Ham Sandwich Indicted!

True to form (and compulsion), Ham Sandwich and family kept it on the foodie tip this Christmas, with several days of festive food and drink. We started off on Christmas Eve with our now-traditional Feast of the Seven Fishes. This year's menu included: Garlic-butter glazed salmon (caught by H.S's brother, up in Michigan) Lemon and herb stuffed whole trout (also caught by said brother) Prociutto-wrapped scallops Sardines in Salsa Verde recipe here , with sardines instead of anchovies Crab cakes Shrimp cocktail Crab salad Salmon dip Farfalle pasta with tomato sauce Assorted cheeses, olives, and breads We also experimented with cocktails from Imbibe! a book of old-tyme drink recipes. And maybe the folks of 1862 had a different idea of what tastes good, but I would argue that Hot Buttered Rum is not very delicious. However, the Vanilla Punch we made on Christmas Day (with brandy, sugar, lemon, and vanilla extract), was quite enjoyable. For Christmas Day dinner, we went with a...

Finally, after years of wanting to try it, your Ham Sandwich, along with two of her partners-in-crime--P and L--jumped on the homebrew-making bandwagon. Above, we proudly present our ESB Pale Ale: Extra Sassy Bitches Edition. It has a rich amber-red color and is made with crystal malt and Target hops in the tea, and dry hopped with Kent Gold. We purchased our ingredients, based on a previously tried recipe, at the Winemaker's Shop , run by the super-friendly and always knowledgeable Scott Francis & Nina Hawranick. Thankfully, I was working with some experienced beer makers--P had made beer in the past with her husband, and L was a former quality control engineer for Anheuser-Busch. My beer experience has been limited to drinking it and slinging it . I failed to take pictures of the first several steps--boiling the tea (malt, water, malt extract, hops, some maple syrup), and the initial fermentation, but did get it together to get some pictures of the latter half of the ...

It started out simply enough: a group of friends with a standing Thursday night date at Buffalo Wild Wings for boneless chicken wings, a few beers, maybe some trivia. Over the course of the year, significant others came and went, but the core group--the Killa B, Big Country, and the H.S. remained. As the summer progressed, the group expanded to a few more regulars (V.Z., Doc Vince, Eddie-O, E.N.), and at the same time the group decided (ok, fine, yours truly, the restaurant geek, decided) that while the discounted boneless wings at BW3s were great and all, it was time to branch out. And with that, the Thursday Night Drinking/Dinner Club (TNDC) was born. Initial forays into other ports-of-call were simple, and stayed close to the sports bar/pub food genre: Brazenhead, King Avenue 5, Grandview Cafe. As the only female of the group for some period of time, and taking into consideration the Killa B's profound affection for BW3s Terriaki sauce, I had to work slowly. It became clear,...