Continuing on the Greek theme, I have found a wonderful summer white that is perfect for your bbq, summer salads or seafood. Made from the Assyritko grape, this wine starts with a bit of fruit but finishes dry with great mineral taste. There is no oak to speak of and I would say that this is most similar to a sauvignon blanc from California, though there really is no comparision.

My one complaint is the wine is a bit pricy at 19.99 especially given the Wine Spectator raiting of 86 - However I think you can probably find it for cheaper online and it is a fantastic drinking wine, regardless of score.

Winery: Biblia Chora
Wine: Areti
Grape: 100% Assyritko
For a great recipe pairing click here: Salad Nicoise (Schlosser Style)

To purchase look up: http://www.sotirisbafitisselections.com - they are the importers and have a list of local distributers or email: wine@bassins.com and ask for it by name

If you are in Seattle you can also find it at Pike and Western Wine Shop

So some nights you just don’t feel like cooking, maybe you are home alone or maybe you just can be motivated to light the grill. Well for those nights I have discovered the perfect alternative - Lucini Pasta Sauce. This sauce actually tastes natural, it tastes like real tomatoes and goes well with just about any pasta. I tried their Spicy Tuscan Tomato and was very impressed. It was hands down the best tasting pasta sauce out of a jar I had ever eaten, most of the time when you open the jar you get some version of red food coloring with water and gelatin added. This my friends is the real deal, it actually contains fresh herbs, spices and fresh tomatoes. This comes straight from Italy where they certainly know their pasta sauce and they leave out all the crap nothing artificial, nothing dried, no sugar and no water.

Even the worst cook among us can boil some water and heat up some sauce, and for those nights I recommend Lucini Pasta Sauces.

For More Information Go Here:

Lucini

You should be able to find this at most fine grocery stores including Whole Foods

technorati tags:Pasta Sauce, Food, Lazy, Cooking, Tricks, Pasta, Lucini, Italian

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Check out Jamie Oliver every Monday night on TLC. In Jamie’s School Lunch Project Jamie Oliver is out to improve the school lunches for kids across the UK. In one amazing bit, Jamie asks the kids to identify a number of veggies. They struggle and can hardly name one. He then holds up a Domino’s Pizza logo and every kid in the room jumps out of their seat yelling Domino’s. It gets even worse when he holds up and McDonalds’s golden arch logo. This all has me thinking: America is FAT, not just overweight but FAT, orca fat and hardly anything is being done to fix the problem. For the first time kids born today are expected to live a shorter life than their parents. This is simply one of the largest, most important problems facing America today. Do you know anyone who has had a Gastric Bypass? Know anyone who has had a heart attack? How about anyone who is constantly dieting? Clearly we need to change the way we eat, exercise and live. Jamie Oliver is on to something, and in his show (TLC 7pm EST) he explores the idea that if we are going to change our eating habits we have to start with our children. Watch as he struggles to get kids to eat veggies, and works even harder to get their parents to stop feeding them crap.

Click below to watch the trailor from the original series in the UK, and join me in thinking about how we change America. Now I am certainly a business man, and I smell a HUGE opportunity in here somehow. The question is how do you improve peoples’ lives while still making money. Much like Whole Foods or your Local Gym, I believe that you can help people live a healthy life and make money doing it. Got any ideas on how to launch a business? I do and I will share them in an upcomming post.

Jamie’s School Lunch Project on TLC

Is America finally becomming more health aware? I have been thinking alot about food trends in our country and granted I get a very skewed view of our country but I believe we may be on the brink of a revolution. The move to organic produce, locally raised meats and fresh seafood is an important one that we should all be following. Customers are flocking to Whole Foods, PCC, Farmers Markets and anywhere else that they can find fresh produce, meats and cheese. This all got me thinking, is this a cultural shift or a trend confined to the upper class, or those in tune with healthy eating? Are things like home cooked meals, wine and organic produce something that most people care about or a couple of thousand yuppies on each coast? I love Whole Foods even though I know it is more expensive, I love shopping there, and I generally feel that anything I buy will be of the highest quality and freshness. I also love buying from farmers markets, these give the the chance to interact with local farmers directly and also provide the chance to buy fresh local ingredients that are in season.

