Fall Into Oktoberfest

Today was a lousy day. One of the worst ever. There were some highlights. For example, we participated in a cupcake tasting contest. However, we also had to drive to Rhode Island to pick up a borrowed car from a friend. This took up much of the day. We also had to go to Target which was terrible. Worst of all, our laundromat had been evicted which meant we had to find a new laundromat to drop off our clothes to since our laundry room was still recovering from flood damage.

This took us until about 8:00 PM where, beaten and defeated, we came to terms with the fact that we'd have to do something about dinner.



After a brief debate about whether or not to eat some sketchy Japanese or Mexican food across the street form the laundromat we returned home. After all, I'd had plans to do something semi-German today as it was the first day of Oktoberfest.

Jen put together a plate of pretzel baguette, mustard, cornichons, and Cambozola, a German blue cheese.



While Jen put this together I caramelized some onion and threw some pork bratwurst into the pan to sear it. And that's pretty much all I did for that course. It was very taxing.



I wanted to kick off Oktoberfest with a German beer so I picked this Oktober Fest-Marzen form Ayinger. I figured there wouldn't be a better beer to kick off the holiday -- or whatever the hell Oktoberfest is.



For dessert I made vanilla ice cream with chopped up Bartlett pears and I drizzled some of the leftover pear poaching liquid I'd made. I didn't really have time to make anything real so I figured this would be the most appropriate Oktoberfest dessert seeing as how it contained beer.

Perhaps I'll have time to actually draw some real inspiration and make something vaguely authentic later on in this event. Event? Celebration?

Well, I guess I have until October 3rd to figure this all out.