Wine: from small to medium

Good wine ruins the purse; bad wine ruins the stomach.” – An old Spanish saying

Hello lovely readers 🙂

I read an article a while back in Food & Wine magazine. The author described her first foray into expensive wines, explaining that drinking an expensive, truly great wine helps properly mold your palate. Having a well formed palate for wine, in turn, aids you in recognizing good wines at all price points.

My husband and I love wine, and drink it often. We usually buy bottles anywhere from $6.99 (the price of the smile-inducing Opala Vinho Verde at Whole Foods when it’s on sale) to $35 (a yummy ’05 Pierre Amadieu Gigondas Grande Reserve). But I was curious to expand the horizon a bit. I wanted to know: when I’m paying more for wine, what exactly am I paying for?

We decided to scale up from small to medium. My choice? A 2006 Les Forts de Latour as a birthday gift for my husband. Yes, I’m aware that ’05 was a better vintage for Bordeaux, but research seemed to point to ’06 as a decent wine for drinking now as opposed to holding (which many wine lovers are doing with their oh-fives), so ’06 it was.

Les Forts is a second wine from First Growth French wine estate Chateau Latour–essentially, their second-tier wine that doesn’t quite satisfy the criteria for the estate’s Grand Vin. Not that such a classification implies second-rate wine. Chateau Latour states that Les Forts is produced:

a) with the grapes from the ” young vines ” of the “Grand Enclos”, which are less than 12 years old.

b) from the grapes grown on three plots situated outside the “Grand Enclos”,

c) in addition, and depending on the quality of the vintage, certain vats of Grand Vin may not, after numerous tastings, be up to the standards required.

They may then be demoted to ” Les Forts de Latour “

Fair enough– and at $125 for the bottle (the price at a South Florida Total Wine), it costs several hundred dollars less than its big brother, the Grand Vin. We cooked a good meal at home to pair with it–or my husband cooked a good meal, while I took a hot bath. A dry aged ribeye and mushroom caps off the grill; tomato basil salad; many, many, many sauteed cloves of garlic.

Thanks, love.

Wine poured. My husband took his first few sips and shared his first impressions with me. His descriptions were peppered with colorful language that I wouldn’t post in my blog, so suffice it to say that he quite liked it. Overall thoughts? It’s a good wine. In all honesty, that’s all anyone wants to know, isn’t it? My detailed impression is that it was ultra smooth, very blackberry and floral, more balanced than overly tannic, and of medium body. But hey, that’s just my two cents. Was it great? Yes, but there are cheaper bottles that are comparable, like the unarguably delicious Almaviva from Chile that runs anywhere from $75-$95 depending on the vintage.

Final verdict? Apparently I have either to go big or go home. It was a delicious wine, but it wasn’t earth-shatteringly different from a much less expensive good wine. Maybe spending more money on a bottle of wine is just a stronger assurance that you’re weeding out bad or weak competition, i.e. “If I spend $150 on a bottle of wine, I’m guaranteed that it will be a good albeit safe wine.” Perhaps sparks fire louder and brighter around the $500 price point? Cheers, happy drinking, and please have a designated driver!

Friday Haiku musings

Dear readers, I understand and acknowledge that the best way to cure writer’s block is…to write. So for today, it’s the following haiku:

Blue Friday: A Reflection of 8-13-2010 by the Sunny Global Diva

***

Friday’s summer air

smothers my poor mind and heart;

cake is not helping.

*Photo by Sakeeb

Happy Friday!

The coolest yogurt ever

First of all… hi. Long hiatus, I won’t even bother explaining, but please know that the blogging world was in my heart 🙂

I went to Whole Foods recently and had a meltdown in the dairy section because they were out of the yogurt that I usually buy (whole milk plain yogurt by Traders Point Creamery; greatest yogurt EVER). So I resigned myself to scouring the shelves for a temporary replacement. I decided to try Skyr, an Icelandic yogurt that I had read about a few months back. I found a plain single serving 6-ounce container of plain skyr priced at $2.79 (ouch!) and was pleased to find that it had only 100 calories (yay!), 6 grams of carbs (double yay!!) and 17 grams of protein (triple yay!!!). Oh, and it’s fat free (I’m out of ‘yays’ by this point because I’m still reeling that this miracle food exists).

