we the north

I've been going to Toronto since I was a teeny tiny child. I have Canadian citizenship, my grandparents used to live there (my grandma has since moved to Collingwood), and we used to spend days upon days there in the summer when I was young. As soon as I was old enough to appreciate them, my parents took me to all the tourist spots; the CN Tower, Chinatown, the Eaton Centre, games at Maple Leaf Gardens & the Rogers Centre, the Ontario Science Centre, Toronto exhibitions, reubens at Shopsy's...  But I haven't seen basically any of that stuff SINCE I was old enough to appreciate it.  A few months back my friend Kat suggested a trip up there for a Leafs game and had been filling my head ever since with all the super fantastic touristy things she'd never done, and I started getting really stoked to relive my childhood.....and drink more Canadian beer.

We both took Friday off work & I made a trip out to Ann Arbor to pick Kat up the night before....which of course required starting the weekend off with Miki sushi (during basically a tornado...) and a quick trip over to Arbor Brewing for some sour beer <3

I want all my sashimi to be salmon and all my sushi to be kanpyo + strawberries.

The most incredible thing I've ever experienced happened on the trip up (after a stop at Kelsey's for club sandwiches with PEAMEAL BACON <3 and to meet up with a friend of Kat's), which is absolutely zero traffic on the way in to the city. From London to Yonge & Gerrard in 2 hours. This will presumably never happen again in my lifetime.

Staying literally right on Yonge street was fabulous - we posted up the Delta Chelsea (I don't care if that's not what it's called anymore) for the weekend and it was completely fabulous. I used to stay there a lot with the family when we came up years back and it's only gotten nicer (but still has those mega-tall headboards I remember!).  We got there so early in the day that we decided to take a trip down to the Eaton Centre & do some shopping (ZARA!!!!!! Goodbye, $200....but one of my Toronto goals was to find this skirt, and I succeeded), sightseeing, and then back up the road to bar Volo for some Dieu du Ciel Rigor Mortis & Great Lakes Robohop (which is the closest to a DRIPA I have ever tasted in my life; A+) before coming back to the hotel to chill in the whirlpool(!!!).

My favorite building in Toronto <3

Saturday was tourist day, after a quick workout in the nicest hotel fitness center I've ever had the experience of using.  We took a nice walk down to the Hockey Hall of Fame, where I haven't been since 2007, ogled everything for a while & then set out again to the CN Tower where I gushed for like 45 minutes of standing in line about how excited I was to stand on the glass floor.

The view while I ran a couple miles.

 I MISS YOU PATRICK EAVESSSSSS :( :( :(

I LOVE this, and I was so happy to see this sort of recognition for such a horrible tragedy, but I did pitch a small fit in the middle of the HHOF over that glaring awful typo.

That ceiling, though...

Had to :)

Second favorite building in Toronto ;)

Highlight of the day - after watching my many attempts at getting a badass picture of both headstands on the glass floor as well as Eka Pada Koundinyasana, a random dude who I just watched do 61 pushups (on the glass floor) while his friend recorded him challenged me to a planking contest which I'm happy to report that I, in my faux cowboy boots and Zara-purchased shirt, sweating far more than I intended to do on my day out about town, kicked his ass at as was subsequently cheered for by this whole crowd I did NOT realize had accumulated around us, haha.

I see u Billy Bishop!

Nobody outplanks AMERICA.

Life goal: accomplished.

Glass floor selfie!

After the tower (and after a quick stop on Queen Street at the HBO pop up shop just so I could sit in the badass Game of Thrones throne), we hiked it over to & up Spadina for DIM SUM!  I haven't had true, authentic dim sum in....probably ten years.  Literally the best EVER, and it was so fun to introduce Kat to yet another super local Torontonian place (Rosewood will always have my heart when it comes to Chinatown Dim Sum).

Not pictured: like six other things, including bbq pork dumplings & the actual best sesame lotus paste dumplings I've EVER had.

Post-lunch we hoofed it the rest of the way to Ossington because BELLWOODS!  Got lucky enough to snag a couple spots at the bar where we partook in some Boogie Monster, Cat Lady, and split a Bounty Hunter. Mmmmm all the coconut.  I also bought beer for literally everyone I knew, which resulted in a street car ride back to the hotel rather than a 2.5 mile walk holding totes full of a case of bombers.

