14.5 ounce) cans low-fat, low sodium chicken broth
* 3 cups water
* salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Rinse and pick through peas. Place them in a large pot with the celery, carrots, broth and water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover and simmer until peas have fallen apart, 1 to 2 hours. Season with salt and pepper before serving.



I decided to also add a small onion, since I have a ton of them, and despite the reviews saying this was too watery, I actually found mine was too mushy, so I added more water. Also I only needed to cook mine about 1.5 hrs. I chose to saute the veggies with a little of the stock before putting all the split peas and remaining stock/water, with some pepper and a bit of smoked paprika for a little smokiness. In the end, you couldn't really taste the smoked paprika, so maybe next time I will choose something else for a boost in flavor. Regardless, the result was very tasty, very hearty for this cold weather, and reheated well for future lunches and dinners. I highly recommend this simple tasty meal!

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Next on the agenda, the Pyrador Pinot Noir (2007). This wine is from the central coast of California, and is a decent wine for the $18 we paid for it at Binny's. It's a little thin, but has a fruit-forward flavor that we both really like. I'm not wild about it, but I enjoyed it for 4:00 on a Saturday afternoon.