Weekly Wine(d) Up!
Take a glimpse below at one of my wine and food pairings from this weekend for inspiration with your next meal!
I don’t know how obvious it is or, honestly, how obvious I’ve made it but I LOVE sushi. So when I made an impromptu trip to go to Hobby Lobby to get supplies to make necklaces (I’m addicted and have made so many already), naturally, I got distracted by the kitchen items as one does and came across the cutest knick knacks and kitchen supplies to make homemade sushi. An immediate wave of decision making came over me (for the second time in two weeks - a very proud moment for me I might add) that my boyfriend and I were going to make homemade sushi that weekend. It was the perfect scenario to do so as well since we were house sitting and dog sitting and had no other plans last Friday night but to swim, have some drinks, and relax. So a date night at home was in the cards and we were ready to make some delicious dinner!
First, the food…
Wegman’s has really become one of my favorite grocery stores over the years. They not only carry a lot of unique items but they also have some fantastic prepared food items and their branded options are awesome. Reminds me of Trader Joe’s who has become the king of self branded items and it all is practically perfect. Now I do have to say, this homemade sushi idea was not 100% self funded by the items I found at Hobby Lobby but it practically sealed the deal of when this was going to happen. Recently, I noticed that Wegman’s was selling a few of their sushi grade fish options in “bulk”. Now, by “in bulk”, I mean in a larger chunk exhibited above. I wanted to just get one large piece of salmon and one large piece of tuna so I did ask if I could request a specific amount or size and the person at the sushi counter said no so keep that in mind. Also keep in mind that your girl does not know how to buy a normal amount of anything. If I’m making a dip for 10 people it’s easily made for a crowd of 75 (okay that’s exaggerating a little bit but you get my point). So, out of character for me, I actually TRIED to keep things in moderation. You know, sushi is expensive so I was trying to be considerate of that and also that we needed ingredients that would help us make the sushi besides just the fish as well as my boyfriend wanted to have steak. Picture this: I get what I think is a small piece of salmon and then 2 smaller portions of tuna because I was like “no, no, Jordan. We don’t need to have that much fish.” Take it from me: whatever your “moderate amount” of sushi is, is still too much. Cut it in half. We truly only needed one piece of the tuna. All of this to say, Wegman’s has everything you need down to the rice, seaweed, wasabi, etc. You name it, they got it and that’s what I love about Wegman’s. We ended up making some spicy tuna rolls, some cucumber avocado salmon rolls, cucumber pineapple salmon rolls, and we even put a little steak on some rice as well as some tuna. Everything was so good and soooo filling we had so many leftovers but it was worth it. I also SLAYYYYYED the spicy mayo on the first try. Proportions were immaculate. Pro tip: Make sure you cook your rice ahead of when you want to start making sushi because it needs to cool to room temp and also please I beg of you to buy the correct kewpie mayo for your spicy mayo. It makes a difference! All in all though, making the sushi wasn’t that hard at all! The only challenging part we had was getting the rice to be evenly distributed across the seaweed but overall, a really fun and beginner friendly dish!
Now, onto the more important part…
I had two different wines this evening. The first started out as my cooking/pool wine and then I paired a wine when we actually went to eat. The first wine was a Sancerre I had never had before. This was the perfect wine to have after a long week and to unwind a bit. It was citrusy, a little floral, and had some nice acidity. This was great on its own but I do think it could have paired nicely with the sushi as well. The wine i did pair with the sushi was this Green Quartz Sauvy B. I love a Sauvy B and this did it for me. It had your classic grapefruit, lemon, grassiness to it and it was great to have on a warm evening outside. Pro tip: if you live in PA, make sure you are buying wines from the chairman’s selection. Of course you can get great wines from just the normal selection available but the chairman’s selection allows you to purchase really great wines at a really great price. I am almost always buying wine from that area of the store unless I’m looking for something very specific.
The rest of the weekend was also a lot of fun! We had people over to swim and cookout and we had a nice family dinner on Sunday evening. Overall a relaxing but exciting weekend. Oh and of course with some more of making beaded jewelry (I told you I’m obsessed). I hope you had a great weekend and that you have some fun plans coming up for this weekend!
That’s all for now so…
Until next time wine lovers, Cheers!
Jordana
