General Tso’s Chicken is one of the Wine Peeps favorite dishes, and we especially enjoy it prepared extra spicy. An added consideration in planning and preparing our challenging wine pairing meal this time is that John has been diagnosed with a gluten allergy, so I prepared the dish gluten free and was pleasantly surprised with […]

The Wine Peeps enjoy Taco Tuesday each week. It is a fun time to get together, the meal is an easy one to prepare, and we enjoy the blend of the spicy flavors in the food. Our menu generally consists of beef tacos, refried beans, Mexican rice, and hot salsa. We usually enjoy margaritas on […]

Washington State produces many excellent wines from many different grape varieties. There is much debate as to which red wine Washington does best. Some say Syrah, others Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon, and others red Bordeaux-style blends. This month’s wine tasting dinner featured Bordeaux-style red blends from Washington State, all from the 2008 vintage. It was […]

It is cookie season! This is the time of year when Girl Scout Cookies are sold. Many of us have an assortment of these cookies that we’ve purchased from daughters of friends and from young ladies selling them outside grocery stores and coffee shops. The other day a friend mentioned enjoying a Girl Scout Cookie […]

Recently, I came across a recipe for beef lettuce wraps with wowee sauce. This sounded delicious and seemed like a great prospect for one of our challenging wine pairings. Seasoned ground beef topped with shredded carrots and sliced water chestnuts garnished with wowee sauce was fabulous wrapped in the Boston lettuce leaves. Wowee sauce is […]

This month I decided to do something a little different with our challenging wine pairing. Rather than do the usual pairing with a meal, we decided to do a pairing with a dessert. German chocolate pie is something that I’ve used many times as the dessert with our tasting dinners. On most occasions, I have […]

The Rhone Valley in France is divided into two parts, appropriately referred to as the northern Rhone and the southern Rhone. While the northern Rhone produces mostly single varietal wines, the southern Rhone is known for producing blends. The most famous AOC in the southern Rhone is Chateauneuf-du-Pape, which is well known for its Grenache-based […]

Beef brisket is usually associated with barbeque; however, at this time of year, cooking outside is not always feasible or enjoyable. Having been in the cattle business in Texas for many years, I’m especially partial to the Texas Beef Council whose website offers some great recipes. For this month’s challenging wine pairing, we had two […]

While I generally prefer flavorful but simple-to-prepare recipes, I decided to make Greek moussaka for this month’s challenging wine pairing meal. Although there are short-cut versions, I wanted to follow the standard recipe. Moussaka is a little like lasagna in that there are layers—potatoes, eggplant, cheese, ground lamb (although beef can also be used) with […]

The Food Lover’s Guide to Wine by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg is a great book that gives very interesting and valuable information and suggestions for the food lover, or anyone else, who wants to learn more about wine. Those of you who are regular readers of Wine Peeps know that the book What to […]