donnunn.com

Seasonal beers FTW.

And David’s brew, the Czech Pilsner:

Maker’s Mark. At a coffee shop. At the mall.

I must not be in Utah anymore!

The crab and asparagus omelet at Skillet. Insanely delicious.

At Skillet in German Village.

If Samuel Adams’ Summer Ale is to be believed.

And I’m ready to believe.

The first pint of Curve Ball this year. Aaahhhhh....

Cheers!

*And* beer. Heaven!

Buttface Amber at The Ram to finish the work week.

Aaahhhhhh....

Shrimp dumplings and a frosty Tsing Tao before I start the trek home.

Good for the planet, good for you, and fun shapes too!

Preparing the glaze for the rum cake. A 4:2:1 sugar/rum/water mix with a butter chaser :-D

Boozing up the rum cake. Holiday baking in full force!

Bacardi Coco and Pyrat XO rums, pineapple and orange juices, fresh lime.

Ahh, the tropics. :-)

From the “things we’ve never heard out of Julie Anne’s mouth before” files.

Chasing Tail ale in my Squatters Mug Club mug :-)

American Brewing Company recently opened its doors to the Edmonds community, and University of Washington journalism student Allison Barrett developed the following multimedia presentation through an internship project for My Edmonds News.

While American Brewing Company may be new, head brewmeister Skip Madsen has a long history of crafting beers in the Pacific Northwest. His regional brewing experience includes time spent at Pike Brewing Company and Big Time Brewery in Seattle as well as at Boundary Bay Brewing Company in Bellingham and Waterstreet [sic] Brewing and Ale House in Port Townsend.

via myedmondsnews.com; links added by me

We enjoyed American Brewing’s Breakaway Caboose Oatmeal Stout just last week at the twice-yearly Brewmasters Dinner at Ray’s Cafe. Ray’s executive chef Peter Birk paired the beer with an excellent starter course of baked Penn Cove Select oysters with horseradish, aged cheddar, and tallgrass rye bread. It was an unexpected match that worked really well.

Very much looking forward to stopping by American Brewing and checking out their Breakaway Room tasting spot.

Check out the link to My Edmonds News for the multimedia presentation, it’s an interesting look into the brewery’s people and operations.

Jennifer Talley, the brewmaster at Squatters Pub Brewery in Salt Lake City, has won the prestigious Russell Schehrer Award for Innovation in Brewing. She is the first woman to receive the honor since it was first presented in 1997 by the national Brewers Association.

She recevied the award last week during the Craft Brewers Conference in Boulder, Colorado.

A native of Chicago, Talley has been the head brewer at Squatters since 1994. Utah beer lovers know she is always experimenting with new beer styles and ingredients creating award winners such as Alt & In The Way, a gold medal winner at the 2008 World Beer Cup.

via www.sltrib.com

Good news! Squatters is my fave brewpub, glad to see the recognition.

Alehouse restroom. Flashing back to the hospital gift shop in 2004, all those old-lady volunteers.

Which is not to say the old-lady volunteers were in the alehouse restroom with me—nothing so scandalous.

No, one of them was named Stella. And every time I saw her, I’d do the “Streetcar” bit. And she’d smile tolerantly and encourage me to return to the cash-register lesson. ;-)

You can’t quite see the cheery glow of the practically white-hot metal, but trust my tongue. OW.

Crazy bald kid didn’t know WTF he was talking about!

(Clearly I am rapturously attentive in this meeting)

“Mornings aren’t pretty”—truer words never spoken, though I didn’t sleep long enough to get a really grand case of bedhead. But I kinda feel like Mickey looks.

And it can’t be purely coincidence that one French press = one giant coffee cup, right? No, it *must* be a greater statement of the proper order of the universe.

In order: People, beers, and cans of enchilada sauce to ring in the new year.

On the second hand (a set and a run), instead of, say, on an actually USEFUL hand like the final (3 runs)???

I decided, on the final hand, to try for three runs of diamonds. Here’s to that second joker :-D

Game final score: Don 190, Julie Anne 400

Not the game-winner, but it looks good so far. Three hands in (of seven total) and I’m batting a thousand. :-)

Cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Christmas morning.

Julie Anne’s scratch-made pumpkin pies.

For the record, this wasn’t a total Martha Stewart endeavor. Julie Anne did not make the pie dishes herself. She bought ’em. And she feels a bit terrible about that. ;-)

Corned beef hash with poached eggs, home fries, and pumpkin pancakes at the Original Pancake House.

This has become a weekend ritual during the cold/wet months.

Interesting list. Now I know where I’ll be getting ideas for some new local bottles to try over the next few years.

The methodology is simple. I look through a year's worth of tasting notes and select one wine from each of 100 wineries for inclusion. All but three of these wines scored 91 points or higher (out of 100) in my reviews for a national wine publication. They are ranked first according to their score and within each scoring category by price. Among all 93-point wines, for example, the least expensive will rank highest, and the most expensive lowest. The original suggested retail price is also listed.

