Text 17834, 80 rader
Skriven 2007-07-10 08:46:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: nondairy desserts 802
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Dinner with Ellen and Joel and their kids.

Started off with playing three Mozart sonatas and a Brahms
with Joel, and proceeded to alcohol and large quantities of
food, most of it quite delicious.

As Joel is now a day trader by profession and no longer a
corporate CFO pulling down six figures, the house white wine
is a little $4.99 number, the Pinot Grigio from Beringer,
vintage irrelevant, which is quaffable, with pleasant fruit
notes, a touch of sweetness, and not much else.

With the main courses, Joel pulled out the big gun, the
Castano Monastrell 05 (Yecla), to which Robert Parker gives 90
points - a rich, plummy wine that I guessed as Mediterranean
but even with prompting couldn't get closer than Spain. Mint
and ripe berries on the nose. Plums, licorice, a hint of chocolate.
$7 a bottle.

Burgers were of the interesting variety - I tend to prefer plain
meat, maybe a touch of salt and pepper; Ellen puts onions and
herbs and A-1 into the mix, making more of a meatloaf than a
burger. Wieners came from the company into which the sister of the
rabbi had married or was going to marry - I didn't have one this
time but remembered them from last time as kind of like Hebrew
National, i.e., wholesome and pleasantly garlicked. Carol, who
likes burgers and dogs, had one of each, maybe two of the latter.

There were also two inch-thick ribeyes. Joel put them on, and
Ellen and I told him to take one off as soon as it was browned
on both sides: he demurred, but we prevailed, saying we'd eat
it even if it was raw. The other he cooked quite a bit longer,
until Ellen gave him a hard time about this. Joel said that it
was still too raw, and the kids wouldn't eat it; Ellen said that
he was right that they wouldn't eat it, because it was too done.
So out it came. The result: ours was rare, just a bit above
blue; his was medium. The girls had some of ours; nobody but
Joel ate any of his (well, I did have a bite, and I did admit
that it was perfectly palatable). The wine went excellently.

The veggies, also done on the grill, were asparagus (nice) and
yellow squash (Carol liked it).

And dessert! which had to be Pareve, of course, so it was a
wonderful opportunity to try dairy substitutes.

Celestial Seasonings Tea Dreams:

Imperial white peach - nobody liked this one, as it tasted
like sweet white nothing with canned peaches in it.

Chocolate caramel chai was okay, very spicy with cinnamon
and clove, some chocolate hiding the bitterness of the
Rice Dream base, the promised caramel flavor fugitive
(whether or not this was a mercy is open to debate).

Both are rice-based, and I found them less attractive than the
soy products below.

Soy Dream soygurt products:

Green tea was quite strong, a little bitter, somewhat musty
tasting; people (except me) seemed to like it.

Butter pecan was, Ellen said, too buttery to be Pareve. It
did an amazing job of masquerading as ice cream. Lots of
chopped pretty fresh pecans.

And the Whole Soy & Co. lemon ginger nondairy frozen yogurt -
this was quite creamy and mild; everyone but Ellen found it
pleasantly gingery but not very lemony; she thought it lemony
and not gingery enough. It was 5 to 1, so we figure her taster
was off this evening.

The three soy desserts were favored over the rice-based ones,
I think unanimously. My favorites were the butter pecan
Soy Dream followed by the Whole Soy lemon ginger. I'd not go
out of my way for any of the other three.
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