Christmas, and Four Day Weekend

Sorry for not blogging since Wednesday, but we’ve been busy.  Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and Chanukah, we sure did!  Where oh where to begin…

We celebrated Christmas Eve with my family at Kristen and Jon’s house.  Combined pictures from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day may be found in my Picasa Web Gallery, or by clicking on the image to right.  There was an impromptu visit by Santa who took time out of his busy schedule to stop by and say hi to everybody before his big night.  We all took a chance at sitting on his lap though, strangely, he didn’t ask any of us what we wanted.  Guess it was too late by that time!  The kids all had a great time opening presents.  This year Christi was my Secret Santa — again — and this year I was Jeff’s.

Christmas Day was held at Aunt Robin and Uncle Ben’s house.  The picture of Benny to the left is there because, after I took it, he asked “is this going to end up on the blog?”  Yes Benny, yes, congratulations on your (second!) blog appearance.  Have fun playing with your Mensa Mind Challenges!

Aunt Robin made some kick-ass lasagne and prime rib and, for desert, pignoli cookies.  I think my mom and I are the only two people who really love them but that’s fine by me: they were great, as usual, and luckily I was able to bring some home.

Our Mondel Bread was also a hit on both Eve and Day.  It was my best batch yet and there was no leftovers.

Friday was a brew day!  I got brave and attempted a 10g batch, twice the size I usually brew.  My kettle is 15g and I had that sucker all the way to the brim, as you can see by the picture to the right.  It was quite an experience since Christi and I had to babysit it, adjusting the heat as necessary to avoid a boilover.  We had a few boilovers, but nothing major, and the batch turned out good.  For those of you brewers, I missed my target gravity by about .1.  Short gravities have been plauging me since I’ve gone full-boil, I need to start diagnosing WTF is wrong.

Anywho, after the boil we split the batch into my two 6g carboys and they are fermenting away as I type this.  I also split my monster yeast starter (that I blogged about last week) and poured 1 cup of slurry into each carboy.  Fermentation commenced within 3hrs.

Saturday was a shopping day.  We did some returns, bought a few things, and got Christi an iPhone.  She’s wanted one for quite a while now, but hasn’t pulled the trigger, so I pulled it for her.  The 3G model is very sweet and much faster than mine, and she’s looking forward to using Google Reader and getting into podcasts to pass the time on the bus.  As a bonus she can now check her personal email more often, so she can get back to all of you within hours instead of days!

Yesterday we watched the Jets end their season.  With Mangini gone we can only hope that Bill Cowher is interested, and that the Patriots will let Matt Castle come over after they franchise his ass.  Alas, I dream…

That’s it for now.  Sorry for the long post, but we had a lot to catch up on .  Take it easy everybody!

A Christi Sighting

Last night we polished off one of the Winter Wheat growlers.  Below is a picture of the final pint, along with a rare sighting of “The Christi” in her natural habitat:

In the background you can see the lights over our fireplace in action.  In our NFL picks, we split this week (winning a measly four games each, eh) so Christi is still +1 going into Week 16.

Oh, by the way, High Point Brewing Company will be putting the Winter Wheat into bottles this week so you may be able to find it.  For places that serve or sell their beer, take a look at their website.  If you can find it I highly suggest picking up a sixer.  I’ll drink it if you dont’ like it

And Now For Something Completely Different

An actual SMS conversation between Christi (on the left) and me (green, on the right) last night regarding dinner:

You see, Christi often forgets to take the meat for the nights dinner out of the freezer a few days before so I usually put them in a water bath when I get home, so they’re ready for her to cook when she gets home.  Christi, being ever so fun-loving and half-asleep on her bus ride home, let this gem slip.

By “at least” two breasts, I assume that is a blank check: I can grab as many breasts as I’d like.  Lucky me!

Christi -1

It’s official: she’s on a roll in her comeback!  She’s only down by one game now, going into week 14…

Thanksgiving 2008 Movie

Here is a compilation of the movies we took on Thanksgiving day:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Enjoy!  Also, I forgot to mention last post: the pignoli cookies that Aunt Robin and Michelle made were awesome!

Thanksgiving, and Last Weekend

Where to begin?  I hope everybody had a happy Thanksgiving, we sure did!  It was great unplugging for a nice four day weekend.  With the exception of the pictures I threw up from the Jets game yesterday, we didn’t blog at all… sorry for the silence.

I’ll start from the beginning.  Thursday we had a great Thanksgiving over at Kristen and Jon’s.  We started the day with the first annual Turkey Bowl then, after sampling my Belgian and Chocolate Imperial Stout — which were liked by all — we sat down for a great Thanksgiving dinner cooked by the man himself, Jon.  Everything, as usual, was fantastic especially the XXX which was the sleeper hit of the meal.  The pies were okay… not great, so next year pie duty will fall upon Christi and I.

As you can see from the picture on the left, Jon doesn’t mess around: he gets a good look and gets out all of his stuffing!

Friday and Saturday we did errands all day and, whenever possible, I spent some time working on my new fermentation chamber.  No pictures yet but as soon as it’s finished I’ll upload a bunch.  I’m still at least a week away from finishing it, as I need to figure out some electrical issues with the thermostat, but I made significant progress on it this weekend.