Why just one wine per winery? With roughly 670 wineries in the state, it is a better way to showcase the breadth and depth of the industry's offerings.

Who needs caffeine to wake up? This oatmeal has a half-life of several hundred years.

So Katharine knows I do, in fact, drink a Bloody Mary now and then

It were good.

Stepped away for a lunch break, returned to find a little sweet perched atop my notepad courtesy my coworker Jeremy. :-)

I give you: Julie Anne’s quick-draw map of Seattle.

She was trying to explain to her mom where we were in relation to Seattle proper, but she ended up drawing a mutant Goon from a 1940s “Popeye” cartoon. ;-)

;-)

It’s not cold in this room. I know this for two reasons.

First, I have photographic proof:

And second, I don’t feel cold.

But my hands do not know this.

My hands! They feel frozen and have for most of the day, dammit!

So, having achieved fluid equilibrium a few hours ago, that state where I must expel fluids at roughly the same rate I am consuming them, I went down the hallway a bit ago for a refresh of my beverage. And I thought:

Ah ha! Hot chocolate!

Which I am now not drinking but am hugging closely to my person, in an attempt (so far vain, because I have taken my hands off the warm cup so I can type this post) to warm my poor frozen hands.

Also, earlier (and unrelated), I sneezed five times in a row. Best sneezes EVER.

So how’s your Friday?

This morning we stopped at Starbucks for eggnog lattes and at Target for Christmas lights, candles, and a wreath and hanger.

Now back at Julie Anne’s discussing the particulars of her holiday decorating plans before we retrieve the dozen or so Christmas boxes from her storage unit, all while she’s mixing up a batch of home-made bread and Christmas songs waft from the living room.

Definitely that time of year!

Happy holidays :-D  

IHOP NFL-themed stuffed French toast, oh dear God
(Click image for full-size 1280x1024)IHOP’s newest thing: Football-shaped stuffed French toast for the new NFL season. Strawberries for AFC, blueberries for NFC.

Woo new local coffeehouse (and crepes! beer! wine!) opening soon just down the street. via citizencoffee.com

UPDATE: Targeted for opening Sep 01, woo! via Queen Anne View

Click image to view full size, 1280 x 1024Accent wallpaper pays amusing homage to the ubiquitous fowl at Kountry Kitchen in Kapa‘a.

So this morning at IHOP the server asked if I wanted my usual, and I said, uh, what is my usual? and she said eggs over medium and pancakes with link sausage, and I said, how do you know that? I’ve only had that once here and you weren’t my server, and she said, when folks come in two Sundays in a row, they always get the same thing.

It was kinda creepy. But the food was good.

Beldin: I had Golden Grahams for breakfast. There was a little zebra car toy thingie in the box, a tie-in to Madagascar 2—I opened the box (it was new) and the little toy popped right out, a bit of a surprise for so early of a morn.

Bug: Weird.. you mean they don't bury the toys at the bottom of the box any more? :x

Beldin: Nope. This one was in its own separate little wrapping on the outside of the cereal bag, just inside the box top.

Bug: How.. odd. Takes all the fun out of trying to DIG for the toy. ;x

Beldin: I know! I used to pour the whole damned box into a big mixing bowl to find the toy, and then ladle the cereal back in spoonful by spoonful after. ;D

Bug: ROFL, exactly. ;x

Back a little while ago from the birthday festivities. Had a SPECTACULAR evening with Katharine and Julie Anne.

I had planned to slip out a little early so Julie Anne and I could play some pool and have a beer or two before we met Katharine for dinner tonight, but ended up leaving work right at my usual time when Julie Anne picked me up. We headed into Bellevue for a few rounds of pool at The Parlor Billiards & Spirits in Lincoln Square. Place has been open for a few years now but somehow we’d never tried it, a shocking oversight. They have something like 20 pool tables arranged to allow plenty of space on each side so players won’t encroach on other games (very often, anyway), and an extensive bar and food menu to keep you fueled up while you scratch your way through a few games of pool.

While we were playing, Julie Anne, who was vibrating in joyous anticipation at the gift she had arranged for me, suddenly could take it no longer and insisted I open her birthday card. Inside were two concert tickets for Vienna Teng on December 13.

My first thought was: How in the world could I have missed a Vienna Teng concert date in Seattle? I have the tour-dates feed in my regular reader, the last time Vienna Teng was in town I had tickets 12 minutes after the concert date was posted to the feed!

Then I kept looking at the tickets and two things struck me:

Katharine and I are off to Sequim, the retirement paradise with the funny name on the Olympic peninsula, to spend Thanksgiving with our uncle Kermit and our cousin Donna and her family.

Enjoy the day and best wishes for the rest of the holiday season.

Blargh. I loves me some Circus Animals now and then.

SFGate: Mother’s Cookies abruptly shut down
George Raine, Chronicle Staff Writer

(10-08) 17:21 PDT — Mother’s Cookies, an Oakland institution for 92 years, has been shuttered, its owner seeking bankruptcy protection for the company.

