Rasputin imperial stout

as good as it looks.  OK first off, i'm not going to nerd out like some beer snob , but there is some complex stuff happening here. i do tend to drink darker beers and this one was a very very good kisser, taste great , and did i say as good as it looks poured into a glass. Plus it was cool how we just did not speak, not once to each other it just happened. Well let me back it up a little , after first tasting this beer (on tap) in seattle ,  i have since found it at Muggs , and more recently my local corner store (yeah i might be in trouble this fall ) anyways, yeah! there is something about this beer, a rich complex taste and packing a punch. i've never made beer myself but i do feel like there is a dark smooth chocolate carmel flavor to this beer and it has a cool picture on the bottles of some old looking monk, making some kind of crazy hand signal , i kinda feel like maybe he's started his own crazy gang or cult.  i hate that it is pricey at the bar but at 9% alcohol after my third beer i was telling women that there pants where falling down , . strong  but sophisticated .

Peanut Butter Cookies at City Bakery

Roy & I maybe spend an inordinate amount of time talking about peanut butter cookies & other treats in the peanut butter family. We'd tried to go to City Bakery once before but they were closed when we got there. The disappointment was enormous.

Now that I've finally had some of these cookies, I'm not sure. It's been a week & I'm still not sure. I think I like them. They're really unlike any other peanut butter cookie I've ever had. My initial thought was "It turns to peanut butter in your mouth." At the moment, that's all I've got.

You grab one of the buttery lumps out of the bag, take too big of a bite & the peanut butter is overwhelming. It's like when you're eating it out of the jar & you put too much on the spoon. All you can do is breathe through your nose & enjoy it. If you like peanut butter, it's probably a good thing. If not, skip it.

One thing that will really add to the whole experience: a glass of cold milk. Do not get a can of black cherry soda from the deli across the street. The combination will make those cavities you need to get filled tingle with something like the opposite of delight.

If you stop by City Bakery when it's chilly out, Roy recommends the hot chocolate.

City Bakery
3 W. 18th St.

GOOD BURGER

never underestimate the power of a good home cooked meal . of course there are those times when the last thing you want to do when you get home is to cook, I'm not saying there isn't planning involved , (if your lucky, you'll get better and eventually be able to be more spontaneous with the ingredients in your fridge). I still have vivid memories as a kid grilling burgers in the winter time (late fall,or maybe there really was snow on the ground), anyways, part of what made those bacon cheese burgers with a toasted english muffin slathered with peanut butter on one side and mayonaise on the other with a lot of garlic powder so good was a combination of the time of year, the fact that i actually grilled them meself in my back yard and the biggest part, was knowing?/believing a certain combination of ingredients will taste good. When i lived in seattle , there was a pizza place owned by two brothers, and basically what stood out most about them was that they put fresh herbs in the crust . Ok so now i've come back around to what i first started talking about , forget about that best burger in NY. nonsense , you'll drive yourself crazy and end up weighing 900lbs, and the same goes for all the barbeque joints. So what makes a good burger ? Personally you have to add something to the beef prior to grilling even if its just fresh ground black pepper. ok so here is a recipe for a burger that i made recently grabbing items from my fridge 

for two burgers

1/2 pound beef

1/2 finely chopped oninon

1 clove garlic finely chopped

1/4 jalapeno pepper finely chopped

1 sausage Finely chopped (i used chicken suasage)

 briefly saute onion,garlic, and jalepenoa in a little oil , add to beef make patties and cook like normal 

finish with a  little cheese , lettuce and tomato 

+ Here are some pro tips: 1. apparently real cooks keep a jar of bacon grease somewhere close by , use that to saute the onion, garlic, and jalapeno in , and then pour all of it into the beef 

2. try and get some real provolone from the cheese shop

Old Fashioned at The Angel's Share

The Angel's Share is one of those secret bars that was all the rage awhile back except it's not really that secret. When you get to the top of the stairs up to the restaurant, just look to your left. The unmarked door that looks like it could be the bathroom is the bar. Inside, the bar is long & skinny with big, street-facing windows. It's cozy.

Roy & I went right after work in the middle of the week because like some other Grumpy Grampaws, we like the bar to relatively quiet, empty even. I ordered an Old Fashioned even though I didn't know what it had in it besides bourbon. Roy said that these guys had mixing skills for days so I thought, "I like bourbon. I'll just order whatever".

When it came to the table it looked like the picture above. Huge orange peel thinger, giant ice cube with a maraschino cherry frozen in it. It looked like a drink from a magazine. It looked like that Eggleston photo of the midflight drink sitting on the seatback tray. How did it taste? It tasted like bourbon.

I brought my puzzlement to Roy's attention but he didn't know what was in an Old Fashioned either. I continued on drinking while we talked about The Watchmen (remember liking it), text messages, a boyfriend's responsibilities (specifically picking your girlfriend up at the airport in the middle of the night), driving trucks longer than 18 feet long (no, thank you) & bike riding (should do more of it, probably).

We returned to the subject of the drink at some point & while I poked at some sort of undissolved sugar at the bottom of my glass, Roy urged me to ask our top-knotted waiter. I was too embarrassed to do that so I just wrote "Old Fashioned" down on a random piece of paper (not on one of my list compendiums secreted away in my too-big messenger bag) to be looked up on wikipedia at some odd moment later.

So, odd moment later:

IBA¹ specified ingredients -

* 4.0 cl. bourbon, Scotch or rye whiskey
* 1 sugar cube
* 2 dashes Angostura bitters
* 1 splash soda Water

The sugar is supposed to dissolved in the soda & bitters first. Add ice & then bourbon. Very simple. Maybe even the first "cocktail" according to the wikipedia entry.

So they got it wrong, I guess. I didn't care because having a bourbon on the rocks where the "rock" is a giant Ayers Rock of ice cube & the garnish is some unnameable insect from that Planet Earth series & the bar is secret, that is pretty rad.

Roy had red wine, merlot maybe. All I remember is that the waiter couldn't understand what he was saying & had to have him spell it. Strange.

Angel's Share
8 Stuyvesant St., 2nd fl, New York, NY 10003

¹ International Bartender's Association