EARLY TAILGATE plus LATE BIRTHDAY PARTY

A friend invited me for a birthday dinner at Assagio, which also suffices as the first tailgate of the week, for tonight features Hawaii women's volleyball versus West Virginia and NFL football with Tampa Bay visiting Carolina (but you need to have access to the NFL channel), then on Saturday, the undefeated Hawaii football team plays at Washington, and later that day, the undefeated Rainbow Wahine volleyball team entertains UCLA.  The 15 Craigside poker group had our dinner at this same restaurant last month.

We had an Opolo Mountain Zinfandel, which both of us liked better than the Chateau Lafite Rothschild we experienced earlier this year.  Why mountain is that the grapes come from the hills close to Paso Robles.  The wine is dark, rich, fruity, but soft.  Typically Opolo is at around 16% alcohol, but our bottle was 15.9%.

I had a Capellini Puttanesca, with a bowl of Vichyssoise, combining hot and cold.  At one time I best liked this angel hair pasta, but now am beginning to better appreciate the al dente character of thicker noodles.  Assaggio is noted for the bread they serve, and we arranged to bring home two loaves.  Forgot to take a photo of the candle on the ice cream pie.

Like many pasta dishes, puttanesca has a history.  One story is that a restaurant owner suddenly had a bunch of guests late one night, so he merely combined whatever he had in his kitchen.  Another has to do with puttana, which in Italian means whore.  Puttanesca is a quick and easy pasta sauce to make between customers.  In short, tomato sauce, anchovy, olives and capers over whatever pasta you choose.  Assaggio does a good job.

My birthday gift was a dragon bottle of Napoleon Cognac:

So embarrassing, but we couldn't figure out how to open it.  She'll find out and return.  So we settled for Suntory Toki.

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Our oceans are relatively calm now, but there is potential for some development in the Gulf of Mexico:

In the East Pacific, a hurricane will form off Mexico, but will peter out quickly.

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