We cut it extra close on time, so we had to hop on the subway to take us back to the ACC, where we watched the Leafs eat it one last time for the season (super entertaining game though, plus my boyfriend Richard Panik was there), and then got to meet up at Jack Astor's with my lovely friend Bhavna who I honestly haven't seen in YEARS. Such a good time catching up and such a late night haha.  By the time we got back to the hotel & devoured ten pounds of trail mix, it was 2 am before we crawled into bed, which mean we did NOT in fact work out again the next morning (oops).

No salute-gate tonight ;)

Our beautiful reunion <3

Instead we went to Stockyards for breakfast!!  The red pepper citrus maple syrup was every bit as phenomenal as I remembered.  Leaving the city was depressing as always, but brightened by the fact that we had Nickelbrook Brewery to stop at on the way home, where we were served samples of literally everything that existed, and where a couple patrons told us to also stop at Railway City Brewing to buy some Dead Elephant, which I haven't sampled yet, but I heard is suuuuuper bitter/hoppy.

Nice haul....

The Zara haul <3 Plus a little Raptor pride!

And of course, the TRUE reason for going to Canada......

Every trip I take to Toronto feels painfully short and like I missed a thousand things I wanted to do, but it's such a short drive that I know I'm going to start going back far more often. If only because Bellwoods didn't have bottles of Witchshark for sale this time around ;)  And, bonus, next weekend is yet another trip to Austin!

late late beer updates

When I started this blog, I had this grand idea that one of predominant themes of it would be my quest to make it to every craft brewery in Michigan – brewery reviews, etc.  The only problem, I soon realized, was that I was a bit behind the times.  By the time this little old blog was born, I’d already been to almost 90 breweries, which means the trips to new ones were getting much, MUCH fewer & further between.  I mean, anything within a 60 mile radius of me (or of Kalamazoo) has at the very least been one and done.

So, scratch that idea –  guess I’ll just talk about random beer as I have/find/seek it??

To start, it’s officially OBERON SEASON!  Oberon is one of those beers I have more of a nostalgia connection to than an actual love for – I’m not and never have been a wheat beer person, but after going to WMU for four years and living in Kalamazoo, I look forward to that first sip of cold sunshine every year.  This year we actually had a work going away party at a bar with Oberon on tap that got moved to a different bar last minute – you can guess where I “accidentally” ended up.

Gimme that sudsy sunshine <3

Followed up with my first taste of Blushing Monk - VERY raspberry, VERY sweet, and VERY alcoholic.

I did get a chance last month to check out a new brewery in Saint Clair Shores & two new breweries in Detroit – Baffin Brewing, the long awaited Batch Brewing, and the newly opened, totally situationally weird Brew Detroit.

I checked out Baffin after an hour of suffering at a 4 year old’s birthday party, so I would have been happy even if the beer had been awful, but it was decidedly not!  The guy serving us (either one of the brewers, or at least involved in the process) was a gem – took great care of us, offered us a ton of insight about their beers, and was just a genuinely passionate person.  I LOVE when brewers get super excited about their craft & that’s the exact experience we had.  They had four beers on tap (one of which was named Roth IPA – as the daughter of a CPA I laughed for like five minutes straight), but they were ALL quality. Best yet – it’s near where I work, and also had some of the straight up best free brewery popcorn I’ve ever had.

A friend and I checked out Brew Detroit after grabbing some brunch at Brooklyn Street Local in Corktown (FYI – the owners are straight outta Toronto, and served me, for the very first time, peameal bacon in the States that tastes how peameal bacon is supposed to taste), which I would like to tell you more about, but I accidentally typed my year of birth in to the site as “2015” and no force on the earth can convince the internet that I am not browsing from the womb, so all I can tell you is they brew(ed?) Badass (the Kid Rock beer) at one point.

Brew Detroit is a pretty big production facility that just recently started brewing their own beer, of which we sampled everything.  The guys working were conversational and more than willing to give us samples of a bunch of stuff not even on tap yet (including a beer that literally tasted like peach rings), & it was a nice place to chill for a while before the Wings game we were going to.  Nothing was incredible (I enjoyed the ESB and the Belgian stout – although I didn’t think it really tasted like a Belgian stout – but they brew in small batches and probably won’t have any of that next time I’m there!), but I was more impressed than I expected to be.

The mug says "PRAHA". You get me, Brooklyn Street Local.

The whole upstairs is dead space right now, but the circular bar isn't so bad :)

Batch was actually quite busy when we stopped by later that afternoon, but they did still let us have a few samples (the guy pouring beer was super friendly & more than happy to provide – the guy manning the counter seemed rather perturbed about it; not the best impression to make, buddy).  I sampled the A-Rye, which had a really nice sweet touch that I’m not used to finding in a rye, and ended up going with the Son of a Batch IPA, which was a solid IPA on the verge of a double.  I liked their focus on slight twists on the standards (they seemed to be doing a lot of experiments with flip flopping the usual yeasts & grain bill on traditional styles – pretty cool, different tasting stuff), and I’ll definitely be going back.

