the rest of 2015: a hellacious summary

It’s 2016!  And here’s an exciting fact: 5 days in to 2016 I have already taken time to sit and write some fiction snippets one two separate occasions, which is probably more than I bothered to do in the entirety of 2015 – uh, oops.

So I did some pretty cool stuff in the last quarter of the year since the last time I ventured on to this corner of the internet (AKA September), including but not limited to:

Central/Western Day in Kzoo
I haven’t been to a WMU football game in probably 7 years (since I graduated), so this year we snagged some tickets & made a day out of it that included nitro coffee, breakfast beers, seeing some alum friends I haven’t visited in ages, and a mini-brewery tour of some local (but new to me!) breweries.

This is how to do a flight.

Toronto Cask Days 2015
Cask Days was one of my very favorite events of 2014, so I was more than stoked to go back in 2015, especially since we got early-in tickets, & I have, in the past year, learned to pace myself so that by 5 PM at a beer festival I am not a stumbling mess that can’t stay awake to meet for dinner later on.

Also involved in this trip was my very best Ottawa friends, my very best Toronto friends, a fancy ass whole wild boar dinner (listen: flaky pastry crust with an apple & bacon filling, cranberry coulis & vanilla ice cream), late night post-Jays game burritos, me spending $50+ at David’s Tea, and a few new delightful Toronto breweries.

Starting the trip off right in Sarnia at 11 am.

One of my all time favorite breweries (Bellwoods); ALL of my all time favorite people.

I thought I was completely stuffed until someone brought me this apple bacon wonder.

Red Wings Season Ticket Holder Appreciation Night #2
The auto industry came through for me again - I was hoping to get a handful of extra pucks signed for a giant display in my living room, but the entire arena was SOLD OUT??? Of pucks???  Regardless, it was a fun (free) night of skating on NHL arena ice, my girlfriend got a bunch of signatures on the onesie I gifted her at a baby shower & luckily my real goal was still accomplished:

Montreal!!
I spent American Thanksgiving with my very favorite travel partner in Montreal accomplishing not only a new NHL arena (I’m at 11/30!), but also (among many others) getting to grab some evening beers at Dieu du Ciel!, which is a brewery responsible in large part for some of my deeper diving into craft beer styles & which I always swore I would make it to eventually, and doing forearm stands in front of a bizarre architectural anomaly that I inexplicably researched & wrote about back during my senior year of college.

Also, Montreal has some gorgeous architecture, bomb street art, solid breweries, and CAT CAFES.

(Also – this trip allowed for a brief little jaunt down to Ottawa to drink to excess & see some of my absolute favorite people.)

The original Montreal smoked meat. I desperately miss this.

My lil' babe Luna :)

Turkish brunch!

Christmas / New Years
I’d just like to show off that I made the actual most amazing gorgonzola, cranberry & walnut stuffed beef tenderloin with a molasses/bourbon glaze & I have perhaps never eaten something so delicious in all of my prior life.  And then when that was over, I made crème brulee cheesecake with an actual torch.

Also we went fowling, and to a whiskey distillery WITH DOGS!!!

Noble Fish forever.

Rye & Rue <3

Here’s this other thing that happened: I went to a semi-fancy NYE party that culminated in a wild(ly terrible) rendition of “I Think We’re Alone Now” sung in to a bottle of champagne at midnight, followed up with some wrestling. I’m an adult & you can’t prove otherwise.

colorado part one

I went on a pretty awesome trip a couple weeks ago and it’s only about now that I’ve gotten caught up enough on life again to put it into words –

A few months ago I realized few important things: #1. I somehow had acquired a steadily growing list of friends who call the Denver, Colorado area home, #2. I have not been to an NHL game at the Pepsi Center, #3. There are some really good beers coming out of that area, and #4. I’ve never actually been in the mountains.  In 2005 I went on a trip to China that involved some very harrowing bus-driving on some very narrow, very steep, very precarious Chinese roads, but I was actually marginally concerned for my life through most of that jaunt, so I don’t think I really got to take in the actual enormity and beauty of being surrounded by gigantic rock formations sticking up out of the earth.  Anyway, all these realizations turned into a whirlwind planned trip centered around what else but an Avalanche/Red Wings game.

