Boulevard Brewery tour

To anyone not in the Midwest, it may be hard to come by Boulevard beer. And to you I say, I'm sorry. 

Boulevard is the 10th largest craft brewer in the U.S. and happens to be approximately 10 minutes away from me. Darn.

I've actually been lucky enough to tour Boulevard three times now, most recently this weekend with Dad and Cathie. To anyone in the area or even visiting, I highly recommend it (and recommend planning far ahead because it tends to be booked months in advance).

It's pretty fascinating to see what it takes to make this beer. The barrels a few pictures above are for their specialty smokestack beers. This bottling line is fun to watch and bottles something like eight beers per second.

The whole tour is filled with lots of metal, lots of pipes, and obviously huge tanks of beer. One of my tours I went on was for work, when I interviewed the brewery's brewmaster, who's from Belgium. He gave an interesting insight into how to stay relevant as a craft brewery when they're popping up all over the country, and now breweries here differ from his home country's.

The brewery opened a new addition in 2006 that was way bigger than the old portion of the brewery, which they still use. This awesome floor is in the new building.

Naturally, at the end of the tour is a tasting. Meet my stepmom and nutty father.

And now a normal photo. It's definitely a fun trip and a good way to spend an hour. The beer ain't bad either :)

Happy birthday Julia! Chocolate almond cake, orange cream meringues and Hefeweizen cupcakes

So Tuesday was a big day for me. I'm not one to talk too much about personal stuff online; I like to separate that stuff from the Internet. But I just hit a year of being single, and I have to say, I never thought it would happen. Neither did anyone in my family or friends, you can ask! See, I've been a serial long-term dater, and dated two different guys over a six-year period before this. But this year has been the greatest yet. I've put a lot more into this blog. I've spent more time with family. I've moved. I've started a new job, a wonderful job. I've decorated my apartment. And, as Cathie said, I've spent a lot of time discovering who I am. Cliched, maybe, but true. Here's to seeing what the next year brings!

Speaking of special days, Monday was a special day too. It was Julia Child's birthday! Well, it would have been at least. She would have been 99. Last year I made her chocolate almond cake to celebrate. I haven't made anything from Mastering the Art of French Cooking since then, although I officially have a Dutch oven and can make boeuf bourguignon when it gets cold again. But I figured the perfect way to celebrate her birthday this year was to make the same chocolate almond cake because it was SO good. And the Biz Journal staff thought so too!

I hadn't baked all week, actually, and then in the last few days I went on a binge. Meringues are something I love, for some reason. They're so darn simple and they melt in your mouth. I made this spiral style last year for Christmas because it was in the holiday version edition of Food Network Magazine. Then recently, Aunt Betty and I made flavored meringue kisses, and my favorite was the orange cream ones. So I combined them and made orange cream swirls the other day.

Then I ran across this recipe for Hefeweizen cupcakes. I love wheat and German beers, so it seemed perfect. It's a beer cupcake with a malt and beer glaze. To be honest, I thought they were a little weird, although I'm not sure what I was expecting. I might need to make them again without the glaze and with a real frosting, lemon-y maybe.

Winter break hiatus

It's been a while since I've posted, but mostly because I haven't done a lot of baking. Weird, I know, but I was completely lazy during break. It was nice. Now, school starts tomorrow. Ugh.

I was supposed to go on a super fun trip this break to California. That would have been a very good reason not to bake or post. BUT our airline was completely unable to get us there. As in, sat on the plane an hour past departure time, was told to get off the plane, waited through two promised departure times, back on plane, waited for luggage loading, waited for deicing, taxied all the way to the runway and then taxied back to the gate for the second time, was told another repair would take 15 minutes, listened to them say they "lost" their mechanic, wasn't helped by any airline staffer, got off plane, discovered three other flights had taken off to where we were going, listed to them tell us they wouldn't take our luggage off of our current plane (with all our ski gear in it for the next day) and finally decided to cancel altogether. It was a trainwreck. We canceled our trip to Sacramento/Lake Tahoe/Napa/San Francisco. We got a refund for our trip, but it was still super disappointing. I didn't get to see my friends or go skiing or wine tasting or anything. So instead I went shopping and went to Melting Pot with Drew and his family to make things better.

That whole situation was super disappointing, but I guess that just means Spring Break will have to be better. We're planning on Vegas, which happens to be the cheapest option for the most fun. We're thinking of staying at the Mirage and flying Southwest, which doesn't seem to have the same kind of problems as other airlines do. I really want to go see the Beatles Love Cirque de Soleil again, and also maybe the new Elvis one. And I think I might go to the spa for the first time ever.

I also want to hit up some great restaurants. I know we'll go to Mesa Grill, but if you know of any others that are a must, let me know!

Last night there was a mini dinner party at my house. Dinner was made by Tim, and was a pepper-chicken-pasta-raspberry mustard concoction. It was quite good. I made Olive Garden breadsticks (and burnt the hell out of my arm while doing so), then got back on my cupcake kick. Martha Stewart helped me out. I made stout cupcakes. As in Guinness stout. They're very winter-y tasting, because they've got a whole bottle of Guinness in them, plus brown sugar, lots of molasses, cinnamon and nutmeg. On top, a Guinness glaze (with only two ingredients, beer and powdered sugar). I liked them well enough, but not really my style.

I also made cookies and cream cheesecakes, which are excellent. Oreo in the bottom, Oreo cheesecake mixture in cupcake papers. They're pretty awesome.

Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to do to get rid of all my food so often. I'm definitely wanting to get back to baking regularly. We'll see how much I can do between readings for homework. Ugh.

One fun thought before leaving: When I was back in Salina, I went through my grandma's old recipes and all her old stuff. That includes her wedding cake topper. Here it is, circa 1944: