Thursday, November 17, 2016

Sunset Magazine wine offer


The offer is made by First Leaf through Sunset Magazine. And it seemed like a very good offer, but with a hook. These three bottles were only $15.00 and a membership that sends bottles thereafter at triple the cost, that is still a very good price when you like experimenting with wine. 

But I don't. 

Every time I drink a glass of wine the whole time I'm thinking, "I wish this were a Pepsi," but now that Pepsi is politicized in such a low class manner I've lost my taste for that. Poof. Gone. Just like that. 

This is for other people. For visitors. I hope it's okay. I have no way to know. I have wine in there that's languished for a decade. Sometimes I take out a bottle to use for cooking. 

That reminds me. One time I prepared a brine for Thanksgiving turkey. In a cleaned out utility bucket. I didn't have a cooler then so I kept adding ice through the day and lot at night. So it kept being diluted as it went. On impulse I dumped in a bottle of wine. Not the best way to go. Health inspectors would shut me down. And that turned out the most tender and moist turkey I ever produced. Baked it rapidly. It beat all of the turkeys my mother baked twice each year for holidays for decades using her slow roasting and constant basting method. When I cut a slice from the breast, as they show on t.v., the slice folded like paper and veritably melted in my mouth when I ate it. Total win. So then, I suggest doing that. Just pick any white wine, like this one here and dump into your bucket. 

Lemme look. 

Oh wait. I'm wrong. Sorry. That one was buttermilk. The wine one was great, truly great, because the wine facilitated carrying the flavors, but the buttermilk turkey was superb. The turkey wouldn't fit in the largest bowl so I used a towel soaked in buttermilk to drape it. It wasn't the prettiest thing when it baked, rather awkward, and there Mum's turkey beat mine for looks, but hers were dry and this buttermilk soaked turkey was the most moist in my whole family's history. My sister carries on with our mother's technique. And they are very good, no complaining, but this one was the most moist of all.

I used powdered buttermilk a bit diluted.


It was ugly


I guess I didn't wipe the buttermilk off enough. 

Maybe I didn't wipe it off at all. 



As for the wine offer through First Leaf, they seem like an upright company. I think they know that a lot of people will bite on the offer but not on the program thereafter. They were ready for people like me. They retuned a very considerate and professional email, perfectly worded tactfully, as if by a diplomat, just so, better than Hillary speaking to Children Defense and with the perfect tone. 

The wine came beautifully packaged to impress. The three bottles nested in pressed cardboard material as egg carton except for three bottles not eggs. With black classy cardboard panel to lift off from the top inner box, attractive, and with a very nice professional welcoming letter. 

I emailed them last night to cancel my account with no explanation and they responded this morning acknowledging the cancellation and graciously extending another offer for $10.00 off each shipment for the first year, and that is a very good offer. It really did force me to reconsider. I could stack up even more bottles, what the heck. Then cancel again after the year is up, unless I get hooked on wine by then.  I like these guys. They really worked me. They got me. I have to appreciate that.  

[Incidentally, I read three times a few weeks ago that the word "moist" is at the top of the list for most despised English words. I haven't a clue why. It seems 100% innocent to me while it bugs the crap out of other people. Nobody explained why.]

3 comments:

ricpic said...

Martha Stewart wraps the turkey in cheesecloth that has been dipped in a mixture of butter and wine (white wine I guess). At a certain point in the roasting process she removes the cheesecloth and then bastes two or three times with the butter/wine mix before done. Says it's to die for.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Martha Stewart's Magazine was known for not testing its recipes. So they were hit and miss.

Which is why I liked America's Test Kitchen, which tends to be more objective. But the idea of cheesecloth should work, so I would try it.

I like wine. I definitely prefer wine to Pepsi.

ampersand said...

I generally don't care for food cooked with wine, with the exception of dry sherry. The sherry leaves a nice flavor in chicken dishes, soups and especially Chinese recipes.
I once followed a Martha Stewart recipe for turkey with cognac. No thanks. Turkey comes once a year, I make it as simple as possible with generous injections of melted butter into the meat.
Buttermilk brine is great with chicken, I also tried it with pork chops. Very tender meat.
The store bought turkeys are already saturated with a brining solution so be careful subjecting them to another salt brine.