Back to the Boat

We are on our way to the boat tonight, again, for the millionth time. I sure am getting sick of that 2 1/2 hour drive. It should take us about two days to get her in the Ft. Myers/Naples area. I will be back next week with pictures of our adventure down the Okeechobee Waterway. It will be like a mini-sail blog post.

I tested out my pressure cooker last night. Karen just got her wisdom teeth out on Friday, so I was trying to make her something that was easy for her to chew. I cooked up some Argentinian style beef in red wine and seasoned with herbs and spices. It only cooked for 40 minutes, but it came out of the pressure cooker like it had been cooking all day long! She appreciated the fact that she could get some substantial food in her tummy. Two days of eating yogurt and pudding gets old I imagine. I am going to cook up some chicken in red wine and tarragon on the boat tomorrow night with my pressure cooker. We have to be conscious of our fuel on board so it helps if we don't let pots simmer for hours. The chicken should only take 10 minutes or so. I got a Chilean Puerto Viejo Carmenere to celebrate being back on the boat. The first night we ever spent on the boat, we opened a bottle of wine that we brought back from Chile. It kind of tasted like vinegar because we had transported it across the country so many times in our hot cars. Oh well, we drank it anyways. We were too excited about our new boat to care. So I figured since this is basically a renewing relationship with Pegasus, that I would get us another Chilean wine. Hopefully this one doesn't taste like vinegar.

I'd never really heard of the Carmenere varietal previously, but it is essentially the "lost grape." It was considered one of the six original Bordeaux grapes, the others being Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot. It was transported to Chile in the mid-1800's, just before the phollexera virus ravaged Europe, destroying many varietals, including Carmenere. When the Carmenere grape was first grown in Chile, it was thought to be Merlot. It wasn't until years later in 1994, when they did extensive testing that the so-called Merlot grape was actually found to be Carmenere. Since then, the Chileans have capitalized on their new found varietal and have been producing some outstanding wines. The Carmenere grape is in between a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Merlot, the tannins are softer than that of a Cabernet with cherry, fruit, smoke, spice and earth. It is typically not meant to age.