Food & Drink

Bourbon, Bourbon, Who’s Got The Bourbon?

/ Ally Bean / 14 Comments

{A Weekend Getaway – Part 2 of 2.  Part 1 here.}  

[I know, I know.  I said that I’d post once a week during the summer… but this adventure was two parts.  My blog, my rules to break at will.]

After taking time to enjoy Shaker simplicity, we hit the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.  Yes, there is such a thing.  You didn’t know that?!!

•  First we went to Woodford Reserve.  It was the only distillery to charge admission.  This might be in part because it was a very commercialized, modern place.  There were tickets & lines & audio headsets & a short bus ride & a long-winded presentation.

Our one small taste of Woodford bourbon was smooth & delicious, but the tour was not what we expected.  The whole experience had a “keep it moving” vibe to it.

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•  Next we went to Four Roses.  This distillery was about as mellow as the product they were selling.  Our tour guide was a young & friendly guy with an amazing knowledge of how the bourbon was made, the buildings in which the bourbon was made– and the charming family history that underscores the brand.

At the end of the tour our complimentary tasting included three different types of bourbon with suggestions of which ones to use in mixed drinks & which one to drink straight.  This tour was more of the experience that we had expected.

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•  Our third and final tour was at Maker’s Mark.  This distillery was by far the most personable and well-organized of the three that we visited.  The tour started in the refurbished home of the company’s founder, walked us through the distillery grounds, showed us the fermenting vats, the oak barrel storage facility & the bottling line where the bottles are hand-dipped in the famous bright red wax.

This tour ended in a laboratory-type setting where we each had four generous tastes of bourbon.  Our tour guide talked us through each glass telling us how the different Bourbons might taste to us– and why.  This was the experience we had hoped for along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.

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[Hello FTC!  As you may recall I do not take any money or other compensation for my opinions about any products that I discuss on my sweet little bloggy.  I tell you this again in case you’ve forgotten that fact.  We good, my friend?] 

Guess Who Got Stopped In The U-Scan Lane, Again

/ Ally Bean / 11 Comments

While shopping in the grocery I noticed in the bakery section a box containing two giant chocolate brownies with caramel icing.  They looked delicious.  While not a healthy food choice, I had to have them.  No question about it.

When I went to check out of the store I used the U-Scan lane so, obviously, I ended up scanning these brownies across the machine.  I am a very good scanner.  Fast.  Efficient.  Attentive to the project at hand.

Which subsequently means that I’m also rather quick to bag the items that I scan.  I have a real competitive streak when it comes to this sort of thing.  Always trying to improve upon my personal best.  Planning ahead about where each item is going to go in the bag.

[Does anyone remember a My Name Is Earl episode in which Earl {Jason Lee} is helping some guy {Jon Heder} train for the grocery store baggers national competition?  And in the process of helping this guy both of them get hurt.  So, to have 2 functioning hands/arms they tied themselves together, and entered the competition as one contestant.  It was hilarious. But I digress…]

So I scanned the brownies, my last item, and wedged them into the bag.  It was perfect placement with everything nestled together just so.  I was happy, quietly congratulating myself on a job well done.  Until I realized that the man who maintained the U-Scan lane was walking toward me and shouting something at me.

Naturally, I said the first thing that came to mind which was: “huh?”  I’m sharp like that when I’m confused.

But the grocery store U-Scan man, un-phased by my eloquent retort, said to me:  “show me the brownies.”

Reluctantly, I disassembled my perfect bag to get to the brownies.  All the while I was wondering “why?” but figured that there was a reason, other than mental instability, that caused this grocery store U-Scan man to tell me to do this.  And there was.

Come to find out, the brownies had so much caramel icing on them that their weight had increased.  And the scanner, being a fussy little device that likes its UPC code and weight to match, wouldn’t register them as brownies.  Instead, the scanner said that I was trying to steal something.

Which, of course, I wasn’t.  But I had to prove this to the grocery store U-Scan man by showing him the brownies.  Which, of course, I did.

All of which brings me to the point of this post: any brownie that has so much caramel icing on it that it stops a scanner in its tracks is a very good thing to buy.  Worthy of many repeat purchases– wonky scanner be damned.

