Beers 38-40 Moose Drool, Lone Mountain, and Alaskan Amber

While on vacation in Montana, we sampled three new beers, Alaskan Amber, Lone Mountain Pale Ale, and Moose Drool, all particularly apt names for Western brewed beers.

Needless to say, Moose Drool wins the prize for the best name, and as an added bonus it is brewed in Big Sky, Montana, where we were staying. It's a great brown ale, but neither of us are as partial to browns. Lone Mountain beer is named after the mountain we were skiing on and you know it tasted particularly good after a day of cross country skiing! The Alaskan Amber was also quite good, but without a direct regional connection to report on. With these three beers we have reached our goal of forty in our second category several months in advance of the end of our time in Chicago. Hmmm, restaurants were first and beers second. What does this say about us?

Persepolis - Movie 22, Duke of Perth - Place 30; Fuller's - Beer 37

Last weekend we went with our friend Ellen to see Persepolis, a feature film adaption of a graphic novel about about a young girl's coming of age during the Iranian revolution. The story is largely the same as the book, but its visual representation on the screen is much more layered and complicated than was the case with the frames on the page. This allows Satrapi to meet the complicated layers of the narrative with a visual match. Two thumbs up - we both liked it a lot. Afterward, we went to a local bar, the Duke of Perth for refreshment, imbibing in a Fuller or two. The Duke features a fine UK based beer list, along with an extensive list of Scotch, including several flights. This will be a great place to take our friends Wayne and Helena if they visit later this year -- Wayne is a wee bit of a fan of the scotch!

Hop Leaf - Restaurant 39, Beers 36; Fun Fact 33

People have been telling us about Hopleaf pretty much since we arrived in Chicago. We finally visited this bar / restaurant in the nearby Andersonville neighborhood on a freezing cold night recently, to meet our friends Sandy and Trish for dinner. These girls are elite rowers and continue to coach in the sport at the college and high school levels. Fun Fact: We were virtually introduced to them through our friends Helena and Wayne, who live in Pennsylvania.

After all the hype, Hopleaf did not disappoint. It offers a truly amazing array of beers (pages and pages on the menu -- we could complete the 40 beer category here and then some!) along with a good selection of excellent comfort food items (perfect for a subzero temp night if you're a meat eater). We started with a Cain and Abel beer -- a nice dark amber with a touch of spice, not unlike the Maudite previously mentioned in these pages, but not quite as strong alcoholically speaking. Susan had a beef stew entree with mashed potatoes mixed in, yum! Kate had a ham and cheese sandwich that was also quite good. We also shared mac and cheese on the side -- delicious!

During the course of conversation attention turned to 10x40 and Trish wanted to know why we don't have a category for 40 new people. For a while we were entertaining the possibility of swapping out the rather anemic recipe category for people, but we decided there were too many logistical difficulties in doing so at this point. Sorry Trish! Great idea, but the execution was lacking on our end!

Moxie - Restaurant 38, Dead Guy Ale - Beer 35

A few days ago we went to a restaurant down the street from Wrigley Field called Moxie. We had been planning on stopping in there for a while, at a time when our friend Marissa would be there cooking. We went on a freezing cold night and were immediately warmed by the friendly atmosphere, great drinks, and fantastic food. We started out with a few beers from the bar, including a new one, Dead Guy Ale a fine pale ale from the Rogue line. Sure, it was a bit cold out for a beer, but when you're committed to completing 10x40 you can't let a few low tempatures get in the way! As for food, the whole table began with hummus and pita with a twist -- a bit of red pepper flake or something along those lines -- which made a usually routine appetizer much more interesting and tasty. We then split a Carribean salad, followed by portabello and goat cheese in a wonderful sauce and skewered shrimp in an excellent pesto sauce. Friends at the table let us try their crab cakes and gnocchi which were also quite good. Great company, great food, and it was fun to see our friend happily cooking away in Moxie's kitchen -- what more could you ask for?

