Gotta like a nice long weekend.  Actually it was broken up with some intermittent work, but that’s OK.  We had a quite nice Thanksgiving, if a bit unconventional.  Since we just got out to CA recently, we’re not really ready to absorb the financial (or mental) impact of travel just yet, so we stayed home and had a quiet holiday at home.  We originally had a turkey breast on the menu, but decided to go whole-bird because A) Mom sent me some fancy brine that I wanted to use and B) we wanted some leftovers.  So, we picked up a 12 lb. bird and rounded out the menu with green bean casserole, garlic potatoes and gravy, stuffing, and crescent rolls.  We also had egg noodles on the list, which we had to do a considerable amount of shopping for.  Apparently they aren’t too widely available here, and I wasn’t going to go to the (admittedly small) effort to make them.  We finally found them at, of all places, Target.  All that trouble, and then we forgot to actually take them out of the freezer and cook them.  I’m not sure but I think that’s a regular occurrence for us.  Anyway, everything that we actually remembered to cook came out well, it was a fine feast.  I think the brine saved me on the turkey, as I brutally overcooked it.  Following the recipe in my Weber cookbook, I didn’t take a temp on it until 2.5 hours, and by then it was far overdone.  Brine works miracles though, it was still plenty juicy.

Friday sort of escapes me…  I went to work for a bit, and we hung out on our back patio for a while.  We’re gonna squeeze every last bit out of this 70 degree weather;  To hear everyone talk it’s not the norm here.  Saturday was quite warm too, so Teagan and I played a good round of fetch at the park and then I spent the rest of the afternoon working on an immense pot of turkey & sausage gumbo.  It came out good enough, and we’ve pretty much got enough to last us the rest of our natural lives.  I definitely miss the andouille sausage from The Store in Raytown though, there’s just no substitute for it.  I’ve considered ordering some from Louisiana, it’s not terribly unreasonable, but I always forget.

Sunday was spent brewing up a few more batches of homebrew, as well as kegging the two batches from a few weeks ago.  We only have three kegs available, so I’m not sure what we’ll do with the fourth batch when it’s ready…  We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.  I elected to make a rather generic Irish stout, while my co-brewer went with a ridiculously elaborate clone of the semi-famous Pliny the Elder.  Hope it comes out good, it was a lot more effort than I ever put into my batches.  We also hooked the kegs up to the snazzy kegerator, which was completed last week.  It looks good too.  I’m not entirely sure his wife is overly fond of it’s prominent location in their formal dining room, I couldn’t get a read on that.  But it does look nice, and the stain even matches the dining room table.  The only thing left to do is to get somebody with handwriting much nicer than ours to put the styles under the respective taps.  We should probably come up with some catchy names too, but so far haven’t gotten past “beer #1” and “beer #2.”

The re-purposed deep freeze

Cooked it on the Weber grill. Came out very well, if a bit over-cooked. I didn’t check the temp until 2.5 hours, it was probably done at the 2 hour mark.

We took our second weekend trip to Tahoe this weekend.  I can see it being a fairly regular occurrence;  It’s quite a bit of entertainment for an hour and a half of driving.  Much like last time, we didn’t really take in any “activities,” just sort of hung out.  We got there late Friday and were really questioning the wisdom of our trip when we stepped out of the car into the sub-freezing, windy weather.  Hmmmm, we just left 60 degrees for this?  On purpose?  Well, the decision had been made, so we parked the car and walked to dinner down the street.  We darn near froze walking back from the restaurant, so we cranked up the fireplace in the room and called it a night.

Saturday we accomplished a similar amount of nothing.  We retrieved the car and were heading for a late lunch at Harrah’s, but the valet recommended The Lucky Beaver so we took him at his word and changed plans.  The place was a bit on the cheesy side (I’d liken it to a Hooter’s) but he was correct in that the food was very good.  Unfortunately it was SO good we overate and had to cancel our reservations at Riva Grill that night.  Sort of a bummer, as I was really looking forward to it, but I was stuffed.  We trudged to the couch and fell asleep watching college football.  Pretty much just like being at home on a Saturday, but somewhere else.

Sunday we got up semi-early and got the heck out.  We stopped for breakfast at The Red Hut, which was a fine way to start the day.  I had the chicken & waffles, which while delicious wasn’t quite what I was looking for.  (For whatever reason I like wings with my chicken & waffles.  Don’t know why, I just do.)  I should have stuck with the biscuits and gravy I originally ordered…  I guarantee we’ll be back though so I’ll get them next time.  After that we were on the road, and back home in time for the second half of the Chief’s debacle.  Grilled up some nice salmon fillets for dinner, and called it a weekend.

