5th Anniversary Celebrations

What do you do to celebrate your 5th marriage anniversary?  Go to a beer festival of course.  It only makes sense.  Well, maybe for us.

The second annual Houston Beer Fest went over much more smoothly than last year.  More entrances meant no lines to get in.  Longer hours meant less crowds at once.  It was still hot as Hades, but at least they had free water available.  I only wish the booths were manned by the brewers instead of just temp workers hired by the festival.  I think that's why we still like the Brewmasters International Beer Fest in Galveston better.  It's always neat to be able to learn about the different beers (what type of beer it is, how it was brewed, how long the brewery has been around, etc.)  You can't really get that when the booths aren't manned by the brewers. 

Dorks...

After the festival, we headed over to The Melting Pot with Sal and Nicole to enjoy some fondue.  None of us had been there before, and it was actually pretty good.  Plus, it was fun to cook your own food.

It was a four course meal - cheese appetizer with bread and veggies, salad, the main course (seen below), and chocolate with fruit and sweets.  Yum!

Pretty fun 5th anniversary celebrations, huh?  Up next on the blog, fun 5th anniversary presents...

Hay Merchant Grand Opening

So there has been a ton of press over the last months about the long anticipated opening of Hay Merchant (like here, here, here, here, here, and oh-my-dear-god-why-has-there-been-THAT-much-press here), so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel.  But, I do have to share that Jason and I actually checked the place out... on opening night, nonetheless.  Yes, we're total beer snobs.  And, yes, like one of the articles mentioned, it was full of tons of people "in the know."  Too bad I'm not "in the know" and couldn't identify half of them.

Interior shot.  Sorry for the bad picture quality.  I headed there
straight after work and didn't have a camera with me.

I do know that the guys from Karbach were there.  Also, we had an encounter with Chris Shepherd as he made his obligatory rounds.  While it's unclear how much input Chris had with the Hay Merchant menu offerings since his future next door restaurant, Underbelly, will be kept completely separate, it was still kinda funny.

Water was served in 32 oz. Budweiser bottles.  Get it?  Ha.

As Jason and I ate our blood sausage queso fundido, delicious local daily ground hamburger, and onion rings, I said, "Hey, maybe we should tell Chris how good the food is."  Jason says, "Why, he's just going to go, 'I know.'"  So later, Chris comes by the table and asks if every thing's alright.  I say, "Yea, thanks... the burger is delicious."  He so nonchalantly, responds, "Yea," and walks away.  Then Jason and I giggled cause he was totally called the response to a T.

Only an after shot of the food since it we ate it so quickly.

Anyways, we were pretty impressed by the whole experience.  Good food.  Over 75 beers on tap... and good ones too.  Attentive staff.  Nice interior.  Oh, and they have a couple dart boards so of course Jason was happy.

Dude Jase, chill out with your stalking of the
dart boards.

I'm sure we'll keep this place on our list of frequently visited beer establishments.

Update:  According to this article, the executive chef at Hay Merchant is Antoine Ware.

Brewmasters Craft Beer Festival

Yesterday we attended the 2nd annual Brewmasters Craft Beer Festival at Moody Gardens in Galveston.  It was pretty fun.  This year, they expanded the tasting to two days, so the crowd was very reasonable.  Jason has become quite the beer connoisseur since attending the event last year.  Unlike last year where we knew nothing about the craft beer scene, this year we knew most of the brews.  We had a chance to taste our favorites as well as relative newcomers like Clown Shoes and Karbach.

Enjoying the tastings.

When we headed outside afterwards, there was a double rainbow.

As we waited for a cab, we watched the sun set and the sky change as the storm started rolling in.

Mostly just wind.  Not too much rain out of the whole deal.

We ate dinner at Fisherman's Wharf. 

Since a lot of hotels were sold out and rooms at Super 8 were going for $250 and up, we rented a room from a lady on airbnb.com.  She had a cute little house in the historic East End and rented us her upstairs suite at a very reasonable price.  Her three dogs were so happy we came to visit them.  :)

Jason's 27th Birthday Adventure

To celebrate Jason's 27th birthday, I planned a full day of fun things for us.  Nothing too out of the ordinary, but stuff I knew Jason would enjoy. 

I presented each activity via a page from his adventure book right before it was time to move on.  (Cheestastic?  Yes... but hopefully fun as well.)  As you can tell, when he woke up, I made him breakfast.  (He chose boiled eggs & fruit.)  Then he watched part of the Tour de France before we headed to Barnes and Noble to pick him out some birthday books. 

The big part of the day was going to No Label Brewing Co. out in Katy.  We've been meaning to make it out there for months now, but have never found the time to do so.  It's such a small operation and they've only been around for less than a year, but boy do they make some yummy beer.

It's a family owned operation.  See that guy up there under the flags?  That's Brian Royo, part owner, giving us the low down.

I think there is some weird law that doesn't allow breweries to advertise where they distribute their product, so I caught this super secret picture from behind the scenes.  The white board shows what bars they are in and which brew is at which bar.

