Lagunitas Little Sumpin' Sumpin' Ale

WOW! I really have been slacking... I promise I will not go this long again without writing. To start things off again... I will be writing about a beer!

The featured beer of the day is: 

Little Sumpin' Ale by Lagunitas

About the Beer: 

"Sneaky Smooth with a Touch of What We Call Wheatly-esque-ish-ness. Crispy Wheat and Pale Malt flavors with a Big Round & Juicy Hop Finish. Everyone Needs A Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Sometimes." Not to mention the name and the label are amazing! 

Review of the Beer: 5 out of 5 "A new favorite"

Now my tastebuds might have been a bit biased when I tasted this (after going on a no alcohol stint after getting my wisdom teeth taken out) but I loved this beer.

Sight: A nice light brown color with some orange undertones. When poured the head displaced quite fast leaving a nice lace on top. Fairly translucent. 

Smell: The hops were not as fragrant as other ales and the fruit didn't come out as much as I would have thought.

Taste: A thin beer with a light hop flavor with the perfect amount of fruit flavor. Some beers get too close to ciders (which I am not the biggest fan of) but this was perfect. The taste stayed pretty steady but ended on a sweeter note than it started on. 

Over all: I recommend this beer for sitting on your porch in the summer and watching the people walk by! 

Welcome to summer foodies! Drink up!

PS look at me using these technical beer terms! I might have done a little research on how to describe a beer better... :D 

Picnic Part Two - Kalamata Olives

Part two of the Music Mondays Picnic blog posts!!!

About the Food: Kalamata olives are named after the city of Kalamata in Messenia, southern Greece, where they are grown. Kalamata Olives are said to have a smooth and meat-like taste.

Review: I give Kalamata Olives a 2 out of 5 rating. 

Oh how I love black olives and I thought these would taste similar and they slightly did but not enough for me to like them. The flavor was bitter and just bad... I will not be eating these again. 

Picnic Part One - Iberico Cheese and Prosciutto

Picnic post! I went to Music Mondays the other night at Millennium Park and enjoyed some wonderful music and a delicious picnic! Though I tried too many foods for just one post so... here is part one!

Part one's foods are Iberico Cheese and Prosciutto! 

About: Iberico is a blend of cows' and sheep's milk creating a soft cheese with a smooth flavor. Prosciutto is a type of ham made in Italy and it's name means dried of liquid in Latin.

Review: I give Iberico Cheese and Prosciutto a 5 out of 5

Being from Wisconsin I love cheese and who doesn't love bacon? Iberico Cheese and Prosciutto are the "more sophisticated" counter parts. And while I loved the two of these foods separately you put them together and YUM! The smooth yet sharp flavor of the Iberico combined with the sweet and smokey flavor or the Prosciutto made a party in my mouth! 

Tapas - Cafe Ba Ba Reeba

Tapas, Topless, Tapas! What a great invention! ;) And while all of the Tapas dishes I had I have ate before I have never had the Tapas dinning style experience, thus this wonderful blog post!

About the Food:
Tapas is the name for the spanish style of dinning where the meal consists of a bunch of small dishes/appetizers called Tapas. Tapas were designed to encourage communication between the people at the table, the small dishes are meant to to distract people from traditionally focusing on one giant meal/plate and to encourage everyone to talk between each Tapa or plate.

Review of the Food: I give Tapas a 5 out of 5

Tapas were amazing! I often find myself sitting down for a meal and eating half of it, get sick of it and skill being hungry; I call this food A.D.D. ;) Tapas is the perfect dining experience for someone like me! Being able to eat small portions of a bunch of different foods was amazing! Not to mention all of the foods we ordered were delicious! 

Of the many Tapas we ordered my favorites were the cheese plate, the dark chocolate desert and the meat pastry, YUM! I can not wait to go back!

Restaurant Review: Ba Ba Reeba I give it a 5 out of 5!
Was this place cute or what!? Ba Ba Reeba had a very nice "comfy" atmosphere. The lighting was a soft yellow and the decorations were all brown and maroon and they had fun "christmas" type lights everywhere; it was just very... nice!

And as good as the atmosphere was, the service was just as good. We did have quite a long wait to get seated but we were able to go sit at their bar and have some sangria. When we got to our table the waiter took our order quickly and the food came out soon after.

I would not only recommend Tapas to everyone but I would also highly recommend going to Cafe Ba Ba Reeba to get them!

