We do buy cheap wine, but aim for quality

After a year of blogging about food, I find that it's becoming harder for me to cook something I haven't cooked before. Hence less blog-worthy material. Tonight we ate baked breaded catfish for dinner. Yum. But I've already blogged about that. Yesterday I took fresh baked French rolls to a dinner party. Would have snapped a shot and blogged about those, but that recipe is already on the blog too. Maybe I'll shift gears temporarily. Blog about wine for awhile. Cheap wine.

I love going to a big wine store (Jacobs Liquor Exchange or Grove Liquor are my favorites in Wichita) and strolling the aisles to find interesting, inexpensive selections. Fortunately, there are lots of nice, cheap wines on the market these days. Tonight for dinner we had a bottle of 2006 Yard Dog, an Australian blend of Petit Verdot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot within my preferred $10-or-so range. I'm not a slave to wine ratings (I was amused but not surprised by news this week calling into question Wine Spectator's standards. Check this out.) but this has garnered passable reviews. I'm gravitating toward relatively rich blended reds lately, and this one fit the bill. Dave tends to prefer something drier, lighter, but he gave this a thumbs up. This wine would go perfectly with a rich beef stew, but what do I know? It tasted dandy with catfish, IMHO. And I dig the label.