west michigan roadtripping

It’s October!

Even though it feels like it was literally summer for about fifteen minutes, I’m pumped for fall.  Stereotypically, I love sweaters and burning leaves and pumpkin everything and apple picking and all things Halloween.  I also love the crisp fall weather (I broke out a pair of yoga pants for an evening walk the other day and I can’t remember ever being so comfy before in my life).  Of course, thus far it still feels mostly like late summer – which is making me crazy because that first taste of fall has me itching for it to get cooler, even though I’m not really ready to stop wearing dresses every day and go back to dress pants for work.

I’ve been saying goodbye to summer with a slew (okay two) of West Michigan roadtrips.  Western Michigan University is my Alma Mater, and I have a ton of nostalgic feelings associated with the four years I spent living on that side of the state while I was in school, so I never pass up an opportunity to go back.  In early September, my best friend in all the world turned 28 and on her birthday Taking Back Sunday, The Used, & Frank Iero and the Cellabration were playing in Grand Rapids, so a group of us journeyed out there to spent an evening moshing (like old people) and drinking microbrews.

My very favorites!

I saw these guys in April; saw them again in September, loved every second just as much.

At The Hideout in Grand Rapids you can get a "flight" that consists of literally one of every beer they have on tap.

Special props to the 9am Hazelnut IPA, the Maple Oak Pilsner, & the Cinnamon Red Velvet Ale.

The presents my boys sent me home with - AKA why I love them the very best.

It was truly the best time – I almost felt like it was MY birthday, surrounded by my favorite people, listening to one of my favorite bands, and coming home loaded up with a stock pile of beer courtesy of three separate GR/Kalamazoo/Flint-centric friends.

Not to mention we had decorated Alyssa in a fancy blinking crown which we surrendered to the mosh pit during TBS’ late song (makedamnsure) - & it just happened to crop up again the next morning…..!

I also had another Kalamazoo visit planned for late September – it was a quick one, but jam-packed with (surprise!) beer and adventures.  Last summer my college bestie Tom and I took a quick southwestern Michigan beer tour – but we didn’t make it quite all the way down the side of the state, so we’ve been planning the follow-up ever since.  With an entire beautiful day laid out in front of us, we got extra-motivated and decided to drive all the way out to 3 Floyd’s in Indiana, the mecca of metal music/weird Asian fusion style/super hoppy beers with outrageous names. 

It was a little disappointing that they didn’t have cases of Zombie Dust, but we made out with some bombers of Arctic Panzer Wolf, Broodoo, & Chevalier, not to mention a glorious cheese platter, and more than a few half pints.  Standouts included Secret Sub Lair, Space Station Middle Finger, and my favorite weird experimental beer of the journey, Oh Myyyy Takei, made with sake & kolsch yeast. Um, YUM!

The line outside of 3 Floyd's........at 12:30 (they open at noon).

Showing off the spoils!

And the locale <3

The very best part about 3 Floyd's is a solid toss-up between the beer itself, and the names of said beers.

WAR MULLET.

We also hit up (for the MI part of our tour) Pleasant House (where we ate a lunch of the best pasties in the universe), Greenbush and Tapistry, with a side jaunt over to Journeyman Distillery (that gin, though...) before calling it quits for the day (two breweries shy of what we had planned – we’ll get you next time, Cravings & Arclight!), heading back to Kalamazoo, and collapsing with a gross amount of Big Burrito, more beer, and a night full of Hyrule Warriors.

The best pasties I've ever had - steak & ale, traditional, and mushroom & kale. Plus peas & mint.

Quality ales - Snobbler is one of the best browns I've ever had.

Beautiful evening at Greenbush.

Ring of tasters - including a cherry porter that's my new favorite thing in the world.

Getting the crap side-eyed out of me at Tapistry by my college BFF while I drink blood oranges & oatmeal cookies.

Should have bought it.

Picked this comfy beauty up from the Greenbush general store!

The next morning of course was the traditional Crow’s Nest breakfast (the literally BEST brunch spot I have ever experienced in all 28 years of my life - I make a trip every time I get out to Kalamazoo) before I headed back to Michigan to resume normal life…….officially the worst ever.  

