If you’ve paid attention to this blog over the years, you’ll have clued in to the fact that I quite like the occasional malted beverage, and that I strongly prefer the black, opaque ones to the ones I tend to disdainfully dismiss as “see-through beer”. I may also have mentioned over the years that I tend to prefer stouts in… Read more →
Category: Food and Drink
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Four acquaintances of mine are tromping about Japan at the moment. While I have a very low interest in doing that myself, I am quite interested in following along with their escapades through the Internet. Today, the escapades included ice cream flavours. “But there’s also tomato-flavoured ice cream. And sea urchin. And fried noodle. And lamb raisin. Yes, lamb raisin. No, I don’t understand why it’s lamb raisin.” And that’s not the peak. Go. Read.
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The preceding post was brought to you by Crémant St. Nicolas cidre légere mousseaux from Ciderie St. Nicolas. Here’s a lovely picture of it on my desk. (It won’t oust Archibald’s Hard Cider as the champ, but it will fuel blogging quite nicely.)
No Fear Of The Dreaded Two-Day-er
It’s weird–or maybe not so weird, really–but reading certain news items my reactions are almost entirely filtered through my years of training as a science fiction reader. Sometimes I read the story and suddenly see all kinds of comparisons between some real world event and things I’ve read–either direct connections, or analogies. Sometimes I read something and can’t help but… Read more →
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Is it weird that part of my “keeping in touch with Halifax” plan involves watching what the Nova Scotia Archives publishes? And if not, would it then be weird for me to have spent a lot of time today looking at wartime recipe books? The Atlantic War Fund Club of Halifax’s Favourite Recipes (1940) and the Wartime Economy Book Of Recipes For 1945 were both recently posted, and I seem to be weirdly fascinated with them.
I drink alone
Well, my plan to try out a couple of interesting beers each night for the six nights kind of fell apart. Primarily this was down to too many nights when my all-day meeting schedule ran over into evening activities. (For the record, the official count was 57 hours of scheduled meetings over 5 days, and that doesn’t include the social… Read more →
Julio and religion
A very full day of meetings today, ending with a relatively late working dinner, cut short my beer exploration time tonight. So I only had time to explore one small beer: Saint Bridget’s Porter from the Great Divide Brewing Company. While the bottle describes this as a “Robust Porter” I didn’t find it particularly overwhelming in terms of robustness. That… Read more →
…down by the schoolyard
As is my wont when attending days of endless meetings in the “Boston” office, I’ve made a trip to see Julio and stock up the fridge for an exploration of some interesting looking beers that I haven’t tried before. After today’s marathon meeting session I retired to the hotel and sampled my first selection: Mayflower Porter, from right here in… Read more →
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A completely unsolicited endorsement: the combination of St. Ambroise Stout and Sartori Reserve Raspberry BellaVitano cheese is ridiculously yummy. That is all.
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I note with some interest that the winner of this year’s Canadian Brewing Awards in the Stout category is the St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout from McAuslan. Not news to me. I’ll have to look into Hockley Valley Brewing, and that Imperial Stout from Grand River Brewing as well–more reasons to look forward to the Ontario move.
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Apparently I missed the 250th anniversary of Guinness yesterday. There was a time that couldn’t have happened, since I would likely have been accidentally celebrating it on any given day anyway, but that time is receding into the distant past now. Hell, I used to have the stuff on tap in my house. When I do have a pint at a bar, I still go to Guinness when it’s the only stout, or the best of the available ones, but it’s not religious anymore and there are many better stouts out there.
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Note, I am rescinding the previous statement about the ultimate snack food. The One True Ultimate Snack Food is now the Luxure Cashews from Natursource. That is all.
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While I am less enamoured with the idea of the bacon explosion than the rest of the internet, I admit to an unhealthy curiosity about the idea of a bacon chocolate bar. Of course, the odds are better of my buying an amusing bacon t-shirt than actually trying either of those. And while all this bacon stuff amuses me, some people will take it Just Too Far, Man.
A Punishing Beverage
You know those people who only read one book at a time? I’m not one of them. At the moment I have two novels (one noir detective, one hard SF) on the go in my reading room, a collection of short stories (“M. R. James by way of Lovecraft”) in the bedroom, two books of poetry and political tract in… Read more →
On bacon
I quite like bacon. Indeed, I occasionally require it, ideally in the form of the canonical club sandwich. You might think, then, that see a short, informative video on bacon would be something I would enjoy. As you might guess after watching that, “I enjoyed that” was not my immediate reaction. In fact, my immediate reaction was to Google the… Read more →
