Anniversary Weekend: Local Tourists

November 2 marks our 12th wedding anniversary. Some years we've been able to celebrate by taking a little trip to someplace nearby, going out to a nice dinner in DC, or on a couple of wonderful occasions, taking a two week trip to France. This year, we're going to reach back to one from our younger, less economically able days:  Local Tourism.

Gastonomical Cooking: Brisket Breakthrough!

I'm not going to claim that I'm a Certified Barbecue Expert, but I've smoked my share of meat over the years -- mostly of the porcine variety. I've smoked pork butt several different ways, including traditional pulled pork and an Italian porchetta, all to rave reviews. I've also had good luck with ribs. But the one time I did brisket was several years ago, and it was, well, disappointing. It was okay (it was barbecued brisket!), but it was on the dry side, and compared with the excellence I'd been able to produce from Our Friend the Pig, it led me to relegate brisket to something I get in restaurants rather than try myself.

October 6-12 is Regional Wine Week -- Support Your Local Grape!

Dave McIntyre, in his WineLine blog, posted about October 6-12 being Regional Wine Week. It's the sixth annual celebration of wine made throughout the country and not just on the West Coast, according to McIntyre, who actually started the recognition as part of the drinklocalwine.com blog and along with Jeff Siegel, The Wine Crumudgeon. The focus was to encourage wine writers, bloggers and tweeters to focus on their local wine, wherever that happened to be.