Livingroom Bowling and Beercheese Soup

Nintendo Wii rocks. So does Beer cheese soup.










Last night my buddies Sam and Dennis and I got together to play Wii and make some amazing beer cheese soup. Both were considered by all to be a great success.

If you have yet to hear about the Nintendo Wii - you do not need to hear about it on my page. Suffice to say that it is awesome, and bowling, golfing, boxing (among other things) in the living room is very cool.


The beer cheese soup was also an excellent addition to a cold evening in November. Here is the recipe for all of you who would like to try it in your own homes. Please keep in mind, however, that when I'm cooking, there's a lot of approximate amounts going on - a lot of "season to taste" - so I'll give you what I can, and the rest is up to you.







So without further ado, here it is:

"Livingroom-Bowling Beer Cheese Soup"
-1/2 cup celery (chopped)
-1/2 cup carrots (chopped)
-1/2 cup onions (chopped)
-3 big cloves of garlic (if you like garlic add more, if not add less)
-5 cups vegetable stock
-3/4 cup butter
-1/2 cup barley flour (I'm sure regular flour would work, but this is what I had and it was awesome)
-6 oz Cheddar cheese
-2 big table spoons Parmesan cheese
-about four shakes of dry Chinese mustard
-5 or 6 shakes of Worcester Sauce
-1 pint of Odell's 5 Barrel Pale ale (you can use a different beer, but it should probably be not to malty, a little hoppy, but nothing as lacking in flavor as your regular Bud or Miller. Good beers will give you a good soup.)

Directions:
Chop up the celery, carrots, onions and garlic. Melt the butter in a pan and add the veggies to saute them. Make sure too cook them, but not to brown them. Next blend in the flour and the mustard. Slowly add the chicken stock and bring the mix to a boil. Cook at the boil and stir for five minutes. Then mix in the cheese and beer. Simmer for half an hour and continue to stir every now and then to make sure nothing is settling on the bottom and cooking to the bottom of the pan.

And there you go! Works really well with a good sourdough bread and a full red wine (or the beer you used to make it of course, if you hadn't finished that during the making of the soup).

Hope you enjoy!
Dave

Housewarming Party!

Last night Carole and I were finally both available at the same time so we finally had our house warming party.

It was a ton of fun and a lot of great friends and family were able to make it. Good food, good drinks, good friends and good fun. We had friends jamming in the front room and playing cards in the living room. Just a great time and a perfect way to make a house really feel like a home.

I tried looking for a quote about homes, but they were all too lame and didn't sound appropriate. The one picture of the poster is an idea that Carole got to have everyone sign when they came in and now it hangs next to the front door.

I can't believe the waste!!

Ahhh! Here's my rant for today.

I bought an electric shaver two years ago. Today I was at the store at thought I might get some new blades. I saw the exact shaver that I bought, it was $29.42. I looked for the replacement blades and saw the blades that I needed and - get this - they were $29.89.

Cheaper to throw the whole shaver away than just replace the blades! Why?? Way too much waste in this country.

Rogue Squirrel on Election Day

First of all just want to say that everybody should vote today if you haven't already. I think it's a sad state of affairs that they're only predicting Colorado to have a 60% voter turnout and around 40% nationally. That's ridiculous. Voting is simple, it doesn't take up a lot of your time and it has a direct impact on what the next couple years will be like where you live. So don't give that apathetic excuse that so many do when they say that their vote doesn't matter. Or that you're sick of the two party system and the third party candidate who you would vote for wouldn't win anyway so you'd just be wasting your vote. Do you realize how crazy it would be if everybody who thought that actually did go vote for the third party candidate? They'd win by a landslide! So start the change this year and go vote this afternoon.

Here's something I found on YouTube. Apparently I checked it out and it didn't actually happen in Colorado, it was in Oklahoma where this squirrel chewed through a bunch of cords of electronic voting machines.

What I'm wondering is, how can you tell a rogue squirrel from a normal one? And how do they know this one was a rogue?