Teresa's Table
"My Table's Come Full Circle"
This recipe is certainly silly. It says to separate the eggs, but it doesn’t say how far to separate them.—Gracie Allen
Besides giving me a laugh, Gracie Allen captures the essence of the last couple of months for me. It is certainly silly that I have taken on so much. Let’s see, there was the Houston Culinary Awards in early October. Two weeks later, we co-hosted the 21st annual Caesar Salad Competition and, later that same evening, the James Beard Foundation Scholarship Dinner at the St. Regis. In the midst of these wonderful events, we were working like mad on the October-November issue of My Table, one of our biggest and best of the year, and I began teaching a writing course at Rice University’s School of Continuing Studies. Hurricane Rita hit in the midst of it all while we were developing the final recipe for what you’re reading right now… SideDish.
Like Gracie and her eggs in the recipe, I wish someone had told me how far to separate everything!
What fun it all has been, though, and I can’t tell you how much I look forward to publishing this newsletter. My Table has truly come full circle. For those who have not been with us the past 11 years (shame on you!), My Table magazine had its beginnings as a humble newsletter I began publishing way back in 1994. To my great surprise, people seemed to take to my little rag, and thanks to our extraordinary readers and advertisers we were able to expand into a full-blown magazine, embracing a community that contributes every bit as much to the success of My Table as do the writers, editors, designers and artists who create it.
My Table has undergone many changes over the past decade-plus, as have I, as has the world. But perhaps nothing has transformed our world since the early 1990s as much as the internet. I admit I was not an early adopter of this technology. I didn’t avoid it exactly; I just didn’t have time for it. I will boast (because it’s my webmaster David Chien’s creation) that despite me, the My Table website has won much praise—Texas Monthly named it one of The 100 Best Texas Web Sites—and now, thanks to another business relationship I developed with Tom Hurley, our e-letter, SideDish, is born.
SideDish will not only give us the ability to talk with each other more often, but also to expand our community—something that I have long sought to do. Tom will explain more about the particulars of SideDish below, but what we hope to do best is share the passion we have for the culture of food and for being at table… new tastes, old tastes, unusual food finds, little-known facts, little-known places, tastemakers, undiscovered producers and everything else that surrounds and cements our relationship with food.
Thank you for signing up for SideDish. Please know that, like the My Table original, this newsletter is a work in progress, so we welcome your comments, insights, stories… whatever you want to share with our community. We have a seat for you at the table right here.
Editor's Table
"Welcome to SideDish!"
First I want to thank all of you for signing up for the inaugural issue of SideDish and giving us a look. We have a lot of ideas that will roll out in future issues including the ‘Guest Table’, with contributions from chefs, food producers, wine makers, and other featured ‘foodies’. We’ll have an ongoing recipe section and the SideDish ‘foodspotters’ which will put us throughout the region and keep us abreast of the latest trends and new ideas out there.
So stay with us and give us your input…I don’t want to lean too heavily on food analogies here, but I do believe that our little newsletter has many similarities to a good recipe…if My Table is the original version, SideDish will be its many interpretations as it passes through me and, most importantly, through all of you.
Now I briefly wanted to address a few more ‘administrative’ details about SideDish:
- Our current plan is to publish twice a month with SideDish going out on Thursdays.
- You will receive SideDish from sidedish@my-table.com. Please add this sender to your ‘safe senders’ list or email address book to avoid the newsletter from being mistakenly identified as spam by your internet service provider (ISP) or mail software.
- We will never sell, rent, or otherwise give your email address to a third party.
- We have designed a double opt in sign up for the newsletter. This means that after you subscribe, you will than also have to say ‘yes’ to our confirmation email. This will ensure that only those who really want SideDish get it and you can feel secure in sending it on to friends…they will only begin to get it if they confirm they want it.
Let us hear from you and if you enjoy SideDish, please send it on to friends.
Now…onto the important stuff…WINE!
Fill My Glass
"On The Road to Grapeness"
The road less traveled is probably a good description for how I got to be a wine writer and educator.
In college I started out ordering Blue Nun Liebfraumilch, Lancer’s Rose and Mateus as my “starter” wines as these were very popular at the time. And sweet or slightly sweet wines were an easy introduction to the world of wine, as well as a good way to impress my then girlfriend, now my wife. One night I got crazy and ordered a Saint Emilion to have with steak and the broader world of “dry” wines was opened before my eyes. Years later a delightful Pomerol from France at the Playboy Club in Chicago with my wife sealed my love of wine.
