Hows my little '11 recap?

2011 Has been a really great year, a year that seemed to go by too quickly but great nonetheless. A lot of new and wonderful things came to me this year. This year was the first year I set a new years resolution and followed through with it. I gave up cereal, I miss Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Golden Grahams greatly, but I'm not hungry 45 minutes after breakfast anymore, that makes it worth it. I've had many good accomplishments and small changes to my usual lifestyle and am looking forward to more to come. Here's to 2012!....that is unless the world ends.

With no further ado, the highlights of 2011:

Best:
Movie (in theater): Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Just like when I closed the final book after finishing it, i left this movie feeling a bit empty. Since high school I've been looking forward to new Harry Potter books and movies and this year it all ended.

TV Show: True Blood.
This year I even gave Lost a chance, boy did that show blow.

Concert: Flogging Molly, Congress Theater, Chicago
Flogging Molly seems to be a staple for this award, but it was also one of the only concerts I attended this year. It helped that the Chicago River was green.

Performance: Blue Man Group.
If you ever get the chance to see these guys, do it. If you can get tickets in the "splash zone" it is 100% worth the premium, their performance is enhanced by their blue facial expressions.

Album: Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
Wow. If you like music with electric guitars at all, buy this one.

Song: Electric Chapel - Lady Gaga
So goddamned catchy.

Game: Angry Birds Seasons
Smurfs Village is a close second though, really close.

Book: The Passage by Michael Cronin
Easily the best book of the year (of the few I read).

Gadget: Lil Mac II
A new laptop. A much needed upgrade and used extensively for work. Fantastic.

Bar Night: Las Vegas June 10-12th
Not really one night, but really I didn't stop imbibing the whole weekend. Bare, Glitter Gulch, Flamingo, Stratosphere, Downtown, +$200, 10 hours sleeping, no complaints.

Getaway: Michigan
Belated 1 year anniversary and a MUCH needed recharge from the crazy hours spent working the previous couple of months.


Garden Growth: Brussels Sprouts
I really think these are pretty gross frozen, but fresh from the garden...Yum!

Race: Grandma's Marathon
26.2 miles of exertion and a massage worth running to.

Construction: Garden trellis
I have no idea if this thing is going to stand the test of time, but I'll cross my fingers.

Intoxicating Beverage Tour: Yazoo Brewery, Nashville
The tour was pretty great, but the strangers we befriended iced the cake.



Events of Note:

Random: Sauerkraut failure. Grey Butt hair. Mohawk.

Obsession: Learning about Minimalist footwear, running and so on.

Newsworthy: Japan's destructive earthquake and tsunami.
Sparked the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

News I'm oblivious to: Casey Anthony, Kardashians, Charlie Sheen.
Charlie Sheen jokes fall flat don't make them expecting me to laugh. Watching my facebook friends blow up over Casey and Kim was crazy. I couldn't believe how much hatred was expressed towards complete strangers' lives.

Travels: Chicago, Door County, Chicago again, Northern Georgia, Las Vegas, Duluth, Washburn, Michigan, Sand Ridge State Park.

The death of my wonderful old companion Chip.
First Annual Bockfest, 100% success.
Our new grill is amazing!
I lost about 15 pounds through this year and maintained that weight.


2012 has a great many things to look forward to. At work the winemaking process is moving more into my control, which is terrifying and exciting. Last year I resolved to write more blog entries to keep my faithful readers interested and this year I am going to improve on my sad improvement from 2009. There are a few travels that I am looking forward to, like a trip to Boston, Georgia, Tough Mudder Twin Cities, possibly California, and the usual adventures to see my great friends and family. I'm also looking forward to our newly enlarged garden, we added 72 square feet for more tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, and new things! This year maintaining and improving my fitness is also going to be a major goal. I also keep talking about building some sort of piece of furniture and I think this is going to be the year it happens, a lack of tools is no longer an excuse. I'm also excited to step up my homebrewing adventures by moving to all grain brewing for the first time! With that comes greater control and effort, but the quality of beer should improve. Another important goal is for me to read more books this year.

