Big Weekend

So you may say, "Sarah and Greg, it has been ridiculously, absurdly long since your last update; what are you hiding from us?" And for most of that time, the answer would be "Nothing." We get up, we go to work, we come home, rinse and repeat. But seeing as it's more than two months since the last post (and a few days before our eleventh monthiversary), I believe I'll tell the story of this weekend.

Friday we went to a super cool event called Savor (and in fact we are visible, if not recognizable, in one of the photos now cycling on that page). Forty-eight craft breweries each brought two beers, and a catering company supplied canapes, soups, and chocolates for pairing. Rather than just wandering around and tasting at random, we attended a class (sorry, a salon) on beer and cheese pairing, presented by just about the most knowledgeable beer guy we'd ever heard. His name is Garret Oliver, he wrote the award-winning book The Brewmaster's Table (a good Greg gift if you're in need of one), and if he's giving a presentation within 100 miles of you, go.

After the class, then we wandered around and tasted at random.

Saturday was Wine in the Woods, where we also refrained from wandering and spent more time in classes. Even though the event wasn't overly crowded (it was the same day as the Preakness), it's still frustrating to push through clots of people for a measly ounce of wine, so we attended all four demonstrations, where you sit comfortably while people bring you two ounces of wine. Now we're talking. The presenters in the demo tent are from the local branch of Tasters Guild, and every year we leave the demo tent, brochure in hand, with every intent of joining. Maybe this year.

We went to the "Wine 101" and white wine classes, then left the tent briefly for provisions (cheeses and jerky), returning for red wines and dessert wines. We were unimpressed with the desserts they chose, and one of the reds had been selected for demonstration specifically because it was so bad, but we always enjoy the presentations themselves, and we always learn something. This year it was how to open a champagne bottle (and, conversely, how to open a screw-top with at least some level of panache--apparently something sommeliers have been concerned about for some time).

After the demos, the event is only open for another hour and a half, much of which we spent dancing to a fun band called King Teddy, who had brought a following of dancers from northern Virginia. Once the area in front of the stage became too muddy, we grabbed a few more samples and headed out, making this the first wine festival we ever attended without buying anything!

Sunday we participated in the first ever Washington Post Hunt, organized by Dave Barry, Gene Weingarten, and Tom Shroeder, who have been doing a similar thing for 20 years in Miami. We met up with a bunch of folks from the National Puzzlers League (another club we're not members of), divided ourselves into teams, and had a good time despite not coming close to winning. The hunt began with five puzzles to be solved in three hours, followed by a metapuzzle to be solved as quickly as possible. We solved the first group in about an hour (and most of the time was taken up by walking from one clue to the next), broke for lunch with an air of confidence, and then everything went downhill from there. If you're interested in a play-by-play, Eric Berlin's experience was very similar to ours (although his team did get one notch closer to the finish line).

After the hunt, the NPL crowd + us went out for dinner, then visited a bar near where I went to school that I had mysteriously never visited. The legendary Brickskeller boasts an astounding beer list, which we subsequently chipped away at for several hours. Our waitress was phenomenal: we're give her ideas like "I like Harp" or "less hoppy than that last one," and she'd flip through the list for a few seconds before coming up with something great...or at least unique.

We ended up having so much fun with the NPLers that we missed the last metro out of town! The bad news is, getting a cab in DC at midnight on a Sunday ain't easy, but the good news was it wasn't nearly as expensive as I had guesstimated.

And as if that weren't enough already, on Monday Sarah learned that her project team for her technology class had been selected as runners-up for the annual Dean's Award for their final project, "Recipe Republic." It's hard to feel bad about coming in second when (a) you didn't know about the award to begin with, and (b) the people who beat you are PhD candidates.

So how's that for an update?

Quiet Spring

More than two months since the last update? No wonder people complain. Fortunately, you're not missing much.

Earlier this month, we went to Illinois to celebrate Sarah's Uncle Don and Aunt Carol's 50th wedding anniversary. We stayed at the nearest hotel, which was apparently the fanciest hotel in town; the turndown service included cookies and milk, and they laid out our bathrobes and slippers, too, as well as starting a fire in the fireplace. Not bad. The bathroom was larger than our hotel room in London.

The official festivities were on Saturday afternoon (March 1), and featured a buffet lunch, a slideshow, and some brief but heartfelt speeches. Later, we adjourned to an Irish bar in St. Charles for many beers. Many, many beers. Sunday, we lunched at Mill Race Inn before stopping by the Olsons to hang out even less formally with the other out of town guests. There might have been beer there, too. Oh, and we picked up a few bottles at Fox Valley Winery, too. We're really not the lushes it may appear, but when the opportunity arises...did we mention Greg bottled a lager last week?

Sarah's still in school, although this week is spring break. Her completely pathetic (but completely mandatory) new personal home page is here. Don't laugh: she got 100 out of 100 on it. The other class is about how to be a better reference librarian; anti-Google rants are common, yet futile.

