The Milla Times Journal

field tripping: Mo and i had been talking about going out of town for ages, but issues with the house, the dogs, the money made it difficult to just get up and go. still, we were aching for a breakin, so we settled on the Stone Brewery. located in north San Diego, it’s nearby enough to not require the burning of too much gas in getting there but far away enough to make us feel like we’re really out of town.


giddy Mo: like a kid in a candy store, a Mo in a beer shop, the Stone brand, with its Arrogant Bastard Ale, is one of Mo’s favorite microbrews.


impressive: they had about a kazillion beers on tap, most of which change daily and can’t be bought in stores.


manic panic on tap: at the time of our visit, the brewery was participating in some annual event where its employees and fans are asked to dye their hair blue to raise money for beer awareness or something. oh wait, it was for childrens charities. hiccup — pass the pale ale.


back to the beer: it was pretty damn tasty, especially for a gal like me who has an underdeveloped beer palate. Mo was in hops heaven, sampling everything on the menu and bringing home a growler filled with one of Stone’s anniversary brews, which was aged in a brandy barrel, alcohol content: 10.25%.


schlemiel, schlimazel: we took a free tour of the actual brewery, which provided a lesson on how beer is made, plus a walkthrough of the premises.


not quaker oatmeal: apparently, beer is made with a lot of rolled oats, or yeast, or barley or something. i was quite drunk at this point so i’m not sure what the tour dude said.


did she get it at Ross? i was so drunk that i kept urging Mo to ask the girl in the orange halter top where she got her shirt. “tell her you want to buy one for your girlfriend,” i said to Mo, who was too busy calculating how many cases of beer would fit in the trunk of my car.


total Stoner: that’s what they call fans of the Stone Brewery. our tour guide was definitely one, leading the tour as he did, beer in hand, while explaining the fermentation process and restating that “yellow, fizzy beer is for sissies.”


kegggggerssss: there were so many. felt like college.


and the food: beyond just the drinking, there was plenty of eating to be done. we had two different meals in the brewery’s “world bistro” restaurant, which served crazy incredible food, some of which was prepared with Stone’s own beers, like the Arrogant Bastard Onion Rings. the restaurant was mighty gorgeous, designed with stones and pebbles, and with this huge wall of glass that faced the back patio.


babylon: the landscaping was also first class, with the most lovely, fragrant gardens everywhere. it provided me with many good ideas on how to landscape the house, which is currently surrounded by dirt and dead grass. something tells me Mo won’t mind growing hops in the front yard.


back to hell-lay: the “vacation” was short-lived (just one saturday night in Escondido), and it wasn’t entirely relaxing as Mo and i had a spat after dinner, but getting away is always good. i’m sure this had everything to do with the beer.

Labels: food, travel

• Pinkberry: i had been curious about this much-hyped food spot ever since i read KT’s review of it on her Gastronomy 101 blog. so on a warm day, our taste buds piqued, Mo and i took a leisurely walk to this frozen yogurt-esque shop to sample what all the fuss was about. and it was, as KT noted, totally underwhelming. it tasted like a tart slushie that had sat in the freezer too long.
  
  and hullo, just two flavors? no sugary-cereal-as-toppings gimmick can mask the fact that variety is lacking here — and i need variety in my frozen treats. and i need yum flavor, also lacking. but hey, it’s popular with the kids; the ones who helped bring this fad to the forefront: generic college kids in their hoodies, the type who bring glowsticks to raves. they were in line all around us.



• Taco Truckin: Polly had a birthday party in Highland Park the other week, a fun party in a gorgeous craftsman house where i talked to a lot of strangers and drank red wine, Mo by my side. as nice as that was, the night’s highlight had to be the stop we made both before and after that party: to an unmarked taco truck we found on Fig, where we ate $1 tacos so profoundly impressive to my taste buds that their mere memory is making me salivate as i type this.
  
  cut to sunday night in bed: Mo and i retired for the evening, undressed, spent and still discussing these magical tacos. cut to three hours later: Mo at the bedside waking me from a deep sleep, saying, “i got up and got tacos from a truck on Santa Monica. want some?” cut to five minutes later: Mo and i eating tacos at 2 a.m. at the coffee table.



• crockpot sundays: also known as make-a-grip-of-food-so-you-have-leftovers-to-take-to-work-all-week day. i’ve made some good soups, stews, a jambalaya, some roasts and a whole hen that produced a crazy good stock as byproduct. next up: homemade fish stock, so Mo and i can perfect our bouillabaisse recipe.
  
  we tried the other week with lackluster, store-bought stock and spent a good hour scrubbing the mussels and clams with a scouring pad before throwing them aside in a bowl. and while they sat in this holding bowl — awaiting their death-by-steamer fate that would have them opening wide to expose their tender, yummy uvulas — they made noise. like snap, crackle, popping noises that caused them to shift in the bowl. i’ll confess that i haven’t cooked with much “living” food before, and this made me very uncomfortable.

