Do Not Inquire Why Or Whither

Boo Jones turned 4 years old today!

She may not appreciate the holiday as much as us, but she knows a good soft-serve when she sees it. I have to agree with the wife: Boo is probably the best gift-receiver I have ever seen, whether it be an ice cream cone, a strawberry, or a long-distance toy from her canine friends back home (pre-chewed, of course.) Her ears flip back, her eyes go wide, and she goes completely into the moment.

Boo had to take a break after her ice cream indulgence, but just before sunset, she got a late night round of futball -- or whatever she calls it. Whatever it is, she lives to play with this ball so it was a fitting end to her b-day.

With the new Nike ball, Boo is hoping for a sponsorship. Nike, are you listening?

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.

Thornton Wilder (1897 - 1975)

A Pint of Scrumpy

I think I've mentioned that they take their cider seriously here and that cider only means the hard stuff. Everything else is just apple juice.

I started noticing another variety on the store shelves and I needed to figure out what it was all about. "Scrumpy" is a traditional type of cider made mainly in our Herefordshire area and in the south of England. It is made from whole apples instead of apple juice, is non-filtered, unpasteurised, non-carbonated, and doesn't have any sugar added. Very unlike the ciders most people know.

According to a BBC article, a scrimp is a small withered apple and to scrump means to steal someone's apples. I didn't know it, but I think scrump has been missing from my vernacular. Dude, did you scrump my burrito?

But how do you pick your scrumpy? Many of the bottles are intentionally designed to look extra rural: clay pots, rustic-looking paper labels, and so forth. We tried what looked to be a safe first attempt at having some scrumpy, Jack Ratt Scrumpy Cider in a nice, clean-looking bottle. This stuff is very light, easy to drink. Not sweet at all and was refreshing on ice. You wouldn't know it was 6% alcohol.

We've heard, though, about some of the more authentic scrumpys that get cloudier, thicker, and much more potent at around 15% alcohol. This is the kind made out behind the shed with a barrel, some apples, and a hickory stick. We had dinner with some work folks the other night and they gave us a tip on where to get it. I'll let you know how the scrumpy hunt progresses.

Cheers!

In The Bush

Are these pigeons? Doves? Whatever. I'm not sure how much bigger these freaks of nature plan to get, but they have taken over the upper realms of multiple trees in our garden. Boo desperately wishes she could fly -- they taunt her from their perch. She has, however, done a good job of letting these monsters know that touching terra firma is a bad idea. The wife wants to go 'Tony Soprano' on these things.

I'm Against a Homogenized Society

I know I have weaknesses. And when it comes to donuts, me and Homer Simpson have a lot in common. Fortunately for my arteries, you don't see too many donuts in this part of the world. The cake-donut lady in the town square on weekends does an OK job but to me, cake donuts are somewhere towards the bottom of the donut heap. Amateur stuff, really.

The top donut on my donut list, without question, is the custard-filled, chocolate-iced long john - and not one of these 'filled' donuts that you can get halfway through and still not be sure that it's actually stuffed. Before you finish the first bite, you should be having trouble controlling the custard. One (two?) of these and some hot coffee... whew... that's a good start to any day.

I'm pretty sure, then, my love of custard may be somehow related to that donut. Unlike the donuts, England has pretty much got all the bases covered when it comes to custard. There is a custard section at the grocer -- next to the extensive cream section -- and every store even has its own store-branded custard. And I aim to try them all. So far, I've tried the Sainsbury, Tesco, and ASDA store brands. I made a critical mistake on the ASDA purchase: I got 'light' variety that was low fat and artificially sweetened. In a lot of cases, I'm fine with that -- but custard is basically fat and sugar held together by egg yolks so it just doesn't work here. The current winner is Tesco but the Sainsbury brand was decent.

Custard has its dangers, though. First off, you have to buy it by the pint. For a family, that might work. For single usage, it's a bit much when you consider danger number two: they simply use less preservatives over here. Once you crack the top of the custard you have less than 3 days to consume. Driven by a fear of spoiling, I pretty much eat the whole thing in about 10 minutes. Nothing like taking down 1000 calories, 100 grams of fat, and 50 grams of sugar in about the same time it takes to drink a cup o' joe. It should make me sick. Should.

