When did it become Wednesday?

Monday was Patriot’s Day here in Massachusetts, when tens of thousands of runners challenge themselves on the legendary 26.2 mile Boston marathon course. Even more tens of thousands of drunk college students line the streets cheering for them. In the midst of all this, for some reason, the Red Sox play a day game. But not just any day game. An 11AM day game. This means that people start lining up outside of bars at 9:30AM, and the game gets out right as the majority of runners make their way through the Fenway Park-neighboring Kenmore Square. It’s epic, that’s for sure, but the extra long weekend is also to blame for me being dreadfully backed up on blogging.

Coming soon:

• Movie reviews! 'Sunshine Cleaning,' 'Vicky Christina Barcelona' and the first hour of 'I’m Not There.'
• American Idol! Or not. Last night, the real American Idols were the Hundred Years War band members, who played an amazing show, organized by Ryan’s Smashing Life. Their fans were out in full force. This is code for We-Were-Out-Really-Late-and-Drank-Many-Beers-So-Don’t-Expect-an-American-Idol-Recap.
• Craft beer! The Craft Brewer’s Conference is here in Boston this week, meaning there are all sorts of snobby and awesome beer events going on. What a great opportunity for me to force my opinions about Good Beer onto you!

Cheers to that

Ever notice how repetitive ‘American Idol’ can get? How could you not? Use the predictability to your benefit with this totally non-sanctioned, not-patented American Idol drinking game:

• Drink at any mention of a past ‘American Idol’ contestant.
• Take 2 drinks at the mention of a past ‘American Idol’ winner.
• Drink when a judge says the words “I like you” during his/her critique.
• Drink when Ryan is shown in the audience.
• Take a half-drink when Paula gives someone a standing ovation.
• Drink when Simon critiques someone’s outfit.
• Drink when the mentor is shown live in the audience.
  
• Drink when someone is called the best of the night.
  
• Drink when a contestant plays an instrument.
• Drink when a contestant is placed on the stage in a somehow unique way (On the ground, in the crowd, etc.).
• Drink when a contestant’s family and loved ones are shown.
• Take a half-drink when song choice is critiqued.
• Drink any time Ryan tries to incite a fight between Simon & Paula or Simon & himself.
• Drink when you see a fan-made sign.
• Drink again when a fan-made sign has a pun on it.
• Drink when Randy mentions one of the “greats” – Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, etc.
• Drink every time the words “this competition” are said.
• Drink every time some kind of promotion or sponsorship is mentioned (iTunes, Ford, etc.)

We’ve never ever officially done the drinking game throughout a whole show of ‘American Idol’ – we’re often too busy recognizing other rules to add to the list – so this might need some tweaking to make it weeknight appropriate. But if nothing else, this can be used as a handy distraction to make Kara slightly more tolerable… Have fun!

It doesn't take much.

I get a good deal of amusement out of the term "amuse bouche." I had never heard of it until a challenge early this year on 'Top Chef' and I certainly had no idea that this is how it was spelt, until I read it on Yelp (Yeah, Yelp! Check out the new Social Media feature at the right, y'all). It literally means "mouth amuser" and is technically supposed to be precisely one bite. How can you not love something so delightfully, yet accurately, titled?

Reflections on a weekend

I love long weekends, because you can accomplish a lot AND sleep in as much as you want, so you don’t have to feel either overworked or lazy. This past weekend was the perfect example, as we got saw a lot of friends and did a bunch of errands, but also did a lot of nothing. Translation: awesome weekend.

Here’s the rundown:

• MANY HAPPY RETURNS: We have been sort-of avoiding Cornwall's ever since we stumbled in there after the Beer Summit and stumbled out without paying. For the uninitiated, Cornwall's is [the best bar in Boston and] located a block from our house. Going a month without visiting there is like going a week without washing your hair – unexpected and slightly awkward because you feel like everyone’s noticing. So, in a conscious effort to re-normalize ourselves with the place, we stopped in for an early evening beer on our way out to Jessica’s house. Everything went fine.
  

