The A Team

I have written about the A Team before.  This is a group of people who met to cook together.  We have become very good friends.  There are 4 couples, 3 of whom live in the Oakland Hills.  One couple was transferred to New Orleans.  They have come back to join us for A Team events.  And one time we called them while we were putting a meal together.

This group loves good food and wines.  We takes turns hosting and we rotate which courses a couple will prepare.  We have varying skills in cooking, we all shop well at specialty food shops.  The main thing is to have a lovely meal, wonderful wines, and catch up on every one's life.  We are busy people and don't see each other routinely.  Setting up our play dates sometimes takes several tries.

July 2 The A Team had a garden party.  We met at 1:00 and ate, drank, laughed, and had a great time for the five hours.  Below are some pictures of our fun day.  You might think there are a lot of wine glasses everywhere, and you would be correct.

The party begins.  Left Lew, middle Nancy, right Hank.  Lew is getting ready to open the champagne.  Hank is filling little dishes with his gazpacho.  Nancy is readying her corn and scallop amuse-bouche.  At the lower right hand corner is the sous vide machine.  That will be explained later.

The picture pretty much says it all.  Ready to toast The A Team. Also you can see the gazpacho ready for Hank to serve.

We are having some more Hank and Thom appetizers:  duck pate and a truffle chicken liver pate.

Main course sous vide boneless ribs in a red wine reduction sauce.  Lew and Nancy cooked them for 72 hours.  YUMMY!  I made the rice and spinach that was seasoned with  nutmeg.  Also I prepared the stuffed tomato.  The tomato had sauteed mushrooms, garlic, shallots, tomato pulp.  Then I added in panko and freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

                                                     Marty was posting on Facebook.

Nearly finished with this course.  I have moved on to the red wine.  I am a couple of glasses behind the others.

Thom with Corky in his lap.  Corky is 15 1/2 and is allowed to run the world.  Very sweet dog.

After this course we had a wonderful chocolate cake with a caramel ice cream.  I forgot to take pictures of it.  Maybe next time.

The A Team is important to each of us.  We are a type of family.  And like all families we are a little dis functional at times.  We all have quirks, we accept that.  We love each other.  And with that love we miss our other couple.  Karl and Deb you need to make them transfer you back to us.

Wine + Laptop =trouble

Last night my alcoholic laptop drank a full glass of wine.  We shook out the wine, used a hair dryer, and then put the Mr. Laptop in a bag with rice all around and on it.  Mr. Laptop had been drunk before and had gone to Dell rehab.  He is very old and really should not drink.  This morning we cleaned all the rice off and plugged him into life support.  Nothing. So off to the local rehab center.  They did a check up and said pull the plug.  He is too old to waste money on.  They will retrieve the information from the hard drive for me.

So now I need a new laptop.  This is not a purchase we want to make at this time. Marty and I don't share well.  We have to have two laptops.  We checked out Best Buy and Office Depot. Office Depot had a very small selection and they ignored us. We left. Best Buy had lots and lots of laptops and were very helpful.  We were very impressed with the information they gave us.  And it wasn't just talk either.  They pulled up PC magazine and showed us rankings of laptops.  So we bought me a lovely Valentine Day's present, a Samsung laptop.  We got a good deal, but damn it still is a lot of money.

I loaded all the stuff on my new laptop.  I did all the start up stuff.  I have it up and running all by myself.  If I had had Best Buy do all that for me, it would have cost only $99.  Aren't I a smart girl.

Marty and I decided from now on when we are drinking wine, pop, water, milk, whatever around our laptops we will not use a glass.  It is sippy cups from now on.