I finally got around to making homemade Kahlua. I just wanna drink the coffee simple syrup from the first step!

Just in time for the holiday.

We got sunchokes from the farmers' market this weekend; the lovely folks at Veenstra's Vegetables had a recipe box too, so I grabbed a page that had a bunch of ideas for using them. After reading up a bit about them, it sounds like sunchokes are very easy to maintain and propagate, so I'll consider buying extra this week and planting a small bed of them.

The flavor of a sunchoke is earthy but crisp and refreshing. It really brightens the flavor of a rich comforting soup like a chowder.

( recipe for Cheese & Sunchoke Chowder )

We've been drinking this new pizza beer lately and really like it. It's infused with lots of common pizza flavors: garlic, oregano, tomato, etc. and of course tastes awesome with pizza and pasta. Actually, I've found that it tastes good with lots of foods. Give it a try if you see it in the store, it's a local microbrew too, produced for them by Sprecher.

Had an awesome weekend with friends visiting for the holiday. We relaxed and gently bathed ourselves in the excesses of good food and booze. I grilled, we ate lots of meat, including my first slow-roasted bbq pulled pork, and also downed pounds and pounds of side salads (made by pinktornado and kleinehexe242). I almost became enraged when the liquor tried to cheat me out of 1/12 of a barrel, but I guess it turned out alright in the end. I am glad to say that even with all the garbage we generated, I only have a small bag of ~20 unrecyclable bottles that I couldn't fit in this week's trash. Thankfully, it didn't get too hot until Sunday, so we never had to crank the AC. I hope it was comfortable for you guys.

We walked downtown a couple times, once to see the fireworks and later in the weekend to enjoy an afternoon beer at Brewhaus (our new favourite bar, even though we don't go there too often). liquidbrain, next time we'll get to go to the brown wood bar. They used some safer low-power-whatever fireworks downtown this year. I was underwhelmed. (Which reminds me that I need to post pics from the good fireworks show we saw at the Carillon festival last month.)

I think Scotland Yard will be one of the new party games. Still gotta find Pass The Pigs though.

Oh yeah, I can sum up one of the most weird and funny moments of the weekend with these three words: Shirtless Candycane Delivery

After our dinnerandamovie date, we're going to check out the last-minute GUEST DJ at KoFusion. Go E!

When you're prepared both mentally and clothing...ly, a brisk ride in the cold wind and rain can be very invigorating.

I could have asked pt to pick me up, but I couldn't leave gina out all night like that. ;) I like the wing night with no smoke; I could actually breathe this time. You get a large amount of wings for a small amount of dollars.

The new booths at the Blind Pig kick ass. You can *comfortably* fit 8 people in each booth, 10 no problem, and 12 if you're in a party mood. The open circular booths in the other part of the new room look rather nice as well. I enjoyed talking politics and perfume and learned some interesting things about eye-tracking applications in market research.

I, for one, will make sure I go there more often after the Champaign Smoking ban takes effect. Dragon's Milk is tasty.

pinktornado has some great news!

We have a wedding gift and pt's graduation gift that are now getting put to good use: a little Dom sipped out of Waterford crystal is a nice way to spend a Tuesday afternoon. =)

I didn't realize that they bumped up the number of user picture icons for paid accounts. Time to fill it up. I'll ring in the month with a new default icon, based on our costumes. I have to say that I'm pretty excited about sewing our costumes. It'll be a challenge, considering the last thing I sewed was probably a pillowcase, about a decade ago, but I'm confident. My $25 vintage hidden sewing machine table gives me the power to do this.

Also added booze icons for a couple of my current faves: Delerium Tremens, and Founder's Breakfast Stout. (Duchess de Bourgogne is another of my standards, but I couldn't find a decent label pic anywhere.)The Pig just won a contest to get a new and rather exciting beer in this month. I can't remember what it is, but I believe it's some sort of breakfast stout. Perfect for the fall.