• FEEDING FRENZY: We made our own pizza on Friday night with Jessica and Chris, and it turned out amazing. Toppings included: caramelized onion, spinach, fresh mozzarella and goat cheese. It was seriously life changing. (The consensus is that it was the fresh mozzarella; I’m leaning towards the caramelized onions). Yesterday, I tried out two new recipes: Boozy Apple Cake (with this name, it’s just demanding to be included in a themed menu!) and Goat Cheese Mushroom Tart with Potato Crust. Both went really well – and were pretty easy.
  
  The tart involved grating a potato (the recipe called for 1 russet potato, I used 4 new potatoes instead) as the crust, then mixing 2 cups of mushrooms, 1 ½ cups of goat cheese, some half-and-half and an egg as the filling. Next time, I’ll add an extra cup of mushrooms to make it a little less white (and a little healthier maybe?), but, let’s be honest, anything with this much goat cheese is going to be delicious.
  
  The cake was essentially a yellow cake with pureed apples mixed in, which, after baking, was soaked with a concoction of whiskey, vanilla and water. I think it could use an extra apple or 2 (only 2 were used) as well as a topping – I’ll probably make some whipped cream for it in the future, but it's pretty great, and an excellent use for the whiskey that's been sitting unused for the last year and a half.
  
  Other food highlights of the weekend included: the housemade black bean burger at Cambridge Common, a long-awaited visit to Mr. Sushi, and getting a Zipcar to go to Trader Joe’s yesterday so we could load up on essentials like wine and laundry detergent without having to deal with carrying these things on the T. See, productivity.
  

• MOVIE MANIA: In an attempt to balance out the money spent earlier in the week on 'He’s Just Not That Into You,' we went to see 'Waltz with Bashir' on Sunday. And, to round out our viewing of the Best Picture nominees in anticipation of this coming Sunday’s Oscar broadcast, we took in 'The Reader' yesterday. More on those later. In between it all, we also watched 'Before Sunrise' and 'Before Sunset' (I wonder if I will ever be able to watch only one of them again, without immediately wanting to watch the other.).

What’s kind of crazy about the weekend is that there are no photos. We didn’t take the camera out of my purse once. I kind of like that – this weekend only exists in memory. And, well, now here too.

Hungry?

Boston Magazine has just released their list of Boston’s 50 Best Restaurants. To get to ‘em, they combined editorial reviews from the major news outlets here, as well as Chowhound and Yelp. Of the 50, I’ve been to 8, which is equal to the number of restaurants I hadn’t even heard of. I probably won’t make it to more than another 8, because let’s be honest, these places are expensive and fancy restaurants don’t tend to be the most vegetarian-friendly places in the world, especially when they’re French (Or when they’re named, say “The Butcher Shop.”). But, it’s a great list to have, as a handy reference for where to go during Restaurant Week (the awesome twice yearly event that has restaurants around town offer a prix fixe menu for $30), or the next time Trevor or I get a massive promotion/bonus/raise.

At the top of my To Go list are Uni and Dante, and the next time someone’s in town with a car (Got that, sister o' mine?) we should make Blue Ginger a priority. Some random thoughts before the whole list – My favorite name on the list (and one of the ones I’d never heard of) is T.W. Food. Love it. The best of the restaurants that I’ve been to is Ten Tables. I lived 2 blocks away from Lineage and never made it there. I don’t know if going to “Hell Night" at East Coast Grille should count, since it’s a different menu – same thing with Union, since I’ve only been there for brunch, but hey, I need the numbers. And finally, the only one on here I’ve been to more than once: Toro. I would walk there in a snowstorm for that corn – luckily, it’s now served at Ken Oringer’s gazillionth Boston restaurant, La Verdad, conveniently located a 10 minute walk from our condo.