Cheers!

I'm against a homogenized society, because I want the cream to rise.
Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

Better Blogs

Folks -- England hasn't provided much blog fodder this past week. The weather still sucks. Hedge trimming is overrated. And both the wife and I have been putting in lots of hours at the mill.

I could tell you about how I had to fix the fence since Boo has escaped twice and found that the field next door is invested with some mutant horde of fleas. Seriously.

Or about how hedge trimming is a crap job. The trimming part is fun but you wouldn't believe how quickly those hedge trimmings can add up. I have no idea what to do with them.

We could talk about how we finally have a car and that shifting with your left hand feels like someone else is doing it and that the wife says I still get a constipated look on my face when I change gears. Hmm.

Or we could talk about how we totally lost control of the garden. I actually used the hedge trimmer to cut down the lettuce and it took us 2 hours yesterday to untangle the two giant tomato trees that had waged a smothering war on each other (but - oh! - the fried green tomatoes made from the fallout boys were awesome!)

But there is hope. We have confirmed a quick break-out of England this Friday as we make our way to Paris to meet with some travelling cousins. Alright, alright. Good food, good drink, a room right next to the Eiffel-ma-bob, and lots of blog-tastic adventures.

Follow that up with a possible trip to the home of goulash (Budapest!) later in September and the arrival of our very first and most special American visitors, His Lord and Ladyship the Duke and Duchess of Westmont (Pez and Payne), and you have a hot month of blogging. Better than a hot lunch, I'll say, unless you are in to that sort of thing.

Cheers!

Bring Out the Gimp

I took some pics of the Lilacs the other day whilst playing with a new lens. I didn't have much to blog about today so I decided to play with GIMP, a freeware graphics tool. This hack is the result. I recommend double-clicking on the image for a better view.

Back to Bizness

After yesterday's lapse, it's time to get back to talking about food and beer. Last night we dined at The Three Horseshoes, over in Allensmore, down Kingstone way, around the corner from Lock's Garage (pronounced ga-raj.) You know the place, right? There are at least six places by the same name in Herefordshire so make sure you get it right if you ever get out this way. I added it to the map below just in case.

I would go back for the beer but I'd think twice about the grub. I had two pints of Wye Valley Brewery Butty Bach. Nice, golden beer with out much bite. I could drink this one all night without too much trouble. They had a bunch of beers on draft and I also noticed a new certification, Cask Marque, that is similar to the Beautiful Beer award I blogged about a fortnight back. There are many, many more local pubs on the Cask Marque certified list, so I'm not sure if its just more accepted or more lenient. I think I want to become a Cask Marque field acreditor. You show up unannounced and they have to give you six free pints of your choice. I might start my own acreditation that requires the qualifying pub to provide six rounds for me and my 'tasting crew'.

Service was excellent and the wait staff was very friendly. They always seem quite surprised when they ask us if we are on holiday and find out that we actually live here.

To start, I had some duck pate (3) while the missus had cream of mushroom soup (2). The pate was decent enough but I wouldn't get it again. The soup was quite good -- thick with chunks of mushrooms and a broth that was not too heavy.

For dinner, I had the 'monster mixed grill' (3). I had a very similar dish at the Grafton near our place, and it was good when I had it there. The basic idea is they bring you a small chunk of about 7 or 8 different grilled meats. Last night it was beef steak, pork chop, kidney, blood sausage, some other sausage, lamb chop, gammon (smoked ham), a fried egg, some grilled tomatoes, and some sauteed mushrooms. All of this with a giant side of fries. And all of it cooked well past a happy medium, even by English standards. Not so good. The missus had the faggots (3) with mushy peas (2) -- which ended up being large meatballs with a livery after-taste in a rich sauce. They were better than my mixed grill. The mushy peas were the best I've had.

No dessert on this trip. I helped the hostess swipe our credit card (she'd never done that before) and we went on our way.