All of this got me to thinking, outside of Whole Foods how could you start a business to take advantage of this growing trend? A couple of ideas come to mind, cooking lessons, take out lunch spot, farm, wine shop, restaurant, etc. Clearly billions are made each year off of weight loss and dieting however this is a bit different. If people truly are focused on eating less processed foods, and eating more local fresh ingredients how do you create a business that takes advantage of this shift in customer buying habits? Which once again brings us back to my original question, is there really a shift or are there just a bunch of yuppies on each coast who have taken up cooking and wine because it is seen somehow as trendy?

Trying to be a good industry banker in the investment banking community means getting out to meeting with a lot of companies and working with your relationships to get better information about small private companies, financial investors (which invest in the small private companies), and large public companies (which acquire the small private companies).  My most recent trip down to the valley was spent with Juniper Networks and Google.

Needless to say, Google has an amazing campus in Mountain View.  We toured the facilities, which have a beach volleyball court at the center, tons of toys and scooters all over campus, and (best of all) three meals a day in the cafeterias around campus - all at no cost to the employees. 

For the hour and a half I was on the campus, I honestly felt like I’d been transported back to Colby.  As we were walking, skateboards would go rolling by, you’d see people working out in state-of-the-art gyms and swimming in the current pools.  You then walk into the cafeteria and select just about anything you might want to eat.  After the tour, I was wishing that Mountain View was commutable from Seattle, as it is the type of place where you could just see innovation thriving.

The obesity epidemic due to poor eating habits and lack of activity that is strangling western culture seems to be permeating the east.

Search google for ‘obesity’ and ‘america’ and you will find TONS of websites talking about the obesity epedemic that supposedly is taking over America. Well, just today someone pointed out this article to me. It reads, “Girdles for paunchy guys a big seller in Japan…As Japanese waistlines expand, so is the market for girdles — for men.” As you probably figured out, there is now a girdle for men available in Japan. And it is being marketed to men who are more “fashion conscious”… not because Japanese men are becoming more overweight, but becuase they are “starting to pay attention to the lines of their body and their silhouette, just like women” said a spokeswoman at Triumph International, the company marketing the product. Not only is this thing just being marketed in Japan, but they are selling like hotcakes! The article goes on to explain that the boom may be explained by the “growing weight problem among once slim Japanese.” At least the writers of this article are not trying to spin this to be something different than it truly is. Triumph International maintains that “most of the demand is due to new styles in pants that are cut to emphasize the hips. ‘It’s really more about style,’ [the spokeswoman] said. ‘After all, there aren’t that many men in their 20s and 30s whose figures are giving way.’” Is she being serious here?! To be fair, I don’t know what proportion of 20-40 year olds are overweight in Japan, but in America that is a huge portion of the overweight population.

One would think that other countries and cultures would be able to learn from the gluttony of America before it seeped into their own cultures. But it looks like at least a portion of the Japanese population is completely oblivious to our widening waistlines. I would take the introduction of a product like this as a sign of general public health moving in the wrong direction.

Get outside and do something!

It is that time of year again, you can vote for the new Kettle Chips Flavor. This year they have added a twist and you can actually taste each of the proposed new chips before voting. This years options are: Buffalo Bleu Cheese, Dirty martini, Tuscan Three Cheese, Spicy Mary, and Creamy Caesar. Without tasting any of them I think my choice may be the Tuscan Three Cheese, but then again maybe I am too Euro or something.

Check it all out for yourself at Flavor Station

To refresh your memory Kettle Chips are all natural, come in a ton of great flavors and are made in Oregon and pair nicely with pizza, nachos, beer and of course football.