Brewery #98!

Plus all that beer put me 100% in the mood for heaps of Indian food and the Decemberists concert I had lined up for that night (it was a busy weekend)!

Oh you, Royal.

This concert ended with the entire band being consumed by a giant presumably cardboard whale.

March also saw two birthdays celebrated at Rochester Mills, who have VASTLY stepped up their solid specialty beers lately – possibly because of the increased production at their new(ish?) production facility making room for more experimenting and smaller batches at the main brewery?  Either way, I washed down some steak & parsnips with a Newton’s ALEchemy, a Grand Cru, and a really roasty yet surprisingly hoppy black IPA & I’m thinking I ought to be paying a lot more attention to their offerings in the future.

Happy birthday you lovely lady <3

Yes, steak, but mostly PARSNIPS <3 <3 <3

Also got to taste (preemptively – this baby needs another couple months in the bottle before it’ll be at its prime) the Belgian quad I brewed way back earlier in the year.  I’m saving total judgement until I taste it again, but…it’s pretty damn good.  Nice body, a little less syrupy than some quads, and a slight added bitterness/subtle tartness from the currants right at the end.

Lazy girl brewer's uniform.

More to come……brew day Sunday!

everybody's getting belayed!

I’ve never gone legit rock climbing. My experience with rock climbing is the distinct memory of being about 8 years old at the Toronto Science Center and “climbing” a maybe 6 foot wall that wrapped around a corner with one or two outcroppings multiple times over the course of twenty minutes before my parents dragged me away. 

And yet, a couple months ago I heard Claire from Girls Gone WOD first talking about and then posting pictures of, going ice climbing, and my immediate response was THAT IS SO COOL I HAVE TO DO IT.  Of course, that was in Colorado, where there are many mountains covered in ice, and I’m in super flat Michigan where there is…not. So I put that thought out of my head until a friend I met (in Colorado actually) posted some Facebook pictures of a day spent out at Peabody’s Ice Climbing Club in Fenton.  The general story of my life is I reply to something like that with, “Oh my gosh, can we go do that together??”  Tentative plans are made (with a fierce sense of absolute determination that it WILL happen) and then never followed through on, and I pout endlessly as those plans drift off into the endless void of possibilities that is social media. 

But this time, my friend texted me a couple weeks later to tell me that she and a group of friends were going to go up to Peabody’s for the last climbing day of the season this past Sunday and that I should meet them there. I was actually kind of hesitant at first – these ladies & gentlemen are all skilled climbers/belayers, and here’s me, literally no experience at all, looking at climbing these enormous (awesome) rickety looking structures with about 2% skill and 98% sheer willpower.  I didn’t want to drag the group down, or fail miserably, or just look like a total idiot – BUT, 2015 is my year of doing things that scare you, doing hard things, unquestionably taking opportunities and just plain being badass. One of the best experiences of my life was that harrowing hard as hell ropes course a while back – and armed with that knowledge, I drove to Fenton Sunday morning to scale some ice.

Background – Peabody’s is the COOLEST place ever.  It’s located in what used to be an apple orchard & now is just a big retired lot, but it still retains a lot of the old rickety buildings.  The first thing I noticed when I walked into the “lodge” – where you dress, rent gear, drink coffee and sit by the fire when your fingers get numb from clutching axes and soaked through gloves – smelled JUST like the inside of so many of the old wooden structures on the farm my family used to own & operate. The place has this amazing rustic feeling while at the same time managing to feel completely safe, and the owner, who was out climbing with us for a bit, basically created Peabody’s as a way for ice climbers in Michigan to train despite the extremely short (and far away) outdoor ice climbing season in Michigan.  The giant towers are constructed out of a bunch of fencing, rigging, giant wood poles, and a huge crane stuck right through the center of them. 

Giant boot death spikes AKA crampons.

As expected, with zero climbing background I was NOT the most skilled ice climber on the lot – but there was a big group of people out when we first got there who were struggling at least as much as I did to figure out how to make all these sharp objects attached to us help us scale sheets of ice.  Thanks to my fabulous “instructors,” Kristine and her friend Lana, I learned the basics of belaying (which I did NOT try), got myself to the top of the small tower at least, and made it about midway up the big tower before the day was over.  Not that shabby!  Also cool: one of our other friends had not only a really fancy camera, but a drone that he flew around the property as well, taking some seriously cool aerial shots.