It’s a yogurt made with skim milk; the milk is incubated with live active cultures and rennet. The whey gets strained away and you’re left with something like soft cheese. Not to worry–historically, all that strained-out whey didn’t go to waste; it was used to pickle foods during the winter. You need to use a lot more milk to make skyr–at least 3 or 4 times more milk than it takes to make the regular liquidy yogurt that fills most supermarket shelves–which I guess explains both the higher price tag and the high protein content. Today, it’s made mostly with cows’ milk although it used to be made with both cow’s milk and sheep’s milk.

The following morning, I eagerly opened my container of skyr and turned it upside down over a bowl. Nothing came out. I grabbed a spoon and stuck it in to swirl it around a bit and was surprised to see how thick it was. The taste? Sour, like sour cream mixed with plain yogurt. Consistency? This is yogurt that you can chew. I drizzled my Haitian-smuggled honey and ground cinnamon over it (which is how I normally eat my plain yogurt). It took getting used to; it took me a lot longer to eat because it’s more like a soft cheese than regular yogurt.

Verdict: I love it and now regularly shell out for it. My trusty Traders Point is still the greatest ever, but this stuff has gotta be the coolest ever. I’ve also tried the blueberry and vanilla flavors. But you should be warned–none of the flavors take away that tangy mouth-puckering dairy taste, so don’t expect blueberry-infused skyr to taste like sugary fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt. All flavorings are very subtle. I’m enjoying mixing in different ingredients–I like to add a spoon of vanilla extract to it. Sometimes I mix in some of the more liquidy plain yogurt. I might try it with jam and fruit sometime–Icelanders often eat it this way. Apparently Icelanders also stir in milk & sugar, or cream & sugar. I can’t imagine adding cream to such a creamy cheesy dairy product, but Icelanders have been making and eating this stuff for about ten centuries, so I readily assume they’ve come up with sound recipes for this product along the way.

I tried Siggi’s skyr, a New York-based skyr-making company started by a homesick Icelandic immigrant named Siggi Hilmarsson. I buy this particular brand at Whole Foods, but it sells in other specialty shops too. Siggi’s flavors include plain (yum), blueberry (yum), vanilla (yum), orange & ginger (would like to try), pomegranate & passion fruit (have no desire to try, as I hate passion fruit), acai (would like to try), and grapefruit (curious). Certain Whole Foods locations also carry another brand called Skyr.is, but it’s not at my location. Major kudos to the skyr.is website for sharing lots of fun skyr recipes with the public! Happy eating!

Facebook Rehab: The halfway point

Hi readers 🙂

I recently blogged about my intention to cut out Facebook for a month. I thought I’d share a few side-effects now that I’m at the halfway point.

1.) iPhone battery lasts longer. The battery on this wondrous phone is awful, but it’s much less awful now that I no longer screw around on Facebook all the time.

2.) More efficient use of daily time. I used to wake up before sunrise, but then over coffee, I’d start Facebooking. Somebody please, cue up your favorite rendition of “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” because that’s the very question I used to ask myself whenever my time disappeared into the Facebook vortex. I gladly report that this is no longer a problem.

Facebook vortex *

3.) Less anxiety. When I was cruising facebook aimlessly, I had guilt sitting like a rock in my belly. This is no longer the case and I gladly report that I am less anxious.