Omelette with sausage, mushrooms, sun-dried tomato, pesto, red pepper aioli & house made zucchini bread. No brunch is greater than Crow's Nest brunch.

I already miss my Kalamafriends, but I’m looking forward to my next weekend adventure – Northern Michigan bar hopping next weekend!!

ziplining in the dark

Last summer I did a glow-themed night 5k at Camp Dearborn and it was wonderful - not only did it feel great to run at night when it was a little cooler, but the environment at the park was fabulous. Campers with glow necklaces and sparklers say outside of their trailers with Christmas lights strung along them and cheered us on as we did two laps around the gorgeous evening scenery & I PRed my 5k time by over a minute!

The point of the story is that a bunch of friends and I have been talking about going to Adventure Park ropes course & ziplining for a long time & last Friday they were having a special "glow night", I remembered how fabulous that run was, and we were sold.

Suited up and ready to go (we thought).

Adventure Park calls itself an "aerial forest park," which is actually a pretty apt description. The park has 20 different "trails" of platforms in the trees connected by various arrangements of ropes, cables, wood and ziplines that form bridges between platforms. It all looks like a fun easy romp through an obstacle course, but IT IS NOT.

Coworker bonding time!

Being the badasses we are, after getting
our harnesses and going through the safety briefing, we decided immediately to start with the mid-level course, which put us 10 feet up in the air to begin and lulled us into an incredibly false sense of security about degree of difficulty. Fresh off of some pretty basic (though challenging) rope bridges & some awesome ziplines through the trees, we decided to conquer the next harder course (actually we tried to skip to an even harder one, but were chastised by some employees).

The second course took me and two of my brave friends 20 feet up in the air and began with a deceptively easy bridge, ladder, and zipline...and then immediately went crazy. Let me tell you, being short is NOT an advantage at a ropes course. At one point I got tangled up between my cable clips and the cables holding the platform up, swaying back and forth 20 feet above the ground and 10 feet away from a platform, had to back up to right the situation and finish crossing super awkwardly and oh yeah, the park lights died right in the middle of all this!! My lucky friends were safely back on the previous platform, as only one person is allowed on an obstacle at a time, while I clung for dear life to a tiny cable and inched my way forward until I finally made it to the next platform (but not before two more mini light failures!).

We did all (well, the six of us who opted to try it) make it through the blue course & were rewarded with a 20-foot free jump/repel at the end - once you convinced yourself it was okay to jump off of a platform that high off the ground into the pitch black, it was a grand old time.

I opted to leave my phone in my car (because I definitely saw myself dropping it from 20 feet up and being faced with hundreds of dollars in replacement fees), but we did grab a couple pictures as we were walking around before it got dark out.

We never made it to those impossible looking triangles, but we'll get you next time, double black!!

At times the course felt like it was never going to end, and I found myself dreading the next obstacle - but my friends & I pushed each other to finish, and honestly despite how I felt at the time, the adrenaline rush was amazing, and it was a really cool experience to find new ways to push my body's limits. It was crazy how much of the challenge was all mental - the biggest challenge of all was having to force your mind to override when your body says no.   It was so easy to forget that when you jumped on a platform onto the zipline, you'd be sitting in your harness - the whole time my brain was screaming at me that there was nooooo way I had the upper body strength to hang on for the whole length of the rope.  But in retrospect, I had so much fun!  We're all still talking about the trials and tribulations of the zipline, and planning to go back and conquer the black and double black courses. And, to top it off, it was a serious no joke upper body workout. I was feeling it for days!!

(And of course, afterwards we chose to reward our weary bodies with a pineapple/feta/jalapeno pizza and a night of watching Little Shop of Horrors like the bunch of nerds we are - so all is well that ends well.)

fermentation 101

David Klingenberger getting ready to teach us all how to ferment everything ever.

This post is a week overdue, so excuse my tardiness (as always), but the experience was so cool I can't help but backtrack a little.

David showing off the fermentation room.

