Red Wine and Box Brownies Re-Thunk

On Friday night, I was cool for the first time in a very long time.

On Saturday I landed back on earth with a resounding THUNK.

Seminal post-punk eighties band Killing Joke was playing Irving Plaza and I happen to be a buddy of its drummer, Paul Ferguson and his wife, Olga.

So my folks stepped in with babysitting and I actually got on a train by myself to Manhattan and did the whole VIP- backstage thing at the incredibly hard-driving concert with friends and didn’t get home until around 3 am! Fortunately I had chosen Guinness as my stick-to beverage and so on Saturday, despite having onlyabout 3.5 hours of sleep, I was doing relatively well.

Maqui, Natalia and Paul backstage - while I was still cool

Then, as we were preparing to go to a birthday party on Saturday evening, there was an awful scream from the living room. Mommy ears told me immediately that this was not your run-of-the-mill attention-getting moaning over a one of those minor bumps that occur 17 times a day to an active boy-toddler.

And yes indeed, Leandro had slipped, banged his chin and bit his tongue. Hard. 

So we spent the rest of the evening – from 8:30 to about 11 p.m. at the emergency room, mopping up blood and spit and getting him stitched up. He’ll be okay, despite the sad fact that I cannot remove the hurt and suffer it for him. Heavy sigh.

Where this intersects with food is that part of the interrupted party prep was baking some brownies to take. I am not much of a baker (Following directions and doing things with precision are not my talents) and every brownie recipe I have seen looks daunting. So Leandro and I ripped open a packet of Ghirardelli’s Triple Chocolate stirred it around with an egg, some oil and water and popped it in the oven. We pulled it out just before leaving for the hospital.

Now, my wine-snob self would’ve told you that chocolate and red wine isn’t a good flavor combination at all. That chocolate robs the wine of all the sugar on the palate and ruins the wine’s balance and flavor.

But, after a long night in emergency trying to calm a hurting toddler who means more to me than anything else in the world…I’m tired and drained and worried and finally relaxing because he is asleep and resting…give me the damn brownies and pour me another glass of red – what an exactly, precisely, perfectly harmonious combination indeed!

I hope Leandro will recover soon enough to have some brownies too!

Tags: brownies, food, red wine, wine