Beer: Hands Up! Tin Whistle brewery

Bill Miner (1847-1913)

"Bill Miner, the first train robber in Canada was known as the 'Gentleman Bandit' because of his good manners during a hold-up. He was also the originator of the phrase 'Hands Up!'"
"On May 8, 1906, he held up the C.P.R. near Kamloops making him a local folk hero. He was later arrested by the Royal North West Mounted Police and sentenced to 25 years in the New Westminster Penitentiary."
"The 1982 Canadian film 'The Grey Fox' was based on Billy Miner's life."

A Raisin Oatmeal Red Ale, this beer has a colour much more typical of what I like. It has a grape like smell that reminds me of something faintly, maybe some grape candy? Tasting I find it much milder then I expected with, as you would expect, a faintly grape taste to it. Surprisingly I find it isn't all that sweet, with a dark and bitter aftertaste. Not all that bad as beers go, but I don't think I'll buy it again.
Originally posted on my facebook.

Beer: The Muse from Cannery Brewing.

Tags: Beer, Cannery Brewing, Canada, Canadian, British Columbia, B.C., Review

"Her serene blend of golden promise malts, California ale yeast, and Simcoe Hops flow seamlessly together weaving a path of strength and vitality. The Muse is the heart, the spark, that enchants your mind in such a way you can't think of anything else but her"

A lighter beer than my usual tipple, but I can't resist trying a new beer. Also, some very pretty artwork. Not very fragrant but the glass delivers that smell that just says 'this is a good beer". Sipping it I enjoy a dry, full bodied taste without fruity overtones. The aftertaste is enjoyable but leaves my mouth feeling a bit dry. A very pleasant ale, I'd buy it again!

Originally posted on my facebook.

Old Fashioned Beef Stew, revised.

Old-Time Beef Stew, Revised.                                   Prep Time: 5 Minutes

Original Recipe courtesy of Paula Dean                  Cooking Time: 2 hr 15 min

Note: A link to the original recipe can be found at the bottom of this page, this ingredients list and cooking instructions are all my personal attempts to make a perfect beef stew. Feel free to remove or substitute any ingredients you like. I have no idea if having both a shallot and onions made a difference or not, I just felt like cooking a shallot, same with the bacon.

Ingredients

3 strips thick cut Bacon (or 6, see Step 1)

2 pounds Stew Beef

2 tablespoons Olive Oil

2 cups Beef Broth (You may want to use Low Salt)

1 cup Red Wine (I used The Grinder Pinotage)

1 bottle of Porter or dark Stout

1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce

2 large Yellow Potatoes cubed

1 large Tomato chopped

1 156ml can Tomato Paste

2 cloves Garlic, crushed

1 or 2 Bay Leaves

1 medium Onion, chopped

1 large or 2 small Shallots, chopped

¾ teaspoon Salt

1 teaspoon Sugar

½ teaspoon Pepper

½ teaspoon Paprika

dash of ground Allspice or ground Cloves

The veggies go in after all the ingredients above have cooked for a while, so keep them separate, eh?

3 large Carrots, sliced

3 ribs Celery, chopped

2 tablespoons cornstarch

Instructions:

Step 1: Fry up the bacon and then use it to make yourself a grilled cheese & bacon sandwich, cause who doesn’t get hungry cooking bacon? And you’ll be hungry again by the time the stew is ready. Then fry up 3 more strips and put them aside on a plate with some paper towel.

Step 2: Caramelize the chopped onion and shallot until they getting golden looking and almost see through. You can do this in the same pan as you did the bacon in with a little bacon fat, or in the stew pot, but either way they are going to be put to the side until after the beef is browned.

Step 3: Brown the stew beef, in the pot, with the olive oil. Note: This step is one I still have to fiddle with, just browning the beef in oil works, but results in very plain tasting beef. On the other hand, this recipe is really easy to get too salty. If you you season the beef, maybe flouring it as well, I’d recommend reducing the salt to ½ teaspoon or none at all, and then tasting the stew before adding the carrots and celery to determine if it needs more salt.

Step 4: Add beef broth, red wine, beer, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, bay leaves, onion, tomato, potatoes, salt, sugar, pepper, paprika, and allspice. Cover and simmer for 1 ½ hours. Note: I only just realized I messed this step up and only simmered for half an hour, but it turned out wonderfully anyway, So I suppose it depends on how thick you want your stew.

Step 5: Add carrots and celery. Cover and simmer for another 30 to 40 minutes.