I think I might get back and try a few more pints here, and maybe something different off the menu (should have got the steak and Guinness pie!) It's right between home and work so for convenience alone, it's worth a trip back.

Cheers!

One Step Closer To The Edge

Dear American,

Don't ever move to England.

Regards,
Kept Man

P.S. WHY!? WHY!? You ask? I am having a break down today. I was trying to be the pillar of strength between the wife and me and the dog but today I just can't do it.

We have been here almost exactly 4 months now. And this time I just can't be the glowing light of optimism I need to be. I can find good eggs in the US -- I'll pay extra -- and leave the rest behind.

Whilst I was away in Oregon, our washer-dryer, that never worked right to begin with, finally took its last breath. On Monday last week I ordered a new one, to be delivered in about 3 business days. The company confirmed delivery on Thursday and on Thursday morning, I disconnect the old and waited. And waited and waited. And waited some more. It took me until 11AM the next day to finally re-establish contact with the company (their phones went down -- they said) I bought it from. They blamed the manufacturer, said with a "tough shit" tone that I wasn't the only one that didn't get my order, and I could either cancel the order or wait until the following Tuesday. I had little choice but to wait.

So Tuesday comes and the washer-dryer is delivered. Just like our moving crew, the guys dropping this thing off were in a hurry and didn't spend too much time thinking about how to safely and carefully handle the washer. I inspected it (I guess I should have flipped it over?), signed off, and started installing it.

Once installed, I ran a rinse cycle as recommended to make sure all of my fittings were ok. Moments later Noah came by and asked if he should take Boo with him. Our laundry room had quickly flooded. I blamed my installation first but then realized that somehow a large plastic reservoir inside the washer had been smashed in on one side. Possibly by a hand truck?

I call the manufacturer. The gist of what they told me is over a week to get a new one or get it repaired. I was reminded several times that the upcoming weekend was a bank holiday so that would slow it down. They recommended that since I had the washer less than 28 days (how about less than 28 minutes) that I contact my retailer. They also denied the retailer's claims that it was their fault it was a late delivery to begin with.

I am now just shy of 24 hours later and my retailer hasn't responded to phone or email contact. Their phone immediately goes to voicemail and my messages go unanswered. I am wondering how long before I get the message that their phone system is down.

If it was just this one thing, fine, every once and a while you have bad luck. But it's not just bad luck anymore, it's being used to a standard of service so much higher than can be found here. In less developed parts of the world, I get that you can't have the expectations you have in the USA. But in a country where half the people I deal with seem to think they have a well-established superiority to the USA (and they will tell you as much), you'd think they would then try to do better that what we have. Guess what England, you're not even close. It's a sad state of affairs -- and you know it is bad when locals (we had this talk with our neighbors) agree that it's an epidemic problem that nobody here gives a shit.

In four months:

• British Telecom misses four appointments and it takes us six weeks to get a phone.
• Our English move-in crew, who we were told were the best crew, put more dings in our stuff than we got in 3 moves in Chicago. Thank god I was there when they were going to use a hammer (and not the prying end) to open the shipping crate of our widescreen TV.
  
• HSBC Bank wastes our time signing us up for an account we can never get and then never bothers to call us and tell us. We wait for 3 weeks before calling them.
  
• NatWest loses all of our application information, including copies of passports, and advises us just to start all over -- and even though they don't know where our sensitive information is at, they assured us it was safe.
  
• NatWest finally gives us accounts. Even though we have joint savings and checking and even though I got a credit card, we have to submit further information to prove my wife is married to me so she can get a card. That was weeks ago and still no card.
  
• It takes us months to get a car because apparently no one actually understands their own systems and policies and our time is repeatedly wasted filling out forms that will never get us anything.
  
• Our new wine cooler's shelves can't hold the weight of wine bottles (?) and self-destruct. Our retailer won't let us exchange or return it. Our only option is to send it in for repair which can take some undefined amount of time.
  
