Hooked on the Bottle

I am self employed. My income goes up and down like the tides. Currently, the tide is low. This situation has put a crimp on my spending as of late. Of course, bills still get paid but my “discretionary” income (I hate that word and I don’t really know why) has dropped major poundage. If spending money took human shape, mine would be Ethiopian. As such, I am loathe to fill my days with shopping excursions where I will be tempted to spend money that I do not have.

As a replacement for my time, I have started to look around my house and try to find little things to do or projects to complete that will cost me a minimal amount of money and yet still give me the sort of satisfaction that I crave.

Now, I’m sure this road has been traveled by many before me. I know I am not the first to learn there are certain joys associated with thrift. For the life of me, though, I just didn’t believe it until now. (Feel free to note the jaded nature of that comment. I was a priss; there is no way around it.) I have been tickled pink to find how elated I feel with some of my recent endeavors.

One of these new projects has been the simple act of soaking off the labels of some of the glass jars that I usually would throw away. I have been keeping the ones that I like for various uses around the house.

Some have been used as vases for flowers that I cut or purchase from the store. Some have been used to house the excess rice or pasta in my pantry. Some have stood as candle stick holders, which look lovely when arranged in large groups. All this use from old glass bottles! Who knew!

I HEART Red Wine...

I love red wine…truly. It was, however, a slow progression to love. My first experience with wine was somewhat near to the feeling you have of both repulsion and attraction to that obnoxious boy on the other side of the class. His arrogance being simultaneously irritating, and yet,…alluring.. (Okay, maybe that was just my childhood crush.) In any case, I had ambiguous feeling about wine when I was first introduced.

I started with Chardonnays. My mother loves Chardonnays. She was more than happy to introduce me to her favorites, all of which I tried and sipped in guilty disgust. I could not bring myself to tell my mother that the dry, earthy taste of this wine was nowhere near enjoyable to me. And yet, I continued sipping, sure that with enough time I would grow to enjoy wine. Alas, it never happened.

To this day I still can’t stand Chardonnays. As a replacement I turned to the sweeter white wines, such as Reislings, but always felt a certain sort of exclusion from the club. I wanted to love wine the way I saw in movies such as Bottleshock and Sideways. I felt nothing near love.

At some point, my mother offered me a glass of Red Zinfandel. It was a deep, smooth wine made by a winery called Tobin James. It was absolutely wonderful! I loved the deeper, less tart taste of red wines. From there, I never looked back. I was hooked on reds.

Currently, I gravitate towards Cabernets and Zins, but my everyday (not that I drink it every day…but I could), go-to wine is a label called Ménage á Trois. This is a blend of reds, 3 to be exact: Zin, Cab and Merlot - hence the provocative title. Here is why I love this wine: it is smooth, fairly light (for a red), and ever-so-slightly sweet. Moreover, its easy to find and inexpensive. If you are new to wine drinking, especially reds, give this red a try. You might be surprised.

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