That's rather delightful, erika. I am charmed.

Well, thank you. I literally don't hear that every day.

Completely unrelated to anything y'all are talking about - my company's affiliated winery is offering us 50% off their current release wines (they are much fancier than the wine I naturally gravitate to, they do library releases and have a "tasting salon" rather than a tasting room and even with the 50% off I would not I would not be looking at bottles with these prices at the grocery store or BevMo, but I still kinda feel like buying some? Because it's a good deal? I went through and picked out 8 that sound pretty good and am trying to remember if I like Pinot Noir. Not particularly, I don't think, although I don't dislike it as such, either. There's a "vertical tasting" of 2015-2018 that is intriguing just because vertical tastings are always interesting but would I ever really do that and can I distinguish between pinots enough to make it worthwhile?

Has there ever been a more first world problem? So bougie

I love that problem. I have no advice other than get you some 'o dat.

I will take the validation!

Sounds nice, although I do like whites better. Riesling or pinot grigio.

You take the whites and I'll take the reds, erika, and between us we can cover it all. Riesling is not for me - I don't even like the grapes - so I'm always happy that someone else can enjoy my share

I splurged and got everything I was considering. They will deliver it to my workplace and I feel like having a case of wine under my desk will somehow improve my days at the office as I slowly deplete it (by bringing a bottle home now and then, not by drinking during meetings, as pleasant a prospect as that sometimes seems)

There's a "vertical tasting" of 2015-2018 that is intriguing just because vertical tastings are always interesting but would I ever really do that and can I distinguish between pinots enough to make it worthwhile?

I feel like that would be interesting as a wine flight but not as bottles because I would not open them all at once or drink in quick enough succession to remember how they compared.

Yeah, that's a problem, meara. I mean, in theory I could pour myself a half glass of each and reseal the bottles while I compare, I suppose, but that doesn't really seem satisfactory. Ideally, I think I'd want 3 or 4 other people to sample them with me, but organizing that seems daunting. We'll see.

Mom has confirmed that she ordered thanksgiving dinner from Whole Foods, although not turkey or sweet potatoes this year so we'll be making those. We tried braised turkey legs last year and they didn't take very long and came out great so we are doing that instead of the pre roasted turkey breast that has been our usual. She said WF's sweet potatoes were too sweet, which I don't recall but doesn't surprise me. Our traditional sweet potato casserole recipe is out of one of those huge compendiums of recipes like The Joy of Cooking that starts with "for every cup of sweet potato add..." specific measurements of orange juice and brown sugar and what have you. The way we have always made it is to roast a bunch of sweet potatoes, peel them and mash them, eyeball the results and calculate additions accordingly. Well, one year after I had moved out I tried following the recipe by actually measuring my sweet potatoes (since I was only making enough for me that was much more manageable) and ended up with a much higher concentration of all the additions than how we usually make it, so we must consistently underestimate the initial sweet potato recipe and hence add a lot less sugar. So it makes sense than anyone else's version is going to seem too sweet.

I am chatty today! I don't know where that is coming from.