Behind the scenes, the growing buzz for Victory’s 15th Anniversary

Victory’s Anniversary event is on February 15th

Victory is getting ready to celebrate it’s princess birthday, turning 15 years old, on February 15th.  Just under two weeks away, we all have been busy and now the excitement is settling in!

Introducing Headwaters Pale Ale

The night promises some great food and entertainment, and of course, the quality beer many of you have grown to love with a special, new addition.  Headwaters Pale Ale will be poured for the first time at the brewpub at 5pm, to kick off the evenings’ events.  Tours starting at every hour, special additions to their brewpub menu (your old favorite may make a one-day re-appearance!), the release of their newest flag ship beer, a video honoring their 15 years of character, and the cake cutting ceremony!

It’s pretty cool to see things coming together, I have to say.  The video tribute will feature a few familiar faces in the craft brewing world, like Greg from Stone Brewing Company, and Sam from Dogfish Head.

Headwaters Pale Ale, what can I say… I think you guys are going to love it!

What I’ve had fun keeping tabs on is this cake…  As the Victory Beer Blog mentioned, it’s going to be a model of the brewing process, all the way from tanks to a working tap!  Our Chef Lynn has been working hard; from sketches, to models, to building the supporting frame,  it’s going to be fantastic!  Here’s a sneak-peek!

 

Blue prints

Not intended for outer-space

hungry?

Hope to see you there!

Nya. If it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it.

So that batch of chili a that I made last week?  One word: YUM.  I was stupidly happy every time I had a bowl.

I made it again tonight, with the beer I had originally intended to make. Nope, definitely not the one.  I’m not sure if it’s the beer in combination with the spices or if I missed something but it’s good, but not the giddiness-inducing fantasticness of the last run.  I’m not devastated, just disappointed.  Good thing I made a normal sized recipe… Next week I’ll make it *right* and that’ll be it!

Bring me to the next weekend quickly!! (And snow, please don’t complicate things =P)

Constantly exciting, constantly busy!

So the new job is going great! Tons to do, it’s quite the learning experience, but it’s fantastic to see my work come to life. It’s been encouraging, too, on many creative fronts beyond design… There’s quite a few foodies in these offices, and so far hardly a week goes by without a few treats gracing the lunch room. Fantastic pastries, quiches, sausages, artisan cheeses, cellar-aged beers… and that’s before going upstairs to the brewpub!

Chili bento with cheese/prosciutto roll, cheezits and a hello kitty-pressed egg.

Well, on the horizon for VBC is the Chili Challenge, on Feb 27th, and though I haven’t been there long I’ve decided to give it a shot! On Sunday I made my first batch of chili, starting my quest to finding the one I want to compete with, and this was an encouraging start for me… I have enjoyed it so much, it’s in my lunchbox with rice (since it’s a bean-less chili), shredded cheddar and sour cream. All mixed together, it’s definitely a cold-weather favorite!

hello kitty pressed egg!

So along with the chili and bento fun, I’ve been making more homemade butter, this time with wild flower honey and white pepper.  It’s awesome.  Try it.  And the hard boiled eggs.  I honestly set out to make egg salad, but instead I ended up playing with my food ^_~  Hubby won’t take them to work because they’re pressed to look like the head of hello kitty. =d

I was also busy *ahem* baking again, I made another chocolate layer cake (see the previous post for a lovely picture of that)  For Christmas the number of wrapped gifts were fewer, but there were plenty of edible ones!  Cranberry-orange pinwheel cookies, cinnamon-sugar puff cupcakes, and my favorite ‘car-bomb’ cupcakes!  I didn’t have anything to bring home… *sniffle* But the New Year is off to a tasty start!  Good thing I’m doing yoga a little more lately…

What are your cold weather favorite foods?  Soup? Casserole? Pie?

This has been the year for changes… Big changes!

So driving into work this morning, listening to the radio, the announcer was talking about how you must take time to sit back and reflect on the year about to end.  Think about the good and bad events and evaluate what brought you to ‘today.’

The last year (adding in a few months) has been so exciting for myself and my husband.

We bought a house and slowly turned it into a home… I was lucky enough to break the place in with an impromptu New Years party with some good friends!  A few weeks later, we kicked off 2010 with an awesome ski trip in the Pocono Mountains.  That trip rekindled my interest in cooking, especially since we had been working in and out of boxes with the move.  Through the spring I started to get further and further into cooking and started this blog!

We got deep into wedding planning during the summer months and had a lot of travel back and forth from Philly to State College for that… Went to Mexico for my cousin’s wedding, which was my first trip out of the country!  That was so exciting, so much great food, and some beautiful scenery.  Oh, and of course, a few awesome trips to Atlantic City for the Bachelorette party and Honeymoon!  Suuuuch good food…

And finally on the professional front, I changed jobs.  Not once, but twice!  Now I work with the amazing family at Victory Brewing Company, and all I can say is that every day has been exciting, and the people are just wonderful!  It’s been a crazy busy few weeks with starting the new job and the holidays, both past and coming, but I *think* the dust is starting the settle!

I am excited for the holidays which are only weeks away, though I must admit, January will bring a welcome slow time.  Who knows, maybe I’ll even update more frequently!

