#159 - by the time i get to arizona (pt 2)

during the first two days of my trip to arizona to visit the sis, we tried something called "guacummus," paid a visit to a famous breakfast joint in phoenix & brewery in tempe, and mixed in some at-home snacking. over the final two days of the trip, we just kept on eating with a purpose.

on saturday morning, we woke up & headed down the street to two hippies breakfast joint, one of five "two hippies" locations (including a burger joint, a taco joint & a pizzeria) in the phoenix area. it's the type of place with all kinds of random crap all over the walls...not that the velvet blacklight KISS poster was by any means "crap," but i'm just saying is all. anyway, i went for a breakfast burrito & since you got to choose SIX toppings (an overwhelming amount of choice!) along with your "scrambled hippie eggs," i had them toss in spinach, green chilies, red salsa, sun-dried tomato, chorizo & monterey jack. it was wicked chorizo juice-leaky but wicked good. for my beverage, i had a tall, cool cup of desert pear lemonade. biggidy bam! yeah, hippies.

after a lucky occurence at a CVS (which i'll get into shortly), we headed back to my sis' apartment to chill before her 4pm convocation ceremony. she decided to take a quick nap, so i decided to relax with an afternoon bottle of grand canyon rattlesnake beer, made with 100% rattlesnake! jk! made with 50% rattlesnake! jk! going in, i assumed it was going to taste similar to a lonestar, but it turned out to actually have some flavor. once sis woke up, we put on our fancy clothes & headed to a westin in scottsdale for her convocation ceremony. at the cocktail hour, i drank a four peaks 8th st ale on a patio overlooking a golf course before sitting down in a big tent for a dinner of brisket, starches, salads & cookies. it was nicely done & all, but was it good? well, my sister felt it was strikingly reminiscent of what they serve at her hospital...so there's that.

sunday started with breakfast at the counter at overeasy, one of my sis's favorite breakfast spots. she had something called the "wolfpack" & i opted for an omelet with asparagus, smoked salmon & goat cheese and a strawberry lemonade with rosemary, a drink which somehow worked despite the fact that i usually only put rosemary on things like potatoes. in the afternoon, we rode the light rail down to chase field for the diamondbacks game. since watching baseball without beer is stupid, i searched out the beer counter on the way to our seats & was pleasantly surprised by the selection, which included big bottles of deschutes mirror pond pale ale & fat tire amber ale. i got one of each & sis got a container of pungent garlic fries & a bag of yummy kettle corn. the diamondbacks got killed by the blue jays, but at least i sat in the sun at a nice ball park with my sis & got a slight buzz on quality beer.  

for our final dinner together in phoenix, we decided to dine in style, with my first ever trip to an in-n-out. i'd read about the west coast-based chain's secret-not-so-secret menu, so i planned my meal ahead. after much turmoil, i eventually settled on the burger animal style, fries & a chocolate shake. sis got the grilled cheese & a vanilla shake. my take: the burgers are tasty & animal sauce is totally thousand island dressing, even if they say it isn't. the fries are like wendy's (which is a good thing in my book) but thinner. as for the chocolate shake, i'm not a huge shake guy, but i could definitely get a big fat ass off of their chocolate shakes. post-in-n-out, we stopped at sprouts farmers market, where i found a last-minute beer to smuggle home in my luggage, but other than that, i had a flight at the ass crack of dawn the next morn, so i called it an evening pretty early.

the next morn at the airport, before heading to the gate, i stopped by the newsstand to get a bottle of water & when i looked down at the front of the register, i noticed that they had scorpion lollipops at the register. way to be obvious, arizona. at $3.50 a pop, i decided that was too much to pay for kitsch & i had told myself that in protest of arizona's impending immigration law, i was going to spend $5 less than i would've normally spent. i guess $3.50 is close enough.

snack: pretzel m&ms
drink: nimbus dirty guera blonde ale

the night after i returned home, i snacked on an item that i'd been searching for for a good month or so--pretzel m&ms. they're a new flavor & i'd had a lot of trouble finding them. first, i heard that they were only available at wal-mart. there aren't any wal-marts here in nyc, so i figured i was screwed but then, based on a tip from one jason rodriguez, i found out that they're also available at CVS. there's one of those right around the corner from my apartment, but when i went by to claim my rightful share of the pretzel m&m bounty, i found that they weren't carrying them. boo. phoenix answered the call though & i finally found them at a CVS out there, although if it wasn't for my sister, i totally would've missed them. thanks, sis! up until now, they really haven't been making a big deal about them, but as of today, the pretzel m&ms media blitz is on, starting with an american idol/pretzel m&ms concert earlier today here in nyc. it makes sense. after all, what better way to promote a new product than to tie it to a fading, dying product?

let me start off by saying that texturewise, the pretzel m&ms are slightly off. there's only a thin candy shell & a thin layer of chocolate before you hit the pretzel center & that trifecta didn't sit well with my teeth at all. the best way i can describe the feeling is that if i bit one just the right way, the dryness of the pretzel gave me that "chewing cotton" feeling...awful. luckily, i'm a big proponent of the chocolate-pretzel combination & the weird texture skeeve-out didn't happen with every bite, so i was able to look past the texture & enjoy them. to be honest, i don't think i could truly hate anything that combines the sweetness of chocolate with the saltiness of salt. i will say this though: they're NO pretzel flipz.

since i was going the "stuff bought in arizona" route, i washed down my pretzel m&ms with a bottle of nimbus dirty guera blonde ale, made by a brewery based in tucson. they've been around since 1996 & are the largest brewery in arizona, producing about 45,000 kegs of beer annually. i tried out their old monkey shine english style ale one evening whilst in phoenix & liked it a lot. it's made with a bunch of malts & some brown sugar & i enjoyed it so much that it led to my decision to get a different one of their beers at AJ's fine foods & bring it back to brooklyn with me. i chose the nimbus dirty guera.

too bad i didn't choose something else. i HATED it. when i first poured it into a glass & took a good whiff, i got a pleasant, hoppy, floral scent, but that pleasant feeling quickly dissipated once i took my first sip. it's brewed with pale malts & "mesquite-flavored 'killer bee' honey." um, killer bee honey? ok. whatever. anyway, i don't know what the hell that's all about, but it tasted friggin weird. i'm not going to say that it tasted skunky, but it was definitely off, a sometimes bitter & sometimes sweet combo of honey & fruitiness & smokiness & god knows what else. given the color of my cut, i'm usually biased towards dirty blondes. as for the nimbus dirty guera, it's definitely one blonde i regret bringing home with me.

check out food photos from AZ at the eat!drink!snack! flickr page!