Here’s the full list:

1. O Ya
2. L'Espalier
3. No. 9 Park
4. Uni
5. Clio
6. Aujourd'hui
7. Radius
8. Hungry Mother
9. Hamersley's Bistro
10. Oleana
11. Craigie on Main
12. Meritage
13. Salts
14. Oishii
15. Ten Tables
16. Neptune Oyster
17. Icarus
18. Persephone
19. Mistral
20. Sorellina
21. Rialto
22. B&G Oysters
23. Troquet
24. Lumiere
25. Pigalle
26. Toro
27. Blue Ginger
28. Upstairs on the Square
29. Excelsior
30. Benatti
31. Sage
32. TW Food
33. Locke-Ober
34. Taranta
35. Rendezvous
36. L’Andana
37. The Butcher Shop
38. Via Matta
39. Dante
40. Scampo
41. 51 Lincoln
42. Lineage
43. Bistro Five
44. Grill 23
45. East Coast Grill
46. Estragon
47. Union Bar and Grille
48. Il Capriccio
49. Bin 26 Enoteca
50. Avila

Lessons Learned from Christmas 2008

Trevor & I spent six days in California for Christmas. With 140 miles between our parents, another 100 between my parents and camp, and a final 130 miles back to the airport, we really covered some ground -

and learned some important lessons along the way:

• Things that matter: Friendly AAA drivers who show up on Christmas day to fill your car with gas when you’ve run out in the middle of nowhere. Things that really don’t: Lakers vs. Celtics.
• Banana Bread Beer tastes just as bad as you think it would.
  
• Chihuahuas are kind of like cats.

• 26-year old bodies don’t recover from air mattress / floor / airplane sleeping quite as quickly as younger ones.
• The Stone Brewery - despite its kind of weird warehouse-like location in the outskirts of Escondido - is an amazingly awesome demonstration of the slow food movement, not only featuring over 20 of their own beers on draft and in the bottle, but offering beers from other craft breweries and tons of local and organic goods and produce, including onion rings so thick and delicious they look like donuts.
  

• When a kitchen-full of Californians tells you the hot sauce is too hot – it’s too hot.
• Just like video cameras, airport scales add about 5 pounds.
• A pie can be cut into 8 pieces with just 3 straight lines. This makes little to no sense to the Tecate and Irish Car Bomb swilling masses. So, we'll just have to believe you, Cranium.
  

• A full year of eating Mexican food twice a day couldn't get you to all the amazing-looking places between LA and San Diego.
• When your Grandma and Mom drink (and enjoy) a Lambic, it's official: It really is the right type of beer for non-beer drinkers.
  

The Office Drinking Game

After a full day out and about on Saturday eating and drinking our way through Cambridge, Trevor & I settled in for a game that’s sure to become a tradition (Though, perhaps not always with homebrew and leftover pumpkin beer – we watch The Office so often, that could get us into dangerous territory. Sometimes it will just have to be played with water.) – The Office Drinking Game.

Take 1 sip of your drink every time:

• Michael messes up a cliché
• Stanley is doing a crossword puzzle
• Jim and Pam have a silent connection
• Someone’s on the phone
• Michael hates Toby
• You spot Froggy 101
• Kelly tells a lie
• There’s action in the “annex”
• There’s tell of Michael’s crush on Ryan
• You spot someone from non-Dunder Mifflin offices in Scranton Business Park (EX: Bob Vance)
• There’s a scene in the parking lot
• Other Scranton businesses are mentioned (EX: Poor Richard’s)
• Corporate is on the phone
• There’s mention of other Dunder Mifflin branches (Do this one at your own risk during Season 3)
• The word “paper” is mentioned.
• Someone is spotted doing their job well
• Angela mentions that she’s a vegetarian
• You spot Darryl
• A pop song is mentioned/sung
• There’s an argument within the accounting department
• You see Pam’s artwork

What’s missing? Chime in here.

Are there gold flakes in here?

Massachusetts has all sorts of bizarre laws involving liquor. Like, it can’t be sold on Sundays until noon. It used to not be allowed in grocery stores at all. All bars have to serve food, and no happy hour drink specials are allowed. Some of these are called blue laws. Other we have Michael Dukakis to thank for. (PSA: I don’t mean to be flippant about the significance of what Dukakis did here by outlawing drink specials – drunk driving deaths have decreased by 50% since that law was passed in the late 80s.) I’m just wondering if there should be a limit on this ‘ no drink special’ thing.

