Latest from “Beck land” in Summer, 2009

I know, I know – we continue to be lame on the blogging front. We can talk about how busy we have been, but everyone is busy…. We get it.

What's been going on (outside of working at our day jobs)?

• We had a fun visit with our nephew, Mason, along with Marc's parents, Dee and Bruce. Checked out things like the Grossology exhibit at the Pacific Science Center and saw some cool looking sailboats at the pier. Plus Marc went into baking instructor mode by showing Mason how to bake some cookies, make M&M pancakes and create a personalized pizza!
  
• We've made some updates to the Purple Teeth Cellars blog. We had a great time coming up with some vegetarian food pairings for our wines, and will continue to post those recipes throughout the next few weeks.
  
• We've been having some fun experimenting in the kitchen, drinking wine and entertaining friends. Pictures of some of our creations have been posted here.
  
• Hitting Safeco Field when the Yankees were in town. We caught 2 of the 4 games, and the Yanks won both of them. Woo woo! We took 3 of 4 in the series.
  
• Kicking off JDRF fundraising. As you know, raising $$$ for finding the cure for Type 1 diabetes is very important to us, so we're doing the normal e-mail campaign plus hosting the wine dinner at the end of September. If you're interested in donating, please click here.
  
• Hanging out with friends and trying restaurants we haven't been to yet.
  

With respect to that last bullet, we've hit a number of Italian restaurants in the area recently and here are some thoughts:

• Osteria La Spiga – everything was great until they told us that the wine steward was too busy to come out when they didn't have EITHER of the dessert wines that Marc and I picked out. It's too bad. The other thing that happened was that they pulled a "sneak the bread cost" at the end when we didn't even request the bread. Not cool. You know, if you just told us that it went really well with the proscuitto, we would have ordered it and not minded paying for it. The food was great (we had an awesome dessert) and there were a number of reasonably priced wines. The space was pretty large if you're looking to go out in a group larger than 4 people. It's in a great section of Capitol Hill, with the Plum Bistro (just opened) in the same building and Barrio across the street.
  
• Barolo – service was very good, the fresh pastas were excellent and the wine list was solid. The secondi courses were an afterthought because there were so many awesome pasta dishes to choose from.
  
• Bricco della Regina Anna – you can have dinner here and go to Chocolopolis next door for dessert. It's more of a wine bar with some small plates, but they had a lamb carpaccio from Salumi (Mario Batali's father owns it) that was so tasty that we had to have a 2^nd order sent out.
  
• Spinasse – best of the bunch. Service was great, porcinis were in season (I was in love), menu was simple but excellent, and solid wine list. The menu is not as expansive as the others, but they make up for it in quality. I wouldn't recommend going with more than 4 people and reservations are a bit tough to come by on a Friday or Saturday (at least by Seattle standards).
  

Haven't been to Café Juanita in awhile, but it is still my favorite Italian place in Seattle.