4.) Self-pity. Yeah, I know–not a desirable side-effect. I’d feel frustrated sometimes, like that painful, mouthwatering sensation that overtakes your body when you’re not allowed to take a potato chip from the plate of Lays sitting in front of you. One night, thanks to my TiVo, I did a 24 marathon and finally watched the last 6 episodes of the series. As the final minutes played out and I cried with Chloe O’Brian and watched Jack Bauer fade away, I actually felt sorry for myself that I couldn’t whine about the end of my favorite show on facebook.  I thought, ‘Lose facebook AND 24 in the same week?’ Anyway, I got over it 5 minutes later. Sometimes my husband sits near me, logs in, and says something like, “Ohh, so and so posted her first pregnancy picture.” Insert itch-that-can’t-be-scratched sensation. How many times did I want to bitch to the facebook community about Italy’s crybaby tactics on South Africa’s fields? Many times, but I engaged in animated discussions about it with my husband and father instead. Sidenote: How crazy was Italy vs. Slovakia??!

5.) True face time. I admit that I’m generally over-addicted to my iPhone. The apps, the email, the games, and worst of all, the facebook. Now that I use my phone a lot less, I’ve become keenly aware of people who are plugged into their smartphones–I’m talking zero eye contact during a conversation so long as the damn phone is in their hands. I readily recognize that this is a growing epidemic of rudeness, and I renounce this awful behavior for my part. I vow not to look at random info on my phone while talking to people. This new self-imposed rule has enabled me to converse meaningfully with people in a pre-smartphone way: no distractions, complete focus. Of course, I owe my friends and loved ones that courtesy anyway.

Bottom line: Life was always good, but these days, life is better; I’d be lying, however, if I said I didn’t miss facebook.

Photo Credit: “Facebook is Scary” by Kevin Saff

Monsters all around me?

Photo by La FruU

Growing up, I never had an extreme fear of parasites. I did have a bizarre respectful fascination with them and would spend hours reading up on them, what illnesses they caused, etc. Then somewhere in the vicinity of young adulthood, I developed a paranoid aversion to these organisms. After a major surgery at age 21, I awoke in recovery to a traumatic experience thanks to less-than-competent recovery room staff, made worse by unbearable physical pain. I made it through that only to return to the hospital a week later for several days to treat a very painful bout of pneumonia and pleurisy. I think my fear of parasites and infections came about after this experience. The thought of anything making me ill enough to land in the hospital for an indeterminable stay was frightening and HAD to be avoided at all costs.

I confessed recently to my husband that I didn’t used to be this way and wanted to live carefree as I used to. Which is why I don’t know what on Earth possessed me to watch this Animal Planet series Monsters Inside Me, a show about parasites that wreak havoc inside people’s bodies. The format of the series mixes interviews with re-enactments and jarring stop-start filming, zooming in on people’s eyes, just like Mystery Diagnosis, a show on sister channel Discovery Health. There’s fast-paced thriller music playing in the background while the narrator talks up the creepy crawlies. Sprinkled throughout are photographs of rashes, welts, lumps and generally oozing things, along with ultrasound footage of worms whenever applicable. Then after emphasizing the horrific effects of being infected by these organisms for several consecutive minutes, a biologist speaks one or two sentences telling viewers how they can avoid getting sick. Um, ok.

As you may be able to tell, I have mixed feelings about this show, or at least about its format. It does have some interesting information about the parasites themselves and how they operate. One interesting segment showed a scientist cooking  parasite-ridden fish in 4 different ways and showing which methods killed the worms, and which didn’t. *If you’re curious, the parasites in the fully-cooked fish and the frozen fish died, but the parasites in the ceviche and in the seared rare fish stayed alive. I like the people’s stories. I just can’t stand the delivery of the material. I don’t know what the show sets out to accomplish besides fear-mongering. It’s incredibly sensationalistic and hyper, from the fast-paced CSI-ish shots to the narrator’s annoying haunted-house-greeter manner of speaking. The show plays out like a horror movie. The problem is that it’s not a movie; we’re supposed to be watching something about real life. Do people need to compare their lives to horror movies? Isn’t there enough paranoia out there? Fortunately, I’m fairly well traveled and pretty adventurous, but what does programming like this do to people who are not? If I were an unadventurous and/or slightly irrational person watching this show, I’d come away concluding that I shouldn’t travel to Florida for fear of parasitic infection, nor should I visit water parks for fear of parasitic infection. Are these really the kinds of messages that we want to communicate to an overly sanitized American public?