Juno - Movie 20 and CD 18; Maudite - Beer 34;

Friday night was a weird night. We had planned to see the movie Persepolis, only to find that it had sold out right before we got to the head of the enormously long line (probably due to everyone going out on a really cold night to avoid the horrifically cold night to follow on Saturday). So we decided to see Juno instead. We had read some mixed reviews, so were not sure what to expect but this movie and its central character are both winners. The movie tracks Juno's alternatively sardonic and sweet chronicle of her year as a pregnant teen still in high school. We liked it so well that we went out and bought the soundtrack which features pared down acoustic rock from The Moldy Peaches and others, as well as covers from Cat Power and others and some classics by the Velvet Underground and others. Then we headed off to Uncommon Ground to meet up with our friend Andrea to see a friend of hers play in a guitar and cello combo, and once again we were closed out! However, we were able to sample a really excellent beer called Maudite brewed at a Quebec brewery called Unibroue. This amber beer has some interesting spices in it that made the beer quite tasty and satisfying - especially on a cold winter's night. While we are not normally fans of the spiced beer, this one did work -- really well, in fact, for without knowing it we stumbled home to find that it had an 8% alcohol content. Fun fact: the label on Maudite protrays a flying canoe, provided by the devil, to whom these gents had sold their soul to get home for Christmas. Based on our experience of Maudite, we don't think you need the devil to fly home after drinking this beer! Or perhaps that's what ocassioned the story in the first place!

Beers 27 - 33 Winter Welcome et. al.

Is there a better way to spend the holidays than imbibing with friends? To that end, we sampled 7 new beers last month. Our favorite was Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome Ale (pictured at left). This is a very nice amber which has a lot of flavor but is neither too heavy nor too dark for our tastes. As an added bonus it comes in a convenient oversized bottle, just slightly larger than a pint. Major Tom, brought in from Fort Collins, CO by our friend Belle's daughter was surprisingly tasty. We usually steer clear of fruity beers and this one had pomegranite in it, but it turned out to be a very good blend. Left Hand's Sawtooth Ale would get a nod from us for a great brand name alone, but it also is a great ale with a bite. Our friend Vince gave us an oversized bottle of Rogue as a coming home present, another great ale, which, as luck would have it, was conveniently packaged in an even larger over-sized bottle. We also sampled Red Seal and Woliver, fine ales, but not too distinctive. Finally, we has Brooklyn Pale Ale on New Year's Eve, thanks to our friend Karen, an excellent way to end off the holiday ale sampling. But you know what they say, everyone ending is a new beginning! That bodes well for filling out the beer list in 2008 :^)

Moretti's - Beer 26

Last night we went back to Rose Angelis, an excellent northern Italian restaurant that was discussed earlier on this blog. Kate had the same dish as last time -- spinach half moons filled with cheese and cooked in a brown butter sauce - yum! I had ravioli cooked in a sauce made of pulverized sun dried tomatoes. Mmmmm. After sharing these meals and just about finishing both of them we were so full that we couldn't even manage to think about dessert. Although we can't count the restaurant again for 10 x 40 purposes, I did have a new beer, a Moretti, which was a lighter colored beer with a medium strong taste to it.

Jin Ju - Restaurant 29; OB - Beer 25; LaShondra Barnett - Performance 11

Last Sunday I went to a discussion led by LaShondra Barnett about her new book, I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters and Their Craft at Women and Children First bookstore on Clark and Foster. This is a great book filled with interviews of black women songwriters ranging from Nina Simone to Alicia Keys. About 25 people turned out to hear Prof. Barnett (she's in Amereican Studies at Sarah Lawrence) talk about the accomplishments of these women as well as the way that they are usually diminished through a focus on the personal. Afterwards, I met up with Kate and we had dinner at Jin Ju, a Korean restaurant just down the street. We had a delicious scallion pancake and a tasty seaweed roll for appetizers. We each also had an OB beer (Oriental Brewery) which was a pretty unintersting lite beer. For dinner, Kate had Bi Bim Bop (a variety of mixed vegtables mixed together in a hot stone bowl right there at the table) and I had tilapia with eggplant and mushrooms. Both had excellent sauces with just the right amount of kick to make them interesting. The atmosphere was pretty quiet, it being early Sunday evening, but I'm sure the place jumps during the weekend! I've been told that there are cheaper places to get this quality of Korean food, so stay tuned for more soon!