This weekend was a bit of fun, as I revived my long-dormant homebrew kit.  After a quiet night at home Friday, I headed over to my friend’s house Saturday to start the brewing project.  (Note that “friend’s” is singular-possessive, as in I have one friend and I was at that one friend’s house.  Maybe some day I’ll meet more people here but it’s not looking positive so far.)  Pathetic social life aside, we had a very productive day.  Our project started with a trip to the local brew shop in Folsom, where I purchased a California IPA, and he went with the El Dorado Hills Double IPA.  His was an infinitely more interesting recipe;  Apparently he did a little more research than I.  His kit isn’t listed on the site, but it came with a prodigious amount of hops grown right here in El Dorado Hills.  After listening to the guy carry on about how popular and limited it was, I wanted that one too;  Alas, I’d made my choice and I was sticking with it.  I had most of the hardware necessary to get us going so we didn’t have to purchase much else.  The rest of the afternoon was spent boiling, stirring, straining, pitching, cooling, cleaning…  Pretty darn fun actually.

In conjunction with this brewing project is the building of a dispensing unit to hold the homebrew.  The whole thing kind of kicked off when this guy mentioned he was looking into homebrewing, and also wanted to build a kegerator out of an old freezer.  Well, wouldn’t you know it, I just happened to have a semi-complete draft kit taking up valuable space in my overstuffed garage, as well as a small deep freeze that we no longer have a use for.  Bingo, project on.  Luckily he is far better at woodworking than I, and it’s coming along just swimmingly.  I’ll have to get some pictures taken.  (Actually I have some, I’m just too lazy to get them off my phone.)  The “collar,” which is the wood part between the freezer body and the lid, is red oak with four tap handles.  It’s stained and finished all purdy, and then the main body is finished in chalkboard paint so we can write our styles and other fascinating info on it.  (Or his kids can use it for doodling, more likely.)  Hopefully it’s all up and running by the time our two batches of the aforementioned homebrew get finished.

We are slowly but surely getting moved into our new house.  Very slowly, maybe not so surely.  I somehow imagined having all kinds of free time out here;  Not really working out that way in practice.  Always some good football game on, or the weather is too nice to sit inside, or other similar monumental events.  It’ll get there.  (Won’t it?)

Friday I made an attempt at keeping up my end-of-week happy hour tradition.  I had a fine evening I guess.  I sat on the back patio at the house and pondered the deep question:  “If you sit alone on your back patio, can you really call it happy hour?”  I didn’t come up with a decisive answer.  If you sit at the Brooksider with a table full of people but don’t talk to anyone, is THAT happy hour?  Heavy thoughts man, heavy thoughts.  I know I enjoyed the 70 degree weather, the fire pit, and a short cigar.  Grilled up some rather nice mahi mahi on the ol’ Weber for dinner, then played a few rounds of Wii with the wife to round out the day.

Saturday never quite got off the ground for some reason.  The Missouri game came on at some unholy hour of morning… 9:00 if I remember right?  This PST is sort of inconvenient in some respects, sporting events being one of them.  We tuned in though, it made for a good start to the day I suppose.  It was evident they had the game well in hand by half time, so Teagan and I strolled up the street and played some ball at the nearby park.  After that the day kind of just went by.  We watched several more college games that we had only marginal interest in, I washed the motorcycle, slept intermittently on the couch…  And that was about it.

Sunday we had a bit more energy, or at least got a bit more accomplished.  I put a little effort into my new home network, with absolutely no progress.  (The temptation here to go on a detailed tangent of my Uverse issues, possible fixes, and past failures, is almost overwhelming.  I shall refrain though.  You’re welcome.)  Given the lack of a Chief’s game, we headed out to get some shopping done.  We are definitely doing better about eating at home now, (mostly because we can barely afford our rent,) but haven’t quite settled on whether to grocery shop day-by-day or once a week.  Both approaches have their own advantage.  At any rate, this week we bought most everything at once.  My major purchase (or at least most interesting) was a tri tip roast from Costco.  I’ve been searching in vain for a brisket since we got here.  I’m not sure they can be found.  Urban legend has it that they occasionally show up at Costco, but I sure haven’t seen them.  Apparently when in California, the beef consumer is relegated to the “tri tip” cut.  Hmmm.  Color me skeptical.  They look sort of like a brisket, but that’s where the similarity ends.  One major difference is they only take about an hour to cook.  What the heck are you supposed to do with the rest of your day??!?!?  Gone is the excuse, “Sorry, can’t do that today, got to keep an eye on my brisket.”  Lame.  Oh well, I guess this is one more major cultural difference I’ll just have to overcome.  (It came out pretty darn tasty though.)