“If any form of pleasure is exhibited, report to me and it will be prohibited! I’ll put my foot down, so shall it be… this is the land of the free! The last man nearly ruined this place he didn’t know what to do with it. If you think this country’s bad off now, just wait till I get through with it! The country’s taxes must be fixed, and I know what to do with it. If you think you’re paying too much now, just wait till I get through with it!” as spoken by Rufus T. Firefly.  Finding quotes from cinema, is much harder than finding a menu or a wine these days.  We are getting into a routine, as most people have getting used to the new normal. My Bride is working from 8:30 to 4:30 Monday to Friday and even dresses for work, in case of a Zoom or FaceTime session.  I am doing my blogging and other projects and trying to keep busy, as I do not want to become a growth on the sofa.  At 4:30 we venture out of the house, while the yellow ball is up in the sky and we do our two to three mile walk, in the subdivision, seeing the occasional car, cyclist or the odd couple walking like us; as we haven’t even ventured onto a secondary road, not that there is any traffic there either.  We enjoy our walk and our chat, and by that time of the day the menu has been selected and perhaps the wine as well.  After dinner, she catches up on some of her programs that she enjoys and I go and discover what is new on Social Media and then eventually it is time for bed, so we may repeat the process the next day. 

I have to admit that my Bride is taking all of this in stride, much better than I am.  She is trying to stretch her culinary skills, as long as she doesn’t get out of my comfort zone.  She knows that I am fussy and there are some cuisines that will go unnamed that I would rather miss a meal then eat.  Just call me a Limited Foodie.  Since she has been using the Weight Watchers regiment, she has had good result, though I still have trouble getting used to food being called protein.  We have been eating quite a bit more shrimp and that is fine with me, as long as it is real shrimp and not the plankton that some places try to pawn off as shrimp.  She decided to make Gamberi con Carciofi which we have often at restaurants, but not at home, and it is just the Italian way of saying Shrimp with Artichokes.   She has told me that plain shrimp has zero points as a protein according to Weight Watcher and then the count goes up depending how it is prepared, so I would have to presume that the old Beer-battered Deep-fried Shrimp of my youth would be off the charts and you would have to borrow points from the next day.  Her dinner was excellent along with the rice and vegetables.  And I knew that there was enough to have as leftovers for another night, so that we don’t get into having the same dinners over and over. 

I think that I grabbed the last white wine in the refrigerator, and I guess I will have to reload it with some more whites.  I opened up a bottle of Broadway Vineyards Chardonnay Carneros 2015.  Broadway Vineyards feel that they embody the essence of the Sonoma lifestyle.  In 2002 Jim and Marilyn Hybiske found property just two miles from the Historic Square in downtown Sonoma.  Six of their friends joined them to develop a small vineyard focusing on Chardonnay, Merlot and Syrah.  Work began on the vineyard in 2004 and the first harvest was in 2006.  The results each year got better and better and the wine started being appreciated by others than the original investors and they started to take off.  Since the estate is small, there is only a finite amount of wine that can be produced.  The winemaker for Broadway Vineyards is Philippe Langner who began his career at Chateau Clarke, a Rothschild property in Bordeaux, France.  The three different varietals were chosen very carefully to be planted on the estate from day one to take advantage of the soil and the cool nights and warm days and the area was perfect for the three cool-climate varietals.  The Broadway Vineyards Chardonnay 2015 was hand harvested at the beginning of September, 2015.  The wine was barrel aged for ten months, bottled in mid-June of 2016 and then spent nine months in the bottle before being released.  There were only one-hundred-sixty-two cases of this wine produced.   A soft floral nose and a real good Chardonnay with enough butter to give it a nice finish.  It will be a pleasure to finish the wine when we finish the leftovers, oh the joys of sheltering at home.