Karyn's Cooked - Restaurant 28; Beer 24

This is a catch-up post: About a week before Thanksgiving, our friend Kathleen came to Chicago from Athens for a conference and we were lucky enough to be able to arrange a dinner with her on the one (chilly!) night she was in town. Kathleen's a vegetarian, so we thought we'd try Karyn's Cooked, Conscious Comfort Foods, located two blocks away from the Chicago stop on the Brown line. This is a place that makes traditional comfort foods, with only vegan ingredients. (There is also a Karyn's Raw which serves only uncooked foods, located on Clybourn and pictured here).

We decided to share three dishes. Kathleen ordered the ribs, Kate ordered a Buddha bowl (mixed vegtables and rice), and I had polenta with mushrooms. They were all very good, but I think that anyone of them on their own might have been a bit much for us. Combining the entrees seemed to really add to their flavor. We also each had a Scarecrow organic beer, a flavorful light amber. We then decided to split a piece of coconut cake which was the largest piece of cake I have ever received in a restaurant! Despite it being very tasty, even the three of us together could not finish it off.

Karen's Cooked was a nice treat, but an even greater treat was having dinner with Kathleen and catching up on all the comings and goings in Athens!

Ras Dashen - Restaurant 27; Beers 22 & 23

On Saturday we went to Ras Dashen an Ethiopian restaurant on Broadway north of Hollywood to celebrate our friend Aileen's birthday. Although we were still feeling the effects of several days of big eating, we thoroughly enjoyed the food here. We had excellent appetizers - a much lighter version of something like a vegtable pakora. This was followed by a platter that included a wide variety of tasty vegetarian treats served on top of the traditional spongy Ethiopian bread. Our favorites were the specials --a mushroom based and a pumpkin based dish, as well as a lentil based dish off the regular menu. We also had a Windhoek beer (a tasty lager) and a Harar (which was also very good - it had a little more bite too it.) For dessert, we had a really good coconut creme brulee -- very light and flavorful. Some friends had coffee too, but that stuff was so strong I wouldn't have been able to sleep a wink! Great meal! We plan to return soon.

Red Light - Restaurant 25; Tiger - Beer 21

Last weekend our Athens friends Margie and David Barba were in Chicago visiting their daugher Emma who recently moved to town. We met them for dinner on Sunday night at a great west loop Asian fusion restaurant called Red Light. We started out with an excellent crab cake appetizer as well as some yummy sweet potato fries. Susan had scallops on polenta and Kate had "Shrimp 99", both of which were very good. But as so often happens, we really liked the appetizers the best. Susan also had a Tiger beer, which was pretty tasty for a lager. We were all so stuffed from dinner that there was no room for dessert! However, the very best part of dinner was catching up with the Barba's and getting all the latest dish from Athens. Hope they come to visit the city again soon!

Fiddlehead - Restaurant 18; Two Brothers Beer 18; Ann Sathers - Restaurant 19

Fiddlehead is a restaurant in the Lincoln Square neighborhood that uses (mostly) organice ingredients in their dishes. The place has a great feel, with the space including a full bar and tables with a good view of the street. The wait staff are very helpful and friendly. This is a great place to come and relax, have a drink, and take your time eating dinner.

We started out with an excellent grilled shrimp, mushroom, and tomato appetizer (doesn't sound good on paper, but it was delicious) along with some very good bread. Susan had a Two Brothers beer, from a local brewery in the western suburbs of Chicago which was very good. Kate had a 312, another local beer brewed by Goose Island, mentioned earlier here in the blog. For dinner, Susan had an excellent chicken dish with mashed potatoes and mushrooms while Kate had a goat cheese in phyllo dish.

We had to scoot right out of there to get to the movie on time, but then we returned afterwards (to the staff's amusement) for a truly remarkable piece of banana creme pie before we braved the 40 degree weather to get home to welcome Athens friends Jonathan and Barry into town for a food show, to sell Jonathan's most excellent Vino de Milo products, such as the ones shown above. If you haven't tried them yet, check out the website for a store near you! It was great to see them both to catch up on all the Athens gossip and to visit Ann Sather's for breakfast, a place in the neighborhood that Susan used to go to for breakfast with her Aunt. And who knew Jonathan was such a crack puzzler? With him on the team we were able to finish a Friday NYT puzzle, no mean feat!

