Cooking With Beer

I should really use Cooking With Beer as a tag instead of a title, because it's what I do.

I walk into a brewery, start tasting, and inevitably, the beers I really like are the ones I want to turn into a recipe.

Like right now. I'm drinking a Tripel from Legend Brewing. I'm sitting on the patio in the lovely, perfect warm sunshine, and all I can think is: banana bread. Or truffles. I can totally do chocolate beer truffles, right?

This Tripel hits you with banana right off. If I were going to drink beer for breakfast (what, it has grains and fruit and... okay, never mind. Ice cream is better for you.) this is the one I'd choose for a fruit-forward meal.

But - and yes, this is in the notes but it's totally true - on the third sip I got bubblegum. The kind of bubblegum wrapped in the paper with the comics on them. Or in the fake tobacco pouch.

It's the taste of I'm ten and at the skating rink on Saturday morning again.

I enjoy drinking beer; I really do. But I like cooking with it even more. I like coming up with wacky recipes that use beer and it's why one of these days I'm going to open up a restaurant where all I do is cook with beer.

Strawberry Jam 2017

There are a few rules for canning jam. Make sure your kitchen and your canning equipment is clean. Don't overfill your jars. Make sure your jars aren't chipped or cracked before you dump them in boiling water.

Oh, and check to see if you have the correct size lids for your jars before you start making the jam.

I'm a bit of an absent-minded chef. I toss ingredients in willy-nilly, use recipes more as guidelines, and forget to set the oven timer.

But I'm far more careful with canning, because, well, botulism.

The one thing I can't seem to remember to do before I start the process of sterilizing jars and dumping twelve cups of strawberries into pots to cook is to make sure I have jar lids in the house.

Sure enough, true to form, I started on the first of the two jams I was making, had the water bath boiling, and was ready to soak the jar lids in hot water when I realized that I had just enough lids for this first batch of jam. Maybe. Definitely not enough for the second.

Yeah, I'm the one wandering the aisles of Kroger on a Saturday night looking for canning supplies.

All's well that ends well, right? Two batches of strawberry jam finished, and now I know I have enough lids for at least a few more projects.