Mystic Monday

Recovering From a Long Weekend of Fun
Happy Mystic Monday!

Shut Up! You Say!

Go Away!

How can you be so chipper on a Monday?

Ah, well, I may be recuperating from a four-day mini-vacation, but I feel recharged and able to take on my little corner of the world. Yeah, wait until next week and see if I'm still chipper as today marks the first of 5 Bucks home games I will be cheering for in a 9 day span. Yep, I have a game to attend and be loud for every other day over the next 9 days. It's going to be grueling, I'm going to be sore lucky if I still have a voice after the fifth home game in this stretch, but it's going to be damn fun rooting for a team that is playing terrific without it's Olympian, Michael Redd.

But that's not what I'm blogging about today. I'm blogging about what I did to celebrate my birthday this past weekend.

So, what did we do?

Well, we drove south to St. Louis in hopes of finding some warm weather, and it worked...for the first two days, lol! I actually wore shorts the first two days we played disc golf. I tried wearing shorts on Saturday, but after a bit, it just felt to cold and I had to put pants on! The disc golfing wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped, but that's okay, because I went down more for the craft beer anyway.

The first place we went to was Square One, which has to be my favorite brewery in St. Louis, MO. It seems as though every time we go down, they have different beers, and they're generally pretty tasty! They had a nice quad and dopplebock among their regular offerings. As much as I wanted a full glass of the quad, I went with the dopplebock because I just didn't want to be stumbling home as I knew I would be if I had the quad, lol! I love their Scotch Ale (usually single-malt), but it wasn't on tap this time and neither was their spicy blonde, which is a really good beer. I can't remember all the spices, I just remember that they were prevalent enough on the tongue to make the beer interesting as I normally do not like blonde ales.

We ate dinner there. My burger was decent (I love a burger and fries with my beer) but the dessert was darn good! It was a brownie dessert and I swear they keep mixing up what they serve the brownie with. The first time I had it, it came with a stout sauce and was pretty good, the second time, it came with a raspberry sauce (wasn't as good, they were busy and it didn't get cooked properly), this third time, it came with a lovely caramel sauce that complemented the brownie and ice cream very well. I haven't had much else there, so I can't recommend anything else.

The second place we went to, Schlafly Bottleworks, I ordered two things I usually get there - spent grain bread (with sides of bleu cheese and cheddar-chive butter) and a grilled cheese on artisan-sourdough bread. Both were great as always! I'm not sure what the rules are in other states, but up here, they're very strict on brewpubs (because of Miller). Of all the brewpubs I've been to, this is the only place I've ever seen spent-grain bread on the menu.

Seriously, all brewpubs should make a spent-grain bread. Schlafly makes theirs with the spent grain from their pale ale. Even though I'm not a fan of hoppy beers (like pale ales), this bread was so good and the cheddar-chive butter was a great accompaniment. It's also very green too!

So, what about the beer? When we first went down, I would have said, awesome! You so need to go there! Now, I won't say you need to go there, but the spent-grain and some of the more vegan-style and other exotic food offerings may make stopping there a treat. However, their beer is the same as what you can find in bottles all over the place, so, unless you prefer tap to bottles, the need to go there isn't as great. Square One, on the other hand, doesn't bottle any of their beers and they like to mix it up regularly, even though they do have some recipes they brew regularly!

Thursday before we left, the weather people predicted that there would be inches of snow falling on us the day we were supposed to come back (Sunday). Then, as it got closer to Sunday, that changed. In fact, the radar changed so much that the snow/rain they thought we'd get all went south of us and barely did anything in our neck of the woods. Of course, some people did get blasted. Kansas City, to the south of us, got hit with 8 inches! Boy, were we happy we missed that because we might have been stuck until they cleared things away! Not only that, but it wass much colder down there than in St. Louis!

If someone was looking out for me/us and made sure we had nice weather while there and for the drive home, I thank he/she highly because it made for a nice getaway!

Now, back to the keyboard! Have a great day everyone!