Today we finished up the at-home mail-in version of the crossword tournament. Preliminary results imply that Sarah might have beat Greg again, but we won't know for sure for several weeks.

Belated Christmas Update

...and bonus belated six-month-iversary update. Post-Christmas, Sarah's amazon.com wish list is now only three pages long (in the condensed mode), she can take pictures of virtually anything from here, and Greg has burned off his soft palette with Blenheim's "Extra Hot" Ginger Ale. In tech news, the household gained an iPhone, a Wii, and a Nintendo DS, meaning that even if we do leave the house, we still have internet access and Super Mario. Last night, we went out to dinner and baked bread simultaneously, so this morning we had really really homemade French toast.

Last semester, Sarah squeaked out A's in both classes, so the bar has been set fairly high. Based on one of the textbooks for spring ("This is called a CPU. Can you spell CPU?"), hopes are high for a continuation of the trend. Plus, since Sarah has no Tuesday night classes, we can return to weekly Lindy Hop; last week was the inevitable "Hell Night," the first class of the session, where Greg's heart rate didn't return to normal until the next morning. Fun!

As karmic retribution for having an otherwise dreadful work week, Sarah got an Army Achievement Medal on Thursday (for those of you not familiar with Army medals, that's basically one notch above a little pat on the head), and came in second place in the "chilled dough creations" category of a cookie baking contest on Saturday. It was kind of a neat idea: entries had to have 26 cookies, two for judging and two dozen for the USO to box up and send to Iraq and Afghanistan. We'd love to share the winning recipe, but we don't know which of the three entries placed. It's either something from verybestbaking.com, or "Cinnamon Stars," which is just premade sugar cookie dough plus some red-hots beaten to death with a hammer. It ain't art.

Happy...Whatever!

Greg got a big shiny award today, from a project he'd worked on last year. The award has a name, but since it's been given for 17 years--to individuals and groups--and I can only find three mentions of it online, I'm guessing I shouldn't be the person making the fourth mention, you know? Anyway, congratulations Greg!

We celebrated with dinner at Iron Bridge Wine Company, a tiny but classy restaurant where we'd tried to go for my birthday, but failed. We used something we learned from Capitol Grille: instead of getting a bottle of wine and hoping it matched well with anything we might order, we ordered by the glass. This meant I got a super dry white with my appetizer cheese assortment, and a mild red for the beef entree. And a crazy Uruguayan dessert wine with my flourless chocolate cake. If you're gonna celebrate, celebrate.

The Capital Grille

Look, don't even bother arguing with me here: no matter what you had for dinner last night, our dinner was better. This statement is non-negotiable.

As a wedding gift, the Simpsons gave us dinner at the Capital Grille Tysons Corner, over which Sue apparently wields an inordinate amount of power. This became clear when we walked in, and the folks at the host desk all but kowtowed when we introduced ourselves as the Clark party. The poor girl who tried to show us to a normal table was stopped by another host who explained, "Jocelyn is coming to greet them."

Marketing manager Jocelyn Fox took us through the restaurant into the kitchen and introduced us to chef Jeff Surma, a man who loves his job. We suited up with chefs' jackets as our server Walter poured champagne, and we began picking at the four appetizers waiting for us: bacon-wrapped scallops, asparagus wrapped in thinly-sliced beef with a very mild horseradish cream sauce, new potatoes with creme fraiche and caviar, and pastry pouches full of brie and almonds. We quickly realized the futility of trying to pace ourselves.

Jeff explained the restaurant's signature food, dry-aged beef. The beef is aged about two weeks in a locker kept at 32 degrees and 85% humidity; it reduces in size about 35% as the meat's own enzymes tenderize it and the flavors intensify with loss of water. We peeked into the locker, where "only" $35,000 worth of beef was waiting for butchering (as opposed to the $100,000 the New York restaurant normally stocks, since this smaller location "only" does about $7.5 million business annually).

Our first assignment was to make a citrus salsa for our first course. Greg and I were the first to try cutting the fruit as Jeff had shown us, slicing off the ends to make a flat surface for it to stand on, then running the knife just under the rind, then cutting out each section and discarding the seeds. What took Jeff maybe 90 seconds to demonstrate was taking us about five minutes per fruit. Luckily Walter was keeping the champagne glasses full. Greg surrendered his place at the cutting board to Jenn so he could get back to the appetizers, and Jeff immediately noticed she was a little more skilled than the rest of us. I think she did two or three oranges in the time it took me to cut one lime. I gave up and returned to the brie pockets while Jeff demonstrated dicing techniques and Greg struggled to follow. With three cuts, Jeff reduced a bell pepper to a flat rectangle, which he chopped into regular strips, perfect eighth-inch cubes, and decorative diamonds. He started mixing his salsa (mild, by request of Jenn and Brian) as Greg carefully removed the seeds from a Thai chili for his hotter version.

