Twisted Pinot Grigio

Description on the bottle:

Here is a Limerick of a wine that is Twisted.

In a glass, it cannot be resisted.

Whether a Cab, Chard or Merlot, Pinot Grigio, Zin - all great to know.

Pour me another glass I insisted!

Twisted Pinot Grigio is an enchanting taste of summer - regardless of the season.  This crisp white wine sparkles with bright Meyer lemon drops, pear, yellow apple, and subtle hints of cinnamon spice.  Enjoy this delightful sipper with fish tacos, angel-hair pasta with bacon and fresh peas, peel and eat shrimp, or Cobb salad.

Sarah says:  I didn't drink this wine with any of the foods listed above, and it was still very enjoyable.  I had it on Christmas Eve with my in-laws as we ate ham and sat around talking.  I figured a pinot grigio was a safe bet for a group of people, and it worked out wonderfully.  We all ate, drank, and enjoyed the night.  The wine was delicious, and the company was comfortable.  I wished we could have spent more time together, but the kids had to get to bed so Santa could come!  I would certainly get this wine for a family function again.   

Overall rating:  Thumbs up

Sarah says:  The sticker on this bottle says it has won 18 gold medals, and 5 best buys since 2007.  While I believe the wine is worth all these awards, my cooking as I finished this bottle up last night, was not.  Without going into the details, we've decided that Liam is going gluten free.  We decided this a few weeks ago, and have been low gluten since, meaning I've been giving him special bread, pasta & cereal, but I haven't really been looking into much else.  But starting 1/1 - we're going all the way.  To prepare, over the past few weeks I've been reading and reading and reading all about this diet.  I think I have enough knowledge to jump in with my nose unplugged.  I've also learned over the past few weeks, that gluten free isn't cheap.  The frugal side of me, and the mom-that-wants-whats-best-for-her-kids side of me are having a huge conflict.  To attempt to settle the fight between them, I decided I'd try to cook some gluten free muffins.

So are so many things wrong with this plan that I don't even know where to begin.  The first being, I do not cook.  And even worse, I do not bake.  I can occasionally cook a semi-decent dinner, but baking, baking just never works out for me.  But, all this reading I've been doing - those stinking authors had me thinking it would be easy.  The second issue, my lack of cooking/baking has me with a lack of tools.  I pretty much have one mixing bowl, one spoon, a hand held mixer that was probably $5 on a black friday special, and a blender that is 10+ years old, with blades that are probably super worn down from making margaritas!  My kitchen is not adequately prepared for the cooking that this diet demands.  Third, I was going to bake with ingredients that I never heard of, could barely pronounce, and sounds like they are a little finicky to begin with.  This project was doomed from the start.

Either way - after putting the kids to bed, I poured myself a glass of wine, propped open my cook book, and got started.  First task was to make some rice milk - here's the thing, the recipe called for any type of milk - and we aren't going casein free (casein is basically the protein in dairy products, kind of like gluten is the protein in wheat), but from all that I've read, it sounds like it might be a good idea too.  While I'm only focused on gluten right now, I figured I might as well pull out the casein where I can.  So I made rice milk - which looks as gross as it sounds by the way.  Then, I put my yeast packet into my rice milk, which was supposed to bubble for 5 min, it did for about 4 seconds...  then I melted some butter, which resulted in a stick of butter exploding all over the inside of my microwave.  I'm trying to blame the end results on the fact that I only ended up with a half a stick of butter, since the rest was all over my walls, but I'm thinking that wasn't the problem.  Then, and here is another spot that I may have gone wrong - I decided not to just start with the normal, simple, gluten free muffins.  I figured if I was going to do this, I was going to DO THIS.  I live by the statement, anything worth doing is only worth doing if you give 110% into it.  I was not about to make regular muffins, I was going to make the super charged healthy muffins, where you sneak in purred veggies and applesauce without you kid even knowing.  So I threw some of that in there too.  Then I baked.  Here is what came out...

After 2 hours of mixing, measuring, swearing, and explosions, I got 12 of these babies.  Not bad looking, right?  I was actually pretty pleased with myself after cleaning up.  I put 6 in the freezer, and 6 in a Tupperware for the next day.  Liam and Mary saw them the next morning and couldn't wait to get their hands on them!  Mary called them cupcakes, Liam called them treats.  We were so excited, we didn't bother waiting for dinner (their original purpose - since they are more like rolls), we dug into them for breakfast.  Liam shoved a whole half into his mouth, and about 3 chews later starting dry heaving and gagging.  I tried to tell him to take a deep breath, chew slowly and swallow.  It didn't work.  I happened to be emptying the dishwasher at the time, so I had a sauce pan in my hand, which I threw in front of him and he threw up the entire thing.  I tried to convince him he took too big of a bite and to try again, taking smaller bites... he refused.  Mary took one small bite - her excitement quickly drained from her face and she pushed her plate away and walked away from the table in complete silence, but turned back to give me a glance of ultimate disappointment.  How dare I give her such awful food?  I figured they were just being difficult, how bad could they be?!  Bad... trust me.... so so bad.  I popped a piece into my mouth.  At first, I thought, "this isn't the best thing I've ever eaten, but it's ok"... a few chews later, I thought, "oh god... this is bad, chew slowly, breath, swallow... swallow... darn it sarah, swallow!" A few seconds later... I spat it out in the sink.  

My poor children!  I tried to kill them with these awful healthy muffins!  I seriously don't even know how to describe the taste - lets just say it's not something you want to eat.  They even smell bad!  I was going to just toss them out, but my frugal side smacked me upside the head and told me I spend $15 on all those ingredients, they were not going in the garbage.  So, for dinner, I heated them a bit, hoping that would make them better, and smothered them in ranch dressing, which kind of defeats the purpose of making them casein free, but whatever.  Mary still refused, but Liam ate it, which I guess is all that really matters.  I didn't personally taste it this way, I figured if they still wouldn't go for it... then I'd just take their word for it.  That's good parenting right there!  Maybe tomorrow I'll put BBQ sauce on them, BBQ sauce is good on anything.  Wait maybe I should look and see if BBQ sauce is gluten free first, shoot, I'm still new at this!

So anyways - my first adventure in gluten free baking didn't go so well.  Even with that disaster, tomorrow I'm going to try making bread!  I just can't force myself to keep spending $5 for 14 slices of bread when I used to spend $1 for 30!  Please wish me luck - any advice is welcomed! 

:-)