• American Express UK (a very different animal from AMEX USA) repeatedly denies us credit cards and then weeks later realizes a typo on their side was the problem.
• New lawnmower arrives. One of the handles is missing from the box. Thank god I ordered from Amazon (which is the same as the USA and handled an immediate exchange with Saturday delivery) because the manufacturer's support line said it could take 48 hours to get back to me.
• Oh and look at that. It's raining again.
  

Whew. Weight off my chest. Ok, I'm going to think about how good the eggs are for a while. Hard boiled eggs, poached eggs, scrambled eggs, eggs gumbo, garlic eggs, cajun eggs, eggs benedict, eggs over easy, toad in a hole...I'm gonna go make some eggs.

Pull Not Down Thy Hedge

We have hedges. And despite the cute Ron Jeremy fantasy perception of hedges and their inhabitants, hedges take some work.

In the tradition of naming my household and garden implements after Tolkien references, behold Narsil, the Hedge Trimmer. Narsil, a Bosch AHS 52 Accu, was brought in to handle our unruly hedges. Fifty-two centimeters of laser cut blades and two 14.4 volt batteries, providing 55 minutes of hedge trimming fervor each, have brought my abilities up to Edward Scissorhands status. I went with the cordless variety with the hopes that if we ever leave the Land of Rain, we can simply get a different charger to keep using it (unlike the appliances we bought.) I also had a crippling fear of slicing through the cord of a corded variety.

The first hedge pic is a naughty hedge. It is growing every which way with no regard for the aesthetics of our garden. It taunts me and makes a mockery of the well kept grass. It must be tamed.

The procedure is simple. Insert battery in Narsil, lay blanket under hedge (saves on clean up time), and attack with hedge trimmer. Narsil makes short work of hedge branches up to 15mm thick. It can also quickly chop through a bob wire fence when one gets ones Narsil too close to it (oops!) Unfortunately, I am alone in my blogging today so I am unable to provide an action shot.

Now, here we have nice tidy hedge that has been taken down a notch. If a branch had some desire to stick out from the pack, it was chopped off. We have no room for individuality in this yard. Everything is right again.

In a few days of sporadic on and off trimming -- it has rained on and off for going on 2.5 years here now -- I have accumulated mountains of hedge trimmings. The trimmings apparently are like crack for slugs, which have moved in to the pile in droves. I need to call on the neighbors to see if I can add my slug nest to their burn pile. I suppose this is a detail I should have worked out ahead of time but once I had the Narsil, "reason" took a brief holiday.

Here There Be Dragons

Once again, reality has tread on blogality and work is keeping the blogger down. This hasty post is a Google map I've started to give a feel for the Hereford experience and where we have been so far. Nothing much, but drag it around, do some zooming and be... be... be the Hereford. More detail to come, I'm sure this will one day be a permanent blog page fixture. Cheers!

Oh -- and yes, men on horseback are my twisted way of marking a butcher shop.


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22,983 Weetabix Were Made While Writing This Blog

I didn't even see it coming. I'm sure the signs were there but somehow I missed them. This is how it happens: bit by bit it gets into your head and next thing you know you are talking like Austin Powers and have bad teeth. Yeah, baby, yeah.

In case you haven't figured it out already, my favorite UK breakfast cereal is no doubt Weetabix. Weetabix is the most popular cereal here. And it's like Marmite. When you first eat it, it is sorta surprising how mushy and bland it is, but then a fortnight later, you are craving it. It comes packaged in large fiber turds, each roughly the size of a McDonald's hash brown (hmm, now that sounds tasty!) Once milk touches said turds, you have approximately 13 seconds to eat the Weetabix before it disintegrates. I've timed this and it's accurate.

You'd think the incredible lack of texture in Weetabix would be a negatory aspect of the food. Not so. Like the food I ate as a baby, once those 13 seconds are up, you can ingest four bricks in mere seconds. It may be the most efficient food in existence. It's not about taste or enjoyment, it's about a good BM achieved with the least effort possible. If a good BM means I'm becoming more British, then bring on the tatties and God Save the Queen!

Ooo, Behave!

