#156 - the woods, the snacks & the sea.

oh man. so my high school pal jeff is getting married this summer & his bachelor party was this past weekend up at foxwoods. originally, i wasn't planning on attending, but circumstances eventually changed & by saturday afternoon, i was drinking a beer in a foxwoods hotel room. this is what happened: on friday, tadley (of spotted dick fame) & nugs drove up from d.c. for a friday evening stopover before heading up to foxwoods on saturday. i got out of work a whole hour early & met them out at mission dolores (alternate name: missing clitoris), a new beer garden in a converted church on 4th ave in park slope. it was a lovely day out & we sat in the outdoor courtyard drinking snooty beer after snooty beer & taking artsy photos & by the third beer, i'd said "screw it" & decided to join them when they left the next morn. after all, how many bachelor parties is jeff going to have? two, maybe three?

on saturday, we had a surprisingly incident & delay-free drive through almost the entire length of connecticut (aka the third level of hell), arrived at foxwoods in the mid-afternoon & spent a couple hours hanging out in the hotel room drinking beers with a few other dudes while we waited for the groom-to-be & the remainder of the dudes to return from a round of golf. when they returned, we had fifteen dudes in a hotel room & hours of drinking to go before dinner. i had myself a couple coors lights, but eventually broke out my snooty beers--a mcneill's champ ale, a brew free or die i.p.a. (in honor of our NH heritage) & a hell or high watermelon beer (which one friend described as "awful").

the kentucky derby came on around 6:30 & to make a telecast of horses running around a muddy track for two minutes interesting, we each put down $5 on a random horse, a bet that ended up being the only gambling i did all night. i drew the #10 horse, an apparently irish colt named paddy o'prado & although i didn't notice him for the entire race, he somehow ended up with a third place finish. too bad the pot was winner-take-all.

when the derby finished up, we made our way downstairs to craftsteak, a steak joint that's run by top chef head judge tom coliccho, who also created eatdrinkordie.com, a funny or die-associated site with a name after my heart. craftsteak's menu is filled with japanese grass-fed beef, dry-aged beef, sponge-bathed beef...all that fancy, triple-digit priced stuff. i'm not thrifty enough that i'd spring for a steak of that magnitude though. instead, i opted for the beet salad paired with a dogfish head indian brown ale & pieces of steak that people kept putting on my plate. the verdict: if you raise a cow in stress free, japanese environment & feed it grass, it'll taste AWESOME killed & grilled.

after dinner, we hit the casino for a few hours. it was probably a good thing that i didn't gamble, because with the exception of two guys, who won $50 & $1000, everyone lost money. i got my enjoyment out of smoking indoors, watching friends gamble & observing both the casino craziness/sadness & the hot waitresses. eventually, we ended the night with more drinking in the hotel room, where i broke my "no more than one shot in an evening" rule.

i had a blast, but as far as bachelor parties go, it was a relatively tame evening. there was no cocaine-snorting donkey. nobody lost a tooth & got married. we didn't wake up to find mike tyson's tiger in the bathtub. hell, there wasn't even a stripper. we did raid the hotel room bar & break open the pistachios, cashews & romance kit though, because sometimes you've just have to throw caution to the wind. after all, how many bachelor parties is jeff going to have? four, maybe five?

snacks (clockwise): peanut butter cup brownie bite / oatmeal cranberry white chocolate chip cookie / chocolate puddle cookie with hazelnut & dried cherries / sugar cookie with lemon icing / blueberry coffee cake
drink: heavy seas small craft warning

when i finally arrived back home early sunday evening, i was unkempt & groggy from the previous evening. after washing the casino stink off of me, i sat down to relax & finish off a bounty of snacks i'd brought home with me from a gathering at my bro's apartment two weekends ago, when he & his girlfriend hosted a gathering for her 30th birthday. as is par for the course at their parties, they'd cooked & baked & made a ton of tasty dishes & treats. as is also par for the course, i left at the end of the evening with a backpack full of tupperware old cool whip & i can't believe it's not butter tubs containing various salads & goodies.

on sunday, what i had left was a peanut butter cup brownie bite, an oatmeal cranberry white chocolate chip cookie, a chocolate puddle cookie with hazelnut & dried cherries, a sugar cookie with lemon icing & a piece of blueberry coffee cake. all five snacks were good, but my favorite was the chocolate puddle cookie with hazelnut & dried cherries, with the blueberry coffee cake coming in a close second. the puddle cookie has a light, meringuelike consistency which pairs well with the consistency of the dried cherries, while the blueberry coffee cake was still moist & sweet & fruity a week after the party.

as for the rest of them, the peanut butter cup brownie bite tasted pretty much like you'd expect it to taste, the oatmeal cranberry white chocolate chip cookie was aight, but i'm not a big oatmeal guy & the sugar cookie with lemon icing was really all about the lemon icing. like i said...they were all good though. in fact, if you can bake, i suggest trying to make one of them yourself. i'm pretty sure there are recipes for all five snacks on the interweb somewhere.

although i'd drank enough beer for two, possibly three 130-pound men the previous evening, there's always room for snooty beer, so i broke out a bottle of heavy seas small craft warning, made by clipper city brewing co., a company out of baltimore. get this: hugh sisson, who started clipper city & brought in brewmaster ernesto igot to help with the brewery, first started brewing professionally back in '89 at his family's pub (sisson's). as it turns out, sisson's is rather historical, as it's maryland's first brewpub. true story. says so on the heavy seas website. also true: heavy seas' beers are divided into three series--the clipper fleet (classic beer styles), the pyrate fleet (which includes the small craft warning) & the mutiny fleet (limited edition beers). so yeah, they're nautical. arr. it be a clever theme, matey.

...so the pyrate fleet are robust, bottle conditioned beers & the small craft is an "über pils," a golden orange-colored imperial pilsner with a sweet, citrus flavor that's heavy on the malt. the heavy seas website suggests pairing it with chicken or fish, but i'd like to add sugar cookie with lemon icing to that list, since it went well with the citrus flavor in the beer. i tell you what though...while the heavy seas is pretty good overall, i recently tried harpoon's big bohemian pilsner & if i had a choice, i'd opt for the harpoon. luckily, i rarely have to choose, which means that if they're both available, i can just choose both.