A few months ago I discovered this really fantastic local foods vendor at The Eastern Market in Detroit.  Initially I was drawn in because they sold kimchi (which was my obsession at the time - seriously, but have you ever had a burger with peanut butter and kimchi, because if not, get your butt to Green Dot Stables and eat like twelve), but I ended up walking away with a jar of their Sea Stag sauerkraut - sauerkraut made with cabbage, carrots, burdock root & most excitingly, a bunch of sea vegetables (which I love love love).  From that point on every time I went to Eastern Market I'd treat myself to some new sort of fermented yum from The Brinery (and of course some new wonderful flavor of peanut butter from The Granola Tree - excuse me for a moment while I pimp their Almond Joy peanut butter as one of the most fantastic things that's ever been in my mouth - but that's besides the point).

Flash forward to last month when I heard about a workshop the owner of The Brinery was doing on lacto-fermentation - it involved a small "seminar" of sorts about the process of fermenting, a taste-testing of many Brinery products, a tour of their new facility at The Washtenaw County Food Hub (which is also a seriously cool place currently in development to support local farm & food businesses through a myriad of really awesome future plans), a hands-on workshop where you got to make your own sauerkraut, and a lunch prepared with loads of fermented delicacies.  It might not be the same sort of fermentation I'm used to (aka beer), but I couldn't help but want to go.

A little background about The Brinery:  It was founded by David in 2010 basically because the farm he worked at, Tantre Farm, had an excess of cabbage one year, and the fermentation was needed to preserve it.  From there, he developed the business into what it is now - serving tons of local farmers markets, even shipping out of state, and growing into a 10-ish employee operation that just recently moved into a new home at the Food Hub.  The coolest thing about The Brinery to me is their product innovation - recipes are my favorite thing about brewing beer, especially coming up with new and unique spins on old standards.  While you can get regular plain old sauerkraut at The Brinery, you can also get sauerkraut with watermelon radishes, sea vegetables, juniper berries, kimchi with local garlic scapes and ramps, pickled beets and carrots, multiple kinds of kvass, and most recently they've forayed into making their own tempeh (which I promise is incredible) and hot sauces (including a fermented play on sriracha!).

I also appreciate David's philosophy on doing things with "assisted manpower" - for example, they still ferment in relatively small batches in barrels, rather than using giant vats or any sort of automated system - but they have special-made machinery to lift & dump the barrels.  Different canvas, but when we were chopping cabbage and leeks and carrots to make into our own batch of sauerkraut, it felt just like being in my garage mashing peaches and portioning out hops for my next batch of beer.  Pretty cool.  Not to mention David was a remarkably personable & friendly guy - he stopped to chat with everyone in attendance, shared his exuberance for the craft and, when he found out I brew beer, even offered a trade - I left him with a bottle of chocolate porter & a bottle of coffee milk stout in exchange for some really great hot sauce.  Fermentation friends!

The Brinery fermentation calendar - kraut might be a little different than beer, but it was really cool (and maybe useful someday!) to see how a smaller scale business operates, especially with regard to things you aren't normally privileged to see, like scheduling!

Chopping up some cabbage (no worries - there was a mandoline & we didn't have to do it all by hand!), leeks, carrots & garlic for our own special batch of sauerkraut.

One of the other attendees offered to take some shots for me while we were mixing up our future kraut - I guess we both figured my briney hands shouldn't be anywhere near my phone.

The lunch provided at the end of the day was the icing on a really awesome cabbage cake - highlights were the black pepper tempeh salad (I went back for seconds...and thirds...), a bevy of fresh local veggies & cheeses, and of course the mounds of not pictured here sauerkraut & kimchi that littered the table.

I've done a decent amount of making jams & pickling, but this is my first foray into sauerkraut.  My batch from this workshop is still chilling on my countertop getting funky, but if all goes well I'm hoping to make my way into kimchi next!!

the happiest 5k take 2!

Team Fit Britches 2014!

I have a turbulent history with 5ks - first I was all about them, then I decided I only liked silly themed races that didn't require me to just flat out run, then I realized they make me 400% miserable and swore them off in favor of exercise I actually enjoy, and now it seems like the tides are slowly turning. 

A few months ago a friend of mine and I decided we wanted to do a theme race & I suggested, based on my past experience last summer, The Color Run. (This may also have been influenced by the fact that doing the Toledo race meant we could go to the zoo & to Maumee Bay Brewery afterward.) We recruited some friends and ended up with a group of 6 & the team name "Fit Britches." (Thanks, autocorrect.)

Getting up at 4:30am to head down to Toledo made for an interesting drive...