Jeez, I’m sick of all this shock programming on TV! Producers, please for everybody’s sake, tone it down!

World Cup 2010 is HERE! Musings on music…

Woot woot World Cup is here! Unarguably THE most festive sports occasion, all countries (except the USA) will be madly cheering, jeering and drinking for the next several weeks. Although I’m glad to see that the US is starting to get with the program and is somewhat beginning to embrace the world religion that is football.

Make sure to tune in tonight on ABC at 8:00 ET for the FIFA World Cup Kickoff Celebration to see performances and highlights from the opening concert, which featured a bunch of awesome performances from musical artists around the world. I watched some clips online this morning and the vibe was simply amazing–the excitement of the crowd at this event is PALPABLE! I expect ABC to favor American performances, but hopefully the network will show plenty of performances from non-American musicians too.

On a related note, I spent lots of time listening to and analyzing the different World Cup anthems, official and unofficial. There’s been controversy about the fact that Shakira’s song, “Waka Waka” was chosen to be the official anthem as opposed to a song by a local artist. Her song is awesome and lots of fun, but I do feel that this event would have been a golden opportunity to showcase an African musician. This is Africa’s very first time hosting an event of this magnitude, and we sense that the whole continent is spiritually coming together for this event, so why overlook masterful musicians from the host country itself, as well as the plethora of musicians from the other 50+ African countries for that matter, and go with one of Sony’s already-best-known singers? Besides, “Waka Waka” borrows very heavily from an old Cameroonian song, “Zangalewa,” that was popular all over Africa during the 1980s. Yes, Shakira is backed by popular South African group Freshlyground, but there are many well known African singers who are capable of holding their own on a song. And yes, I’m aware that there’s no rule about the official song having to come from the host country, but that’s not my point. My point is that this is the FIRST time that Africa is hosting an event like this. South Africa is standing on the world stage trailblazing for the entire African continent right now, so I think that symbolically in a land that has given so much music to the world, handing off the official song to a non-African singer was a poor choice.

Anywho, that’s all I have to say about that. I’ll still gladly buy Shakira’s song along with the others. Other strong contenders for the official anthem included Senegalese-American singer Akon’s “Oh Africa“–a great song. My personal favorite was Somalian-born singer K’Naan’s “Wavin’ Flag,” which had long been rumored to be the official anthem. For me, his song screams serious anthem while Shakira’s song is a bit trite in comparison. Eventually these songs got picked up as Pepsi and Coca Cola’s official World Cup songs, respectively. All the anthems have fabulous videos and commercials attached to them, like this ad from PEPSI featuring Akon’s song.

So I hope you’ll all be watching. I’ll definitely be heading to Fritz & Franz Bierhaus in Coral Gables at least once to take in the football madness, and recommend this fabulous football-worshipping place to anyone in the Miami area. Good food, good beer, great atmosphere.

Any thoughts and predictions on World Cup 2010 so far? Please share!

Experiment: Facebook rehab

Hi readers.

Chances are, if you’re a close friend of mine, we’re probably friends on Facebook. And if you’re my friend on Facebook, you know that I spend plenty of time there. Recently though, my addiction has begun to weigh heavily on me. One of my best friends had given up Facebook access as a sacrifice for Lent 2010, describing the website as “crack.” I’ve come to see it the same way. I can no longer ignore or deny that I’m addicted to this website. One of the worst things about it? That’s it’s not even just confined to being a website anymore–it’s on my phone too. For God’s sake, it’s EVERYWHERE. So I check in “real quick”–in quotes, because it’s most often never quick–ALL the time. The most common letdown is that usually, it turns out that nothing exciting has happened in the last 120 seconds (the amount of time that has lapsed since I last looked).

Of course, the very nature of Facebook is designed to keep you hooked. Hyperlinks everywhere, in the form of random faces that you want to click on. Quite often, before you know it, you’ve got twenty tabs open and you’re making mental notes to return to this person’s profile and that person’s picture album. Yada yada yada, so goes facebook’s never-ending story.