I spent the first few days of the trip in Denver, staying with an old college friend who had to work for much of the time I was there, which gave me a lot of time to explore (and to walk multiple miles & indulge in a lot of day drinking and donuts) downtown Denver.  The first day I was there it snowed literally all day – wet, sloppy snow that soaked immediately through my inappropriately cable knit boots.  Fortunately for me, it literally ALL melted by the middle of the next day, and there were a number of Denver highlights that rendered soggy feet a small price to pay:

• Voodoo Donuts – There’s something to be said for a fritter the size of my face covered in banana, peanut butter, peanuts, and chocolate chips consumed slowly over the course of 48 hours (shoutout to college friend Nancy’s roommate for helping me consume a big chunk of this thing and therefore lessening the hatred I felt for myself when I reached the end of the world’s largest donut).

Worth the walk!

That's ONE donut in a half dozen box...

•  The Denver Beer Scene – During my day of wandering I made (accidentally) to The Cheeky Monk, which, while not being a brewery, had a ridiculously enormous selection of Belgian beers to pick from.  Since I had a bit of time to kick back and wait for Nancy to get off of work, I made friends with the bartender, who forcefed (really, I swear) me samples of all kinds of fabulous Belgian quads.  Life was truly good.  That evening we also made it to Epic, River North, Great Divide, and Wynkoop where I ate a burger I could actually not pick up even with two hands and took a picture with a giant gorilla before returning home to finish consuming above mentioned face-sized donut.

Oh, there it is!

First beer of the trip was a Kasteel Rouge. Please, more always.

St. Bernadus ABT 12

Epic!

Do you think they'd let me hug those barrels?

My lady date <3

There's a burger under this somewhere.

After I ate that burger I was sober enough to call a Lyft ride, and to do this.

• Denver City Park – Feeling slightly gross but also really awake the next morning, I crawled out of bed (couch) to watch the sun rise, at which point Nancy and I each realized each other was awake and decided to set out on a brisk morning run to get over the last twinges of hangover (and to work off the damn donut).  What I did not know was that it was going to be GORGEOUS.  I love exercise but I hate running – but if it looked like this every time I did it, I could be more often convinced.

Denver City Park after dawn.

• Blue Sushi – Shout out to literally the best vegetarian sushi roll I have EVER had.  After a quick bus ride downtown (during which I FINALLY saw mountains!!!!), I met up with Nanc and another friend for a quick lunch.  I love sushi but I feel like I always get the same things (lots and lots and l o o o o t s of raw salmon), so I decided to mix it up and get their lunch sashimi/sushi combo, which meant I DID get raw salmon, but I also got to pick a roll & I ended up going with the “Eden Roll,” which was sweet potato tempura topped with edamame hummus, a sun dried tomato, and a drizzle of olive oil.  I’m not usually an all-veggie sushi style girl, but hot damn. Hot. Damn.  (The weirdest part was it was really that little bit of olive oil that just pulled it all together into actual bliss in my mouth – never would have expected that!)

Eden indeed...

• Jagged Mountain Tequila Barrel Aged Porter – That happened.  Never would have put those flavors together.  Someone is clearly smarter at beer than me.

That Whiskey Voodoo Goat was nothing to scoff at, either.

• The Pepsi Center – First off, let me tell you something: Colorado is apparently the home of lost, misplaced, relocated Michiganders.  You know how at the Joe when there’s a Canadian team in town (especially when it’s the poor, woe begotten Maple Leafs), the crowd is literally 50/50 Wings fans & opposing team fans?  That’s how the Pepsi Center was. That’s how the arena-adjacent bar before the game was.  That’s how the streets of Denver the entire afternoon prior to the game were. Detroit jerseys EVERYWHERE, Detroit fans cheering, Detroit fans drowning out the Colorado fans, Detroit fans laughing forever when for some reason Roy thought it was the most intelligent decision to pull his goalie with 3 minutes remaining in a 1-0 game and give the Wings the opportunity to score not one but TWO empty net goals.  Thanks for the memories, Pepsi Center; you’re a beauty.

Soooo much red and white!

Detroit vs. Everybody <3

 

And then it was time to say goodbye to Denver and hop on the road (literally out of the parking structure and on the freeway in like ten minutes – you got a lot to learn, Detroit) to Fort Collins while deconstructing poor pop radio and contemplating how much beer was going to be consumed in the next 48 hours…