Slave to Marketing

I often tell people that I am a slave to marketing, because if I see something new and interesting in a magazine or on a commercial I HAVE to try it. This is why I put up food "reviews" and whatnot so often. So I have 2 more. One is the new Sally Hansen nail polish pen.

Don't aske me why this one's black, it was the only image I could find. It's MUCH easier to hold and do your nails with than a normal bottle, but the polish comes out onto the brush funny and my polish started peeling the next day. If you want something that's truly not messy, and lasts forever try these:

They're dry nail strips that you set on your nail and essentially rub on. They smell a little nail polish-y still because they finish drying after you've rubbed them on and mine lasted at least 2 weeks. And it supplies you with everything you need for a manicure - emory board, cuticle pusher thing, etc.
Finally a food product:

Sorry the image is so small. Click on it to enlarge. It's Bolthouse Farms salad dressing. This is a brand new brand of salad dressing that I found at the grocery store the other day. It's in the refrigerated section with the Marzetti's brand dressings. It is made with a base of yogurt and has "no added preservatives, MSG, added sugar, or trans fat". It has the same calorie and fat content (approximately - 70 cal and 6.5 g fat per serving) as the "lite" dressings and drum roll please.....it tastes amazing! This is the only dressing I've ever tasted that didn't have 20g of fat in it (and even then) that I liked. It comes in 4 flavors and I will try the ranch next and let you know about that, but the blue cheese actually tastes like dressing that you get at a restaurant. I realize it sounds like I'm getting paid for this, but I swear I'm not (but I'm open to it, Bolthouse Farms - call me!) The only downside is that because it has no preservatives it only lasts about a month in the fridge. It's a 14 oz bottle and it's around $5 which is pretty pricey too. But because I love creamy dressings and hate any "lite" creamy dressings, this will forever be in my fridge and I can throw out all of my Kraft/Newmans/LiteDoneRight dressings and free up space in the door.

Portion Control

Nifty! This is a teeny tiny carton of ice cream. It's 3.6 fl. oz. For those of us with no self-control when it comes to ice cream it's obviously intended to keep you from eating entire pints of Ben & Jerry's at once. Haagen Daaz has them too (I have no idea how to spell that). It's like one little scoop. And it even comes with a little spoon in the lid. :)

Pretty pretty present

So this is my pretty, pretty present that Nikki sent me from Italy. It is (obviously) a wine bottle stopper and it is gorgeous! I think it matches the wine bottle over there nicely! That is a "casual sparkling wine" that my wine store just started carrying that is really very good. That is the Moscato and it is slightly sweet and slightly sparkling. I really like it a lot. The red sticker in the box of the wine stopper says "Made in Murano Italy". Thank you Nikki!

Chrissi-mas

My Birthday (observed). So, my birthday isn't until Monday, but we decided to celebrate on Saturday. So my friends put more thought into it than I did and after a very moving introduction by Bill they toasted me and told me that they've decided to christen my birthday "Chrissi-mas". :) We decided that "Chrissi-mas" will be celebrated on the Saturday nearest my birthday. Just in case you were interested, Nikki-mas is celebrated on the nearest Friday.

We went to "Killer Margaritas", which you can see had fabulous (and large) margaritas. Bill had a leetle one. :) Then we went to a Dueling Piano Bar. You can see me and Katie dancing and wailing along.

Santa Rita Reserva Merlot

I haven't done a wine review in a while, partially because I feel like I don't quite have the vocabulary down and partially because I feel pretentious doing them. But I'll do one anyway. I'm actually planning on taking a wine-tasting class downtown if I can get in at a place called Bin 36 in Chicago. I've actually seen their wines on the shelves, and been there before and I'm looking forward to it. I'm taking Wine 101.

So I don't think I've done too many reds because I prefer white, but I bought this Merlot recently and I thought it merited a review. It is actually a Chilean red wine. I highly recommend getting some of your wine, in particular red, from Chile or South Africa. They have the right soil for growing the grapes and because it's not Italy or France, the wines tend to be very reasonably priced for the value. This one I bought for $10.99. I don't think it's one you would find at the grocery store, but probably at a liquor store.

I have to say it wasn't anything super-special in taste. I can't recall that it had particular flavors that I marvelled at. However. It had barely any tannic taste to speak of (that pucker feeling you get in your mouth), wasn't bitter at all, and was very smooth. Considering the price, I thought it was quite good. It's definitely a red that you could serve at a dinner party or something without offending any guests. :) I quite liked it and will probably buy it again.

That's all for the review, but here's a story. I went with a friend of mine to a wine-tasting a few weeks ago. Her apartment is above the owner of the restaurant and she got free tickets. So, we went. There were probably 15 or so tables there and we decided to start with the white, then move on to the reds. Oddly, some of the people there (the ones showing the wine) agreed with us (most, actually) and some seem surprised we would split them up that way. When me and Mom went to Napa Valley that is how we were taught to taste the wines. Anyway, most of the people were very nice and did not expect us to be particularly sophisticated in our tastes. However, one of the guys, I believe his wines were from Greece, was so snobby! I tried to comment on how dry the Riesling was and he scoffed at me! Not openly really, but he didn't try to hide it either. And the real kicker was that his wines weren't even particularly good! So despite that, I ended up buying 4 bottles. Two of Madera, which is normally a dessert wine - very sweet, but one of the bottles I bought was dry and very good, and two of Gewurztraminer which are also sweet white wines. The Gewurztraminer (which is very close to a Riesling) are excellent! They are all wines that only sell to restaurants which is why I didn't review them. Unfortunately, me and Natalie were only able to get through the white wines before both of our stomachs couldn't take any more, so I sampled a few reds and then we left. But it was still very cool.