And the games? Forget it. I made the mistake of starting to play an online facebook game called Restaurant City, a Sims-esque restaurant-focused game. The “goal” of the game is to build your restaurant, decorate it, hire people and keep them fed, and master all of the food and drink dishes that you serve. The problem is that this game is an online form of soap opera–there’s no end in sight; the goal is to never reach an end goal. This game keeps sending more and more novelties to settle and colonize my mental landscape. It’s become quite the time suck.  How bad has it gotten? This bad: I created a whole secondary profile just to play this game. Fake Me’s restaurant was supposed to be a place from which Real Me could siphon off whatever I needed. But Fake Me wanted more. Fake Me’s restaurant is now more ornate and grandiose than Real Me’s restaurant is. The energy, time and focus needed to run Fake Me and Real Me’s restaurants is staggering.

Long story short, it’s all just too much for me now and I’m about to short-circuit. So I’ve decided to cut it out for a month. I know it’ll be hard–I love seeing what everyone’s up to, checking out friends’ and relatives’ pictures, and making my restaurant pretty, but the truth is that this one website keeps me from being engaged in what’s really going on around me. I check in too often when I could be doing more productive/meaningful things. So I’ll be deleting the phone app for the month, and I’ll block the website on my computer temporarily. Facebook is one of the main places where I advertise my blog posts, so I’ll have to find some way around that little issue–I’ll probably just click “Share on Facebook” directly from my blog posts so that I’m not tempted to log into my account, but I sincerely hope that my friends keep on reading anyway.

So if you need to reach me, you can do so outside facebook. I look forward to reporting from a more peaceful, self-aware mindset  😉

To the food snobs out there…

Hello people!

We’re blessed to be living in an age that allows us such easy access to great food. We’ve come a long way since the 1950s (unarguably a horrid time in American dining history). Just consider this fun fact–during the decade of the 1960s, the word “sushi” appeared only 8 times in the New York Times. Today, 50 years later, you can probably name 8 different sushi restaurants in less than a minute.

These advancements in access  to new and different foods is great. Unfortunately, these advancements have turned way too many people into snobs who aggressively uphold ideas about food and drink that are offputting to others. It always bothers me on shows like Top Chef when diners dislike a dish for whatever reason, and chef contestants say things like, “Well, these are regular people, they don’t really know food.” Um, why? Because I didn’t go to culinary school? Does that make me incapable of having a properly developed palate?

I argue that these snobby people don’t always know better about food and drink, and that they uphold certain myths to make themselves appear superior.

Here are some food and drink attitudes that I’m tired of experiencing from people who think they know best:

1) You’re inferior because you like sugar in your coffee. Those of you who take sugar in your coffee know what I’m talking about: that condescending smirk from people who deem themselves “real” coffee drinkers–the look they give you when you sweeten your coffee. Folks, there’s no rule that says people can’t mix sugar with coffee– the practice started during the 1600s when a man named Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki opened western Europe’s first coffeehouse in Vienna. He served the coffee plain during its early days, then started experimenting with adding sugar and milk to taste to create coffee drinks and well, the rest is history. Earlier than that, coffee drinkers in the Middle East often sweetened their coffee with cinnamon. If you like your coffee without sugar for whatever reason, that’s fine, but lose the “Sugar?? Oh Heavens no!” attitude–it’s obnoxious.

Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.” – Turkish proverb

2) You’re inferior because you like your meat fully cooked. This will always be a battle of the wills between those eating and those preparing the food. Yes, I love sushi, sashimi and beef tartare. I eat beef carpaccio pretty often. When I cook salmon or tuna at home, I cook it rare. But I also acknowledge that it’s well documented that undercooked meats make people sick. I accept that while I may enjoy eating raw or rare meat, I may be exposing myself to various infections like salmonellosis, trichinosis, toxoplasmosis, listeriosis, and E. coli . Bottom line–whether avoiding illness is worth eating slightly dried-out meat is a matter of personal opinion, and someone shouldn’t be made to feel stupid, unsophisticated, or close-minded because he or she would rather eat their meat fully cooked.

