In early October, an earthquake devastated Northern Pakistan. More than 70,000 people died in the tragedy and another 100,000 were injured. You might remember the efforts of the Food (and wine) Blogging Community last February to help those affected by the tsunami in Sout East Asia and East Africa. This year, the blogging community, led by Chez Pim, presents the second Menu For Hope II. Pm has organized this quite differently this year. It’s an raffle of course and all the money raised will go to Unicef, specifically for the earthquake region. Between changing email addresses since the last Menu…

(or at least our mortgage bank is) Monday afternoon, we finalized the purchase of our very first chunk of Long Island — a house and a quarter-or-so acre of land about two miles from Long Island Sound. I just wanted to thank everyone for your emails and blog comments of congratulations and encouragement. We’re excited, anxious, happy, scared and MOVING. We’ve started by moving a few car loads (mostly kitchen stuff of course) and then this Saturday is the official moving day. We have great friends and a half dozen or so of them are coming to help. It’s a…

Blended red wines – they are the best of wines, they are the worst of wines. Have you ever been in a wine shop and seen gallon jugs of “Burgundy” for less than ten dollars? Those wines bear little (okay, no) resemblance to the fine wines of the French region with the same name. Jug “Burgundy” often comes from California’s Central Valley and is a blend of high yield Barbera, Petite Sirah and other red varietals. Wine snobbery is never a good thing, but these wines are just awful. But blended reds are not created equal. Some of the world’s…

Tomorrow night in the Staller Center Recital Hall at 8 p.m., the Stony Brook University Camerata Singers and the Stony Brook Chorale will present their Holiday 2005 performance. The Camerata Singers will be performing motets and folk songs by America’s greatest composer, Aaron Copland, while the Chorale peforms carols and lullabies. Both groups are conducted by Timothy Mount. You may have noticed that there’s no mention of food or wine…so why am I telling you about it? It’s quite simple…my supremely talented wife is a member of the Camerata and they are a great group worth hearing if you are…

It’s not very often that I get mentioned in the "real" media, but in checking my visitor logs this afternoon, I realized that I was mentioned on Budget Living in their "Where We’re Clicking" feature. Unfortunately, the link just says "Wine" but it does come to LENNDEVOURS. I doubt this is in the printed magazine, but if anyone sees it, let me know. I think it’s appropriate…I’m definitely living on a budget. Aren’t we all?

There are new wine blogs popping up all over the place, but occasionally one catches my eye and warrants special mention here on LENNDEVOURS. Water into Wino is one such blog. It’s author is a mystery…but he/she has commented here a couple times and looking at the blog quickly (it just launched over the weekend) they’ve already reviewed a Long Island wine. Looks like he/she is a New Yorker of some sort…and he/she has friends who work in a tasting room on Long Island. Anyway, welcome him/her to the wine blogging world and check out the site.