PS If you are on the Weetabix legal team, I really do like your cereal though I don't know why. I will feed it to my house guests, too. And I don't really think it will give me bad teeth -- I'm fairly certain that has something to do with brown sauce.

The Sky Is Falling

Knock it off, yankees. The dollar is getting stronger and now that the bread winner of the family is paid in pounds sterling, you are hurting our conversion rates! The nerve.

It took some digging to understand why the dollar is getting healthier -- and I think it has more to do with what didn't happen in Europe as opposed to what did happen in the USA. Decision makers on this side of the pond held base interest rates in place while the USA bumped theirs up. The end result is that the dollar now looks better for investors and is worth more.

The good news is that potential UK visitors will finally get a break and my meager US-based earnings don't go so quickly when I use my US bank card.

Cheers, wankers!

Serving Suggestion

Ever pick up a box of Rice-A-Roni and think that the picture on the front looks really good until you see the little words printed at the bottom: "Serving Suggestion"? That's when you realize that with what you get in that box, you will never match the picture on the front. Wait -- you mean it doesn't come with roast chicken?

Unfortunately, the exact opposite is true with a new product we tried, "Hunger Breaks - The Big BBQ." The front of the can shows what we thought was in the can: simple baked beans with perhaps a BBQ style sauce. The picture also shows a variety of meat served with the beans -- meat we thought was part of a 'serving suggestion'.

Imagine our surprise when dumping out the can resulted in a full-on processed meat BBQ appearing. Hot dogs, formed pig chops, and some other chunks that may have been intended to be burgers or meatballs.

And it was all really, really nasty. I'd hardly be surprised to find out the Big BBQ had no meat in it. I ate half of my hot dog (there were two - about half American official hot dog size) and couldn't finish the rest. I will eat almost anything and it was that nasty - like a sponge packaged in a tough skin that squirted insipid "fake meat" juice onto your unsuspecting taste buds. I commented that the pig chop may have been a McDonald's chicken nugget that fell off the processing conveyor and was later reclaimed by Hunger Breaks for reuse. Ah, recycling.

I was even more surprised to see that this crap is available all over the world via various British food shopping websites. Have some self respect!

Cheers!

Keptman's Best of Corvallis

Let's face it: for a mere two week period, I ate and drank a lot of what Corvallis had to offer. Here's a recap of restaurants and bars:


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Mexican
Bombs Away Cafe -- The most un-Mexican Mexican I have ever had. Blah.
La Conga -- Fantastic. And as far as I can tell right now I ate four burritos and I didn't get worms as is apparently feared by some of the locals. Not as far from real Mexican as some would like to think. The Oregon Burrito is a good pick but the chorizo and egg was a close second. It's rumored that the health department shut these guys down and they opened under a new name. These are things of little concern at 2AM. If a worm can survive in that environment, maybe Darwin is working his magick.
La Rockita -- A solid runner-up to La Conga. The lengua burrito tasted a lot like a Taco Bell 7-Layer and that's not a bad thing.
El Sol del Mexico -- This is your typical Americanized Mexican joint with the cheese-drowned combination platters warmed in a microwave. OK for what it was.

Pubs, Bars, and Brew Pubs
Downward Dog - Upscale drinks and an attention to booze details, combined with a great late night menu borrowing from Cloud 9 made this a favorite. Watch out for the chicken wings when ordered 'as hot as you can make them.'
Crowbar - The fancy infusion drinks could step aside and make room for more Pabst. The pizza from American Dream was the big winner at this stop. I am still thinking about that pizza.
McMenamins - A solid choice when the crew can't make up its mind -- they even have two locations in town. Great microbrews, solid burgers (loved the daily special 'stuffed' burger), and much, much more. It's hard to tell you are in a chain restaurant! Oh, and gotta have the cajun tots. Service was sketchy at the downtown location.
Clodfelters -- Stinky college dive with a sub-par burger.
Jamie's -- No beer here but a top-notch burger with lots of options. Classic diner atmosphere was a surprise for a strip mall eatery. Odd but our waitress looked like a few chocolate shakes had blown up on her. Wash those clothes, darlin'.
Sahalie - Wine bar where we had sangria of both the white (huh?) and red varieties. Very tasty and creative fondues -- really just lots of bits of things with sauces -- are worth a repeat trip.
Block 15 -- Best beer in town but the over-ambitious kitchen needs to catch up. Good ideas but just not all that memorable. Very good service. Try the beer sampler.

