. Least Favourite Beer of the Week

The Telegraph Brewing Company describe their Reserve Wheat Ale as "Not for the faint of heart." Fortunately they also note that it is "Available in extremely limited quantities," which hopefully means I won't have to drink another one. Yuck. It's like a really nice Wheat Beer that someone mixed with the sourest lemons they could find, shook it all up, and put in our fridge. I think it's supposed to be refreshing or some such nonsense. It's just nasty.

I thoroughly do not recommend this beer to you while you cook Peppered Mushroom and Cheezly Pie with roasted rosemary onion potatoes and a green salad on a Saturday afternoon while Nif is out at trapeze class and your friends have all gone to bed because of that annoying eight hour time difference and your other friends are down at Delores Park with four thousand other people merrily burning their collectively exposed regions and you can't find your sun block because it's not in the bathroom and it's not in the car and it's not in your bag (it's in your coat pocket) and in situations like this, cooking pie is what you do best.

But not with this beer.

. a pie

I made a pie. It's what I do best.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Sam Smiths Imperial Stout was originally brewed (ten miles from where I grew up) for the fancy Russians of the Czarist courts. It was apparently made high in alcohol so that it would survive the trip to Russia, although I can't help thinking that might be a load of old crap like the claim that IPA's were high in hops and alcohol to survive the trip to India. I've been fooled by these beer historians before.

Trust no one, is my advice to you.

And get 'em in.

I recommend drinking this beer around 5 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon while cooking Black-Eyed Pea Fritters with Spiced Coconut Sauce and Turmeric Basmati Rice.

However, I do not recommend cooking black-eyed peas for Nif. They creep her out. Something about their eyes. If you have a cupboard full of black-eyed peas and don't feel like eating them all yourself then try mixing them with other foods of a similar nature (such as cannellini beans). And then blend them in the blender until their eyes are all mashed into pulp. That seems to do the trick.

The coconut sauce had star anise in it. I had never cooked with star anise before. It is very pretty.



Oh, and the beer is jolly nice too.

. All Grown Up

Our minions have flourished and number well over 100. Fear us. You have no choice but to take one of our strapping seedlings into your home. The San Francisco Indian Summer is nigh, and you'll have nothing to soak up that sun. Please don't pretend you have a/c. How many would you like? Baker's dozen? Baker's 50?

. Summertide Undertakings

. A Decade Ago...

A decade ago today we bought our first car and stuck my head in the trunk. My hair was still quite large, but the trunk was larger.

Ten years later, things are not so large.