For many years thereafter I worked in sales and regulatory affairs for a major oil company and was blessed with a generous expense account for entertaining customers and government officials which was a big part of the job. To offer my customers maximum enjoyment, I started a self-study program to learn about wine so that I could make wise choices. Sometimes my customers were more knowledgeable about wine than I was and I certainly didn’t want to be embarrassed by choosing a poor wine when I was trying to show appreciation for their business. In fact, as time went on my bosses and peers looked to me for wine guidance, even calling me “Mr. Wine.” I frequently ordered wines that I had read good things about and usually was not disappointed. Sometimes I frustrated bosses (who thought they knew a lot about wine) by, for example, ordering a red Rhone instead of their favorite California Cabernet Sauvignon, but I wanted my customers to have a wide variety of wines as they were entertained.
As I neared the end of my Big Oil career, I started to work part-time at Houston Wine Merchant as well as take formal wine classes. This was all fun and very enjoyable, but it was not with a thought of making it a second career (really a third, but that’s another story). Instead, I decided I’d get into financial planning and started down that path with specialized studies. However, one morning I was shaving and looked in the mirror and asked myself “Do you really like this stuff?” My answer was yes, I really liked it, however it soon became clear to me that while it would be an interesting second career, it would be one full of too much stress—and I’d had enough stress at Big Oil. So I thought what can I do? I gradually realized two things: (1) a big part of every job I’d ever had was educating people and (2) I could combine my love of and interest in wine with that. So, I decided to become a wine educator and wine writer.
I started pursuing formal wine education in a big way, studying at the Culinary Institute of American in Napa Valley, at the Rice University School of Continuing Education, courses and conferences with the Society of Wine Educators and the American Wine Society, as well as individual study. Teresa Byrne-Dodge, publisher and editor of My Table, gave me my first writing job, accepting an article that I wrote about sources of wine education in Houston. As time went on and my skills and her confidence in me increased, I starting taking on more and more difficult writing assignments and started writing for other publications.
I also formed a company called A Class of Wine, LLC, devoted to wine appreciation, education and writing. Today, several associates and I offer wine classes and tastings for consumers, clubs, businesses, and churches to advance their knowledge of wine. We offer periodic public classes in Houston and Georgetown as well as do private classes and tastings around the country. You can learn more about our services at www.aclassofwine.com or by calling me at 512-864-7172.
For SideDish, we’ve decided to call me the Wine Professor. I hate the descriptor of “expert,” because it sounds like that person knows everything there is to know about the subject, when it really is all about continuous learning. One of the things I was fortunate to find out in life is that we should never stop learning and, in fact, should always adopt a “listening” attitude instead of a “telling” attitude. So, as I educate others about wine, I, too, learn in the process. And since I was an adjunct professor for awhile at the University of Houston, the moniker of Wine Professor seems to fit well with my wine, teaching, and learning background.
Wine and all of its facets—grape growing, winemaking, food pairing, and sensory perception—fascinates me. I love helping others learn more about all these facets. So I’m looking forward to sharing information with you about all the faces of wine in a light-hearted, down-to-earth fashion, and in answering your questions about “all things wine.” In this feature, we’ll address interesting, eclectic, and little-known aspects of the wine world as well as some basics to help in your own discovery of wine and its magic.
Together, let’s travel “the road to grapeness.” Don’t be shy about posing those “red hot” wine questions you’ve always wondered about, but were afraid to ask. And along the way, enjoy your wine—responsibly.
Ask the Wine Professor
"How much alcohol are you drinking anyway?"
Question: What makes the cherry, raspberry and other flavors in wine? Are flavorings added? A.W., Austin
Answer: The fruit flavors in wine come from small amounts of chemicals such as terpenes, ketones and aldehydes that exist naturally in the grapes. If the wine tastes like raspberries, it’s from the same chemicals that are found in raspberries. For quality wines, flavorings are not added. Other flavors such as wood come from the aging process.
Question: Do more expensive red wines have less tannin than cheaper reds? Is that why they don’t usually give me a headache? M.A., Houston
Answer: No, expensive reds may have more, the same or less tannin than cheaper wines. It all depends on the fruit and the winemaking processes used. Many people don’t get headaches from tannin, but from higher alcohols than ethanol and histamines that are present in minute quantities. Or, they just drink too much!
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Copyright My Table magazine, 2008
Protected by U.S. Copyright Law {Title 17 U.S.C. Section 101 et seq., Title 18 U.S.C. Section 2319}: Infringements can be punishable by up to 5 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
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