Team Nodlings

I'm feeling good, so I finally followed through on a project from last year.  I had the idea to make the kids Team Nodlings jersey t-shirts so they can watch football with me and just generally be awesome.

I put their Names and Numbers on the back and shirt sleeves (in birth order) and Nodlings on the front with my Nod of Approval logo.

#4 Nub is the one face-up in case you've lost track!

Super fun, I can't wait for them to try them on!  Whaddaya think?

Return of the Homebrews

On this edition of Me and the Homebrews, WBN chronicles the Return of the Homebrews.

There has been a renewed interest in ramping up the homebrew again from my posse, the Homebrews. We've cleaned the keg, ordered the goods, and the supplies showed up on my doorstep on Monday.

That makes this Saturday Brew Day. To prepare, I've got to activate the yeast from its dormant slumber by creating a yeast starter on Thursday. That will give it a few days to double in size and get raring to tackle the delicious malt sugar in the beer wort; 200 billion yeast cells is a beautiful thing!

 

We get all our supplies from the helpful guys at Northern Brewer. Stuff is always fresh, affordable, great quality, and delivered to our door quickly. Never had a bad experience with them.

They get my official Nod of Approval.

First up: the Lakefront Brewery Fixed Gear Irish Red.

Fixed Gear is a big, bold American red ale. It pours a glaring crimson tone with a rocky white head and a brilliant floral-citrus aroma, thanks to an aggressive dry hopping. Its immodest, malty spine and intrepid caramel flavors blow in via gratuitous amounts of 2-row pale and dark caramel malts. A balanced citrus bite comes from Chinook and Cascade hops followed shortly by mild, fruity esters from the ale yeast.

 Just looking at this I'm impressed: six hops packets!

We are seriously considering doing a double brew day to maximize our available time and to get something extra in the tank so it can age properly. Giving your homebrew a few extra weeks to "finish" can make a world of difference from first beer to last. The additional time tends to allow the flavors to blend and to smooth off any "rough edges".  Also, since we always keg our beer instead of bottling, we know that it will age uniformly.

Next on deck:   La Petite Orange Belgian Double.

A Belgian Dubbel without the deep dark chocolate maltiness, the Orange is rich with caramel sweetness and a full body that hides the 6.1% ABV very well. A simple sipper that evokes warm summery memories with every sip, yet fits perfectly into the colder months' standard brewing repertoire.

Wyeast Trappist High Gravity Y3787 is a great alternative yeast for this kit; it ferments a bit drier with a rich ester profile, malty palate, and has a high alcohol tolerance. 

In the past, we had good success with our Belgian Dubbel, so I wanted to try something in the same vein, but just a tad different. The reviews on this beer are all raves, so I definitely wanted to get in on the action.

If you love beer, this is the one to watch!

Note: to see all the entries in this series click on the homebrew label at the bottom of this post! 

Bayou Benedict

For family brunch this week I decided to try out a new dish: Eggs Benedict - bayou style. I had something similar once at a restaurant called Eggspectation and thought I'd recreate it in my own image. Ok, this isn't my picture, but it kind of tasted like it.

Plus I had some leftover turkey from Thanksgiving (who doesn't!) that I wanted to re-purpose. 

First I baked some bacon in a stoneware dish and set aside. I re-used the bacon grease to bake medallions of red potatoes in the oven. I used those as my "base" on the plate.

Then I diced up the leftover turkey and heated it up on my griddle and laid it over the potatoes. This is the unusual part: I cooked polenta on my griddle (3 minutes a side) and layered it on the plate.

Finally, I added the poached eggs and Hollandaise sauce and served with a side of toast and an orange garnish. Yum!

I've never cooked polenta before, but it's apparently made out of cornmeal. I had no idea it was so tasty, especially with a hot runny egg yolk mixed in.

Filling and pleasing and novel to boot. What's not to like?

Since You're Here ...

Just want to give a shout out to all the visitors from The Crescat: thanks for coming!

Also "mad props" to all of you who are keeping Wynken, Blynken, and Nod in the running for the Best Potpourri of Popery. It don't mean nothin' -- except to me!

As long as you're here, why not click on the RSS feed in the upper left corner to "Follow the Blynken Blog" posts and get them delivered directly to your Reader? It's private and nobody has to know your guilty pleasure ...

Or fearlessly slap your icon down on the Followers bar like the cowboys of old and become a public Nod'er. We're glad to have ya, and we'll fight any man who says different!

Meanwhile the crack staff here at WBN will humbly try to deliver the best Potpourri of stuff on these here Inter-tubes. It's a lot like life: funny, then serious, and with a case of the munchies.

Vote for our Cannonball Bloc!

