The term “stream of consciousness” is a literary term that I learned back in the early days of my education.  It was at Wilson Junior High School in Detroit, that I first discovered this device that is used by authors.  I lead my poor reader into this essay, because I had a brief message that we are being invited to a dinner, and the hosts have not decided whether to make Boeuf Bourguignon of Boeuf a la Carotte, both dishes are rather similar in structure.

This is where the stream of consciousness comes into play.  As I am thinking of Boeuf Bourguignon, I automatically think of Beef Burgundy which is the English translation.  Beef Burgundy makes me think of the Burgundy wine district of France, where this dish is historically from.  From Burgundy, I think of one of the first red Burgundy wines that I tried from the village of Gevrey-Chambertin in the Cotes de Nuits.  The wine was one of the selected wines from the Confrerie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, a lofty sounding name of a group that promotes the wines of Burgundy.  This was a great introduction to me, what a wine made from the Pinot Noir varietal should taste like, even though this was not a graded wine.

The other avenue that my mind went from this word play is to a restaurant that alas is no longer in existence.  The Chambertin Restaurant originally was a stand alone building of a restaurant in one end of Dearborn, Michigan and then they moved to the other end of Dearborn and went into a new Holiday Inn Hotel complex, half of the complex was a standard hotel, and the other half was for extended business stays, mainly used by an automotive corporation that is also based in Dearborn.  The Chambertin Restaurant was fine dining, and probably the finest restaurant that could be found in the entire chain of the hotel.  There was a coffee shop/diner, a tavern and a full blown white table cloth restaurant all under one roof, along with a couple of catering halls as well.  To this day, I still long for and can remember some of the great dishes that I was first introduced to because of the Chambertin.  Which finally leads me to the last ponderance, and that is what bottle of wine should I chose for this dinner, and that my friends will be for another day.