Modified coq a vin with a glass of pinot noir

So me and my roomie Pranav were going to go out to Michel's (fancy restaurant on Palmer Street here in Townsville) but ended up staying in, so we decided to cook coq a vin. Since we didn't have any red wine, we biked to the corner store, hoping to get some wine and some bacon and chicken with the bone still in. Turns out that BWS (Beer wine spirit) store was open (YAY alcohol!) while the butcher shop was not! (It's closed on Sundays...darn it!) so we had to improvise and make some changes. We tried as hard as possible to stick to the original recipe by Julia Child but ended up not having bacon, not having chicken with the bone in, had no mushrooms and so we ended up using potatoes and minced beef to replace those (well we had chicken thigh/ breasts but they didn't have the bone in them so we just used the ones we had). We were originally going to add in carrots as well (as another part of our improvisation but decided that the sweetness of the carrot probably won't go well with the bitterness of the red wine so we ended up eating that with a french onion dip as a starter. Since I was still hungry, I suggested that we have some brie cheese and some crackers while waiting for the coq a vin to cook (I guess that was our 2nd starter or a mini-entree). 30 minutes later and with a still-growling stomach, it was finally done! Here is what it looked like:
Served it with a glass of pinot noir. It did taste good but Pranav said that it wasn't THE BEST (yeah well go figure since we didn't use the original materials...he said that he will make the actual one sometime in the future and that it will be super delicious). So after that, I was still hungry and so I made myself a banana split while watching an episode of Gossip Girl and CSI NY with Pranav (I tried to spice things up by eating the banana split while covering myself up with my fleece blanket since I was cold hahah I'm convinced that I'm pretty crazy). Halfway through the shows I was like "Hmm, I think you're the only person who can tolerate my craziness.." and Pranav nodded. LOL. I spent half of the last part of CSI NY falling asleep though I did figure out what finally happened to the victims though!
All in all, it was a great fun-filled evening :)
Wow, I feel old.