3) You’re inferior because you like sweeter wines. Unfortunately, many wine snobs disdain sweet wines; this is shortsighted and simplistic. Even the snobbiest of snobs will admit that a glass of a Chateau d’Yquem Sauternes (a wine beloved across the board) is the ideal pairing with a decadent foie gras. I dare you to write off a delicious glass of Tokaji–described in Wine Spectator in 2004 as today’s most underappreciated truly great wine– as a glass of glorified grape juice. And don’t get me started on ports, ice wines and sherry. There are a lot of rich complex sweet wines out there; please resist that bias and try them!

4) You’re inferior because you ordered the chicken. “Why don’t you try the liver/veal/braised short rib/monkfish instead?” I know others may deride you for choosing that rock of ages at a fine restaurant, but stick to your guns, chicken-lovers! Ancient Egyptians and the Sultans of Delhi along with countless other great ones who came before you have eaten this bird with gusto. I maintain that it’s a challenge to find perfectly cooked poultry seasoned in a simple manner; delicious chicken that’s not tasty only because it’s smothered in sweet and sour sauce or drenched in syrupy teriyaki glaze like the kind found at mall food courts. Assuming you have access to well-raised free-roaming birds that will yield flavorful meat, chicken remains fully deserving of your love.

Photo Courtesy of hddod

Are there any food myths or mindsets out there that get on your nerves? Please share!

$1 flip flops, just pay us your time and sanity.

Hello readers! I hope you’ve all got fun but restful Memorial Day plans for this weekend.

Empty racks. Nope, not the USSR, but a South Florida Old Navy store.

In light of what’s sure to be a busy shopping weekend, my mind is on bargains today. We all appreciate a bargain. Bogos, two-for-one, buy-one-get-half, etc. A sale by any name is worthwhile. Or is it? Reliable consumer research, like that of the reputable finance blog Walletpop, tells us that people often overspend during retail promotions by buying things they don’t need simply because they’re getting a per-unit discount. But in a world where many of us live with a scarcity mentality, it’s difficult to accept that truth. The voice of scarcity warns us that we may not have enough money in the future to afford it, so we must buy it now while it’s on sale. Or horror of horrors, it may get discontinued in the future, so we need to buy it now. Read the following sentence out loud, please. “It’s on sale, I have to get it now. If I don’t get it now, I’ll never be able to get it, or something like it, again.” Sounds like a ridiculous statement when you say it out loud to yourself, doesn’t it? It sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous. It’s also false and irrational.

For me, nowhere does this irrationality reach its boiling point more glaringly than at Old Navy on Flip Flop day. Last week, it was a gorgeous sunny Saturday. I hopped into my car, for a pleasant visit to Old Navy. I went intending to get a couple of t-shirts for a short getaway trip. The parking lot at the shopping center was insanely full, but I didn’t mind. Until I got out of my car and realized that everyone was walking right past the Barnes & Noble, right past ULTA and Babies R Us, straight into Old Navy. I opened the door and was greeted with pandemonium. It was sort of like a refugee camp–masses of people grabbing random things, yelling out stuff like “I’m over here Rachel! I got the last two, thank God!” and “MOMMY! Where are you?” and “WHY are you here?? I TOLD you to save my spot in line!” In the meantime the aid workers–er, Old Navy employees–were helping any shell-shocked stragglers find the things they needed to survive, like various inexpensive items that were further discounted by 10-20%. The line snaked all over the store and I realized the error of my ways: I had unwittingly come on dollar-flip-flop day.

