NaNo: Day 16

National Novel Writing Month

Daily Word Count: 1, 040

Total Word Count: 16,093

Words Remaining: 33,907

Averaging 1000 words a day.
I think I can drink to that. ;)

Comet, who is always by my side when I write.

Galaxy, who'd rather I feed her than take her pic. 

One thousand more down today. Looks like that's going to be my average this month if I'm lucky. Hopefully, I'll be able to maintain this speed for the rest of November.  

Luckily, I've got my two fuzzy writing buddies that keep a watchful eye on me every day. 

:)

Desert Hops Beer Festival: Food And Beer Pairing

I was recently asked if I'd share my favorite food and beer pairing as part of a blog shout out to the The Desert Hops International Beer Festival which is being held today, at the The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. I'd never heard about the festival before, but my first reaction was "OMG where's my admission ticket?" 

For me, going to a beer festival is second to going to a good writer's conference. Can you just imagine combining the two events? That would be incredible. Just think of how many writers and agents we could pair up or just how many books could be published....or... yeah, maybe not. :P 

Anyway, I wish I could tell you that I have some fantastic and exotic pairing of food and beer, but for me, simple is best. What I'm not a fan of, is sweet flavored beers and don't really like the weird fruit beers be it watermelon or pumpkin, and God forbid you add a peach or grenadine syrup to your beer like they do here, yuck! I figure if you're going to add syrup to your beer, you might as well order a cocktail. To each their own. 

Basically, I prefer a good beer with a dish of salty carbohydrates. Because let's face it, there's nothing better than a nice cold one and pizza, or chips, or just plain old peanuts. But better yet, beer on a hot day, in the back yard, cooking BBQ, and hanging out with family and friends. I think that's what I associate beer with the most, sharing it with friends and enjoying the simple things while we talk about how better the world would be if we ran things.  

So, when it comes down to it, I'm much more of a have-a-couple-cold-ones-at-home-with-friends-while-watching-Arrow kinda gal. 

So here is my favorite beer / food combination to date: 

Abbaye des Rocs (9 %), a strong Belgian ale with a rich dark amber color and full body taste that lingers in your mouth afterwards. In other words, it tastes awesome. Now take a beer like this and pair it up with a perfectly cooked steak with sautéed mushrooms, along with a side of potatoes loaded with bacon, onions, and melted cheese all cooked in an iron skillet. There, a slice of heaven... unless you're a vegetarian who doesn't drink alcohol. Then, this would be hell. :o  (Actually, there is a beer called Hell, just sayin... :)  )

So even if you're not much of a beer drinker, I'd be willing to bet, with all the different microbreweries producing such a wide range of craft beers from around the world, there's a beer even (or especially) for you. :) 

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So do you have a favorite beer/food pairing? Or maybe you have another drink/food pairing you'd like to share. I'd love to hear about it!


#BrewLV

IWSG: Have A Beer With Me

Lately, my writing has taken a nose dive into the dismal abyss of meritocracy. But this time, instead of moaning and groaning, snapping pens in half, popping keys off my keyboard, or setting my manuscript on fire, I’ve decided to take a different approach, a more calm and religious path to my latest self-loathing. I’ve decided to sit back and have a beer. Now I know that’s not very lady-like but at this point, I don’t care. Besides, I don’t always drink beer, but when I do… I make sure it’s a great tasting beer. Name that meme! ;) 

Anyway, this is an IWSG post, not a beer tasting post and yet… I will find a way to transition this in into a beer post, so hang on. 

Have you ever tried describing how something tastes in your writing and gotten stuck? 

No. 

No? Well, humor me for a second. Geez. 

I like drinking all kinds of different beers. One of the things I enjoy is reading the label before I start peeling it off into little strips and making a mess on the table. On the back of one of these labels, I read a short, highly pretentious description of the beer I was holding. Luckily, the beer was a good one and it prompted me to look up some beer tasting reviews. This is where things got interesting. Beer and wine tasting reviews are some of the most imaginative, colorful, sexy, flowery, BS descriptions you’ll ever read. Here are examples I pulled from random beer descriptions online:

“. . .candied sweet hops pucker the mouth; pear and apple make for a perfumed blend, supported by a surprisingly hearty malt base.”

“. . . dark cumulonimbus, Everest-like white climbing head--”

“The foretaste is very prolonged because of its rich and unctuous development throughout the mouth.” I swear this is talking about BEER. 

“Bitter and sugar tendencies compete and come back together to the taster's great satisfaction.”

“It confirms the initial impression in the first mouthful, with a sharp body that is balanced with a certain fruitiness.”

“...malty caramel aroma, with obvious cherry and floral notes...”

“Some traces of burnt wood are detectable, but never scorched even if it contains this kind of malt.”

It's not easy describing something as subjective as taste. But even if some of these are laughable, if you keep digging, you'll find wonderful imagery and many creative ways for describing taste through beer and wine tasting reviews. 

So there you have it. 

My writing sucks. 

Cheers.

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Many thanks to Alex Cavanaugh our IWSG host and his super co-hosts this month. If you'd like to know more about the IWSG monthly bloghop, feel free to click the IWSG button on my side bar.