Trust me here, people.  These are words to live by.

[Click here to read about my previous encounter with the grocery store U-scan man.]

Yesterday’s Turkey Is Today’s Soup

/ Ally Bean / 4 Comments

My mother was a very good cook.  Not a chef mind you.  A cook.

I have her cookbook of all sorts of practical, yummy recipes.  Mom got most of her recipes from magazines and from the newspaper– then tweaked them.

Here is one of Mom’s recipes.  I have no idea of the original source, but do know that this makes a very tasty, rather healthy soup.

Enjoy!

Split Pea Soup With Ham & Turkey

2 carrots (or more)

2 celery stalks

1 medium size onion

2 small turnips (or use cabbage)

1-16 oz. package of dry green split peas

2 Tablespoons salad oil (or less)

1/4 lb cooked ham, diced

2 teaspoons salt (or omit entirely)

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1 bay leaf

1/4 teaspoon cumin (more or less depending on preference)

8 cups water

1 lb cooked turkey cut into 1/2 inch pieces

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1.  Dice carrots and celery.  Chop onion.  Peel and dice turnips (or chop cabbage if using that instead of turnips).  Rinse peas with cold water and discard any stones or shriveled ones.

2.  In pot with salad oil in it– over medium heat– cook carrots, celery, onion and turnips (or cabbage) until tender crisp.  Stir in peas, ham, allspice, bay leaf, cumin and the water.  Over high heat cook to boiling.  Reduce temperature to low, cover and simmer 45 minutes.

3.  Stir in turkey.  Cook 10-15 minutes longer to blend flavors.

Makes 6 main dish servings (huge) or 8 soup servings (normal size)

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[FYI, when I make this recipe I use cabbage, half the recommended amount of salt, and triple the amount of cumin.  But you do whatever suits your fancy.]

[Also, in recent years I’ve made this soup substituting leftover rotisserie chicken from the grocery for the turkey.  I’m sure that Mom would approve.]

This Is What Passes For Excitement Around Here

/ Ally Bean / 8 Comments
Botanically, a tomato is a fruit. However, in ...

Image via Wikipedia

[Subtitled:  Somewhat Organized Thoughts Upon The Occasion of A Hopefully Random Act of Very Minor Violence]

Our mailbox is a rectangular, black metal one that sits on top of a white wooden post by the street.  It was tomato-ed. This is a first for us.

In the past our mailbox has been: smashed with a baseball bat;  peanutbutter-ed;  egged;  toilet paper-ed;  and robbed.  [One summer I decided to put a small bracket on the back of the white post and hang a basket of geraniums from it.  Very pretty… for the few days that it was there before someone stole it.]  But we’ve never had a tomato thrown at it.

The attack of this not-so-rotten tomato occurred between 6:30 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. while I drove Z-D to work.  Our mailbox, which is large, shiny and very noticeable when pulling out of our driveway, was just fine when we left home.  But when I got back home, the door to it was hanging open and there was a small dent in the side of it.  This I saw from the driveway as I pulled in.

It wasn’t until I walked down our driveway to see up-close what had happened that I realized that we had been tomato-ed with a large, firm, red tomato that left its seedy drool all over one side of our mailbox– and its gushy guts in the grass around the bottom of the wooden post.

As I didn’t grow up in suburbia I can only guess at the motivations for tomato-ing someone’s mailbox.  Questions plague me.

  • Which came first: the tomato or the mailbox?
  • Was this planned?  And if so, where did the perp get his or her tomato?  Stolen from someone’s garden?  Purloined from Mom’s frig?  Purchased at Kroger?
  • Is it possible that our mailbox wasn’t the intended target? 

Considering there are high school kids in the two house across the street from us & in one house next door to us, I have to wonder if this is a case of mistaken tomato-ing.

Answers to these questions elude me, leaving me to suspect that the real reason our mailbox was tomato-ed has nothing to do with logic.  I imagine, that like many things in life, the real reason that our mailbox was tomato-ed is that it was in the right place at the wrong time.