Here goes nothing!

Greetings, and welcome to “Food Night”. To get right to the point – Food Night is a small gathering of friends that make it a priority to get together and share some simple but (hopefully) well crafted cuisine and some fantastic wines. Often times Food Night happens on a Friday or Saturday, but sometimes we break it out on a random Tuesday or Wednesday. After all, life is too short to make weeknight meals an afterthought. The enjoyment of sharing the company of friends and acquaintances old and new, of making food to share with friends, and of bringing bottles of exceptional wine to the table to share should not be reserved for Saturday night alone. That’s why any night is fair game for Food Night.

Here’s what happens at food night; I make food, my guests bring wine, and happiness ensues. Pretty simple formula. The food I make is crafted with one eye on the budget*, and the other on taste. And where do taste and cost effectiveness intersect? Simplicity. Simplicity will be a recurring theme at food night, and one that we will explore more later. For now, suffice to say it is much easier to create good food from good ingredients (imagine that).

* The Budget. There is no formal budget here at Food Night. I'm a regular guy, with a regular job, and a plethora of regular bills to pay, so I’m not spending hundreds of dollars to feed my friends. In fact, not counting what I already have in my pantry, it’s not uncommon for me to spend $50 or less to create 3 or 4 courses that will feed 4 people.

A brief note about the wines that we have here at Food Night; most do lean towards the spendy side. We aren't talking stratospheric dollars or anything, but most probably cost more than the typical bottle that is purchased on the way home from work on a given night for most folks. To be clear, great wine doesn’t have to be expensive, and all expensive wines certainly are not great. What I think tastes like gold, you might think tastes like gasoline. But really, there is only so much to say and/or discuss about a wine that is one dimensional or blah or "eh". And the wines really serve as the basis for most of the conversation at Food Night; comparing bottle X to bottle Y, reminiscing about bottle Z we had two Food Night's ago, etc. One of the most enjoyable things about Food Night is hearing what everyone else thinks of the wines for that particular night, predicting who will like what, and being blown away by a relatively unknown bottle that comes out of nowhere to steal the night. The beauty of Food Night is often in the unknown, the chance that tonight your wine universe will be turned upside down by a bottle you never saw coming.

The goals of the blog from both a food and wine perspective are to document, and to (hopefully) entertain a little while tossing out some opinions, recipes, techniques, favorite products, favorite wines, and who knows what else. And if you, the like minded brilliant reader, have any thoughts, comments, suggestions, feedback, complaints, be sure to chime in. We’d love to hear from you.

Incidentally, nobody here at Food Night is a professional photographer by any means, but there will certainly be photos on the blog (they will just not look like this or this). Whatever direction the blog takes from here is somewhat up in the air. My personal hope is that it will be somewhat informative and entertaining to at least one person who does not share my last name, but let’s just see what happens.

Let’s get down to business, since what would the Food Night blog be without… an actual Food Night! I’m excited to say that the first blogged Food Night is fast approaching! I fully intend to come up with a catchy phrase to announce the impending arrival of the next Food Night*, but for now… I’ve got nothing.

* Perhaps something Jack Buck style (“And we’ll see you… tomorrow night!”), or maybe Walter Cronkite style (“And that’s the way it is…. then recite the date of the next Food Night), or maybe even Ron Burgundy style (“I’ve just been handed an URGENT and HORRIFYING news story, and I need ALL of you to stop what you are doing, and listen!”). Who knows. If you have a suggestion, by all means throw it out in the comments!

Before I announce when the first Food Night will be, as an added bonus for your blog reading pleasure, I have procured one special "secret" ingredient for the occasion. I've never worked with this ingredient before, and could not be more excited to smell, see, touch, fondle, smell, caress and smell it. Yes, I said fondle. Should be deece.*

* Deece. As in, an abbreviated form of “decent”. At Food Night when we talk about something being “deece”… we mean it’s special. It’s great. It’s yummy, fantastic, delish, and all around super-duper. If something is “real deece”… then it’s almost too good for words. Thanks in advance for playing along.

Next Food Night; December 12th, 2009.

Initial menu thoughts; Tom’s venison, raw white fleshed fish (possibly ceviche’d… if that’s a word... and even if it's not), fresh pasta.