2012, I'm ready for you.

Hows my little holiday?

Christmas this year was very difficult to get into the spirit of and that familiar "Christmastime feeling" was completely absent. I tried too! Normally it just comes easy, the temperature drops, snow flies, I hear jingling bells in front of stores, and I lust at everyone's great Santa hats they wear. This year none of that happened! No matter how many times I listened to Michael Buble swoon me with his Christmas songs I just never felt it!

Our Tree was a near disaster from the beginning since we fought with it for over an hour just to get the thing to stand up. Eventually we tied it to the wall, and weighted the stand down with dumbbells. We cut it down without any snow on the ground let alone any in the forecast. We didn't drink our premium hot chocolate while decorating it, because we were both sweaty and mad at its stupid challenging crooked trunk. We had strong chocolate martinis instead.

As a whole our Christmas holiday celebrations went well this year. Although I just realized it was pretty much sibling free, which 20 years ago might have been great, but a bit sad since this was the first year of our "every other" with our whole families.

Since my parents are living here and there we got to hang out with them for a delightful afternoon of fun and headed over to a Christmas party later where I learned I should stay away from gross whiskey and coke. My highlight was throwing hatchets/knives in the basement, I've now decided I should take that up as a hobby to better prepare for the end of the world. Zombies or not.

For Christmas we headed up to the always delightful Washburn, Wisconsin to hang out with Laura's parents. We had tons of fun walking here and there, making the best gingerbread cookies ever (because they aren't rock hard even after a couple of days). Laura's family has a tradition of a snack supper on Christmas eve which was fantastic. Laura's Dad like every 5 year old decided we were opening presents then. So after our delicious meaty meal we opened our great gifts and digested. Laura and I saved a couple presents to open Christmas day because I just didn't feel right not saving any to open. For our dinner on Christmas we had Prime rib which Tim cooked phenomenally, I got a giant cut of it and savored the entire thing. I love me some Prime rib.

Yesterday we took down our tree, which is a bit early for us but since that whole christmas feeling never really arrived, and we had a healthy fear that the dumbells on the tree stand and the string tied to the wall weren't going to hold forever.

I really miss snow.

Hows my little kraut?

About two weeks ago I decided to make Sauerkraut. It is supposedly quite straightforward, easy, tasty, and only a tiny bit terrifying.

Here is how its done:

 I wanted purple kraut so we used our last two purple cabbages from our garden. These were planted specifically for this project.

 Step 1, finely chop your cabbage. I could have done this better.

 Mix in some salt as you chop your cabbage

 Throw in some more salt for good measure and mash up your cabbage to extract some liquid, the salt will extract more.

I found out that you can make it spicy so I threw in some delicious Transylvanian garlic and ground (really spicy) chili peppers.

 Cover your almost kraut and put something heavy on the lid to keep everything pressed down.

 Wait a few weeks. It is supposed to spontaneously ferment...

 After about 11 days I noticed that our house went from smelling a bit strange to smelling like someone was depositing their awful shits underneath our floors. I thought "this is normal". Laura wouldn't let me forget about how stinky it was. I finally gave in and shut the guest room door to keep the smell out of the rest of the house. When I opened the door later I nearly gagged on the horrific smell of the room and decided that it was time to call off the project.

This morning we brought it outside. Good thing too. When we pulled off the cheesecloth the smell magnified tenfold.

 Notice the bright blue mold on the bowl. Even with a light breeze I had to periodically run away to escape the smell.

The cabbage/Sauerkraut's final resting place. Back into the garden for some further decomposition and soil fertility enhancement.


So what did I do wrong?
Maybe a couple of things, Purple cabbage might have been the wrong choice. (but I don't want to admit that)
Before the sitting around for awhile stage you are supposed to add salty water until it covers your cabbage. I added regular water from our refrigerator, I should have probably boiled it beforehand too.
What else? I'm not sure. I do know that it will be difficult to convince Laura that it will be a good idea to attempt this experiment another time.

I'm happy our house doesn't stink anymore.