So, with the past year as busy as it was (possibly the most action-packed year of my life, thus far!) I’m looking forward to getting back to ‘normal life’ and cooking, baking and designing my heart out!

As a parting eye-candy treat, here’s a shot of the home-make chocolate layer cake I made about 2 weeks ago for my mother in-law’s birthday!  … Hah… as if I needed a *reason* to bake!

Chocolate cake!

Freshman-15, meet the Honeymoon-10! =d

So I remember everyone mumbling about how every freshman in college gains 15 lbs from eating poorly (or just a lot, pizza maybe?) for one of their first big experiences outside of home.

No one *ever* mentions the 10lbs you’ll gain from eating fantastic food on a honeymoon!  After all the effort of trying to lose weight to look great in the dress… we ran off to Atlantic City for a weekend of pampering and good food… Ruth’s Chris the first evening, and Buddakan the second night!

Very yum!

It was too hard to wait the extra half hour… and it ended up being still very very soft…

green tea ice cream with a ginger snap cookie!

I had to race to take the picture because it was melting before my eyes!  So, soooo good though!  Perfect with a ginger snap on top!

Putting gifts to good use!

We are still getting a few new belongings situated in our home since our wedding, but tonight I got to make a real treat!  One of the coolest (pun intended) gifts we got was an ice cream maker!

First flavor?  Green tea!

For those of you who haven’t tried it before, yeah it looks like a pale mint ice cream, but it’s got the perfect sweet flavor of green tea, just the best!  I remember getting my first pint of green tea ice cream from an asian foods market back at home, and it was very expensive, about $6.50 for just one pint!

This was so cheap to to make, mainly because it’s mostly staples you need to keep on hand anyway!

1 cup whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar
little salt
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

…

I estimated by taste and color on how much matcha (green tea powder) I added to the mixture.  I added it in stages, so I think it was about 1tbsp!  ::O_O::

I know sounds like a lot, but to compete with the cream, it’s necessary!  I recommend using a stick blender if you have one, it’s way better than using a electric hand mixer for the matcha.  It doesn’t incorporate easily since it is such a fine powder, it just wants to clump up.

Churning away in the mixer

Ready for the freezer!

I had a few tastes out of the mixer, but now it’s hardening in the freezer… 10pm can’t come fast enough!

6 months, and a name change to show for it

So, it’s been quite some time now since my last post, but it’s not without good reason!

Getting adjusted to a new job, changing branch locations, preparing for a wedding, going to weddings, and more wedding planning made for a very *very* busy summer!

By May and into June it was constant dress shopping until we found the perfect one (which I did!!)  July it’s holidays, and we escaped to Mexico for my cousin’s wedding!  Then it was more trips home, more fittings when my dress arrived, caterers visits, florists visits, venue visits, and pepper in some family time here and there!

Finally, the week of the wedding I had one of the best, most relaxing weeks (as I could figure being the bride to be!)  The wedding went beautifully, considering the impending threat of rain for the entire time I was home for the wedding.  We had clear, bright blue, sunny skies from Friday afternoon, until we unpacked our last bags on Sunday night!

The wedding itself was a wonderful time, only real snag was that my beautiful, delicious cake tumbled to the floor right in front of me as we prepared to cut it!  Pictures will soon follow!

So now, I’m Mrs. Anderson!

It was wonderful to have everyone celebrate with us, those of you who were able to make the trip!  Those who could not, were definitely missed!

As I promised, I’m packing my lunch

Now that I have the few things I need to make the most basic lunch, I have started preparing bento lunches.  I made my first California roll the other night, which turned out fantastic.

California roll for Eric’s lunch (And I added a pear in his lunch bag)

My lunch, cheese and cracker snack, and California roll (soy sauce on top tier)

We went to the Cherry Blossom Festival on Sunday, and went to their first annual “sushi experience” by Ms. Saito, who teaches sushi classes at Temple University.  Her claim to fame is naming the Philadelphia Roll: Smoked salmon and Philadelphia cream cheese.

It was a good time, a decent little bento for the sushi event, and some live performances and shopping =D  Pictures to come!

Mochi and sushi…

We have been eating sushi quite a bit lately, and recently when going to Z.Wei, we have been treated to mochi ice cream!  It has been a fantastic treat for us, and I set out to make my own…

Easier said, than done.

I found a few recipes that state the same process:

scoop the ice cream into balls and refreeze, make the dough, cool the dough, flatten the dough and cover the frozen ice cream, and freeze again.

Simple, right?

Well, first attempt to make the dough was unsuccessful and very, very messy.  Too sticky and elastic; it was hard to wrap anything in it.  I made a smaller batch, following the directions to a ‘T’ this time (I added the flour too quickly before) and it made the perfect dough.  The most difficult problem was that the ice cream melted so quickly, it was hard to get the mochi ‘wrap’ to seal around the ball without slipping because the ice cream was melting so fast.

Finally, success!  At the end of the night, I made sushi, which was a very minor success (burned the rice because I was distracted) but I made California rolls… Lunch to come!  If only the mochi ice cream would travel for an hour via train without hassle!

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