The ending was abrupt: Workers for the company, which shifted its baking and distribution operations to plants in Ohio and Canada in 2006, told workers Friday that operations would cease and cookies would no longer be made as of Monday.

The company cited rising prices for raw materials and fuel, and on Monday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

The company that made Mother’s cookies at the end was the Archway & Mother’s Cake and Cookie Co. of Battle Creek, Mich. It was owned by Catterton Partners, a private-equity firm in Greenwich, Conn., which in 2005 purchased it from an Italian firm, Parmalat Finanziaria, which was plagued by scandals at home.

In 2006, Mother’s Cake & Cookie Co. was uprooted from its plant on 81st Avenue in Oakland and relocated. About 230 employees lost their jobs.

[...]

Via Consumerist

UPDATE: Kellogg’s bought the trademarks and recipes, but won’t take on any of the former Mother’s employees.

1. Beautiful weather. This was all weekend, but it started Friday, so chronologically it goes first.
2. Drinks and dinner with Katharine and our coworker friend Ian at Macaroni Grill Friday night. Second time I’d been there in a week, but only once for a meal. And while we were there . . . .
3. Ran into my friend Matt and his roommate Liz, who were there to wait for their other friend Jason, who is one of the bartenders. So of course I had to hang out with them a bit once the dinner part of the evening was over, and somehow that meant a trip to the grocery store to buy a foot-long sub that was actually 14 inches (I called it “the baker’s foot”—I am such a card) and a 12-pack of Coca-Cola. For Jason, that is. I still had my lasagna leftovers.
4. SLEPT. Ahh.
5. Relaxing Saturday morning and early afternoon of household stuff. Never used to relax me, now I find it enormously satisfying. Damned adulthood.
6. A complete reset of my TiVo, which had been doing Spanish-language and cooking shows again, but oddly, no Spanish-cooking shows. Also insisted it was out of program info as of yesterday even though the listings actually ran through the 18th. The little TiVo dude may be cute and cuddly, but damn if I don’t want to slap the shit out of him sometimes.
7. Lovely happy hour and dinner with Julie Anne at Bell Street Diner on the Seattle waterfront. Watched some cruise ships pull away, watched some drama with a whole passel of Seattle Fire Department trucks and personnel including divers for a water rescue that wasn’t actually necessary. Also a lot of BYU fans who were just pleased as non-alcoholic punch by their football team’s one-point victory over the Washington Huskies, though the one set of blue-wearing jackasses on our left did spend a good part of their meal whining about how the Cougars beat the Huskies by “only” one point, woe are they, their team is better than that! The one guy ordered the salmon pot pie, which Julie Anne hates and would normally warn persons she likes against ordering it. This BYU-fan numbnuts she encouraged to order it.
8. Home by 21:00 Saturday so I had a nice evening of warm weather, lovely Seattle city views, and my new rope lights on the balcony to add a bit of ambience, and to blind me to the views of the closer neighborhood. Hadn’t quite thought that all the way through, but it works well enough for the light I actually want out there sometimes.
9. SLEPT more. Ahhhhh.
10. Woke up absurdly early, silly body getting used to the work schedule and holding me to it on the weekends. Drank 12oz Diet Coke, which seems like way TMI but is important a point or two down the line.
11. Met Matt for coffee at Borders in Alderwood Mall. Twelve ounces of non-fat white chocolate mocha there (again, not really TMI, just wait for it), ahead of
12. The 11:30 showing of The Dark Knight in Lynnwood, accompanied by roughly half of a 32oz (they call that “small”) Diet Coke at the theater, so that when the (3-hour!) movie was over
13. I could barely stand up, my bladder was so stretched. RESTROOM EMERGENCY, I walked out of the theater bent over like Igor from Young Frankenstein, but I made it with no lasting ill effect. Ahhhhhhh.
14. Late lunch with Matt in Edmonds at Anthony’s Beach Cafe, or Bell Street Diner North as I’ve decided to call it. Similar menu, similar waterfront experience (though the sandbox and screaming children added a whole level of Family Fun! to the meal), absolutely GORGEOUS afternoon.
15. Home to wind down the weekend with a few more householdy things while I get into the mindset for my first full five-day work week in what seems like months, but is really only a few weeks, after the last few work weeks were shortened by holidays and visiting family.

Seems like such a more happenin’ life when it’s listed in 15 items like this, go figure.

My good friends Corey and Derek are in the process of moving Corey’s business, Frites Belgian Fries, from its location on 10th and Pike (attached to Neumos). They haven’t landed quite yet but will be announcing name, location, and hours soon.

In the meantime, you can reach them by email with questions about the move: fritesbelgianfries at gmail dot com.

Previous Frites mentions:

• Friends (and their business ventures) in the news (Jan 25, 2005)
• Get your frites on (Feb 01, 2005)
• A couple more Frites items (Feb 03, 2005)
• More Frites linkage (Apr 19, 2005)
• Several new things—my first experience of Frites’ product (Jul 16, 2005)