Oh, did I mention that the brewery is located in an old grain mill?  Pretty crazy digs.  Also crazy... the hundreds of people that show up on Saturdays to sit out in the heat and drink beer for a couple of hours.  They are kid and dog friendly, and believe me, there were plenty of both.

Doesn't 27 look good on Jason?

After the brewery tour, we quickly stopped by Katy Mills mall before meeting up with Sal & Nicole for drinks at Taps. 

We went to dinner at Zelko Bistro in the Heights and it was very good.  After that, we were pooped so we just headed home and went to sleep.

So, there you have it... Jason's 27th birthday adventure.  :)

New Orleans

Jason & I headed to New Orleans this week for a much needed vacation.  It was a nice mix of things to see and do and enough time to relax. 

Our New Orleans Digs - The Terrell House

We stayed at a The Terrell House B&B on Magazine Street.  We really enjoyed the location.  If you went out the door to the right, you could visit the shops on Magazine Street or the Garden District.  If you went left, you could head downtown or to the French Quarter.  Our room was actually located in a separate building at the back of the main house.  There was a wonderful courtyard which we enjoyed spending a few minutes reading and drinking coffee before breakfast.  The breakfasts were delicious Southern/ New Orleans cuisine.  And in case we started missing Radar too much, we could get our pet fix by petting the resident dog (Stella) and cat (Jubilee.)

 

Thursday Afternoon - The Garden District

We spent our first afternoon in New Orleans walking around the Garden District admiring the big houses.  I loved the architecture.  The red bricks, the iron work, the porches - all beautiful.  I wish I could have seen the Garden District back in the 1800 and 1900's when the lots were bigger and full of lush gardens.  You can tell that a lot of the original lots have been divided and smaller houses built in between the mansions.  Still beautiful, but it would have been neat to admire in its original form.

 

Thursday Evening - French Quarter and Frenchmen Street

That night, we ventured over to the Marigny neighborhood for dinner.  We stopped in several bars along Frenchmen Street to listen to bands and had drinks at d.b.a. Then we gained the confidence to walk around the French Quarter.  We went relatively early (between 9 and 10 pm) and it was still pretty crazy. I equated it to a carnival for adults.  Nice to see, but not really our scene.   

Friday Morning - WWII Museum

 

Friday morning we woke up relatively early and spent the morning at the The National WWII Museum.  The museum is HUGE.  They show a pretty neat movie about the war with special effects (chairs shake, smoke, snow, etc.)  While I didn't like some aspects of the museum that I felt glorified aspects of the war, it was still overall very educational and worth visiting.

Friday Mid-day - Ferry to Algiers

After the museum, we rode the ferry across the Mississippi River to the residential neighborhood of Algiers so we could see the city from a different vantage point.

Friday Afternoon - Nola Brewery Tour

After grabbing a quick lunch, we headed to the Nola Brewery.  The tour was one of my favorite parts of our trip.  The peeps were cool and the beer was good.  The plant is tiny!  They literally hand fill bottles.  Neat to see an operation so small, especially after visiting St. Arnold's here in Houston and Abita (see below.)  Uh... p.s. you might see a trend in our trip. Seems that Jason has taken to craft beer recently.  A little obsessively.  Like he wants to start home brewing in our garage.  Hmmm.

Friday Evening - Dickie Brennan's

We celebrated my birthday a day early by eating a nice dinner at Dickie Brennan's.  Our favorite part of the meal was definitely the banana fosters bread pudding... delish!

Saturday Morning - Abita Mystery House

Saturday was fun.  We headed north of New Orleans, across Lake Pontchartrain (literally we drove 30 miles across the lake) to Abita Springs.  Abita Springs is a tiny little town that feels like it's in the back woods.  We visited the Abita Mystery House in the middle of town - sooo cool!  I can't even describe it's eccentric quirkiness.  Not sure what type of individual it takes to dream up and execute such an idea, but I'm glad they did.  Totally worth the $3 admission fee.

Saturday Mid-day - Abita Brewery Tour & Brew Pub

Oh look... another brewery.  Didn't I mention there was a theme to our trip?  Which I guess is fitting since people just assume you go to New Orleans to drink.  We just did so responsibly and away from the French Quarter.  Which isn't exactly what people expect.  This time we did our drinking (or tasting) at the Abita Tasting Room and Brew Pub.  Another fun tour, but overall, I liked the Nola experience better.

Saturday evening we ate dinner at Capdeville and grabbed a drink at The Bulldog.  Then, being the old fogies we are, we were in bed, watching reruns of Northern Exposure, by 8 pm.  No joke.  But just pretend I didn't tell you that.  If it makes you feel better, you can pretend we were partying it up on Bourbon Street.

Now we're back in Houston.  I'm trying to enjoy my last few hours of vacation before having to head back to reality tomorrow.  I do have to give a shout out to our dog sitter for the weekend, Nicole at Lucy Goo Pet Sitting.  She did a wonderful job watching the house and the dog while we were away.  Radar calmly greeted us when we got home, and I can tell he had a nice, content weekend while we were gone.   A much better alternative to dog kennels or boarding facilities.