Road trips.

Call me when I can drive to Disneyland from San Francisco with nothing more than 10 minutes to top off. Current and planned pure electric cars get maybe 200-250 miles on a charge, and take upwards of three hours to fully charge. Even super-powered chargers you might find at a filling station are planning 30 minute charges.

Hybrids or range extended vehicles which use a gas tank solve this problem, but for many of them (e.g. the Chevy Volt), you’re going to get 40 miles on the battery and 300 miles on the gas tank, which kind of defeats the point.

They’re great for the commuter who drives 15 or 20 miles round trip a day, and can plug in on either end of that commute, and I wouldn’t mind having a Tesla roadster (only $101,500!), but I don’t see the current crop of cars competing for my cash just yet.

Malbec is a newly discovered grape, for me. It’s only in the last year or so that I’ve learned about it, and it’s rapidly becoming one of my favorites. It’s become a popular wine in Argentina, and is growing in popularity in California. In the 2008 Zolo, it’s a medium-bodied taste, which I think it would lay down well, as it has some some solid structure behind it, though the tannins are not at all overwhelming.

Like many Malbecs, this wine has an inky darkness to it, a deep, deep purple on the edges, almost black as it pools, with a strong plummy or jammy taste. It is the perfect companion to many meals, including tonight’s, my first use of my new Big Green Egg.

I haven’t spoken of my Big Green Egg yet, as it’s only a couple of weeks old, and, other than a test-firing to make sure it “works”, I hadn’t used it before tonight. What is the Big Green Egg? In few words, it’s a ceramic outdoor griller and smoker, shaped, yes, like a big, green egg. I bought it for an absurd amount of money after a few friends swore how good it was. I’d been wanting to buy a new grill to replace my crappy $40 metal bowl, and I’m not a big fan of gas cooking.

(The Egg has a “following” that seems as “cultish” as that of Mac users. No surprise, then, that I’m drawn to it. I’ll have unboxing and set-up pix shortly.)

Tonight, as I pondered dinner, and despite the fact that I went to Forbes Grill Steakhouse on Saturday and I’m going to 5A5 next Saturday, I felt the need to fire up The Egg and sizzle some steak on it.

The economy has done some bad things to a lot of people, but one of the good things its done is made good steak cheap. How cheap? How about Prime grade New York and Ribeye steak for under $10 a pound? Thanks to Costco, I was able to stock up on three or four pounds of each, for less than the cost of one 12 oz. cut of each at a high-end steakhouse.

Tonight I fired up The Egg, and in 20 minutes it was at a roaring 600 degrees. Whew! I sprinkled a New York steak with some kosher salt and fresh ground pepper on both sides, and let it sit while The Egg came up to temperature. Then three minutes on each side with the flames caressing it, and then a couple of minutes “baking” with the fire dialed down, and it came out slightly north of “medium” on the edges.

The uncut steak shown here isn’t slathered with sauce; that color comes from The BGE, which produced a fantastic crust, while remaining moist and juicy. The steak was chewy without being leathery, and despite my initial fear that it had been overcooked and ruined, it was only slightly above temperature.

(Next time, I’ll limit it to two minutes on each side, and two minutes “baking”, so it’s pinker. I know, for a steak lover, I still don’t like it to far below medium. Better than a decade ago when I wasted a good cut at “well done”. Shudder.)

The 2008 Zolo Malbec was in fact the perfect companion to the New York steak. It neither overwhelmed it, as a Zinfandel might, nor succumbed to it, like a wonderfully subtle Pinot Noir might do.

In all, it was a enjoyable meal, and I’m looking forward to more pairings of Big Green Egg and my wine collection.

I’m not a big fan of Chardonnay, finding them generally bland and soft (aka “buttery”). This 2007 Mietz Cellars Chardonnay, however, is a more acidic style, which I find much more interesting, yet it remains an easy drink, making it perfect for an evening sitting on the couch with a loved one after a home-cooked meal of Spice Hound-infused turkey tacos.

Mietz is part of the Family Winery cooperative, and this bottle is part of the cooperative’s wine club I joined in January.

A couple of days ago I dreamt I was sentenced to six months in jail, for an unknown offense.

Beyond the strangeness of dreaming I’d been sent to jail, what was particularly strange was the amount of freedom the inmates seemed to have.

Several times, I left the jail to go home so I could find books, magazines, and other forms of entertainment that would prevent me from being bored during my incarceration.

It seemed I could leave during the day, as long as I was back in the evening, and I could do as I wanted in the cell.

I recall selecting books I had always wanted to read, along with books which were in tatters from decades of use.

One book that stood out was a handbook for amateur magicians, which I’ve owned since I was a teenager. I learned dozens of slight-of-hand and other tricks from that book. And after choosing that book and returning to jail, the next day when I walked out again, it was to bring back a deck of cards.

I have no idea what the dream means. I thought perhaps it represented my desire to live a life of leisure, free to read and learn.

I thought perhaps it represented freedom during the day and inflexibility at night.

No matter how I ponder this, I can’t come up with a good explanation.

(But I wouldn’t mind six months off….)

A quick note on my new posting style: These short “Clips” are things I read or watched, and found interesting enough to share with you.

It’s kinda like sending you a “hey, check this out!” email or iChat message.

If the headline or description intrigues you, click on the headline to go to the original site. My goal is to get you curious enough to read or watch the links.

I hope you enjoy the new style. It’s an experiment in short-form, near-daily posting.

If you find stuff I might be interested in, you can bookmark it in Delicious.com and then tag it with “for:jasonian”. It’ll show up in my Delicious Inbox. Or send it to me the old fashioned way via email or iChat.

I’ll still have more personal, longer-form entries too. And I’m working on a way to hide the Clips for those who don’t care for them.

Finally, I turned off comments on the site. Too much spamming. If you want to comment on something I wrote, I encourage email or a response and link back at your own site. The “#” symbol is a perma-link to each entry.