Time Flies...

One of the benefits to moving.....and as that rather painful experience is still fresh in our minds, I look for the good...so, as I was saying, one of the benefits, is that you gain a determination, as you are packing box, after box, after damnable box, to quit saving so much, to go through your collection of things and get rid of stuff. My current rule is: If I didn't use it in the last 6yrs (the time in our most recent apartment) then WHY do I still have it? Adios.

In the food category (this includes basically anything to do with cooking, baking, snacking, tasting, saucing...you get the picture) I have many things. I am making a concerted effort to use something in every meal from my vast, slowly aging collection, thus reducing the need to move it yet again in the next couple of moves we have slated over the next 1-2 years (house-grange-house, possible storage unit thrown in).I bring you now to the beverage portion of our built up, moved stash. Unlike many people here in France we don't have a massive collection of wine, but for us it is a sizable collection. Years of dinner parties, parties and wine gifts, and not enough nights of us drinking (shocking I know--you should see our liquor bar!), plus the years of Foire du Vin (autumn wine clearance sales), & the Salon des Vins des Vignerons Indépendants (Independant Vintners Salon) that we go to almost every year to get our favourites...well, all this leads to many bottles of wine. In an effort to reduce our stash we're trying not to buy anything new as we celebrate wonderful summer days and tasty meals with a glass of this or that. (Exception being the Rosé we buy and drink chilled, this is not a wine ever worth saving--we learned that lesson early in our French life!) All this celebrating is kind of like reaching in a hat and pulling out a surprise--let me explain. There is no order to the boxes of wine stacked in our atelier--cool, dark room in the Grange (the barn). This is a result of T & a muslim packing guy (he wasn't allowed to touch the bottles) working in our old cave the last day of our 4-day packing marathon--remember from an earlier entry, we did not sleep through most of those days--so zombie T just grabbed & packed, the guy closed the boxes and into the truck they went, no labels, nothing. So we reach in and pull out ....something! Occasionally we recognize a treasure and it goes back in, and then we get something we have no idea about, can't find anything on the internet about it, and so, into the fridge it goes (in this case, as it was a white)....and later we taste.

So, with this lovely bottle you see pictured, our first taste created a rather quizzical look on our faces, weird....not bad, just weird. And then my eyes wandered up to the year label (see right) AAAAKKK! eeeegads....a '92? quick math in my head...what? we are drinking a 16yr old wine? You mean....uh...omg...seriously? A wine that's as old as kids driving today?....but, but...'92 wasn't that long ago....and there across the table with a smug look on his face, my T (here I'd like to point out he IS 11 months and 1 week older then me) with the totally unacceptable remark of...well, yes, you are that old...and so is this wine from '92. Oh my, how time doth fly.....the wine grew on T...but based on the flavour I think it was probably one of those good ones that was past it's premium drinking moment...but that's the fun of trying, why let them just sit there and pile up? --we won't, and neither will any of our visitors, of that I'm sure--Papa, when did you say you wanted to come? ;o)

So, I must learn to accept the passage of time (it's not that hard, I know, just every once and a while something pops up that makes me see it like a neon sign), but we couldn't have picked a better country to do it in, and a better house to see 2008 + go by.....and as the saying goes, "sometimes you just have to stop and smell the roses".....and I do, boy oh boy, do I!

The front right corner of our house has the most beautiful pink roses--I don't know their names, and they're not the most odiferous of our roses--but they're just gorgeous. I took some pictures this afternoon of the second crop coming out, and share them with you to the left and down below. We do have others that aren't nearly as pretty, but have the most heavenly scent of lemon-rose...so, we really have the best of both worlds.

And now, in camping land, dinner is served--homemade spaghetti sauce with peppers from the garden, that's been simmering in the slow cooker all day, and garlic bread....accompanied with tonight's surprise pick--a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon...we'll see how it goes!!