Fine Dining (or close to it) Stregas - Crap service spoiled what should have been a great meal. Never made it back to try again but the kobe flank steak showed some promise. If Corvallis has a great view, it might be from this place in the highest building in town (6 whole stories.)
AQUA - A mouth-watering dining experience. Creative food that gets just about everything right. Upscale tastes (truffles, fish eggs, rich cream and egg sauces) paired with a great selection of seafood. The Asian flare seems so integral to the food. The drinks are more of the same good ideas (shiso mojito!) that aren't just for show -- they really do taste good. Service to match. My vote for best restaurant in Corvallis.
Le Bistro - I can't complain about the food (my veal chop was perfect), but it was too stuffy for our group. It's hard to pair wine with the La Conga you are going to be eating later. If my wife had been there, it would have been a first choice.
Cloud 9 - We only tried the tapas menu but we tried ALL of it. Three of us gorged ourselves to avoid feeling guilty about leaving food that good behind. The habanero fritters (not spicy!) were what I wish hush puppies were everywhere. Great portions, nice heat and tang. This where I would go to get my chillie fix. I'd get the clams again, fersure.
Mc Grath's Fish House - Just had a lunch here, but this chain seafood place should take over the Red Lobsters of the world. Unfortunately, like the Lobsters, there may have been some butter abuse going on. I liked it, but it had mixed reviews from our huge table of people and our waiter seemed a bit frazzled.
Big River - The menu and atmosphere has good potential but I found the bulk of it disappointing and over-priced. Bland! Recommended for grannies.

Odds and Ends
Baguette - A tiny little Vietnamese sandwich shop serving up the best sammy I had on the trip. Cheap, tasty, and too bad we found it on my last day! Great bread!
Crystal Cafe - We were drawn in by a rough sign claiming that this was the 'King of Falafel'. The place was empty but shouldn't be. I had a falafel salad that was decent enough. Again, we found it late in my trip and needed another visit to get a better feel for it. Nice change of pace. Look out for the fresh squeezed rose lemonade: I went into sugar shock.
Stadium Grill - Last but not least, this was our home away from home. This is the lounge of the Hilton. The specials and some of the appetizers were good with a handful of Fat Tires and a martini or two. I was told to avoid the roast beef sandwich -- I never did find out why. The chicken cordon bleu bites were masterful achievements in food engineering.

Well, Oregon, I guess that's it. Cheers!

Home Sweet Hereford

It's funny to think that I am heading home and home is way over in England now. My dealings in Oregon are over and whether or not it was a success probably varies depending on your point of view. Either way, its a very good thing to be heading home to wife and dog.

Today, I fly Portland to Detroit to London Heathrow and then catch a ride over to Hereford. The whole trip takes about 20 hours. I caught the 4AM shuttle from Corvallis, fly out of here at 8:30AM and land in London tomorrow at 7AM.

We'll see if I can get the blog back on track this coming week.

Cheers!

A Tale Of Three Martinis

Who knew there were so many kinds of martinis to be had in Corvallis?

We finally cut out of work late Saturday and made a quick stop for a lunch of drinks and appetizers at one of two McMenamins that are in town. McMenamins has over 55 locations in their food and drink empire including their own distillery and winery and coffee roastery. We had been here for lunch the day before and they served up some tasty food -- gotta have the cajun tots. On special was a dirty martini made with Vintners Gin made at the Edgefield Distillery. This style of gin is one of the things we tried back in Amsterdam and is much more herbal than what most folks consider gin to be. Think Beefeater on herbal steroids. As a dirty martini (I usually like mine squeaky clean) it was smooth with a distinctive taste, rounded out nicely by the extra tang from the olive juice. I followed that up with one of the McMenamins microbrewed ales called "Hammerhead". For food, we had the tots, meaty buffalo wings, and a top-notch hummus plate.

