Square Peg for a Round Hole

Last night, over dinner, WakeChick kinda dared me to get someone to cook a dinner for me. (and she can be pretty good at this - or maybe i'm just a sucker for these things - ended up leaving my number on the check for the waitress, at her, well, would you say encouragement, WC :-). Anyways, I figured I should at least step into the kitchen for once if I were to get anywhere with this cooking thing. And so, three months after I got here, I finally got myself a food locker in the communal kitchen at the I-house. Of course, I realized pretty quick that an empty locker isn't much more than an empty locker, so off I went to get some groceries.

Two days ago, I was at a 'lunch and learn' thing with Prof. Art Middlebrooks who made it into an Ideation session complete with props and Play-Doh. In that class, we went through a bunch of creative exercises one of which was to answer a question he posed to us - you suddenly find someone mistakenly drop off a truckload of wine corks at your doorstep. What do you do with them? My friends T & A (clean thoughts, now) came up with a cool one - start a winery now that they have the corks for the bottles !

That thought, quite like the previous paragraph in this post, popped up in my head abrubtly and out of context as i stood staring at the wine rack at the grocery. You see, I felt like some wine and wanted to get myself a bottle of red wine, but was also pretty sure that once I opened it I wouldn't get back to it for a few days and it wouldn't be all that by then. So, I was resigned to getting a white that I could refrigerate. And, then I saw it. Wowza.

Talk about a product that you come across and it's like someone's read your thoughts and decided to surprise you by putting it there. It was one of those boxed wine things - that don't lose their flavor for about six months ! And it came in a box to appeal to a packaging whore like myself - The Wine Block !Now, I'm not all that kicked about drinking wine from a box but then again, I'm a starving student (at least i'm supposed to be :) so I'll take it. But seriously, I love it that the wine doesn't spoil, is actually good, takes up less space, has 1.5 litres and costs 10 bucks. This is actually one of the more innovative designs I have seen on grocery shelves in a while (the 'while' includes the four-odd months I haven't stepped into one). I suspect they could take off and do pretty well.

Come to think of it, maybe they already are. Is that why the corks showed up at my doorstep in the first place - 'coz no one needs them anymore? Hmmm.