400 Pound Monkey

So I know it has been a while since I have written a post, my first Chicago summer has been quite busy. Though my summer has been fun I am back and have been drinking lots of new beers; a good and a bad thing... ;) 

The featured beer of the day is: 

About the Beer: 

400 Pound Monkey is brewed by Left Hand Brewing Company and is an English style India pale ale. Left Hand Brewing describes the beer as “a beer with hops of a different color, earthy and herbal, well balanced by bready malt. The result? An English-style IPA that separates itself from the ubiquitous bunch. Cartloads of bitter monkeys flinging wasteful amounts of bananas into the jungle . . .we're so done with that.” (Love the humor!) 

Review of the Beer: 4 out of 5

I must say I did love this beer! It seems as though my taste buds are maturing from only liking Miller Lite... Now I have been told that like a book you should never judge a beer by its cover/color, though I feel that the orange/amber color of the beer translated the taste of this beer quite well. The smell of the beer was of light hops, grain and some type of acidic fruit, possibly grape fruit.

As the color translated well so did the smell. The taste was of light hops, a sight acidic flavor and underlying tone of sweetness sort of balancing it all out. I feel that the beer is more a fall beer and I can’t wait until it cools down to drink up!  

A last little tid bit I want to say is that while I liked the flavor of the beer my favorite part of this beer was its label... AMAZING graphic design! (I am quite the graphics dork.) But seriously I see myself buying this beer again and really enjoying it come fall when it is not 2000 degrees outside! 

Keep cool foodies! 

Turkey Burgers

WARNING!!!! Big knifes are sharp! OUCH!!! Yes I learned a very valuable cooking lesson while preparing the food for this blog post: don't try to separate frozen burger with a big, sharp knife! DEFROST! 

Well a late night trip to the ER, a few months of recovery and the knowledge of how to defrost things I am attempted to make turkey burgers and this time I didn't cut myself and made some pretty good turkey burgers! 


About the Food: via cheese-burger.net
Turkey burgers were first discovered by health conscience diners in the seventies when it became known that substituting ground turkey breast for ground beef sheds about 200 calories, 25 grams of fat, 10 grams of saturated fat and 45 milligrams of cholesterol from each quarter pound burger. 

Food Review: 3.5 our of 5
I decided to try turkey burgers because of well... what the about the food said, shedding 200 calories from a meal sounds amazing to me! I had tried turkey sausage and loved it so I assumed that I would like turkey burgers just as much. They were ok...


It might have just been the brand I bought but they were very bland... I will have to look into other brands to see if they are any better. As far as the turkey burger I made, adding condiments, some whole wheat bread and some veggies to the burger made it "not bad"; worth enduring for the the 200 calorie shed when craving a burger! 


Please let me know if any of you know a good turkey burger brand or if you have a good turkey burger recipe!! :D


UPDATE: Duh Duh Duuuhhh I have a found that I was right not to judge Turkey Burgers by the ones I first ate. Since my first traumatic experience with Turkey Burgers I have tried various brands and ordered them at various restaurants and have found: they are pretty tasty! 

Corned Beef and Cabbage

So this post is a little late but Happy St.Patty’s Day!  This also might be a little late (living the past 22 years and never eating this) but I had my first corned beef and cabbage this past St.Patty’s day! My roommate and I made a huge meal including mash potatoes, corned beef and cabbage.

History of the Food/Tradition: Via thekitchenproject.com

Corned Beef and Cabbage is basically an American tradition on St. Patrick's 
Day started by Irish-Americans in the mid 1800's

Some Irish people feel that corned beef and cabbage is about as Irish as spaghetti and meatballs. 

Since cows were used for milk rather than meat in poor times in Ireland, beef was a delicacy that was fed to kings. It was more common to celebrate a holiday meal with what they call a ham (Gammon) or bacon joint. (a cured but un-smoked piece of pork) with their cabbage and potatoes. When many Irish Immigrants came over in the mid 1800’s they couldn’t find a bacon joint like they had in Ireland, so they found that Jewish corned beef was very similar in texture, and they used that for their holiday celebrations.

Review of the Food: I give corned beef and cabbage a 5 out of 5 rating!

Yum, yum, yum, yum!!! I am so upset that this was the first year I had this oh so delicious meal! This takes meat and potatoes to a whole other level! To be honest the only reservations I had with this meal was that, when my roommate was making it, Guinness was added, in my opinion the worst tasting beer on the planet. But in the end (after hours of cooking) you couldn’t even taste it!

The cabbage on the other hand I had many reservations about. I really had never had cooked cabbage and was a little worried, but oh my goodness was it good. I don’t know all that my roommate put in it but bacon was involved and man was it good! I only wish this meal could be made more than just one day of the year because damn was it good! 

I recommend this meal to everyone!! It has officially been added to my St.Patty’s day traditions of green beer and beads!