A portion of the line

Folks, many of us use flip flops, and if you’re from warm-all-year South Florida like I am, you probably use flip flops more than the average North American. I get that. What I don’t get is how or why people lose their common sense and reasoning, and actually stand in LONG, SLOW, winding lines to buy these cheap rubber things. Seriously, people?  The regular price is roughly $2 more, and there’s a 5-pair limit anyway. Why would people willingly participate in that unruly mess to save 5 or 10 bucks? Isn’t your time worth more than that? It reminded me of reports that I read about the Kentucky Fried Chicken promotion for the free meal: people waiting in line for a couple of hours for free fast food at what is already…drumroll please…one of the cheapest restaurant chains in the USA. Seriously? You’d rather wait two hours for two pieces of free chicken than shell out a few dollars somewhere else and do something pleasurable or productive with that time? Hmm, okay then…

Needless to say, I stayed at Old Navy just long enough to snap pictures of the madness and promptly walked out. In my opinion, waiting in line can be worth it for a significant discount on a big-ticket item, like a 20% markdown on a television. But if it’s a dress marked down to $29.99 when the original price is $34.99, then it’s not worth it. Neither that price point, nor that dip in price merit my wasting time in a long line when I could be at the pool with my relatives. My advice after previous years of holiday weekend shopping? Do a little research first before heading out. Just because something is featured on the cover of a store’s newsletter doesn’t mean it’s marked down–very often, the products you’re buying during holiday sale weekends aren’t even discounted at all! Bargains shouldn’t just be about saving a buck; they should be worth your time too. Time is not renewable resource, but a cheap product is! Remember that when you’re standing in long lines during Memorial Day Weekend sales, Independence Day sales and Black Friday sales and remind yourself that your time is more valuable than a pair of flip-flops.

What stuff are you and aren’t you willing to stand in line for?

Words with Friends

Hi all.

If you’ve got a mobile device of some sort that can run the Words with Friends application, then there’s a chance that you’re as hooked on this game as I am. WWF is essentially Scrabble by another name. But since it plays out in the Wild West (my own name for the internet and/or wireless network that connects us all globally), you’re playing matches against many people whom you don’t know. Sure, you can also play against your friends or acquaintances–one of you has to search for the other’s WWF screen name and then initiate a match. But you can also look at the app’s Facebook page where users often post their screen names. Or you can do like I do and let the app search for a random player who happens to be online at the same time as I am (I found my favorite opponent this way; I play with him/her almost exclusively).

Let’s face it–it’s not easy in this day and age to find an ideal opponent in a game that makes decent use of one’s mind. By ideal, I mean someone who’s as intelligent as you–or more so, hence encouraging you to get better–and someone who’s no-maintenance. We lead busy, complicated lives and live in homes with “open floorplans” where all our crap is laid out for all to see. Today, inviting someone over is no longer receiving them in your pretty little parlor room for a round of chess or bridge; it often means putting laundry away and mopping the floors and emptying the sink and preparing a meal: stuff you might not feel like doing right this moment.

Enter WWF. You make your move on the board at your convenience; your opponent makes a different move at his/her convenience. You check in whenever you’d like and play according to your own schedule. Matches can go on for days. How lovely and low-key. Whenever I know I’ll be traveling and won’t be able to check in or play for a few days, I tell my one opponent over the chat function. We never carry on long conversations, but we always wish each other safe travels and congratulate each other on off-the-chart point combinations.

I’m a decent player. I don’t cheat–apparently there are apps where you can plug in your letters and the app will tell you the best point combination, don’t see the point in playing this way. I am, however, the occasional “plugger.” On the WWF Facebook page, it reads the following: “according to the Texas Rangers baseball team, a plugger is a player who, without penalty, throws down made-up words at the board until one of them sticks.’ I’ve done this, and I argue that it’s NOT cheating since it’s coming from my own brain. If this word I’ve never heard of gets accepted on the board, I promptly look it up in the dictionary and add it to my vocabulary.

You’ll find a bit of everything and every kind of sportsmanship in the WWF corner of the Wild West: obsessive players, not-too-bright players, ultra-smarties, and sore losers who will resign the game if they see you’re doing much better than they are, or who accuse you of cheating if you put a word on the board that they’ve never heard of. Of course, a game or sport–even a seemingly innocuous one like Words with Friends– is just another arena in life where we display our best or worst qualities.