mothkettle

. Favourite Beer of the Week

2009-07-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

As you know very well, I am not a religious man. And I suspect neither is the geezer on the label of this bottle of Brother David's Double Abbey Style Ale. He is wearing a habit, and appears to be a monk, but he looks like the kind of monk you'd run into in the middle of Resident Evil 4 whose head would split in two and dirty great tentacles would come out and slap you about before you shot him to death with your magnum.

On Sunday we walked down to the Mission for a reason I have forgotten, and it was all closed off to traffic and people we're dancing in the streets as they do in California, on roller skates . We had some lunch at Herbivore, and when we left the dancing was over and the traffic had returned and I tried to buy a hat but it's hard when your ears are as big as mine, and then we walked home and had a bit of a sit down and a Brother David's Double Abbey Style Ale, which was recommended to Nif by some guy at Rainbow Grocery (the best grocery store in San Francisco for dirty hippy vegetarians) so she bought it and put it in the fridge and now it is in my fat belly.

It is a jolly nice beer. It looks and tastes a bit like a Chimay. Maybe a bit less carbonated, which is good because I don't like a lot of carbonation in my beer as it makes me burp, which isn't nice for anyone.

It is made at Anderson Valley in Boonville, which is a small "unincorporated community" in Mendocino that has its own language - "Boontling", and is apparently the setting for the novel "Vineland" by Thomas Pynchon, which I tried to read twice in my 20s, and failed both times, due to it being a bit shit, despite what they tell you on the back of the book.

And it is 9% alc/vol which is the kind of alc/vol I like on a Sunday evening when I am trying very very hard to not think about going back to work on Monday.

Now let us pray.

. Caipirissima Croquet

2009-07-15T14:28:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday we went to Sebastopol and came second in the Bailey Brent Birthday Croquet tournament.

In HD!

. Favourite Beer of the Week

2009-07-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

Sam Smith's India Ale is not the best IPA I have ever tasted. No sir. It's okay, just not great. It's rather bitter and not much else. It achieves the status of favourite beer of the week purely by the fact that it was drunk on our back deck on a Friday night after a healthy romp around Mt. Davidson.

Maybe it's nicer in Yorkshire before they stick it in a bottle and ship it over here. I know I was.

Or maybe my tastebuds have been ruined by brash and gaudy American IPAs with their in-your-face over-the-top hops. Who knows? Who cares? It's Friday!

. Project Germination

2009-07-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

Our new minions...
Sugar Plum, Brandywine, Orange Blossom, & Genovese tomatoes

. Sparks

2009-07-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

We met 11 years ago today.
They have fireworks here every year to celebrate.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

2009-07-03T13:36:00.000-07:00

Sam Smiths Brewery Pale Ale is nice pint of olde worlde Bitter. Perfect for washing away that annoying sense of ennui you get from another work-week of creeping failure.
Yum!

For maximum effect follow swiftly with a glass of 12 year old Balvenie and season 3 of the Mighty Boosh.

. A Decade Ago...

2009-07-03T10:44:00.000-07:00

This week's "A Decade ago..." is actually "A Decade and five months ago..." when we were visited by my old old friends James and Amy and their then young children Joe and Lily.
And some hummus.

Here you can see my hair is so big it blocks out the sun.

. Pimp My eco-Ride

2009-06-22T21:43:00.000-07:00

This is our friend Mike.
And he'd like to win a bike.

Please Vote Him Up
(he's near the bottom of the page...)

. Wayang with Sasha

2009-06-22T12:14:00.000-07:00

. Half Life is Over Now...

2009-06-18T12:36:00.000-07:00

And I meet full face on dark mornings the bestial visor, bent in by the blows of what happened to happen.

But at least birthday drinks at Nihon was fun. Thank you to everyone who came. Very special thank you to everyone who paid for my whiskeys.

Cheers!

(more pics here)

. Favourite Beer of the Week

2009-06-15T20:28:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night we were going to a dance performance at Dance Mission and we were meeting Diane first for drinks and food and Nif said where shall we go? And I said why don't we go to that place that used to be Radio Valencia at 23rd and Valencia because that's close to Dance Mission and so we went there and it was only 6 o'clock so we got a great table in the corner by the window and we had some eggplant antipasti thing and a mushroom pizza with vegan cheese, and wine and beer. Nif had the wine, I had the beer. Diane showed up later, because she had to hike and stuff.

First I had a Maudite, and then I had a Hitachino Espresso Stout, which tasted of coffee and chocolate, like a beer-mocha. Sounds disgusting I know, but it was actually rather nice, especially after the pizza, as a kind of dessert. I thought at the time that it would be a good beer to share with someone else who likes beer, but then when I was half way through it I was quite happy that Nif and Diane do not like beer at all and I had it all to myself.

Beretta (the place we were in) also serve Hitachino Espresso Stout in an icecream float. Not sure how I feel about that.

. A Decade Ago...

