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Wines…90 points for $10

Ok to be honest with you I like to drink wine. Ok to be really honest with you I love to drink wine. I am mostly a red drinker but, if the food calls for a white I am fine with that. Being a wino though isn’t cheap. I would love to be able to drop $40 or $80 a night on a few bottles of great wine but, my bank account just doesn’t seem to let me do that and there are this little things called billed that I guess I need to pay also. So, I had to ask myself can I still drink good wine on a budget? Or, do I need to switch over to Miller Lite permanently?

No! I have to still drink wine. But, how can I afford it? Never to be discouraged I came up with a challenge for myself. Only drink 90 plus point wines and never spend more then $10 a bottle. While this was my Holey Grail Quest. I started by searching online on some online wine shops. For those of you who haven’t taken a look at these online shops they are really fantastic. You can search by, varietal, region, price, country, and wine score. One of my personal favorites is www.winex.com. They have a great selection and a great search tool. Normally you can count on an additional $2 a bottle shipping and handling fee. Even with that fee their prices are normally marked down enough to compensate for the additional cost. I started creating my list from the info that I dug up on the internet and forwarded that list to my blackberry so that when I was in the wine store searching for bargain buys I wouldn’t have to really on my not so reliable memory. Also I could always add to the list if I found a new one at the store.

To be honest I was amazed by how many great wines there are out there that are 90 points and under $10. I would go to my local wine shop and buy a few to try and then if I liked them I would search for the lower price either online or at the local shop and buy a case. Needless to say its been a pretty fun experiment and the research fairly rewarding. The winner so far? Well…for my personal tastes I like the PENFOLDS 2006 KOONUNGA HILLS SHIRAZ CAB blend. I found it at Costco for $7.99 a bottle. It will go with just about anything from pizza to a steak. You really don’t have to spend more then $10 to get a truly great wine.

$0.79 Chicken

The other day I saw that whole chicken was on sale at a local market for $0.79 a pound. For those of you who aren't bargain shopper that's a great deal. So I bought 3 birds (that was the limit).  Whole roasted chicken makes a great meal and at about $0.89 per serving for four it doesn't get much cheaper then that.  Throw in some brown or wild rice and some salad you're looking at maybe a $1.50 per person. 

I think a lot of people look at a whole chicken and say to them selves what the hell do I do with that?  You really have a ton of choices when it comes to a whole chicken. Can cut it up and grill it, roast it whole, shred it up for tacos, or fried chicken. 

The point being that know when something in the store is on sale and if it's a basic item buy a bunch!

The Slow Cook…

Over the past few year slow cooking has become more and more popular.  There are even clubs and societies dedicated to slow cooking.  With slow cooking being a friend to cheaper cuts of meat it was often the only way poor folks could have meat for dinner.  Now we have start to see these peasant dishes on some of the menus at the trendiest restaurant out there.  Osco Bosco?  Its just braised veal shank.  If it wasn't slow cooked for ours it would be a leathery chewy cut of meat.

There might not be a better way to get all of the fantastic flavor out of a piece meat other then slow cooking.  Slow cooking breaks down all of the great fat and connective tissue found in tougher and cheaper cuts of meat.  There really might not be anything better then a slow cooked pot roast on a cold winter day.  My mom used to make me us pot roast all the time when we kids.  She would always served it on top of a bed of buttered egg noodles and a couple spoon full of sauce. 

Whenever I heard people talk about pot roast I always see them cringe at the thought of their mom's dried out lump of meat. Here are a few tips to make sure you don't end up with that dried up saw dust piece of meat.

Tips for Slow Cooking:

Braise the meat in something other then water.  Try a low sodium broth, wine, or a tomato sauce.

Brown it first! It's of the utmost importance to brown the meat before you braise it. All of those little brown bits at the bottom have all the flavor.

Be patient sometimes it takes a while for the meat to break down.