Place #20 - The Grafton; Lagunitas Censored and Pale Ale - Beers 15 and 16; Fun Fact 5

Last weekend Susan visited The Grafton Pub, down the street from the Old Town School of Folk Music in Lincoln Square. It was chosen by a friend from she met from the (previously blogged) Girls Rock! experience, and we opened up the place at 4:00 for Friday happy hour. We sat at the bar and people slowly joined us, singly and in groups, drinking and eating and talking in friendly fashion. Susan tried two new beers from the Lagunitas Brewing Company, based in California. The first one, called Censored, was a "copper ale". Susan figured that was some new marketing term for amber beer, but the bartender insisted that the term's been around for quite some time. She also explained that they called it Censored because it was thought to smell like marijuana when they brewed it (that should qualify as a fun fact.) It didn't smell like it when Susan drank it, but it did taste pretty good.

The second beer was also a Lagunitas, but it's name was just plain old pale ale. They were trying to decide which one to stock at the bar. Though Susan liked them both, she voted for Censored. That beer will be a conversation starter at this interesting little bar for years to come!

Cubs in First! Cubs in First! Athena in Town! Athena in Town! Yoshi's Cafe - Restaurant # 13; Kiran Beer #13 ; Unabridged Books Place #18

Yes, the Cubs are alone atop the NL Central (even though they lost today). That's where they've been since we last visited Wrigley with our friend Athena, who was in town on a layover for a day last week. The Cubs won big that day over Cincinnati, busting the game wide open in the 8th inning, ultimately winning 12-4. I'm now convinced that the upper deck seats are the best in the house. Unobstructed views of the whole field, cover from the sun and / or rain, easy access to food and bathrooms, what else could you ask for?

After the game, we went to Yoshi's Cafe here in the neighborhood. Kate had very good lobster gazpacho and Athena had chicken with vegtables. I had shrimp and scallops with pasta, but was surpised when the shrimp was enormous and the scallops tiny. Kate and I also had Kiran beer, a Japanese beer that was described as an amber, but was really more of a lager -- in any case it was very tasty.

Athena's whirlwind tour of Chicago ended with a trip to our favorite neighborhood bookstore, Unabridged Books (which I don't believe I've mentioned or counted as a Place before) before heading out to O'Hare to catch her next flight. We had a lot of fun with Athena and hope to see her again soon!

The Social - Restaurant #10; Fattyboombalatty - Beer #11

On Tuesday night Susan had dinner with her old friend Jude at The Social, a hip restaurant in Milwaukee's trendy 3rd ward. (Although she had been to this restaurant, Susan had not been to this new location.) Susan had a tasty tilapia dish that had an excellent corn salsa with an unidentifiable spice that made the dish, along with oddball Social trademarks meant to connote comfort like hushpuppy potatoes (which were left uneaten.) Jude had a gourmet pizza which was also very good, along with a Fatty Boombalatty, a creamy amber beer brewed in Black River Falls Wisconsin.

Of course, there was much talk about the name of the beer, and when I got home I found it out it refers to, not surprisingly, a large person, or somewhat more surprisingly, a rather oversized spliff. Jude brought a six pack home the next night for me to try out. We sat out on the front porch like we used to after work when we lived down the block from each other. The Fatty tasted like an amber beer mixed with a belgian creamy beer like a Blue Moon. Very good and very unusual at the same time. Needless to say, it was also great to visit with Jude who graciously let me stay with her for the duration of my trip to Milwaukee.

Labyrinth - Place #9; Chicago Gold and Erik the Red - Beers #7 and 8

On Tuesday we visited the labyrinth at St. James Cathedral, an episcopal church in downtown Chicago located right off the Gold Coast. We met a group of folks from the church we have been attending here in Chicago, Holy Covenant Methodist Church.

Walking the labyrinth is thought to foster a meditative state. Although it appears to be a maze, it is not. There is only one path that leads to the center and that same path leads to the way out as well. Although it looks rather small, it takes about 30 minutes or so to walk this labryinth in a slow but steady fashion. This particular one is interesting because it is set in the corner of the back of the church in an extremely bustling, urban neighborhood. It's interesting that everyone who we walked with was able to feel quiet and centered despite the traffic etc. surrounding the area.