Labels: food

and likely my last. i’m a sucker for peer pressure and seeing that i have no new news to report and that other members of my Bloglomerate^TM have completed this meme on their blogs, i figured i’d be a sport and play along. so here goes the posting of Five Things You Might Not Know About Me. (note to Wade: tag.)

1. in high school, my house was make-out headquarters for my group of friends. my parents regularly spent long weekends in Las Vegas tending to the rental property they owned there, leaving me alone to tend to myself. sometimes, just hours after their departure, friends and wine coolers would fill the house for such exciting games as Truth or Dare and Seven Minutes in Heaven, which sometimes led to private make-out sessions in my older sister’s vacated bedroom, which sometimes led to lost virginities, rumors at school the following week and home pregnancy tests the following month.
   
   it was great, yet risky fun. one sunday, my parents returned home early to find the garden hose going full blast in the jacuzzi, which had nearly emptied the night before when six of my friends jumped in for a skinny dip. i felt my nerves race when they appeared suddenly at the door, my hand tightly fisted to conceal the cigarette butts and condom wrapper i had gathered from the floor a moment earlier. yet with a few excuses, i managed to escape discovery, ensuring that my house remained an epicenter of hot teenage sex, including my own when i was 17 -- with my older boyfriend, in the jacuzzi, done in two minutes. note to self for next life: avoid sex in water, especially for your first time. it doesn’t provide added lubrication like you think.



2. sadly, i’ve never been a big dreamer when i sleep. i’m sure i dream and just don’t remember, but even when i do remember my dreams they’re mostly lame nightmares where i’m being chased by a bear through a forest. but most nights, i get nothing. just a dark, uneventful stretch of time where my fantasy life should be. weak.



3. at 20, i found myself hanging out with all these theater types in california’s Inland Empire, where i lived for one very hot summer. that was the summer i also began smoking cigarettes since, you know, theater kids smoke to look cool and i’m bad with the peer pressure. so one thing led to another, and before i knew it, i was starring in a play at the local theater -- Christopher Durang’s Baby With the Bathwater.
   
   since it was a no-budget local theater troupe kind of performance, i played three different characters (all supporting roles), as did my fellow “actors.” the play’s opening scene had me singing “hush little baby” a capella. it was my first and last time performing on a stage in front of strangers, and i was very awful -- as a singer and an actress. i was all shaky voice and bad affectation, flubbing lines and missing cues. it was your basic bad local theater performance and while i’m grateful for the experience, etc., etc., i’d never do it again.



4. i don’t eat chocolate. it makes my skin break out in all its adolescent glory so i avoid it. people sometimes get weird when they hear this, like it’s some crime to not enjoy chocolate. the truth is that i like chocolate, but i don’t love it, and i certainly don’t like it enough to endure a face full of pimples. call me crazy. and call me a liar because there is one brand of chocolate i will eat because it’s of such remarkable quality that it doesn’t cause breakouts. it’s a Belgian brand called Neuhaus that i sampled while on my european adventure a few summers back. thankfully, its availability is limited in the U.S., otherwise i might be eating these fattening, expensive, decadent and truly extraordinary chocolates too often. but yeah, in between bites of Neuhaus, i don’t eat chocolate.



5. in grade school i bullied a girl who rode my bus. she was a few years younger, and her older sister, who was in my grade, initiated the wild bullying sessions each afternoon on the ride home, calling younger sister “porky” repeatedly. this seemed an odd fit since “porky” wasn’t exactly a porker; she was of average build. still, older sister went ahead with the “porky” commentary and i joined in because, as noted above, i’m a sucker for peer pressure.
   
   eventually, older sister transferred to a new school, leaving “porky” and me riding the bus together. at that point, terrorizing “porky” had become habit so i continued with it. i think it killed her self-esteem. her mother even appeared at the bus stop one day to chastise me, but i still didn’t stop. i kept going with the name-calling until “porky” transferred to a new school, presumably because of my ridicule though i can never be sure.
   
   the following year, i got a bully of my own. we were seated near each other in homeroom, meaning that each new day of the 8th grade began with her torturing me. she was scrawny, and in retrospect i could have kicked her ass, but she was popular and blessed with magnificent skin. i, however, had some intense adolescent acne going on so logically she called me “pizza face.” i hated her and began doing her math homework each morning to minimize the ridicule.

Labels: family, food, school