 The first few times up were slightly terrifying, since I had exactly NO experience with “falling” when climbing, or with how you can take rests – so I just kept pushing, kicking in with my one size too small boots and hauling myself up (rather than doing the smart thing and using my legs) with the ice axes I had basically a death grip on (ask me how my triceps feel today).  Weirdest thing: looking down, not so bad at all.  Looking up, semi-blinding and full of falling snow, but also not too bad.  Looking straight out in front of you?  Frozen in a panic of where can I possibly put my axes or my feet or my ANYTHING I’m stuck clinging for dear life to the side of this rock please tell my cats that I love them!  At that point I think it became more of a mental thing – stare at the same problem for too long and you can’t see the solution even when it’s right in front of you.

What happens when you try to do a headstand in a helmet on the snow.

Me & my belay-dies ;)

Unfortunately being so inefficient meant I burnt out early – if I hadn’t made such a brutal mess of my upper body strength early on, I think I would have  been able to get much higher up the big wall. Even so, what an AMAZING experience.  So many wonderful people, a little bit of post-climbing snow-yoga (snow-ga?), and lots of invites to come climb with my new buddies at Planet Rock.  Cross ice climbing off the bucket list – can’t WAIT to go again when Peabody’s opens back up next year – and maybe have a little better clue of what I’m doing…

michigan winter beer festival 2015 (aka: "i've never heard anyone say 'butterfly' with such anguish")

Greetings from Day 4 of an attempt to detoxify myself from the wildly absurd amount of alcohol I imbibed over the course of this past weekend.  I was a straight up tour de force of craft beer consumption and I regret none of it except the way my body felt midway through a 75 minute hot yoga session the other night.

Last weekend was Michigan Winter Beer Festival in Grand Rapids – and since my nearest and dearest college beer snob friends still live on the west side, it was basically a given that we’d be going, so when my Christmas present from them was a ticket & a membership to the Michigan Brewer’s Guild, I was zero percent shocked.

I’ve been to the Summer Beer Festival about four years running now, and it’s always a lovely experience – you romp through a really lovely green park in downtown Ypsilanti, it’s in the middle of the summer, so you can wear sundresses and stick your feet in the river and take drunk recovery naps in the grass all afternoon.  This is NOT that.  This is brutal Michigan cold (thank god for the sun) in a parking lot full of slushy snow that soaks through your ill-advised cable knit definitely not waterproof boots and numbs your fingers to the point that you forgo Untapping your beer selections after about stop #2.  This is spilling your sampler glasses because you’re bouncing up and down trying to regain feeling in your limbs.  Fortunately, this is also high gravity beer lover’s paradise filled with a whole lot of barrel aged glory that makes a bit of a dent in warming you up.

I rang in the weekend at my buddy Tom’s with ALL THE SHAWARMA and sampling a slew of beers he’d saved up for my arrival, including but not limited to a coveted bottle of Dino S’Mores – (it’s everything you hope and dream it will be) – before heading up to Grand Rapids to round out our party and get Festival day started off right at Brewery Vivant’s Brewer’s Breakfast.  Vivant’s always been one of my favorite breweries because it’s in a building that used to be an old church, so it’s full of vaulted ceilings, ornate wood beams, and stained glass windows.  Plus they make a MEAN farmhouse/sour/ beer.  For breakfast we all picked out a different option so that we could share – I went with a red-wine barrel aged saison with brett and the crispy breaded chicken and cheddar-bacon waffles with an herbed cream sauce and maple syrup and I definitely won the breakfast lottery on that one.  We also made out on an exciting limited can release that sold out before we even paid our bills….

From our friends in New Holland......my favorite liquor to kick off the night.

The newest in Bell's planet series - maybe the best brown I've ever had.

ALL THE SHAWARMA KING.

At last, my precious nightcap.

Brewer's breakfast at Vivant!

Second best chicken & waffles I've ever had

The festival itself was, as expected, seriously chilly, but a good time – full of bearded dudes with carb necklaces (my favorite by far this year was the guy who upped his game from pretzels/bagels to a necklace of English muffins [??? Don’t you toast those???], and one I saw that was straight up Samoas and beef jerky sticks) and semi-frozen tap lines. I’d made a pretty solid list beforehand of brews I DEFINITELY wanted to try…..and I hit maybe half of those.  Still, there were quite a few standouts:

• Gravel Bottom – Jonny Applebottom [rye whiskey barrel aged apple butter brown ale].  Never in my life did I think something barrel aged or something brown would be one of my very favorites, but this was SOLID. Perfect amount of sweet and tart and crisp and liquor – I could have drank dangerous quantities of that.  (Side note #1 – the RISin Dead [maple bourbon barrel aged Russian imperial stout] was a very close second here, and Side note #2 – I’d say Gravel Bottom was probably the brewery I was most impressed with overall for having never heard about previously.)