Step 6: To thicken gravy, remove 2 cups hot liquid. Using a separate bowl, combine ¼ cup water with cornstarch until smooth. Mix with a little hot liquid and return mixture to pot. Stir and cook until bubbly. Note: This step is pretty pointless. The original recipe called for only 2 cups of water, and after cooking for 2 hours there was hardly any liquid left.  I just dumped cornstarch & water mixture right in. And anyway, if you use starchy enough potatoes and flour the beef, you might not even need to use cornstarch.

So, there you go! My attempt at the perfect beef stew. As I’ve said it still needs some fiddling with but it’s definitely going to get better from this point on. If you do want to revise this recipe to your taste, I suggest you do what I did this time and print off a paper copy and make notes of what you do differently. As Adam Savage said “The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.”

Original Recipe by Paula Dean, found on the Foodnetwork.com http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/old-time-beef-stew-recipe.html

Little note to my nonexistant subscribers

Due to the fact that my old email account is currently so overused that I wouldn't be able to find most of the emails I wanted to see, I decided to use my alternate email address forthis blog from now on.

Time travel

I don't know how many people who might read this read fanfiction, but one of the usual themes for it is having the main character go back in time, sometimes as adults, but more often sending their personality/memories/soul back into their younger body. Now, the way msot of theses stories go follows the, as a favourite author described, 'changing desert, stable mountains' pattern, that is, certain things might be changed, but some events happen no matter what changes. Given what I know about chance and chaos, this is probably impossible, but for the convenience of my subject I'm going to follow it.


If I was to be sent back to my kiddie self, I think the thing I would miss most would be music. Not books, there are all sorts of books that came out when I was a kid that i'd love to own. Not tv, because I frankly think there are a whole bunch of better tv shows when I was a kid that are far superior to what is on now, cartoons especially; watching men In Black from beginning to end is my favourite childhood memory, especially since I cant seem to find any copies now a days. But music, ahhh, music. With a father who seems stuck in the 80s when it comes to music, and a mother who is a music fan, if I was stuck in my kids body I'd end up hearing, over and over and over again, music that i had  heard a thousand times before. Dave Mathews Band, disturbed, bily talent , apocoalyptica, the Darwin song project, I'd have to wait and wait and wait for all of these to come out. BUT THERE WOUL BE NO GUARANTEE THAT THEY WOULD COME TO EXIST AT ALL! Sure, it'd be very LIKELY that they would come to exist, but no CERTAINTY.

What if I decided to focus on learning how to play and sing guitar this time around? Would I be able to resist from playings songs I knew as an adult? if I didn't, and they were released and owned by me, what would happen to those who wrote them originally? The best i could hope for is that they became inspired by my songs and wrote even better ones.

Oh well, it's probably impossible that such a thing would happen anyway, and I certainly hope it doesn't. I guess this is nothing but an intellectual exercise.

Minecraft

There is something to be said for a game that makes you think. Most of the time when I play an rpg or any of the slower none FPS games I listen to an audiobook or a music album., but when I play Minecraft the thought of doing so just goes away. It's not it's a complicated game, the only point is to keep on digging, and explore as you will. Everything made of blocks which can, in most cases, be smashed into pieces, and then reused as you like. Even Lava and Water can be picked up and moved around, with a little work.

The only time I'm tempted to find something to distract myself with is during the night periods, which cannot be fastforwarded, and last 7 minutes, during which skeleton archers and zombies spawn by the truckload, and your only hope is building a shelter, and making sure they don't know you're there, cause otherwise the Creeps will arrive, and blow themselves, and everything around them, up in a pretty darn decent explosion.

One of the neat things is that only a few blocks obey gravity, sand, gravel, water and lava sort of; but the other ones merely require that they be placed against any of the six sides of another block, and then they'll remain there until destroyed. I myself, in one of my worlds, am building myself a floating castle. This is a much more difficult undertaking, because balancing my character on the edge close enough to see the side of it, so I can place another block, often leads to falling. which when you're foolish enough to do it at night is a death knell really. Happily death does nothing more then send you back to the spawn point, which you cant move, at the same time of day as when you dies, which sucks when you die at night.

Night does not always restrain you though, if you're lucky enough to find flint and steel early enough to make a fire starter, and you can figure out how to make eternal flames, all you need is a block of wood, and you can keep on doing what you like. Even mining, so long as you make sure to put enough lights that monsters dont spawn. expect to come back to see you shelter populated by animals when you return though, they do not have a light requirement for spawning, merely a distance from you.

That's all I have to say for now. I ment to merely post some musing and ended up writing a small review... oops?