• Nod at Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, Best Potpourri of Popery
• Aka The Mom's, Shoved to Them for Best Under Appreciated
• LarryD at Acts of the Apostasy for Best Hifreakinglarious Church Militant, Snarkiest, Bat Guano Crazy
• Joe from Defend Us In Battle for New Kid on the Block.

Magic Pillars

These are magic pillars.




You can see them here outside the Starjunkies. (Click for larger image.) I don't know if they belong to them or not, but for a few seconds or so a day, they belong to me.

They amuse me. Why? Because they play music when you touch them.

More specifically, they play low pitched harmonic tones when people touch them (like a touch lamp). They have different segments, too. See the rings separating segments on each pole? They are blue LED lights and they illumine when you touch that segment. Touch a higher or lower segment, and you get a slightly different tone. The tones last about 2-3 seconds and since they are harmonic, you don't get to play Fur Elise exactly, but it's kid-in-a-candy-store kind of fun and it brings a smile to my face.

For several weeks now they've been busted. I'm glad to see these guys working on them. I've been fascinated to know how they're wired.


C'mon, gimme back my magic pillars!

Blynken Makes First Holy Communion

The day was beautiful, the rain held off until Sunday. All the smartly dressed boys in their Sunday best suits filed by, paired with little girls in their dresses of brightest white.

Two by two they came, like the rescued animals from Noah's Ark, to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. In a way, you could say it was a Eucharistic procession.


My girl Blynken made her first Holy Communion on Saturday. Isn't she stunning? Her Aunt K*Lo did a fabulous job with her hair; the veil was interwoven so it wouldn't come out under any circumstances. Blynken was so enamored with her hair that she wanted to sleep in it (along with 4,000 bobby pins) and cried when we had to take it down.

In a venerable tradition (started by Mrs. Nod just now), she wore her mother's Confirmation cross around her neck, a Eucharistic pin on her dress, little white gloves to her wrists, and a beaming smile upon her face.

What a blessing to know our Lord in this intimate way: body, blood, soul, and divinity. Blynken wore her dress again to Sunday Mass and it was awesome to see Father look her in the eyes and give her that tiny little bit of extra attention and reverence in recieving the Eucharist.

Clarion Call: Catholics Come Home

A few weeks ago I mused on my own belief in this Catholic Myth: the Church doesn't advertise.

The basic preconception I had was: if you're Catholic you go to a Catholic Church, no question -- that's just how it is. I was surprised then when Washington Apb. Wuerl hit the airwaves with the Maybe It's God campaign.

So now I was a little better prepared to read the CNS report of the Phoenix media blitz which recalled upwards of 92,000 Catholics to the pews.

An estimated 92,000 inactive Catholics in the Phoenix Diocese have come back to the church in the last year thanks in large part to a groundbreaking television advertising campaign called Catholics Come Home.

The promotional spots featured people and locations from around the Phoenix Diocese to promote the church during prime-time television. The cornerstone of the campaign, the Catholics Come Home Web site, addresses often misunderstood aspects of the faith.

This is obviously good news to have so many new and fallen away Catholics returning home where they can experience the sacraments and the love of the Church for them and their eternal welfare. It's always exciting when people encounter God directly -- I could tell stories -- or through the ordinary ministers of grace in the Church. Many, many people are simply waiting for an invitation, an apology, or an offer to reconcile themselves. There will always be those who reject everything and choose to live in their bitterness, as evidenced by such pejoratives as recovering Catholic, but in the final analysis methinks the lady doth protest too much.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about. The part that caught my eye was the use of the term "groundbreaking" to describe the Phoenix campaign. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines groundbreaking as: markedly innovative. Hey, that means that nobody has done this before, right? As in, this is new and different.

Ok, so a little double-jointed pat on the back for recognizing that this is out of the norm. The Church traditionally hasn't advertised using the media. This is new ground here people: I mean even the Pope has a YouTube channel these days!

But even this new media blitz for the Church isn't quite the same as marketing; it's evangelistic, teaching; it's care for souls, restoration and reconciliation -- not "come to our Church because we've got bingo and great music". The closest we get to the hard sell is usually the annual Bishop's Lenten Appeal.

"Wherever they've been, they can come back home. It's a message that resonates," Hanning said. "I never thought I'd have thousands of Catholics calling and e-mailing me and saying, 'I'm proud to be Catholic and I want to help others.'"

Nod of Approval

Everybody needs encouragement from time to time. This one's my version of the Attaboy.

If I see something that I like or that deserves recognition, I may just give it the Nod of Approval.  Woot!

Can you tell I'm having fun with my drawing apps?

Image is governed by Creative Commons non-commercial license.