• Brewery Vivant – Fat Paczki [Belgian inspired ale with prunes & powdered sugar]. Brewed for Fat Tuesday, it’d be easy to dismiss this as just another kitsch beer (Rogue Voodoo donut beers anyody?), but this is actually really great. Drinkable, like a nice, dark, fruity Belgian, but a little lighter. Upset I missed out on the can release.

• Harmony – Capricorn [chocolate donut absinthe stout]. At one point during the day I met up with my lovely friend Kristine, who I had met for the first time in Colorado & who I had bonded with immediately over our shared experiences traveling to Prague, which of course entails drinking massive quantities of absinthe.  We toasted the lovely memory of Praha while drinking this beer, which, while I deign to say was “good,” definitely did taste exactly as advertised.  (To be fair to Harmony – we also tried the Fee D’Hiver [Belgian dark strong with sugar plums] and I was really impressed/pleased with that one…)

• One Well Brewing – Xalapa [jalapeno blonde].  Yet another style I wouldn’t expect to see show up on my own highlight list, but One Well did something really cool here – they used a very mild jalapeno to flavor the beer itself, & then offered raw jalapenos that you could add on your own to hit the spice level you desired. Pretty neat, and pretty strangely tasty.

• Perrin – No Rules [maple bourbon aged Vietnamese porter]. If I’m being honest, I don’t know what on earth a “Vietnamese” porter is, but it tastes friggin awesome.  We actually got this twice.

• Pigeon Hill - Oatmeal Crème Pie.  I’ve had various types of ambers and browns that tried to go for “oatmeal cookie,” with varying levels of success, but this one nailed the sweet spot right in between “delicious disgusting overly processed sandwich cookie” and “that one really creamy cinnamon shot you had twelve of before you realized it was a really bad choice.”  Awesome.

• Tapistry – Reactor [dry-hopped American IPA]. I had quite a few good Tapistry beers, but the thing that stood out about this one was that it was EXACTLY what I want in an American IPA. Crisp, a little green, nice hop bitterness……the sophisticated beer drinker’s lawnmower beer (and I mean that in the best possible way).

• Stormcloud – Red Wine Barrel Aged Fun Guvn’r [Belgian black IPA aged in red wine barrels]. I love hops. I love bitter things. I love Belgians. If I had to drink wine it would be a dry red with lots of roasty dark fruit flavors.  This was the first beer I had all day and damn if it didn’t set the tone.  Kind of wish I’d tried the straight up regular Fun Guvn’r just to compare.

• The Livery – A toss up between Maillot Rouge [oak aged sour biere de garde with raspberries] and St. Valentine’s Day Massacre [wild ale aged on blood oranges]. The first was the sour fruity delicacy I dreamed of all day, and the second was its sparkly, drier, less approachable best friend.

• Witch’s Hat – Bourbon Barrel Cherry Cordial Night Fury [imperial stout]. I mean….damn. Already a good beer, but now it’s syrupy and liquor-y and like a malty, roasty chocolate covered cherry melting in my mouth.  I wanted to never stop drinking this.  I’m still dreaming about this beer.

My Space Team <3 <3

Xalapa!

Met this lady in Colorado, reunited in Michigan.

Long lost beer running buddies.

Stella's Lounge in GR - good food, good beer, good arcade games - and also a ton of skeleton stencils.

Basically the coolest ceilings I've ever seen.

My poached eggs were a little cold, but they were covered in habanero hollandaise, so win some lose some.

All we could manage to imbibe at Osgoode's after the Saturday binge.

After all that…………………………………the obvious choice was to dump our things off at the hotel, change into dry socks, and head out to downtown GR for disgustingly big slices of spinach stuffed pizza, arcade games, and a growler of Anderson Blood Orange Gose from Hopcat, which we proceeded to drink until we passed out in front of some cooking show.

Sunday was mostly full of driving back to the real world – but not before hitting up the bloody mary bar/brunch menu at Stella’s Lounge (my salmon-y eggs benedict was all right, but the breakfast pot pie stole the show…..), and a quick flight at Osgoode’s – MI brewery #96!