At the starting line with my ladies, Alisha & Emily - shout to to Alisha for the super cute idea to amend her shirt to state "Fit" Britches, haha.

A pre-color shot of us with the classiest of all backgrounds...

It was a beautiful sunny day, but early enough that there was a touch of chill, so it was perfect running weather. I've been doing a lot of pacing work at the gym lately - I learned a huge part of my problem with running is my tendency to shoot out the gate way too hard and burn out before a mile is even up, so I've been doing a lot of steady paced runs at around 5.5-6 mph on the treadmill, and you guys, did it ever help.  I broke away from the group and ran a comfortable race in which I never thought I was going to die or hated my life, in about a half hour - despite stopping to get coated in paint every kilometer. And I felt GREAT. I couldn't believe how actually pleasant running 3.1 miles was!

An epic attempt to be coated in every color possible.

Of course the after party was phenomenal as usual - that's something the Color Run has always done right. Between the DJs and the dancing and the Zumba and the color packet throwing, it's by far the best post-race celebration I've been to yet (and that includes the ones with beer!).  It was also really lovely that the weather was a little cooler than my previous Color Run - the color looks much better when it's not caked all over your body with sweat ;)

Rest assured, Color Run, I will be back in 2015!

summer updates

I used to be a really good blogger. I mean a REALLY good blogger. As in, I use to update my livejournal three and four times a day with what I was doing/eating/reading/cooking, etc (okay that probably actually makes me a seriously horrible blogger - nobody wants to know all the details of my many popcorn binges and tv episodes watched.) Now I'm a lazy blogger in love with the self-indulgent idea of having a blog that tracks all the genuinely cool experiences I have on a regular basis, but apparently still poor at the execution of this.

So, it's summer, and these are the lovely things I've done that bear noting:

• Spent an entire weekend with my best friend forever doing nothing but lying on my couch marathoning every Marvel movie (none of which I had seen). 

The snuggles of both my best lady friend and my kitty; what could be better.

• Went to Ottawa again for just shy of a week of Canadian beer shenanigans - I have far too much to say about this trip not to give it its own post.

Ottawa beers with my best Canadian friends!

• Spent my pre-birthday weekend with my Kalamazoo loves Tom & Joe - including sparkler fights in my driveway on the 4th, after a fancy dinner of grilled salmon and scallops, Tigers game with all my favorite boys in the world followed by an incredible all you can eat meat dinner at Texas de Brazil on the 5th, and a day spent brewing a Belgian Dubbel on the 6th.

KalamaBFFs!

First Tigers game of the season!

These boys are my life <3 

Brazilian cheesecake - we literally had to pass this around the table about ten times before it was gone; we were all so stuffed full of meat.

Looking scrubby with some lovely ladies (they were heading out to a club; I had just come from a ball game...)

For as obnoxious as we were, Texas de Brazil treated us soooo well.

Ghetto-rigged brew-in-bag setup.

How many people does it take to transfer wort from an 18" kettle...?

• Finally figured out a temporary sparge solution for our brew-in-bag beers & created what will hopefully be a successful RyePA with honey & peppercorns - outcome to follow after bottling next weekend ;) 

Manual sparge - might not be the easiest way, but it worked!

• Saw Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for the 3rd time at the Masonic Temple - not only was it an incredible show, but Nick pulled me up onto a seat so he could spit "From Her To Infirmity" right into my face. It was super special that they played Detroit at all (I had previously only seen then in Toronto), but the set list, Nick's energy and interacting with the crowd, and the giant piano interlude (a man on the keys is probably the most attractive thing I can think of - especially one crooning "Love Letter" & "The Ship Song") one of the greatest shows I've ever been to. My buddy and I kept turning to each other and just staring in shock - aka the "I KNOW, right!?" face.

This man completes me.

That would be the rail I was moments later pulled up & over.

• Made many many visits to Eastern Market....& gotten a little carried away every time. My most favorite vendors: DROUGHT raw juices (never stop putting cinnamon in watermelon juice) The Brinery (Kimchi! Kimchi with garlic scapes and ramps!), Corridor Sausage, The Granola Tree (The Almond Joy peanut butter is just killing me), and of course Germack (Jumbo cashews get in my mouth). And of course a big shout out to all the local farms for the delicious produce & meats - I also bought my first ever whole chicken there last weekend - giblets and everything!

