Month: August 2003

DFWBlogs Cocktail Event – August

Ashley Bischoff7 Comments

This month’s DFWBlogs Cocktail Event was at Old Monk. With such a name, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I became quickly intrigued as I read the GuideLive review:

The menu has only 16 items, which range from traditional pub grub such as German sausages ($7.50) and fish and chips ($7.50) to the national dish of Belgium, moules frites (mussels and french fries, $8.95). The mussels and fries are as good, or better, than versions I have eaten in France. […]

German sausages? Well, say no more! That made my entree choice very easy :). The GuideLive review also mentioned their Belgian and German beers, so I went to see whether I could find their beer list. Normally, I'd check their webpage, but a search on Google for “old monk dallas” turned up nothing.

However, I did find this Old Monk section on BeerAdvocate (Beer Advocate is apparently a user-contributed site of restaurant reviews with a focus on beer). And I was pleased to see that some of the reviewers mentioned some of Old Monk’s beers.

So, it wasn’t a complete beer list, but it was a start. As usual, I cross-referenced those beers with the ratings at RateBeer.com — the numbers below include each beer’s score (out of five) and its percentile-ranking.

There were more beers than just those beers listed at the Beer Advocate page, but I didn’t include beers that I couldn’t find at RateBeer nor those that didn’t score well. And, since some of the beer descriptions on Beer Advocate were vague, I wasn’t sure about some of the specific brews (Chimay has serveral, for instance, though only “Chimay” was mentioned).

Once I arrived at Old Monk, I ordered the German Plate and I was about to order a Chimay Bleu, but I then noticed that they didn’t actually have that Chimay variety (though they had Chimay Red, Chimay Grand Reserve and Chimay White). (I just now discovered that Chimay Grand Reserve is an alias for Chimay Bleu — oops.) However, I quickly noticed that they had Fuller’s Porter — a beer I hadn’t seen previously mentioned in any of the Old Monk reviews.

I needed no encouragement in ordering the Fuller’s Porter — I’m not only a fan of porters but the Fuller is also the top rated porter at RateBeer.com! The 16oz bottle didn’t hurt, either.

The porter soon arrived, along with the sausages. The sausages were of two varieties, though I can’t recall their names at the moment (one was pinkish while the other was more whitish). They included some mustard on the side which went perfectly with the sausages — full of flavor and spice but not too hot.

The porter itself was fantastic and I’m not surprised by its high ratings. It had almost a coffee-like taste but without coffee’s bitter aftertaste (as my roommate Mike put it). I don’t even like coffee but I still found this to be a delicious beer. This is easily my favorite porter and possibly my second-favorite beer (Ayinger Celebrator Doppelbock is still first).

After the Fuller’s, I gave some thought to my second beer. Before arriving, I was all set on ordering a Chimay Bleu. But, of course, that was seemingly the one Chimary variety that Old Monk didn’t have. So, I went for a Chimay Red (“only” in the 95.4th percentile). The Red was a good beer, to be sure, though I’m not sure it lived up to its high expectations. It had more carbonation than I expected and a slight sweetness (which isn’t a bad thing, but just not what I was in the mood for at the time).

I really enjoyed Old Monk and on the drive home I was trying to think whether there were any Cocktail Events that I had enjoyed more. Up to that point, The Meridian Room was probably my favorite (their service, in particular, was exceptional). But after thinking it over, I don’t know if there’s anywhere other than Old Monk where I could get some tasty sausages along with such a good selection of beers in Dallas.

(And, Old Monk apparently has a website after all, though all I see is a broken puzzle piece <g>)

New PowerBooks Coming?

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

According to rumors summarized by The Register, Apple may be readying new 15" and 17" PowerBooks:

PowerPage claims the new model sports a 1.25GHz G4 processor and support for 800Mbps 1394, aka FireWire 800. The new 15in PowerBook presents all its ports on the right-hand side of the machine. In looks, says PowerPage’s source, the new model looks like a scaled-down 17in model — it even features the latter’s illuminated keyboard. […]

PowerBooks are really due for an update — they were last released in January and it’s been 225 days since then (the average time between PowerBook updates is 146 days). Of course, some people have been saying “any day now” since Apple slashed PowerBook prices back in June. Still, a PowerBook would be really tempting and a fresh release might be enough to push be towards one.

