rocks glass, 2 cubes of ice and a bottle of Sailor Jerry is a great way to wind down a hectic day of cooking, work around the house and trips to Home Depot when it’s 95F out. OK, when you don’t have any craft beer it’s a good way.
To find out the ultimate experience with seahorse download The Real Happy Hour’s EP15.
Most of you know by now that the Pens lost Wednesday night 3-2 to the Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals 4 games to 2. Normally a fan would be depressed but not me. Yes, I would have liked to see my team win but when you look back over the last 5 years you can’t help but feel pride.
The franchise was on the verge of leaving Pittsburgh. A cash dump by then GM Craig Patrick left us with a team that couldn’t even beat the Johnstown Chiefs and those of us die hard hockey fans were on life support for a sport destined to leave and keep this struggling city a major league town. 5 years later the Penguins became Stanley Cup finalists and the promotional baby of the NHL which was revamping a sport considered dead from a full season lock out.
Hockey isn’t a sport that you can just jump into. You need to know the rules to fully appreciate it. It’s also not something that can go to and just drink unlike football where it’s usually one big kegger. Hockey fans are similar to baseball nuts in regards to the amount of information they can pull out of their rear at any given moment. They are a plethora of random sports knowledge. Come up to F balcony some game and you’ll see it first hand.
My point is that not only as hockey fans but citizens of Pittsburgh, we’re on the verge of something very special and rare. We are at the birth of a dynasty. Granted that the offseason could really screw that up if Shero can’t resign some guys but still we have a core group of guys and a fan base that is more passionate than any other professional sports franchise. We don’t set fires like the people in Montreal or get violent like the thugs in Philadelphia but we do bleed black and (las vegas)gold.
I’m upset that the team lost the Cup but I could never, on any level, be disappointed in the season. I’m proud of this team, the organization and I’m DAMN proud to be a season ticket holder and a fan.
Pens pre-game (Pens lost 3-2 and the cup 4-2) tonight was at Mad Mex in Cranberry once again and to keep the pattern going it was another IPA. Gordon IPA is from the Oskar Blues brewing company in Colorado. The thing you need to know is that they are the pioneers of successfully putting craft beer in a can. That’s right, in a can.
It was difficult to judge the color of the pour due to the dim lighting in Mad Mex but the head was about 2 fingers. The aroma on the beer was generous of hops but what got me was the taste. you’ll notice the hops right away but it’s not overpowering. There was malt but not too much sweetness and amazingly the finish I had on it reminded me of chocolate raspberry candy. I know, weird eh?
I have had this from the can before (this was on draft) and honestly it’s a world of difference. No doubt that I will take the draft over the can but the canned product is still delicious. I will have to try this one on tap elsewhere just to make sure the taste wasn’t a residual from a previous beer that the restaurant had in stock.
Buy it if you can but try to find it on tap.
Links
Beer Advocate
Brewery website
THESE GUYS!
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DETROIT — The Detroit Red Wings were 34.3 seconds away from a magnificent celebration. They were 34.3 seconds away from their fourth Stanley Cup in 11 seasons, as they held a 3-2 lead on the Pittsburgh Penguins.
And then Maxime Talbot crashed the party.
Talbot evened the score with Pittsburgh’s first goal of this entire campaign with the extra attacker, then Petr Sykora scored with 10:03 remaining in triple overtime as the Red Wings failed to close out the Stanley Cup Final in a dramatic 4-3 loss to the Pens at Joe Louis Arena on Monday night
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LETS GO PENS!
Every week I look forward to Sunday dinner at my house. We don’t go out to a restaurant but instead have fun with food in our own kitchen. Lushie and I will use this time to try a new dish or recipe and then spend the day making it. It’s a great way for us to do something together since we’re always hella busy during the week to spend enough quality time together. The meals are rarely a greasy/fatty dish and is usually very healthy eating. As an added bonus this also gives me time to work on my beer/food pairing.
Yesterday was a sweet and spicy day in our kitchen and also a BBQ lovers wet dream on Food Network (which we finally have in HD now! woohoo!) as all day it aired grilling and BBQ specials. Lushie made a trip to Giant Eagle and picked up a piece of salmon, 1 strip steak and shrimp since the area we live lacks a serious meat/seafood place that isn’t a chain. Plus side to the meal was that we had fresh squash and corn left over from our latest Good Apples order.
I marinated the steak for 3-4 hours with a new concoction I picked up from Trader Joe’s called Soyaki. It’s a mix of soy, teriyaki, garlic, sesame seeds and ginger which blew my palette away with oriental goodness. Another fun thing I picked up were reusable aluminum sheets from Lowes to put over the grill so veggies and smaller items wouldn’t fall through. Yeah these have been around for awhile but this one is very easy to clean and extremely flexible should you need to wrap it around something large you need to contain.
The corn was given a brisk butter shower, wrapped in foil and placed over the flames first. Usually takes about 20-25 minutes for it to cook the way we like it. Hands down the best grilling corn we’ve had over the last year came from Good Apples. Steak and squash came on next with a light salt & pepper seasoning followed by the salmon in foil. These usually take 15-20 minutes but honestly depends on the thickness of the cuts. I also know how my grill burns so you can’t always use traditional timing methods. As the food was just about done we seasoned the shrimp with my new favorite accessory, Old Bay.
The final 2 additions some baked beans (had a craving, maybe I’m pregnant) and a sweet and spicy slaw dish (pic) that Lushie whipped up. She had the base for the slaw written down and decided to change it up a bit to fit our taste. The end result was a mild sweetness with a spicy back end. We’ll talk later about posting recipes.
So how did the food turn out? As you can see with the picture above presentation was not a concern of ours. The marinade made the steak one of the tenderest pieces of meat I have ever grilled at home plus the residuals left on it created a delicious crust of oriental bliss and didn’t have the slightest taste of char. The shrimp was fantastic (you really can’t screw that up) and the corn was juicy. The beans and slaw you also read turned out perfect. At the end of the day it was a little sweet, a little spicy and a whole lotta deliciousness.
cheers!
I went to Game 4 of the Stanley Cup playoffs last night for what will be my last game of the season. It’s not that I don’t think that the Pens can come back from a 3 games to 1 deficit but there’s no way I’m shelling out the cash people are asking for tickets. I heard of one scalper asking for $500 to sit in F balcony. My price, $77.
NBC and the NHL have decided that each game will start at 8pm. The problem with this is after a long game the parking garages are a mess to get out of. Last night I finally made it home around midnight after dodging cars running red lights, people not following the pattern for merging lanes in a garage so they can get one car ahead and the always popular “I never saw the 20 signs that say to pay before returning to your car”.
The game as a whole sucked. The officiating was a blatant slap in the face of anyone who knows the rules of the sport and disrespected fans. I’m not saying this because the Pens lost either. Calls on both sides were neglected and the ones that were call were horseshite. The capper for my evening were these 2 boneheads in front of me.
The jagoff in the Wing Nut hat was pissing people off all game. Her hat was blocking the view of the net, she’d get up and dance every break and that guy with the light was annoying as hell. Well with 2:30 left in the game the Wing Nut made LightHead go to the usher and had the guy sitting next to her removed because his towel was getting in her way. You have to be freaking kidding me! I saw the whole thing and she was bent because he waved his towel. The fact the usher told the kid to leave with that much left in the game wasn’t
just stupid it pissed off all of us in F balcony. Oh yeah and the game was still going on so now we had 4 people blocking our view. Freaking nuts.
Here are my pics from last night
