...so last saturday, my bro & his girlfriend amy hosted a little housewarming shindig at their new apartment up in greenpoint. about a week earlier, i'd received an email from amy informing me that on the following saturday, she & the bro would be "making lots of snack food and desserts" & that i "should come over." snack party! as an experienced snacker (& brother of one of the hosts), i immediately marked that shizz down on my calendar. by the time saturday rolled around & amy sent out a follow up email that read "i just made 10 desserts and 3 different kinds of pasta salad in about 14 hours yesterday," i knew it was on.

when i arrived around 9pm, the gathering was already in full swing, with an apartment full of people hanging out, chatting, snacking & drinking. when i first arrived, since i didn't know anyone outside of the hosts, i gave my full attention to the bountiful snack spread which consisted of at least fifty different choices & ranged from hor d'oeuvres such as bacon wrapped scallops & a variety of pasta salads to desserts like black bean walnut brownies & chocolate cream cheese filled cupcakes. each dish featured a printed card next to it displaying the name of the dish & applicable symbols (a broccoli for veggie dishes, a piece of wheat in a circle with a line through it for gluten-free). SO obsessive compulsively/professionally done.

eventually, i decided to interact with actual humans & it turned out that amy & the bro have some interesting/cute friends. there was this one couple who were huge fans of daddy yankee & shakira. the dude did his best to convince me that if i ever make it to europe, since i consistently stay up til all hours of the night/morn, i need to go to barcelona. to be honest, as long as there are bottles of wine and cafes to waste my hours in all hemingway like, i don't care what city i visit. another couple i chatted with had been taken aback by all the crazy woodworking items my brother created that filled the apartment (a skateboard rack, his bed frame, his desk, etc) & since the dude works with my bro doing woodworking, the girl was all "you should get motivated & make a bunch of stuff for our apartment." sorry bout that, dude...better get crackin'.

here's what i learned from the gathering...when hispanic people are out riding the train at one in the morn with their kids in tow, it's just "part of the culture." the daddy yankee/shakira lovin' dude filled me in on that & he was hispanic, so i guess it's true. i also learned that if you have a moped & try to park it on the streets of greenwood, the neighbors will totally freak out & call the fire department because they smell gas. that apparently happened to two of my bro's friends earlier in the day. beyond that, i discovered that people seem to find what i do for work interesting on some level...& that level actually has nothing to do with my job. the first question i often get is "do you get free concert tickets?" that's usually followed up with "have you met so & so musician?" doesn't anybody want to know about content management? so yeah, the snack party was both tasty & educational...food for thought.

#125 - saturday night's alright for snacking.
snack: mint brownies & marshmallow rice krispie treats
drink: goose island lamar street organic pale ale



i brought home a veritable bounty of treats from the gathering, including a bag of cookies with homemade mint brownies & marshmallow rice krispie treats in it. with all the snacks available, i hadn't got around to trying either of them whilst at the snack party, so when i finally got around to eating them, it was like the party was still going...like on & on til the break of dawn & whatnot, but with me as the only one in attendance at the party. there was music & all, but nobody to talk to about my job.

according to my bro, the mint brownies were "an experiment," but to me, they tasted like a perfected recipe, with their tasty minty bits sprinkled throughout. i'm kind of disappointed in myself for bringing home so few of them, but have decided to soldier on anyhow. as for the marshmallow rice krispie treats, they were all moist & chewy & full of krispieness. i'm pretty sure there was no HFCS in them, which means they were better for me than the packaged treats put out by kellogg's themselves. definitely solid, tasty baking in both cases. well played, amy and/or bro.

since the bro doesn't drink & amy hardly does, i also left with a full six pack of assorted good beers. there were two goose island lamar street organic pale ales in there, so i broke open the first one within fifteen minutes of returning home but saved the other one to have along with the bag of cookies. i may be constructing a fictional memory, but if i remember correctly, the organic pale ale was goose island's other offering at july's pitchfork festival, but i was so wrapped up in their 312 urban wheat that i never even got around to trying it. i haven't found any evidence of a lamar st in chicago & goose island doesn't care enough to put the organic pale ale on their website, so i'm not sure where the name comes from. it's probably a tribute to the senior senator & one time long shot presidential hopeful from tennessee or something.

since i'm partial to beers with an assload abundance of flavor, i'm not the biggest fan of pale ales, but the goose island organic one is one of the better ones i've tried. i mean, it wasn't amazing or anything, but since so many pale ales are as boring as the last three wilco albums, i consider it good. still, it wasn't anything special, especially compared to goose island's other brews. it has a somewhat sweet, somewhat hoppy taste to it, but not really. regardless, if you take stock in my blog ramblings, it's definitely worth checking out, but if you notice that there's a sierra pale ale or dale's pale ale sitting on the shelf next to it, you should probably get one of those instead. compared to them, the goose island's just too loosey-goosey.