2009-06-14T18:53:00.000-07:00

Welcome to an exciting new feature of the mothkettle blog called "A Decade Ago..." In it I will be reminiscing about the olden days and talking about how old I am. Now I've written that down it sounds even more exciting than when it was just in my head.

Shall we begin?

A decade ago this month, on the week of my 30th birthday, we went for a walk through Muir Woods with our friends Oliver and Victoria.

Here we can be seen struggling to keep up with new technology called the "self timer".

And here we can be seen having an invisible light saber battle.

A couple of years later I was back in Muir woods walking the coastal trail with my friend Joe, and we were asked by a middle-aged couple going in the opposite direction if we knew where the bar was. We said no we didn't know where the bar was, and after they were gone we laughed about how silly you would have to be to think that there was a bar in the middle of Muir Woods.

Turns out there is a bar in the middle of Muir Woods. So on the week of my 40th birthday we went to find it with our friends Bryce and Jenny. Here is a video documenting that historic occasion.

. mum in california

2009-06-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

Last month my mum came to visit us. Here are some things she did.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

2009-06-07T16:59:00.001-07:00

Ginger beer for ginger beardies.

This is one of those Kiuchi Hitachino nest beers (like this one and this one). This one is the "Real Ginger Brew" and it has ginger in it, and tastes a bit gingery. Very good on a Sunday when you're in the middle of an awfully long recipe like Mushroom Wellington with Madeira Sauce and it's 4 o'clock and the guests aren't arriving til 6:30 and it's too soon to get into the wine but you need a little something. But then afterwards you start to get tired and your wife has to finish the recipe and now it's 5:30 and you're at the computer and thinking of having a shower when you really should be helping in the kitchen and you have totally forgotten to make the mashed potatoes.

Oh dear.

. Birthday H0

2009-06-03T19:06:00.000-07:00

Model railways are built to various scales. 0 scale (zero scale) is 1:43. So something 43 inches tall in the real world (a small child for example) becomes something 1 inch tall in model railway world. H0 (half zero scale) is 1:87. So your small child would be only 1/2 inch tall. Does that make sense? Do you honestly give a crap?

For my birthday I received this rather fabulous H0 scale Water Tower, pimped out by our splendid friend Michael Shaub. To see photos of its creation, click this.

. Forty

2009-06-02T14:43:00.000-07:00

To celebrate my 40th birthday we are going for drinks at this place on Friday (5th of June):

http://www.dajanigroup.net/establishments/nihon-whisky-lounge/

Please join us if you have nothing better to do and enjoy spending time with old people.

Drinks and bar foods are half price before 7:30pm.

. Pending

2009-05-28T20:51:00.000-07:00

You know who you are.

. You Are Beautiful

2009-05-24T16:11:00.000-07:00

Random cell phone pictures while we're out & about...

. Levitation

2009-05-11T17:37:00.000-07:00

Here is some amazing video of me levitating a leaf in 2006.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

2009-04-24T08:09:00.001-07:00

Like the previous Kiuchi Hitachino nest beer I tried, XH produced a big old frothy head which hung around for quite a while and gave me plenty of time to find the camera and take a picture of it.

The beer tasted a bit odd, kind of sour-ish, perhaps. It says on the back of the bottle that XH is fermented in old sake casks, so maybe that's it. Anyway, I liked it. I liked the taste, and the cute stumpy bottle, and the owl picture on the bottle top, and the bright orange colour of the beer, especially when back lit by last year's Christmas lights that we still haven't removed from the kitchen.

When should you take down Christmas lights? Ehow.com have a fascinating and highly informative six point instructional fact file on the matter. As with all of Ehow.com's tens of thousands of "How to" documents, "How to Tell When to Take Down Your Christmas Lights and Decorations" is a priceless resource for such a challenging subject. They have the problem catagorised as "moderately easy", which is more demanding than "easy" but not as difficult as "moderate". Here is a small excerpt:

"Take down your Christmas lights and decorations if your lights go out after Christmas. If your lights go out before Christmas, you’ll probably want to fix the problem. However, if they go out sometime in January, you should probably just take them down and either try to fix them next season or just buy new lights."

Thanks Ehow.com. You are great.

. This movie made Nif feel a bit strange

2009-04-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

. Wolfie

2009-04-12T10:10:00.000-07:00

My niece Samantha made this short film starring my nephew Ben and featuring the voice talent of my other nephew Dan.

. Cooking with Anthony

2009-04-06T20:40:00.000-07:00

This recipe is from the Cafe Flora Vegetarian Cookbook. It's extremely tasty to eat, and relatively easy to make. And I've documented the whole thing on video, just for you.

. First Thursday

2009-03-31T19:11:00.000-07:00

Lovely prints in a lovely little gallery. And I'm one of the lovelies.
Wander by for the opening on Thursday, or any of the other first 29 days in April.

. 120 Views

2009-03-23T15:40:00.001-07:00