"Cup Noodles" = tasty dinner

I don't care that there's enough sodium in one cup to change the buoyancy of the Pacific Ocean-- I love Cup Noodles.  I have always wondered why they omitted the "of" in between "Cup" and "Noodles" but ya know, I don't question the masters.

Or do I?

In this case, no, no I do not question them.  You're off the hook, Cup Noodles.

Who is on the hook, you ask?

Fish!  HA HA HA HA HA!



Ahem.

So, anyway.  Julie and I threw ourselves a garage sale this morning, and it went pretty darn good!  It was hard saying goodbye to some things (like my drumset!) but I'm glad that I did.  It will be much easier to move with less clutter attached to us.  A brilliant insightful saying could come out of that, but I think it's just too obvious.

Instead I will create my own proverb:

Many times will a man push upon a brick wall... but seldom will a man push upon the door of his true destiny.

Eh.

How about this one:

To love someone is to let their strengths become your strengths and their frailties to become your place of protection.

I'll keep working on it.  ;)

Beer and UFOs

So Andrew and I finally did it.  We brewed our very own beer.  And it didn't necessarily go as smoothly as I would have hoped.  But here's a step by step journey-- I invite you to tag along.

First, we needed to get supplies so we headed over to The Brewmeister, a homebrewing supply store in Folsom.

Here's a word for word exchange (mostly) we had with Dave, an unenthusiastic employee who had already put in his two weeks:

ME: "So, we want to do a homebrew and we're brand new at it."
DAVE:  (Silence.  Dead stare.)
ME:  "So... someone said that your kits are really good."
DAVE:  "Yeah, our kits are really good."
ME:  "Of course, we could just pick out our own ingredients based on a recipe."
DAVE:  "Yeah, but then you'd be here for an hour and you'd ask me all these questions and I'd be pissed.  I just got my dream job so I don't care about this one anymore.  I've been pretty much getting drunk every night and barely being able to pay my bills."
ME:  "Okay, we'll get a kit."

100 bucks later, we've got everything we need for a Belgian Double Bock except a 4 gallon boiling pot (they wanted 85 bucks for one in Brewmeister and I said NO).  We decided a thrift store is the proper place to get a cheap pot.  And it was.  Andrew and I entered Eco Thrift with a swagger in our step.  We looked left, then right, and then felt, nay, KNEW right where it was.  Aisle three.  Second shelf.  Next to the figurines of baby Jesus.  That pot glowed--nay-- it SANG up there on that shelf.  Calling us to grasp it's shiny handles and guess at the price.  A pot this magnificent should have been priceless, but I had to look: $7.95.  THE SKY OPENED UP AND THE BABY FIGURINES SHOUTED HALLELUJAH!!!!

Ahem.  So we got the pot and headed home.  Stoked to brew, we were disheartened to find out that the yeast needed to sit out for a day before we could use it.  Looks like we needed to postpone our brew date til after Easter on Monday morning at 7am, before I had to go to work.

AAAAA!!!  Now it's Monday Morning, at 9:07AM!!!  We overslept!!  The yeast is risen!  It's risen indeed!!!  We awoke in a panic.

 Quickly we sanitized our equipment and began steeping our grain.

I was still in my bathrobe at this point.

And now it was

The dogs paced in furious anticipation.

Okay, they just sat there and looked at us funny as we kept bumping into each other.

Next we removed the grain and boiled in our malt extract (had a mini panic attack when we discovered that our friend Dave at BM forgot to give us two of our malts).

Then we added the hops (Liberty).

Kinda looks like the surface of Pluto.
Next we added little nuances like Irish Moss and Candi Rock Sugar.

We let it boil all together for awhile and then it was time to

CHILL OUT!!!

(You'll notice I am no longer in my bathrobe.)

We filled my jolly green bathtub full of cold water and chilled the wort down to a reasonable temperature before we transferred it to the primary fermenter (a bucket).

Here I am adding water and yeast and aerating the mixture.  So much fun!

We stuck a lid on it and a cool device that allows it to breathe but I always forget the name of it... let's call it a "bubble-ator."

In two days the yeast had fermented so vigorously that it had clogged our poor Bubble-ator (let's call him Alexander) and our bucket was stretched out to the max.  We decided to shift our setup to a "blow off" style after a confusing phone call to a lady named Nicole, I think, at Brewmeister.  She was trying to be helpful, but I think my lack of experience confused the crap out of her.  Andy and I made an emergency run to Home Depot to find some tubing that could work for the blow off system and VOILA!  we were back in business!  Disaster thwarted.  Alas, poor Alexander was sniffling sadly in the corner of the room as we hurled insults at him.  So stuck up.

A few days later it was time to transfer our beer to the Secondary fermenter, a carboy supplied by none other than the infamous Brewthers up at Catholic Beer Brewery in the basement of a Maple Valley Pastor (a fine gentleman of a man, to be sure) near Seattle, Washington.  They will probably point out many of my mistakes with this batch since they are seasoned professionals (and damn good looking).  Not sure what their looks have to do with it, but I just thought I should state that for the record.

Here's Andy having fun transferring the beer into our Secondary.

So, now the beer is bubbling slowly in Andy's closet.

Soon we will add the final bit of sugar and bottle it up for a few weeks.

THEN WE WILL DRINK IT AND WONDER WHY WE SPENT SO MUCH FREAKING WORK ON MAKING A MEDIOCRE BEVERAGE.

Or maybe it will be fantastic.  One of those two probably.  Cheers!

Men of renown...

"1 Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.


3 And the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive[a] with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” 4 There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown."  
            -Taken from Genesis, chapter 6
 
Sounds like mythological stuff.  "Men of renown..." like the movie 300 or Spartacus or Troy...  What's going on here?  Did Angels do it with humans?  Did godly men do it with ungodly females?  Is this pure mythology?  Is it all a metaphor?
 
I find the cross of Christian Tradition with Mythology very fascinating.  I feel like the line was much blurrier back in Bible times than it is today.  We like to say "It's all true, cuz it says so right here in this book!"  But frankly, that's not always how it was orated around the campfire.  I'm not saying it's all "made up" but I get the sense that there was a lot of "borrowing" of stories back then.  The flood might have just been a pagan story that eeked it's way into Christian tradition...  same with these "Hercules-esque" God-men from Genesis.  Who knows if Moses was smoking something when he wrote this?  Can it still be the Word of God?  Yes... absolutely.  But it is through the hand of man that it is written and through the mind of man that it is understood.

...and the award goes to...

Last night we had a barista competition at my store.  I lost.  Bad.  Didn't even place in the top three.

Yikes.

When they told me that the only reason was that I went over the time limit, I felt a little better, but not much.  There's always those coulda shoulda wouldas that people like to mention to justify their lack of excelling.  The fact is, I got beat pretty soundly.  And I'm okay with that... I think.

I was also thinking about the people that said they were going to be there but didn't show up.  At least three people from the store said they were going to compete or watch to cheer on the team... but they didn't come.  I am often confused by people that can say they will do something and then just choose not to because they think it might make them feel awkward or something.  I was really proud of my coworker, Carrie, because she was super nervous and she kept telling me how badly she didn't want to be judged by anyone, but I made her promise me that she would stick it out.  She was the only girl who ended up staying for the competition.  And she won.  Beat everyone.  Got free movie tickets.

This is why I try to stay committed to the things that I say I'm going to do, even if it looks like it might suck.  I feel like those are the times in which we get refined.  Those are the times that people excel as human beings and surprise themselves and everyone around them.

You go, Carrie.  You stay true.

I can be a cheerleader.