A Place to Gather and Talk
My search for a tender, juicy and flavorful breaded chicken sandwich took me to the place where so much great thinking begins – the beer aisle.
After playing with various ways and ingredients for imparting flavor and moisture to this most ubiquitous of bird meats, I discovered that a beer bath had the biggest payoff in terms of big flavor with almost no effort.
Continue reading “Beer Bath Works Wonders for Chicken Sandwich”
If Big Tex looks a little glassy-eyed this fall, blame it on the Fried Beer. Fried beer is one of the eight finalists for the Sixth Annual Big Tex Choice Awards competition. The contest is a big deal for concessionaires at the State Fair of Texas.
Booze is generating a buzz for the State Fair of Texas, as fried-alcohol dishes made the list of top new fair foods announced Wednesday.
Eight imaginative contenders are vying for the Sixth Annual Big Tex Choice Awards, with the winners getting plenty of publicity – and long lines of eager fairgoers willing to gobble up the fried goodness.
But have your ID handy for the Fried Beer and Deep Fried Frozen Margarita – you must be 21 or older to partake.
Continue reading “Fried Beer?”
Overview
The idea of using beer as plant food has been around for decades. For many it is believed to be the perfect pick-me-up for their garden. However, there are those who consider this just another old wives’ tale. There are ingredients in beer that seem useful to plants, such as yeast and carbohydrates. However, upon closer examination, these two items aren’t of much benefit to plants.
Ingredients
There are only four ingredients used in the beer making process. They are water, malted barley, hops and yeast. Ninety percent of beer is water.
Fact
Beer doesn’t contain any ingredient, other than water, that is truly helpful for nurturing plants. There are some who believe the carbohydrates in beer act as food for plants. However, plants need complex carbohydrates in order to thrive, not simple sugars such as those found in soda or beer.
Fiction
Because beer contains yeast, many gardeners consider it a benefit to their plants. However, yeast is a fungus, and not only produces an unpleasant odor, but will also begin to grow around your plants. The fungus will eventually die, contributing nothing to the plants.
Uses for Beer in the Garden
Although beer is not useful as a food for plants, it can serve a purpose in the garden.
A philosophy professor stood before his class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a large jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks about 2″ in diameter. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.Visual
So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The students laughed as the professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.
“Now,” said the professor, “I want you to recognize that this is your life. The rocks are the important things — your family, your partner, your health, your children — things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else. The small stuff.”
There was total silence as the students absorbed the lesson.
“If you put the sand into the jar first, there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal.”
The students started nodding in agreement at the professor’s profound wisdom.
“Take care of the rocks first,” the professor finished — “the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”
But then…
A student then took the jar which the other students and the professor agreed was full, and proceeded to pour in a bottle of beer — and then another! Of course the beer filled the remaining spaces within the jar making the jar truly full.
“Because it rhymes with ‘Report,’ Mr. ‘How DARE you steal it from Scribe,’ Colbert?â€
No stores named in this rant. Not the point. This is a beer-less beating of formerly GOOD beer stores. So let the bashing begin!
Thirsty, Scribe stopped by a store in Spencer, Mass. That may or may not be far from The YOS Anti-Archie Bunker. Scribe NEVER tells anyone where the YOS Anti-Archie Bunker is. Too many of Junior’s henchmen and wench women would LOVE to know.
The store used have a moderate supply of craft beer, and used to be in a strip mall where, sad to report, people no longer strip. Must be a lack of beer, or the guys with the bubble machines prowling the lot. Spoil sports.
Continue reading “Ye Olde Scribe’s Bad Beer Store”
Don’t blame them. AB/InBev made them do it. Poor squirrels. Isn’t torture illegal… now?
A friend and I spotted this crazy bar-on-wheels on the street in downtown Austin recently. It’s powered by ten people pedaling, and while they pedal, they’re drinking beer. There are a few non-pedaling seats, including one for a bartender, who serves beer from their BYOB keg from a central tap.
Pubcrawler of Austin has only been plying the streets (on six approved routes) since early July. The way it works is you get a group of at least ten together and rent it — it’s $160 per hour during the week, and $190 per hour Friday and Saturday. Bring a keg — or boxed wine or canned beer (no bottles, no hard liquor). And everyone has to be 21. Or sign up for a seat on Hump Day — Wednesday — when it’s $35 for a seat, as long as ten people sign up. In that case, you bring your own ice chest.
Here’s a top contender for “vanished beers I wish I’d tasted†– Meat Stout. A mixture of serendipity and synchronicity led me to discover Mercer’s Meat Stout this week, a brew I’d never previously heard of. Serendipity (the art of finding something valuable while looking for some other thing entirely) because I was actually searching for pictures of Ena Sharples in the Rovers Return to illustrate a comment I was making at Alan McLeod’s blog about Imperial Milk Stout. Synchronicity (the occurrence in a short space of time of two random but apparently connected events) because I had been reading just a day or so earlier about the attempt by Stuart Howe of Sharp’s Brewery in Cornwall to brew Offal Ale, containing liver, kidney and heart. (Incidentally, Stuart’s “Real Brewing at the Sharp End†is one of the best brewer’s blogs around: sharp, indeed.)
Alton Brown, from the Food Network, recently handed down his choices for the Nation’s Top Ten Sweets. Making the list for the “Best Beer-Spiked Cupcake†was the Bay Area’s own Miette. With two locations in San Francisco (the Ferry Building & Hayes Valley) and one in Oakland (at Jack London Square), here’s how Brown describes them:
A former dot-commer started this mini-chain after a successful stint at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, and her gingerbread cupcake might be the reason for Miette’s popularity. Made with a dark stout beer, it’s super moist and topped with lightly sweetened cream-cheese frosting and a candied orange flower.
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