Our Friends Pretty Much Rock May 22, 2011

A package arrived for us yesterday, and both the Mr. and I were dumbfounded as to what it could be. It came from Scotland. We didn’t order anything from Scotland. And it was heavy.

Completely puzzled, I started shredding the tape that sealed the box and pulled out an envelope. Enclosed was a letter from one half of the couple who recently came to stay with us for a few days:

“Hopefully the enclosed made it to you in one piece. They’re to replace the one in your fridge that was spawning a new life form!”

I read over it a couple of times, and finally it dawned on me what was enclosed. And I squealed with glee, my friends, I squealed.

Most delicious beer EVER.

You see, back before we moved to Germany, I decided that one of the most important things I needed to stock up on before we left Scotland was my favorite beer, Innis & Gunn. I greedily bought several bottles and we drank them all over the course of the past year, except one. I saved one precious bottle back, waiting for the special occasion that would warrant me popping it open. But sadly, no one ever told me that fine beer isn’t quite like fine wine. It doesn’t improve with age. In fact, it doesn’t age well at all. It apparently goes off and starts to have strange, alien-like cloudy formations floating inside that dance around when you tip it. It was a sad day, indeed, when I realized that my clingy love for the Innis & Gunn had actually killed it. Still, I held onto it, hoping that perhaps the cloudy formations might disappear…or maybe start to talk to me. Who knows.

Anyway, when our friends came to visit, we went over the contents of all the various beers in our fridge: hefeweizen, Pilsner (pale lager), alcohol-free pilsner, radler, alcohol-free radler and the sad, mutated Innis & Gunn. I told our friends the tragic story of how my selfish love had ruined the poor little thing, and yet how I still couldn’t bare to let go.

Well, now it’s time for you to hit the drain, baby, ’cause Momma’s got a new set of friends to keep her company! (But only for a limited time, of course…I know understand that to truly love and cherish a beer, I must set it free. In my belly.)

Come and Get It November 24, 2010

So I was going through some of our boxes this evening (boy, that was fun…”oh, cool – I had totally forgotten we had that/this!”) and I discoverd a JUMBO bag of  these:

I impulsively ripped one open and took a bite. Still good! But I was actually in the middle of drinking a glass of this:

For those of you unfamiliar with the deliciousness that is Hefeweizen, it’s an unfiltered German wheat beer. It’s not a beer I usually drink as it’s quite heavy and filling (a little like Guiness…one of these could substitute for your dinner), but we had a bottle in the fridge and for some reason a glass sounded really good.

Now I had planned to drink my Hefeweizen while eating  this: 

This is a German laugenstange, or pretzel stick. It’s basically a traditional German soft preztel only in stick form, so it’s a bit smaller and you get less salt. Now beer and pretzels go together like rama lama lama ke ding a de dinga a dong, but for some reason – call it a psychic premonition – I knew I had to take a bite of the Reese’s cup and then take a sip of the beer. The verdict? De-lish. Maybe further research needs to be conducted on German-American food pairings….