Meanwhile, since the four appetizers were nearly gone, Jeff had Walter bring us pan-fried calamari with hot cherry peppers, officially described as "Calamari sautéed in garlic butter until golden crisp. Then tossed with a house blend of peppers and scallions for a nice, fiery finish." Clearly this was too spicy for the champagne, so we opened a fun California wine called Conundrum.

Jeff heated olive oil in a small skillet over a little portable burner that had been set up for the occasion, and sprinkled black pepper and sea salt on some massive hand-harvested sea scallops, which Jenn loaded into the pan to sear. Once both sides had carmelized, Jeff put them in a 400-degree oven for a few minutes. When they were done, he brought over some huge onion rings which he set on plates, settling a scallop on each one. He added the citrus salsa, a cilantro cream sauce, and greens, and Walter brought a New Zealand sauvignon blanc called Tohu (he caught Jocelyn trying to drink the previous wine with this course, took the glass from her and poured it into the sink).

When we had finished our scallops, Jocelyn led us into the dining room where gift baskets were waiting on our table, along with our personalized menu for the evening, topped by a haiku from Sue:
Fine food, superb wine,
Newlywed celebration,
A gift sent with love.

We were now a wine ahead, so I don't know what it was that Walter brought with the "second" course (fourth, by my count), but of course it nicely balanced with the mild food, a perfectly round tower of grilled portabella mushroom and roasted red pepper layered with goat cheese, topped with a sprig of basil. When Jenn told the server she was allergic to portabellos, they scanned her brain and determined what she wanted most of all was a tomato and mozzarella salad. Okay, maybe there wasn't a brain scan, but that's the first thing they suggested, and it's certainly a Jenn favorite.

Jocelyn appeared with prints of some photos she'd taken earlier in the kitchen. By this time, we were already amazed by how great the experience was. Every one of us had a plastered-on smile (my face was starting to hurt, actually), and we were repeatedly rendered speechless by the food, the service, everything. When we were able to speak, it was generally pithy stuff like "Oh my God!" and "This is so great!" and "Oh my God!" again. At first I said I wanted the lifestyle where you eat like this at least once a week, but eventually we decided that even once a year would be fine. Fantastic, actually.

The third course was "oven baked barramundi with grilled asparagus, fennel, roasted tomatoes with lemon butter," and it was served with the first red of the evening, a tremendously fragrant pinot noir by Acacia. Definitely my favorite wine of the night. It was around this time that we noticed that each course was substantial enough to constitute a meal, and we hadn't even gotten to the dry aged beef yet! Now on the fifth wine, the rampant smiling was moving more toward giggling.

Next, "Kona rubbed dry aged sirloin with shallot butter and Sam's mashed potatoes" with a Beringer cabernet sauvignon. The potatoes were absolutely wonderful; according to the website, "We blend Red Bliss potatoes with sweet cream, butter and salt for a blissfully good side dish." We couldn't figure out what the steak had been rubbed with--Brian guessed cinnamon--until we looked at the menu; for a bunch of non-coffee-drinkers, we sure made some serious dents in the coffee-rubbed sirloin. Greg was the only one to finish his; the rest of us surrendered fairly early, and Walter neatly packed the leftovers.

I didn't really care what the "assorted homemade desserts" were, since I knew from the menu that they'd come with Canadian icewine. It turned out to be all of the desserts: eight full-size desserts for four people who had already been eating for two and a half hours. Jeff personally delivered one of the two trays, and I'm afraid we might have ignored him slightly, having been distracted by cheesecake, berries in creme Anglaise, coconut cream pie, double chocolate brownies with homemade mint ice cream, flourless chocolate espresso cake, key lime pie with pistachios, creme brulee, and chocolate hazelnut cake. It killed me how much we left on the plates! I, Sarah, was too full! We had hit Food Coma at least two courses ago, and were looking for a place to lie down for a few minutes. Greg only finished the creme brulee because he was shoveling it mindlessly into his mouth as though in a trance. Walter packed up anything that was likely to travel at all well, then brought a second icewine, presumably because I had literally applauded the first.

Jenn had been drinking sparkling water all along, and it became clear that she'd be the one driving home, bless her. We were on our eighth wine (some of which I for one had gotten refills on), and between that and the fact that our bodies were now wholly devoted to the task of digestion, we weren't useful for anything other than giggling. When we noticed we were the only customers left, we left a relatively paltry tip on the table despite Walter's protestation that it wasn't necessary ("we want to," explained Brian), gathered up our leftovers and gift baskets, and headed out.

Cheap Pics!

If you're planning to print photos from kodakgallery.com but haven't gotten around to it, this is the weekend to do it. Enter coupon code LOVE2SAVE and take 25% off your order, including prints. I just saved over $46 with that code! Um...please don't do the math to figure out how many prints that means I got. Seriously.