I got this wine as a Christmas gift from my mother’s Hungarian neighbor. Hungarian wines have a very different taste than French or Italian wines. This one is semi sweet and tastes great with food and by itself. I am sure it will be loved by my guests who can not stand the traditional, tart red wines that I like. This becomes my first choice perfect wine for non wine drinkers replacing my previous recommendation for a perfect wine.

Interestingly, there is an entry for Wigilia on Wikipedia.org.

Traditions, customs and descriptions of the food can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigilia.

Every family has their own version of the traditions.

As we used to do back at our parents house, we started with (oplatek) Christmas wafer, followed by the beetroot soup with (uszka) little ears.

There was deep-fried fresh snapper with tartar sauce spiced up with jalapeño peppers. Home made, fresh sauce can not be compared with the store bout one. The snapper tasted so good. The beetroot soup, my mother’s favorite, was great too.

Hungarian and French red wines were served accompanied by Christmas music in the background. Our mother used to watch the Midnight Mass from Rome.

Plastic surgery was one of the subjects and obviously Joan Rivers was invited as the guest. She was funny most of the time, especially when talking about her surgeries and making comments about a biker jacket covering her large body parts. It was really interesting to watch her demonstrate re gifting ideas.

One idea stuck in my mind. What should you say when by mistake you give back the same exact gift to the person that gave it to you? Joan said something like: “Dear, I liked your gift so much, that I bought one for you too”.

The next section was about wine tasting and being able to find cheap wine that tastes like the expensive one. The secret was to buy a cheap wine from the same producer who makes both, expensive and cheap wine. Joan literally blew it. She spat out one of the cheaper wines.

I almost forgot the most important reason for writing about Joan. She is very short. That fact reminded me another short Jewish lady that I met many years ago. She was hired as a receptionist at a factory where I worked. She was short and constantly giggling. Anywhere she happen to be, there was a giggling crowd of few people surrounding her. Nobody was able to work. Her laughter was so contagious that she was let go in about a week. She left laughing. Often when things are not going right, I try to remember the short Jewish lady and her attitude toward life.

My local grocery store came up with a creative deal on 2007 Beaujolais Nouveau. Until last week it used to cost $9.99. This Monday there is a special deal on it. From a distance you see $10.89 on the sign underneath the bottles. At a closer look the sign says: regular price $13.89, with $3.00 coupon final price $10.89. There is a coupon hanging on the neck of the bottle (shown on the right in the picture above). This gets really interesting when you read what the text on coupon says: Save $3.00 instantly off turkey or ham with purchase of one bottle of GD Beaujolais-Villages.

It is a great deal? Not really. I need to buy a bottle of Beaujolais-Villages, some turkey or ham in order to get overcharged on a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau.

I had to check it again today to see if I did not interpret it wrong yesterday.
This time I had my glasses with me and checked the numbers on the iPhone calculator to make sure my subtracting was correct.

I wish I had my glasses with me on Monday when actually I bought ham and two bottles of Beaujolais-Villages and used the coupon shown on the left in the picture above.

This experience prompted another idea for the iPhone – a magnifying glass. This would come in handy when glasses are not around. Simply, the iPhone camera needs to have zoom-in capability (coming soon?).

I already have a ruler on my iPhone.
This is not a joke. It really works.

You can get one at the link below or by clicking the image above. http://anerroroccurredwhileprocessingthisdirective.com/2007/09/10/ruler-for-iphone/

Edited – Initially I posted an incorrect price.