Alligator & Alligash

I'm a little disappointed in myself for not posting this sooner.

Jami and I met my Dad in Blue Island at the Maple Tree Inn where my friend Katie Orr planned an incredible lineup of three Alligator dishes paired with three awesome Allagash beers!

This Alligator & Allagash Beer Dinner was one of the most delicious meals I've ever had!

Katie started us off with their famous "Swamp" Alligator Soup along with an Allagash White

Next was a fried alligator po' boy with cajun fries paired with an Allagash Tripel

I know this isn't how you eat a po' boy, but I wanted it to last. I was savoring every bite.

Finishing off we had an Alligator & Andouille Sauce Piquante paired with Allagash Black

I finished up the night with some blueprints for a new house at the lake paired with an Allagash Interlude.

There's nothing coincidental about that now, is there?

interlude: Noun (plural: interludes)

1. An intervening episode, etc.
2. An entertainment between the acts of a play.

Museum Day! (Part 2)

Always a favorite at the museum is the U-505 exhibit. While I was growing up, you could walk through the submarine, but the boat itself was outside the building. You could only see parts of the exterior from hallway windows inside the museum.

Thanks to the renovations started in 1998, visitors have been able to get up close and personal with the entire vessel since 2005.

Being that it was November, we took advantage of the museum gift shop to pick up some Christmas gifts for my niece and nephew, Lily and Ben. These two shirts were fun, but didn't actually make the cut. They got noisy toys instead!

Museum Day! (Part 1)

Back in late November, Jami and I took advantage of a rare day off at the same time and set off to see the neighborhood! I hadn't been to the museum in a very long time; certainly not with Jami.

This place looks awesome since they decided to bring their larger collection pieces inside the museum. to be a bit more accurate, they built new exhibit rooms around the larger collection pieces.

What? Who's quirky?

Part of the inspiration for heading over to the museum was for the navy exhibit. Jami is pursuing a commission as a Naval Emergency Medicine Physician, and I had exchanged several messages with some buddies from the USS VINCENNES. I wanted to add this photo to the collection on the facebook page that one of my Vinny buddies started for veterans of that ship.

You know you're an engineer when...

It's a habit of engineer ratings in the navy; the yellow boxes mounted on overheads and bulkheads in ships are called: battle lanterns. They're like the emergency lights in fire escape stairwells: they're supposed to light up when the power goes out. There's a little button on the top to make sure that the battery works.

I know... it was only an exhibit; I didn't really expect it to work.

Forbidden fruit .....juice?

Having caught the homebrew fever, it's only natural that I'd try making a hard cider, even if it's only because of my fondness for cider from Wick's.

Wick's Apple House is a staple of my childhood and summers at the lake. Just a few miles from Round Lake, we headed over for doughnuts after church in the summer or for fresh, 100% apple 'squeezin's.'

This fall, I picked up five gallons of cider and brought it home to experiment with in my 'big-kids chemistry set.' A.K.A: Homebrew Equipment.

I don't plan to go into my recipe, largely because I haven't bottled/conditioned/tasted the final product yet, and because I want to keep it to myself for awhile.

After just two weeks, the alcohol content measured 11.8% by volume! Here it is all cloudy and brown, on the left, when the experiment was just getting started:

About eight weeks after initially pitching the yeast, the cider has already begun to clear out nicely:

Naturally, I collected another sample and saved it for tasting. Sean, Jami, and I were all pleasantly surprised (especially Sean) with this taste:
.

...and for those of you who are curoius, the ABV is just under 12%. Most of the fermentation did take place in those first two weeks.

Fallen off the Blaggon

So it's been two months since I've posted to my blog; so what? That should mean I have a wealth of material, right? Certainly so!

This is the photo from the invitation for"A brew or two, a brew or two, a brew or two, or three, or four!"

Back in October I had brewed up two batches of beer in two weeks. Jami decided that if I was going to be brewing on such a rapid schedule that I had to make room for more on a similar schedule. Since she and I really couldn't drink five gallons of beer a week and still keep our jobs, we decided that our own "Beer Tasting" was in order.

I brewed up an American Brown Ale from Perfect Brewing Supply in Libertyville and bottled that. Then I brewed up an IPA and used a Corny Keg as the secondary fermenter and served that straight from the keg. I suspect that racking to the keg was the key factor in why my IPA tasted more like a Belgian Ale. It wasn't bad, it was very interesting and well received. I'm just upset because it didn't turn out like i expected and I'm not sure I could, or would want to, re-create the brew.

If there could be a bad side to a beer party, it was having so much beer left over! This is my own fault too; in the invite for the party I gave those who might be afraid of homebrewed beer the option to bring a sample of their own favorite beer to drink and share. Of course everyone exercised this option and my home brewing pals brought samples of their beer as well as their favorites from other breweries.

Needless to say, we had plenty of tasty options.

So many options in fact, that we didn't have room in the fridge for leftover food - we filled it with leftover beers!

Also, I'd hate to forget mentioning the cider that Jeff brought over; he and I had very similar ideas for samples of Wick's Apple Cider. He brought over a nice spiced hard cider in a growler ...that I need to return soon!

Jami and I couldn't bring ourselves to dump the Belgian IPA, but once that was gone I was able to put the fridge back into some kind of order; it still took us a while to clear out these leftovers!