Like I said.....possibly just a LITTLE bit overboard!!

The biggest brussels sprouts you've ever seen in your life.

My beautiful roast chicken resting on a bed of baked garlic kale. A success, if I do say so myself :)

• Last week I had a bit of a whirlwind Thursday that led in to a crazy busy weekend - inducted a buddy into the world of craft beer Thursday night at Dragonmead (get the waffle fries with chili and jalapeños ALWAYS), bumbled hungover through the workday on Friday, and then recovered just in time to ride go-karts and play excessive amounts of mini-golf at my work picnic on Saturday. 

This boy is 400% trouble & I love every minute.

• Last but definitely not least, today I am finally, FINALLY getting an estimate on putting hardwood floors in my spare bedroom!! I've been wanting to build a mini "studio" for over a year now, but time and money have finally come together, and after spending an hour ripping up carpet this weekend, I'm good to go at last!! I've already got mirrors and gym supplies all picked out ;) Whew!

Now things have slowed down a little but it's definitely only temporary - got some big weekends coming up!!

HOW HAS EVERYONE ELSE'S JULY BEEN??

two firsts!

Happy beautiful summer day!!  I just went for a beautiful 2 mile walk around my condo complex while listening to the latest episode of the Strange Brews Podcast (I'm fan #130!) & now I'm taking a chill break on the couch with all my windows open, a mug of coffee (shut up, I drink coffee in hundred degree weather, today is nothing) & two incredibly snuggly kitties for a quick break before a Whole Foods run.

Shoutout to Reebok - I LOVE these new leggings!!

This morning I went to my very first ever Pound Fit class!  Ever since I heard about it I've been stoked to try it. I spent my formative years in marching band, jazz band, small group ensembles, etc. - playing every form of percussion instrument that existed. How could I NOT love a class that incorporated drum sticks into a loud, high-energy/intensity workout??  So when I heard that the fabulous Nancy G was going to be teaching Pound classes at Ken Jackson's, I signed up immediately.

The class was full of new people (like me), so we were warned that it was going to be a slower pace than usual - we filled out the 45 minute class two songs short of what Nancy told us would eventually constitute a "full" class - but it was still a fantastic workout. I hadn't read quite as much into the workout history, so I wasn't aware that it was so pilates-based and didn't realize how much core and lower body work would be involved - the songs that have you sitting on the mat doing a thousand torturous variations on the yoga boat pose were KILLERS, and I can feel all the squatting & lunging in the hip flexors/glutes/quads already.  I can't wait to take the class again & get it up to speed - I burned about 400 calories in the 45 minute class, but we took lots of breaks so that Nancy could explain poses, make sure we all knew what we were doing & that we all had correct form, so I think you could easily hit 600+ later on down the road.  I'm always looking for a core/strength type class that ups the energy and has a nice cardio element to it - call me a cheater, but I just get so bored doing traditional pilates.  Plus, DRUMMING!!

Not nearly as pretty as all the ones on google.......

My other first was something I've been hearing about EVERYWHERE for the past couple months, but living in the Midwest we just don't see them anywhere - acai bowls!!  The more I keep seeing pictures of these delicious creations, the more I've been craving them, so I took matters into my own hands.  I'll admit, I've never taste acai OR pitaya (the two - from what I can tell - most common bases to a smoothie bowl), so I really had no idea what to expect.  I did a little research and ended up snagging a couple packs of Sambazon original smoothie packs, hitting up the internet for topping tips (most especially this blog post over at The Fitnessista) and ended up blending mine with a banana & some almond milk, then topping with banana, blueberries, almonds, a little bit of granola, some goji berries and a drizzle of peanut butter & honey.  I accidentally added too much almond milk so my first bowl was a liiiiiiittle bit soupy, but it was so so so good that I forgave myself.  I can't wait to try a million different toppings - I was so leery about adding peanut butter for some reason, but there are few things in the world I love more than nut butters, so I talked myself into believing it would be good and damn, was it ever.  I feel a new late night post-gym obsession coming on......

QUESTION OF THE DAY: What's something new you've tried lately, & what inspired you to take the plunge?