An Early-December Visit to South Jersey

A week ago Friday, I ventured to South Jersey with the woofers because I wanted to get in a visit to Cape May with Dad, Jean, and Granny before Christmas.

On Friday night, we had dinner at DiLisi, an Italian (duh; it's got three i's in a six-letter name :-) ) restaurant in the Carlls Corner section of Upper Deerfield Township. I enjoyed my eggplant parmigiana and the pre-entree salad that came with a bruschetta-like topping. Dad told the waitress that he didn't want the "prosciutto" on his salad, and Jean and I had to make him feel like a rube for coming up with the wrong double-t–containing Italian-food term.

I felt like a bit of a rube myself at dinner because the 2007 Berger Blauer Zweigelt I'd brought (DiLisi is BYOB) had a bottle cap on it. When I'd had that wine at Gina's place with Gina, Bob, and Jen last month, I'd arrived after the bottle had been opened, so I didn't know it had such an unusual (and not terribly classy appearing) sealer on it.* I picked up three bottles at Prospect Wine Shop last week and was surprised to see the cap on the bottle. At dinner, I joked that I was going to remove the top with my teeth. Lots of wineries, of course, are now using screw caps to avoid the potential for contamination from TCA in cork. But it was still weird to see a bottle of Austrian wine with a cap usually seen on beer bottles.

Here's a shot of Granny posing with the bottle just after we sat down at our table:

And here's a little info on the Blauer Zweigelt grape, which is also known as just Zweigelt. Blauer means blue, and one of the variety's parents is Blaufränkisch. The last part of the name comes from the grape's developer, Austrian viticulturist Fritz Zweigelt.

At Dad and Jean's place, we watched a couple of episodes of Firefly on DVD. Bob had lent me the complete series several months ago, and I was down to the last disc, which has only three shows on it. We also ate some bar cookies I'd baked the night before: Chocolate Chip Blondies. This time, I threw in some pecans, since I had some on hand and I was in the mood for a chocolate-and-nut combination.

On Saturday afternoon, we went to Cape May. We stopped first at Cape May Winery because Jean wanted to pick up some bottles of her favorite CMW red: the Isaac Smith Merlot. Dad had suggested we do a tasting at the winery, but I'd said I'd rather do it during some other visit, when I wasn't as focused on Christmas shopping.

It rained periodically while we were walking around from store to store in town, which was kind of a drag. The forecast had called for very light snow overnight farther north, and we had counted on it being dry in the evening.

One place we stopped in was Dellas Five and Dime, which opened Memorial Day weekend of 2007. As the linked article says, the store has all kinds of stuff found in an old-school five-and-dime store, including a soda fountain. I didn't buy anything. I just snapped a photo of these "festive" doilies, which had the campiest saying ever on the packaging: "Add more flair to the food you prepare." Hah!

I found a few presents, including one in my favorite Cape May store, Whale's Tale. And we had dinner at my favorite Cape May restaurant, Cucina Rosa, which I've mentioned on this here stupid blog a couple times before. I once again had the Chicken Oreganata, with a side of penne. I really like CR's marinara.

To drink, we had the bottle of riesling from Madonna Estate, which I'd ordered in Madonna's tasting room while on a wine tour during my San Francisco trip. Everyone loved it, including me. Even Granny said it was good, and I don't recall her ever saying anything—either positive or negative—about any wine she's tried. Here's a photo I snapped of Granny holding a glass of the wine:

I'd hoped to watch the last Firefly episode that night, but by the time we got home and I walked and fed the woofers, it was too late to do it. I ended up watching the last one that Monday night. It was a fantastic series—definitely worthy of Bob's fanboyness.

On Sunday morning, we went to Green Olive for breakfast, just like we did the last time I was down that way. On the way home, Dad said he wanted me to help him bring the artificial Christmas tree down from a shelf in the garage. Jean said it wouldn't be a problem because I'm strong. I said, "Yeah, in muscles and odor!" Everybody laughed, and then Granny said, "Why would you say something like that?" I said that I said it because everybody laughed. The day before, I'd asked Granny whether she thought Rudy was ruggedly handsome. "And I say ruggedly handsome because he's always lying around like a rug," I said. Gran said it didn't really mean that, and I said I knew that and I was just trying to be funny. This was comedy gold! Well, maybe comedy pewter.

Gran seemed to be a little more out of it this visit than she had been even in September. She told a lot of the same stories over and over again, as usual, but she also occasionally screwed up some of the details. For instance, she said that when she was growing up, her family always had Airedale terriers, which isn't true; they had only one (and he was a real bastard because no one in the family ever disciplined him). She also told a story about her mother making a big pot of oatmeal for breakfast and then pushing it to the back of the stove so everyone could serve themselves three times in five minutes at breakfast on Sunday.

I left for Brooklyn not long after I helped Dad retrieve his Christmas stuff from the garage. And I grabbed from Dad and Jean's basement the ceramic Christmas tree Granny had made many years ago and had given to me a couple of years ago. I'll run a photo of it in a later post.

*Actually, after I started writing this post, Bob told me the bottle of Berger we had at Gina's had, in fact, been sealed with a cork. Could it be that they ran out of corks before the end of the production run and had to switch to metal caps?

UPDATE on Dec. 16: No, it couldn't be. See Bob's comment.

Comments

[BuddyBob]

Sorry, I guess I made a mistake. The Berger Meister Meister Berger always comes with a bottle cap.

And, man, is Firefly the best series ever or what? Just pure awesomeness. Think about all the awesome:

1. Acting!
2. Writing
3. General plottiness

And I could go on and on about the lovely womenfolk, but if you're sly, the gents were OK too!