On Saturday night we started a fire with our new fireplace grate.  This new grate has a mesh at the base, so the kindling doesn’t fall down and away from the wood as you’re lighting it.  As you can see from the picture to the right it helped quite a bit, and we got one big fire going!  We’re still trying to figure out how to slow down the burn so we don’t use up wood so fast, but we’re making progress.

Anywho, the fire did a great job of keeping our living room warm.  We were able to turn off the heat and the fire maintained the temperature we had set.  We have plenty of wood (thanks Dad!) so we expect to be using this quite a bit this winter.

Lastly, Sunday, we froze our ass off at the Jets game.  Stupid us didn’t buy a tent so our tailgate consisted of us sitting in the car while I ran outside a few times to cook some food.  It was fun, but not as fun as it could have been.  Our seats were pretty good but, unfortunately, not quite under the overhang so we were in the rain the whole time.  By halftime the rain had soaked through our pants, onto our skin, and we were so cold (and the Jets were playing so badly) that we just left.

Now, it’s Monday, and we’re back at work… fun, fun, fun.

Enjoy the week everybody!

A Four-Day Weekend

I hope everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving! We had a nice time at Kristen & Jon’s, playing a rousing game of flag football and gorging ourselves of a Thanksgiving feast. We’ll have photos to share soon.

And since Thanksgiving was on Thursday, Ryan and I both were able to make it a four day weekend! We did a few errands on Friday and Saturday and tomorrow we’re going to the Jets game (vs Denver). Of course, we’ll blog more about the game on Monday, but here’s hoping it goes our way with a WIN!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Short of a funny post tomorrow by Christi that she’s been looking forward to all week, this is probably our last blog until Friday.  Enjoy your Thanksgiving and best wishes to you and your family.

I leave you with a classic picture: “Stuffed Turkeys”

I have no idea what year this is from… if you do, please leave us a comment.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Great Weekend

Tried blogging on Sunday night but I just couldn’t do it.  Honey Pale Ale + Stoudt’s Double IPA + 20oz of Stone Ruination IPA = good weekend, and no capability for typing

Let’s rewind.  Saturday we had a full day of errands so we got up early to get them all done.  As Christi mentioned earlier, we also ran in the afternoon which was good and bad.  We like running early but, when it rains, we don’t really have a choice.

One of errands was running down to Corrado’s to get some yeast for our first cider.  Yes, I said us instead of me because this one was a group effort!  After bottling the Altbier that Dennis, Jason and I brewed on Teach a Friend How To Homebrew Day we jumped right into the cider, since it uses a lot of the same equipment.  I was actually able to use the same 5 gallons of Star San to sanitize the bottling equipment, cider carboy, and carboy equipment… yay me.

The cider was super easy.  5 gallons of 100% apple juice from Trader Joe’s, 2lbs of corn sugar, and a 5g packet of dry champagne yeast.  Mix it all together, rehydrate then pitch the yeast, and you’re good to go.  It took about 24 hours to really take off but now it’s fermenting pretty good.  I’ll be sure to upload a picture later in the week.

This cider should come in around 8% ABV and should be done towards the end of the year; it should sit in the primary fermenter for at least a month.  Hopefully I’ll have my kegging setup done by the time I’m ready to bottle it so it can be my inaugural keg!

Yesterday was a lazy day.  We went to breakfast with Andrea and Rich (and their two adorable kids Ava and Sophia) then saw their new house in Ridgewood. After that we just came home and cleaned and did laundry.  I also did a pilot batch of Mandel Mondel Bread to see how it would cook in our new stove.  I can say with certainty that the batches I do this year will be the best ones yet.  Despite messing up the actual recipe a little bit — that’s what happens when you bake while drinking — they cooked way better than they ever have.

Like I said, great weekend.  Take it easy everybody!

Pictures From Saturday and Misc. Musings

As promised, here are the pictures from Saturday.  Got some really good ones so, as always, let me know if you’d like prints: I’m more than happy to order them from Apple for you.  For those of you who weren’t there, the theme was Halloween which is why everybody is in the hats.  The kids had a great time with the hats and, later in the night, with the teeth.  Even Ava got the opportunity to try on the teeth, giving us a great picture!

I was going to put the slideshow online but didn’t have the time.  I burned copies for Tiff and Kristen, but if anybody else wants a copy let me know and I’ll give it to you the next time I see you.  At some point I’ll be putting it on my iPhone, so I can then send that copy to Mom for her new iPod Touch

On a totally different subject, Christi had a really good week picking up two games this week, dropping my lead to 2 games.  She went out on a limb this week and differed from me on six games (the person in the lead always picks first) and won four while I won two.  Good job Christi!

It’s also really, really crappy outside right now and we lost power as we were walking out the front door.  On the drive to the bus stop, we encountered a downed tree (which, we assume, is the cause of the outage) so we had to make a detour.  None of this is fun decaffinated… ugh.  To boot, the starter I made last night is no longer spinning on the stir plate.  UGH!

One week until Election Day!  And, if you watch Heroes, isn’t this season shaping to be really insane?

That’s it for now, time to caffinate.  Have a great day everybody!