Afterwards, we repaired to the local Rock Bottom Brewery for drinks, dinner, and excellent conversation. All that walking and thinking induced serious thirst and hunger! I had a new beer, Chicago Gold. Billed as a pale ale, it seemed more like a lager, but it was still mighty tasty. Kate had a red beer called Eric the Red that she liked quite a lot. Here's a picture of all the great beers offered at this establishment (with me on the right looking on longingly.)

Book #3 - Cancer Vixen and Beer #6 - Goose Island 312

Cancer Vixen (CLICK ON THE TITLE FOR A GREAT CARTOON SHORT INTRODUCING THE BOOK) by Marisa Acocella Marchetto is a funny yet also sobering graphic novel about a high powered NY based cartoonist whose fast paced, socialite, fahionista lifestyle is turned upside down by a diagnosis of breast cancer. She's on top of the world one minute, publishing cartoons in The New Yorker and preparing to marry one of the most eligible bachelors in Manhattan, when suddenly she learns that the lump that she's discovered is indeed cancerous. Despite the dissimiliarities in our life circumstances, a lot of what she had to say resonated with my experience thus far with breast cancer and the ins and outs of the medical establishment.

Her account made me really happy that I don't have to get chemo, as it sounded entirely dreadful, but then she says, without further explanation, that she found radiation psychologically more difficult than chemo! Yikes! For now at least, I'm going to chalk it up to the cumulative effect -- perhaps she was so worn down after 6 months of chemo every three weeks that she just couldn't take much of anything else, let alone daily treatments for six more weeks.

Great book, but its subject matter (or maybe the looming surgery date) led me to experiment with a new beer, another in the Goose Island line, 312 Urban Wheat Ale. 312 is the area code of the center of the city where the Goose Island breweries are located here in Chicago, just a few blocks away from where the infamous Cabrini Green housing projects used to be located before the city tore them down a few years ago when the neighborhood was starting to gentrify. 312 is a tasty beer, very light with a touch of a wheaty / yeasty flavor. Even if you're not a huge fan of wheat beer, you might like this one, as the wheat aspect adds an interesting flavor without dominating or being too filling. I liked it.

Gerber / Hart Library, and Joie De Vine Bar- Places #2 and #3 and Fun Home - Book #2

Last night we went to the Gerber / Hart Library, an LGBT Archive near Loyola University to participate in a book group discussion of Alison Bechdel's graphic novel, Fun Home: A Tragicomic. Bechdel, best known for her longstanding comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, has written a compelling and complicated story of her troubled relationship with her closeted and ultimately suicidal father and the import of how he chose to deal with his sexuality for the way she chooses to deal with hers. Everyone in the group gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up.

The discussion was quite lively and much more tied to the book itself than any other book group that either of us have participated in! Everyone was asked to say whether they liked the book or not and to give a brief overview of its high and low points. Afterwards, several of us went to Joie De Vine, a bar in the Andersonville neighborhood, frequented mostly by lesbians. All in all, it was quite an enjoyable evening. We'll definitely be back for the next installment of this book club! (Though, of course, everything pales in comparison to our beloved book club in Athens ;^)

Beer Additions -- #4 (Lamar Street) and #5 (Summertime)

Not exactly sure how this happened, but we seem to have omitted from an earlier post several new beers that we explored at Jude's lakehouse. Lamar Street Organic beer falls under the Goose Island label, a Chicago brewery with a home base not very far from here. It's a tasty pale ale that has a nice bite after a swallow or two. We recommend it. Getting in the spirit of things we also drank several of Summertimes, another Goose Island offering. It was good, but not as distinctive as Lamar Street.

Performances #1 and 2 (Congress of Starlings and Julie Loyd) Beer #3 (Mad Hatter)

Last night Kate and I went to see my guitar teacher's band (Congress of Starlings) at a great little bar / restaurant called Uncommon Ground. They're an interesting blend of folk and not-so-folk, great sounds and vocal harmonies. We enjoyed a few glasses of a tasty pale ale called Mad Hatter, beer number 3 on our list of 40 if you're keeping track. The opening act was Julie Loyd, a folkie with a lot of energy, sort of in the mold of Ani Difranco. Loyd was kind enough to point out some open seats for us even though we were late, but not as kind to others in the audience when they talked during her set. Hate to see what would happen if she got actively heckled!