A welcome home meal: grilled salmon with Sauvignon Blanc June 23, 2009

When Patrick is home on the weekends from his law internship, I like to make some nice meals and try new wines.

We recently bought a bottle of Murphy-Goode Sauvignon Blanc (The Fume) that we’ve been wanting to drink and I had some salmon to cook, so I decided to come up with a meal that would feature both.

Here’s what I made: caesar salad with whole wheat croutons and a light caesar dressing, grilled salmon with key lime butter and a dessert of grilled fruit with honey yogurt sauce.

Grilled salmon with key lime butter, caesar salad and Murphy-Goode Sauvignon Blanc

The wine really brought out some spiciness in the caesar dressing, which I liked. The citrus aroma of the Fume also went nicely with the key lime flavors of the salmon.

I got a nice taste  of grapefruit from the wine, and  I liked this Sauvignon Blanc better than another I drank recently – the 2007 Cakebread Sauvignon Blanc. The Murphy-Goode Fume has a better balance and palate to it and is my new Sauvignon Blanc of choice.

But the grilled fruit with yogurt sauce was not the best with the wine. Some of the grilled plums were a bit tart. The yogurt had some tartness of its own and when combined with the wine it was all a bit much.

So the dessert is not something I would repeat with this wine. It’s not that either one was bad – they just weren’t great together. And this Sauvignon Blanc deserves to go with something great!

An online clip archive June 18, 2009

I’m using some of my post-graduation free time to create a bit of an online catalog of my clips. I think it’s important to have these online as I look for freelance/job opportunities and I think most are not accessible at The Palm Beach Post Web site anymore. I’ll put them up over time, in a series of posts. Today I’m just putting up some fun clips.

To start, here are some of my favorite stories from the years:

First, there’s the story I wrote about a celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe at a Catholic Church in South Florida. It was such an interesting experience, to see the way these people were celebrating their heritage, culture and religion. But the day was equally a celebration of the community – the children who’ve grown up together, the older people who’ve endured long lives of hard work to make it in a new country. It was a hopeful scene and one that made me appreciate the diversity of our state.

One morning while I worked the Sunday shift at the Delray Beach Bureau of The Palm Beach Post, my editor called to tell me he’d heard someone was moving a house downtown. So I drove down there and, sure enough, there were a bunch of people already getting drunk and cheering for this house that was inching it’s way down the street. I can only imagine how long they watched that house moving along…

I also wrote a story about a pro-am tennis tournament in Delray Beach. The focus of this story was former pro Anna Kournikova playing on a doubles team with former President George H.W. Bush (that’s the older Bush, in case you’re confused). Anyways, Kournikova served a ball right into Bush’s back! At first I was horrified, along with the rest of the crowd, I suspect. He’s not exactly young and that was a fast ball! But he laughed it off and made a little joke and then the whole arena started laughing. Kournikova was mortified but she got back to playing – more carefully this time!

I’ll probably add some more of these clips as time goes by. It’s nice to look back and see what I’ve done.

A blast from the past June 18, 2009

So I Googled myself the other day to see how many of the stories I’ve written over the years are still online. A good number of them are, actually, but mostly not on the Web sites of the various publications for which I wrote them.

A lot of my old stories – mostly the ones about people and the restaurant reviews – were posted on blogs or company Web sites. It’s neat to see how my stories can live on like this, even when they’re not accessible anymore through the Web site of The Palm Beach Post, etc.

But I think what’s surprised me the most is that it’s the most simple, everyday stories that are still around. I guess that’s because they’re the ones most about people’s lives and they strike a chord with people. Plus, they’re good memories for the subjects of the articles.

Another very surprising thing is that I’m finding my old restaurant reviews on Web sites based all over the country! This does not really make sense to me…but okay.

This review of The N9nz Restaurant & Bar in Boca Raton now appears on a Web site called Austin360.com. So does this review of Sunny Italy Restaurant & Pizzeria Inc. in Wellington. How bizarre is that?