Domestic Sunday: Turkey Day Edition

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving! I hope your dinner chart looked much like mine: 33% turkey, 33% stuffing, 24% mashed potatoes, 10% carrots, and then all the gravy you want poured all over that. With the gravy, that's more than 100%, but Thanksgiving is about the two G's - gratitude and gluttony - so why not give 110% to your food?

In the ensuing tryptophan haze (urban myth), I nearly forgot that I had planned to bring back Domestic Whateverday to the blog on Sunday. Perhaps barely Monday morning still counts?

Unfortunately, the domestic craft portion of the post is not all that inspiring. In fact, it's a bag of fabric:

The plan is for this to become a new quilt for my new apartment. That was also my plan when I moved into the new apartment. At the end of June.

While that photo may not be that inspiring, I assure you that I've done something over the past three months. Behold:

Why, that's like six finished squares, and a few more than are halfway there! I only need to sew about 75 more, sew those together into the quilt top, get the batting and the backing, quilt all that together, and...

Whoah ho ho, it's beer! Let's move on to the other domestic part of Domestic Sunday, the brew. This is the Country Bumpkin from Niagara Oast House Brewers. It's probably much lighter than it appears in the photo, which was taken inside of a King Street bar that has its dimmer switch perpetually set to "smoky 17th century coffeehouse", ie, dark. This disconcerts me in the same way that a casino's censure of natural light bewilders a gambler, so that I probably spend more money than I should, and then act like a cave salamander when I finally head out into the bright and irritating light of day.

Or so any "working lunch" there usually goes. At least this time I kept to one pint. I picked the Country Bumpkin because October is the time for pumpkin beer. Pumpkin beers seem to be coming under increasing criticism from beer folks, and I resent that, because they're often delicious. I also resent the distinct note of sexism I've started picking up, alongside the notes of clove and cinnamon in the beer. Even supporters will feebly celebrate pumpkin ale as, essentially, gateway craft beer for the ladies.

Yes, some pumpkin beers do taste a little too sweet, going heavily enough on the spice that they start to taste less like a beer, and more like a carbonated Pumpkin Spice Latte. And so people will extend their stereotypes of PSL drinkers to beer. But screw 'em. More beer for me, and even a dudely hophead should have few issues with the Country Bumpkin. It was low on the carbonation, and the expected pie spices were supported by the hint of something vegetal. It's worth checking out, both as a decent beer, and as a fine introduction to the style.