We all took a break after lunch and regrouped for another night out. First stop was a local fair that we had been told about. We spent more time in the taxi to and from the fairgrounds then actually at the fair. The description of the beer garden had been exaggerated a bit. Let's just say it wasn't our cup of gin.
We took a taxi straight from the fair to AQUA, a slightly upscale Asian-fusion seafood restaurant just off the river in Corvallis. Things were looking up.

AQUA had a great menu from drinks to starters to the main course. For drinks, it was dark & stormy's (ginger beer and dark rum), followed by their signature AQUA martini that came with two olives stuffed with spicy ahi tuna. The shiso mojito looked great, too, but I ran out of time. The Ben tried the enormous 'Don the Beachcomber Zombie' -- said it was good.

We started with some edamame, kumamoto oysters with shaved sake ice, and scallops with bernaise sauce and truffle oil. Oh my. These dishes weren't cheap but they were so worth it. I moved on to a Thai beef salad. I love thai beef salads and this was easily the best I have had. It was like beef carpaccio with a thai flair -- awesome. I followed that with fish and chips -- and confirmed that the English are really, really good at making these and I should henceforth avoid ordering them outside of the UK.

I couldn't end on a down note so we went with the now trusted Cinnamon's recommendation and ordered up a chocolate milk cocktail. Not unlike the legendary Dutch Whistle, this was a mix of chemicals that ends up tasting like chocolate milk with a vodka aftertaste.

But we weren't done yet.

Next stop was The Downward Dog and Cloud 9. More great drinks at this place made with ingredients that I have never seen before. The Bennerino and I tried the sazerac -- sorta like a Manhattan. The group broke down here and we started to falter. Only Engleman and myself had the stamina to, once again, stumble our way over to the bright lights of LA CONGA for my third burrito of the trip -- this time a pork carnitas variety -- before catching a taxi to the Hilton.

Whew!
Cheers!

Indecision Is For The Birds

Still in Corvallis,Oregon...

Our team leader left and we struggled last night to figure out what to do for dinner. We had already spent some quality time at the hotel bar, including an experimental moment where someone lost money because the chicken cordon bleu bites really do have a chicken-ish meat shell under the fried outer layer.

A few drinks later, we gained a person and lost a person and were in a taxi on our way to Crowbar. I had images of Chicago's Crobar that I have only heard stories about but never been to. This Crowbar wasn't nearly as intense, offering up "infusions" of fruit and liquors in an array of funny named drinks. They also are partnered up and share the same space with American Dream Pizza.

None of the fruit cocktails struck me as sounding good so I started with a beer, a draft Rogue Brutal Bitter that was a good starter. Yep, it was bitter and hoppy with a bit of orange tang and smelled as good as it tasted. We ordered a pizza, "The Bent", and another round of drinks. I gave in and tried a "My Precious" that was sorta like a gin and tonic but with kiwi infused gin and a whole lotta lime. Too much fruit for me. Some of the other guys tried drinks with names like 'Tai Me Up', 'Libido Bandido' and 'Heckyl and Jeckyl'.

The pizza came and it was fantastic. Crust was thick but crispy on the outside and soft on the inside with some sort of garlic butter enhancement. Our toppings were sausage, pepperoni, bacon, mushrooms, and black olives. Fresh mushrooms, zesty sausage, good American bacon, and decent pepperoni made this a keeper. Its been less than 12 hours since I ate a slice and I could go for another one. I don't care if its 9AM and I just ate breakfast. It was that good. Mr. Murata liked it too.

We wrapped up the night with another round of drinks -- I had a draft of the classic Pabst Blue Ribbon. They still make this stuff?

Sometimes blogging ain't easy. Crowbar's rear sign has two giant spotlights on it and the camera phone couldn't handle the glare. Mr. Engleman, one of my partners in crime, found a convenient piece of cardboard to help get the pic. The plan was to crop his arm out of the picture but I think its better like this.

Cheers!