Summer preparation

I've spent the glorious summer teaser weather in Chicago checking out ancient drinking vessels at the Art Institute.

       

Getting a new, laborious tattoo (oy, do I remember that swelling). And I totally got caught by my boss icing it, which necessitated that I show him what it was. He's an older gent, and this is a fairly conservative atmosphere so I'm not normally inclined to share, but we all managed to survive the ordeal. 

Learning to play clawhammer banjo. This was taken during lunch at work to prove to my husband I wasn't slacking on practice. 

I have a love-hate relationship with banjo. I always dread the classes, whining about it all the way. I also have SUCH anxiety about playing music and doing any creative stuff in front of people because if I was any good at it, it would be my job. I just like messing around, strumming along to Ryan Adams, NMH and Oasis on guitar. But taking a class means being out of tune and trying to read tabs IN PUBLIC. Not to mention to my utter horror the teacher has us sing along in class. The first day I just would have none of it! The hippies can do what they want, I would keep my voice to myself. That lasted a little while, anyway, before the teacher was all "Everybody now". So sing I must. But I keep it quiet as I have no misconceptions about the quality of my voice or ability to find a key. And I leave class feeling a little bit smarter. 

I spent my weekend making beer...

...and being stalked by this ferocious beast:

That is pure killer instinct. Now that Lily knows that I am a pushover and our other cat is super jealous she spends all day passive aggressively lording over us all. She tends to be so quiet that when she makes any noise we immediately reward her with whatever she's looking for. That usually is a trip to the basement, even though she's ended up accidentally locked down there for a few hours more than we care to admit.

The beer should be alright. It's the first time I've ever done it, and I was happy to have the collaboration of my friend Monica. We brewed, drank some Dreadnaught, and watched Marie Antoinette.

My temperament is not well suited to the "Relax, have a homebrew" mantra espoused by Charlie Papazian and so I had an absolute freak out when the yeast started doing its job and therefore kind of bubbled over into the airlock. Brew day was fun, but this brewing thing seems to be experimental, and the moments I spent thinking we'd wasted our time and money were dark.

Ramblin'

My birthday adventuring has now officially spanned two weeks. Starting a week prior to my actual birthday I've had more than my fair share of Michelle-centric activities. I'm ready to focus on other stuff for a while, but it was fun while it lasted! It culminated last night with a dinner with co-workers, preceded by nice long walk with Andrew. We saw dreamy buildings from another era as well as the very random sewing machine display. I guess it pays to act

like a tourist sometime and delight in things that would be annoying and confusing if passed everyday.

This past weekend included a snowy trip to the Chicago Brauhaus complete with hackepeter and creamed herring as well as the boot. Showing an amount of restrain befitting someone my age, I kept us to one boot (restraint cancelled out by multiple rounds of schnapps).

A week before we went to our very first beer dinner at Revolution Brewing in Logan Square. I've been for food and drinks before, but never to their upstairs room. It's got a vintage feel but

relaxed enough for the low country shrimp boil, which was the theme of the dinner. I was surprised (alarmed?) at the size of the beer pairings for a Monday night. Very generous. Portions for everything were bountiful.

The best pairings were lime chess pie with a hoppy beer they brew called

Anti-Hero (who knew hops and lemon meringue-type deserts go so well?), brunswick stew with Fistmas (poorly pictured to the right) and a smoked stout with cold smoked oysters. The latter was most remarkable in that the smoke taste did not overwhelm the beer and make it taste like drinkable ham, which in my opinion some of the other smoke beers do.

I'm more than happy that the revelry has ended so I can get back to normal life. Which apparently still includes beer and may also feature some archery.

Gueuze for a game day

There is something resembling a stockpile of Belgian beer at my house. Mostly I forget about it because its in the basement, and I only go down there to contemplate the mess leftover from the flood and work out to the movies of Woody Allen and Kevin Costner. But yesterday was a big day - we had playoff tickets for Bulls vs. Cavs - as well as a ride to the game. In other words: time for some beer.


We selected a couple gueuzes, a sour beer from Belgium that has it's fair share of fans as well as haters. We happen to love the tart, sour taste as well as the funky / barnyard-y smell. However plenty of folks SERIOUSLY hate them, not just because the beer is funky and strange but because the bacteria used in production has messed with beers not meant to be sour.


Initially I thought that Petrus Aged Ale was not gueuze, but it clearly was. It had that barnyard smell that some soft cheeses have, and the flavor was light but definitely sour. I had started with a very hoppy (non-Belgian) beer, and this was a great contrast. Gueuze can be very effervescent and almost light despite the strange flavor. Germany has something similar - gose - which is not only sour, but also saline. It's actually not as strange as it sounds, but its not something I'd have every day or even as often as I might want a gueuze.

The joy of strange grocery stores

The wonderful thing about living in a big city is access to large and unwieldy multi-ethnic supermarkets. I live in Forest Park, something like 9 miles west of Chicago, but I have access to some great shops. The one I'm thinking of today is Tony's, a giant of a store which offers an array of middle eastern, Indian, eastern European and Mexican goodies in their produce and pantry aisles.

Usually it's jam packed with people, but I've found a good rhythm to going that steers me clear of the crush of people trying to get at the deli counter. My last visit was on a Monday night and, while still crowded it was much more manageable to pick up the ingredients for the salmon Nicoise I made for my mother's birthday.

Anyway... in addition to the healthy salad ingredients I picked up a couple bottles of Estonian beer! I've tried many a beer, but never an Estonian beer and I was very curious to see what they had to offer. Especially nice was the fact it was not labeled "dark" and sported 6.7% ABV.

It was an interesting beer. Very sweet and malty, it somewhat resembled
a barleywine in both flavor and appearance (though obviously at 6.7% it was less strong than those bad boys). Bonus points for the fact the full name (Saku Tume) sounds like Sock-It-To-Me. At something around $4 for a size between a bomber and a 12 oz I'd probably buy it again, possibly even for use in a braise of some sort. I braised short ribs in Belgian beer several winters ago and I think this would work similarly





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