Man’s Signature Offends Delaware

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

Charles Weinstein has an otherwise-normal signature that he’s been using for more than eight years — except that it’s upside-down. He's used it on checks, credit cards and other official documents, but the Delaware DMV isn’t accepting it:

He said he trained himself to write his name in this unusual way, working right-side up, as a way to make his mark unique. He said he has been signing his name this way for more than eight years on all official papers, checks, credit cards — even his old driver’s license. It was never a major problem until this week, he said, when he went to the DMV office on Airport Road to change his address.

Weinstein said a window clerk told him to “stop fooling around and sign it right.” When he insisted that what he wrote was his valid, legal signature, Weinstein said the clerk accused him of being a troublemaker and threw him out. […]

Writing one’s signature upside-down is an interesting trick, though I can’t imagine how long it took him to learn that technique or what methods he used to wrap his head around it.

Using an acting analogy, I’m curious whether he used “method writing” (where he actually learned to write the characters in his name upside-down and then wrote those in sequence to form his signature) or whether he merely learned how to mimic the look of his upside-down signature.

(Via the Crypto-Gram newsletter.)

Low Carb Chips?

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

The good news: Randy Blaun appears to have invented a low carb chip.

Can there be such a thing as a healthy chip? Randy Blaun, a writer and self-proclaimed foodie living in New York, claims to have invented just that: french fries that have as many nutrients and as much fibre as a serving of broccoli.

Moreover — and this should be of profound interest to the millions following diets such as the high-protein, low-carbohydrate one proposed by Dr Robert Atkins — Ms Blaun’s chips are low in carbohydrates. They have six to eight milligrams of carbohydrates a serving [I presume that “milligrams” is a typo. — Alex], compared with 20-plus in a serving of regular chips. […]

The bad (or silly, depending on your point of view) news? The guy patented his recipe :-/.

Ms Blaun’s patent application, published in June, reveals her secret ingredient: cauliflower.

Cauliflower chips? Well, not just cauliflower. Also egg whites and calcium caseinate, which is derived from milk, and “just enough potato to make it potato-y”.

I’m not sure what to think of this, though I’ll believe it when I taste it. And if you're confused by someone named “Randy” being Ms Blaun, then that makes two of us :-/.

Dallas Camera Club Scavenger Hunt

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

The Dallas Camera Club had its annual Photo Scavenger Hunt on Saturday, at the Fort Worth Stockyards. For those not aware, the Stockyards are roughly a Disneyland for cowboys — the couple-block area looks somewhat like an old-west set and everything is cowboy-themed.

We started early, at 9:00am, with the idea of beating the heat. We’d take photographs around noon and then we’d meet for lunch. We had to find and photograph these 10 items: breeze, look-up, look-down, tarantula, water, boots, hooved animals, gold, red, purple, and a cowboy. Many of the items were open to iterpretation, such as the colors in particular.

My strategy was to get token pictures of each item first and then go around and get better photographs with my remaining time. For instance, the Visitors’ Center had flowers out front that were gold, red and purple (which took care of all three of those). Then, as the morning went on, I looked for other items in those categories so that I wouldn’t have to use the flowers for all three keywords. I think I got all ten items, though I haven’t downloaded the images to my PC yet. I’ll probably post some of the better ones in a later entry.

After taking pictures all morning, we met for lunch at the H3 Ranch restaurant, which is part of the Stockyards Hotel. They have a fairly ordinary menu, including tacos, chicken-fried steak, and burgers. I went with a bacon-cheddar cheeseburger, though I asked the server if they had cheeses other than cheddar. They had pepper jack and I went with that.

The burger came with seasoned fries which were better than I thought they’d be. I added a touch of ketchup, at first, but it turned out that the fries were just fine on their own. The burger itself was mediocre; the top bun was too thick while the bottom bun was too thin and actually soggy. The cheese was fine but the bacon wasn’t crispy and I got the impression that it had been cooked much earlier and later added.

Some of us stayed for dessert and that turned out well. Their dessert menu had about four items, I think (cheesecake, hot brownie with Jack Daniels ice cream, peach cobbler, and one other item). Though hot brownies are hella-delicious, I just wasn’t sure about that Jack Daniels ice cream.

So, I ordered the cheesecake instead (with pecan praline sauce). I hadn’t tried praline sauce on cheesecake before, but it was really nice — it wasn’t too thick and had a good pecan flavor. And the cheesecake itself was some of the best that I’ve ever had — it was dense but with a light and fluffy texture.

I had such a great time and I was sorry to learn that the Dallas Camera Club only has scavenger hunts once a year. However the club has normal field trips every month. I’ll probably go to more of those as they’ll help me to stay in practice and learn more about photography.