SaltShaker

 Pinot Noir is about finesse, elegance and clarity. It’s one of the few varietals translucent enough to show soil, climate and the winemaker’s hand. At its best, it can be the most complex and satisfying elixir you’ll ever consume. At its worst it can be thin insipid swill you wouldn’t even serve to relatives.”
- Mike [...]

 Life, you know, we gotta take it all in stride.”
- Alberta Wright, Chef/Owner, Jezebel’s
Buenos Aires - For almost exactly the same 23 years I lived in New York, there was a restaurant on the southeast corner of 9th Avenue and West 45th Street, called Jezebel’s. It was, to some, an “upscale soul food” dining spot, [...]

 In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”
- J.R.R. Tolkein, The [...]

 Light the candles and pour the red wine into your glass. Before you begin to eat, raise your glass in honor of yourself. The company is the best you’ll ever have.”
- Daniel Halpern, Poet, How to Eat Alone
Buenos Aires - A group of local wine afficionados contacted me for a little private wine tasting here [...]

 Si dice di una cosa che succede per caso, o meglio in modo inaspettato.”
- Slangopedia
Buenos Aires - Loosely, I’d translate the above as “You say this when something just happens, or happens in an unexpected manner.” The word being defined is damblee, and, it happens to be the name of a new discovery here in [...]

 All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.”
- Dr. Carl Sagan, Scientist
Buenos Aires - For those of you not familiar with bit-torrents, don’t go searching to find out, they’re addictive little [...]

 The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.”
- Alexander Hamilton, Statesman
Buenos Aires - I have a little place that I’ve [...]

 Attention K-Mart shoppers, there’s a blue light special on…”
Buenos Aires - It was more than a moment of indecision, it was days of indecision. Two events on the calendar for the weekend - Independence Day in Mexico and the traditional New Year’s Day in Persia, long before it became Iran. Was it to be one [...]