Monthly Archives: May 2011

American Craft Beer Week

Beer

As part of American Craft Beer Week, our local brewery (Swamp Head) and Cigar City from Tampa had a “taproom takover” (I’d call it a “tasting room exchange”, but that’s not as alliterative). So we got our choice of eight CCB beers on tap.

The smallish tasting room was already packed at 5:00pm, so we got a pint of Florida Cracker Wheat Ale, and a growler of Table Saison.  It took me nearly 15 minute to get those, and I almost changed my order halfway through to add another couple of growlers.  I should have done that, because by the time I came back to get more growlers, the crowd was much worse, and three of the kegs blew while I was waiting to get a couple growlers, including both the beers I wanted.  So I had to take my third and fourth choices (Jose Marti Porter and Maduro Brown Ale).

Luckily, I’ve never had a bad beer from Cigar City, and these were no exception.  The Cracker Wheat Ale was a great cloudy hefeweizen, with just enough spice and citrus to make it interesting.  The Jose Marti was inky and intense, with a little sweetness and not too smoky.  The Maduro was a great brown ale, with a big malt and lot of subtlety to match it (and I found some 12 oz. bottles at Tipple’s, so we can get more).  The Table Saison was not as sour and bold as their Sea Bass, but a more mainstream farmhouse, very light but with a definite sourness, almost like a kolsch.

We’re going to round out Craft Beer Week with Victory‘s V-12, which should be muscular enough to go well with chili.

Who cares that it’s in the 90s?

knitting, ,

I finally just wrapped up Project #2  from my mom’s visit – Morehouse Farm’s alligator scarf. This was too hard to resist, despite the already ridiculously hot weather. I bought the baby alligator version of the pattern, which is the perfect size for three-year-olds, such as my son. It’s also the perfect size for the moms of three-year-olds, as well as their sisters, dads, friends, and cousins. In fact, especially here in Gator-central, there is no actual limit to the number of people who this scarf is perfect for.

As an added bonus, it was shockingly easy to knit (so long as I was paying enough attention to actually count my stitches).

 

Mother’s Day project

knitting, ,

I found this cute flower pattern on Ravelry while I was looking for a project to make for my mom and Redbeard’s mom for Mother’s Day. I couldn’t resist, even though I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the flowers, once completed.

Inspiration struck halfway into the second one – add a thin stem and make it into a bookmark! Both of our moms are avid readers and have not (yet) succumbed to the siren’s call of the Kindle, so cute and functional – perfect! Then, I just had to figure out how to add a stem. This is one of those obvious-in-hindsight things, but I admit at first I was at a loss. I tried knitting a three-stitch row garter stitch, which twisted. That surprised me, which I guess reflects my rookie-knitter status. It worked for the part of the stem near the flower, though. For the rest of the stem, I ended up braiding three strands of yarn, which worked even better!

I May Be Doing This Wrong…

Beer,

Dinner did not get off to a good start.  I was going to make lasagna, but for some reason that didn’t seem like a good idea when walking home in 90° heat.  So I decided I’d take most of the ingredients and make a pasta bake instead, since that seemed like it would be lighter.  That was going OK until I knocked one of my Guiness glasses off the counter, sending shards of broken glass all over the kitchen.

Then we decided we’d rather have beer than wine, so I opened a bottle of Lectio Divina.  When I opened the last bottle, the cork blew out of my hand as soon as I looked at the wire cage funny.  So this time I carefully held the cork down with one hand and loosened the wire with the other.  But then I had trouble getting the wire cage off and forgot to hold the cork down for a second, and it exploded out of my hand, sending the cork into the next room and cutting my thumb with the wire as it zoomed by.

And then I stained my favorite white shirt with the pasta sauce (that’s my own fault, I should’ve changed my shirt…).

At least the beer was good and all but one of the kids liked the pasta bake.