Say, for example, you’re at lunch with your lovely sister who came to town for your birthday. You’re actually taking a lunch break, and you go to a Latin American-flava restaurant in your office complex. You order a sandwich that costs $6.95. She orders a salad that costs $8.50. And you both order priceless margaritas (Priceless as in price unlisted, nothing to do with Billy Crudup).

Sure, at this point, you might ask:

A. Ashley, are you expensing that? (No, I am not the CEO of AIG.)
B. Ashley, should you really be drinking during work hours? (Um, it's "Friday"?)
C. Just because you don’t normally take a lunch break doesn’t mean you’re entitled to this kind of special treatment. (Dear Devil’s Advocate: That’s not even a question. Rephrase or I won’t respond).

Regardless.

The margaritas are particularly pungent, and everything is going just fine. Then the bill comes, and you discover that said margaritas were $12. Each. A quick perusal of the dinner menu shows that to be pretty in line with their evening entrée offerings where everything’s $12 and up – as opposed to the lunch menu where everything is between $6 and $10.

So my questions to you are this: Should drinks come at a lower price (and perhaps alcohol content) during the day, to stay in line with lunch pricing? Should I be less offended because there was a lot of bang for the buck in this margarita? And, is Massachusetts or the restaurant at fault here?

An Ode to Pumpkin Beer

Oh pumpkin beer, how fleeting you are.
I wish you could stay around past the fall
Your sweet aroma, and lasting taste
Never a single drop do I waste.
I dream of you – No, really I do
As I wait for Billy to announce it’s true:
‘The keg is tapped – this one’s for you.’

You’re organic and fresh and locally made
I wish I could have you every day
But, truly, you are worth the wait
(Can I find a way to rhyme satiate?)
Great Pumpkin Ale, you are without peer:
Though you come around just once a year
You are by far my favorite beer.

Beer me.

Last night, Trevor and I went to a Vegetarian Beer Tasting at the Cambridge Common in...Cambridge.

Tasting menus are always so enticing, but hard as a vegetarian to justify $40-$75 a plate when you know you're only going to be eat maybe 1/3 of what is served, or (in my case) feel very uncomfortable asking for special treatment (Side note: Last night, the woman from Beer Advocate said to not feel this way about tasting menus,that if you call in advance and request a vegetarian option, any restaurant should be able to provide one. And if they can't, "then they're not real chefs." Nice!!)

The dinner last night went like this:

mozzarella tomato salad (Pinkus Pilsner)
arugula/grapefruit/avocado salad (Oxford Raspberry)
gazpacho (Orlio IPA)
black bean cake (Peak Organic Pale Ale)
fries with ale-spiked ketchup (Wolaver's Oatmeal Stout)
empanada with tomatillo salsa (Wolaver's IPA)
angel hair pasta with peppers and feta cheese (Orlio Common Ale)
a cheese/fruit plate (3: A double-edelweiss, a Hefeweizen and a regular wheat - I'll have to ask Trevor for their actual names)
peach cobbler (Wolaver's Brown)

It was all amazing. The cheese plate was out of this world, and the ale-spiked ketchup was even better than the homemade ketchup at Matt Murphy's... The empanada was probably the best stand alone dish. The peach cobbler / Wollaver's brown was the best pairing. And the best beer was probably the Peak Organic Pale Ale, which I'd had before, but is always just such pleasant surprise.

I took me about 24 hours to be ready to eat again. And I can't wait to do it again! I'd never eaten at the Cambridge Common before and hadn't been there since I lived in Somerville - at which point I wasn't exactly the biggest beer connoisseur, so I am particularly excited about hitting it up often with Trevor for new, local and organic offerings.

Live it, love it

Eat local - sometimes it's even more important than organic. What's in season by you?