Toast Tuesday: a day late and a Meade short

I feel like I am sitting down for the first time in a week.  I have had so much fun the last three days.  The best stories start with Dude I had SO much to drink… or this one time at band camp… Well, I had a couple glasses of wine, and when someone said there is a midnight bike ride coming up that we should do, I thought it sounded fun.  I actually thought it was a great idea right up until it a couple hours before.

I’m usually in bed about 9ish during the week because my alarm goes off so early.  On the weekends, I’m willing to stay up later if there is something to do, but will fall asleep if I’m just hanging on the couch.  So about the time I should have been crawling into bed, this seemed like a really bad idea.  I had committed and I went.

I was awesome, if I must say so myself.  For the gal who hasn’t ridden a bike in at least three years, I got out and rode 15 miles!  I thought my muscles would object more, but they didn’t.  Other than my bruised bum from the horrible bike seat, I felt really good the next day.  After going to bed at 3:30AM I was a bit tired and didn’t get a nap in before my friend showed up.

E is on a road trip visiting friends and family and I was delighted to have her come to Memphis.  As she said, it was nice talking to someone you didn’t have to give the back story to before you told the rest of the story.  I could just pick up in the middle of the sentence and she knew right where I was.

The first night she arrived, we had Vietnamese.  A nice low key dinner.  I had to work on Monday, so she got to sleep in, hang out on my patio, and enjoy a leisurely morning.  That’s what vacations are for.  Monday night we  had a wonderful dinner, which you saw yesterday.  The Beauty Shop is one of my favorite restaurants, ever since I went there back in 2006 after sneaking out of my niece’s Bat Mitzvah party.  I have never had a bad meal there, and while it isn’t every day fare, it does not disappoint.

So, tonight I am sitting on the couch getting the stink eye from Coe because we haven’t been for a walk.  I’m so happy to be doing nothing at this very moment, she can give me another minute.  Meg gives us a really good history of meade, so I am going to skip all of that and just tell you what I drank.  As usual, I had to do some searching to find meade in this town.  When asking for meade, I got more than one Huh?! what’s that?

I finally made it to a liquor store that had meade.  And yes, I had to buy meade in a liquor store because it is high gravity.  What is considered high gravity varies from state to state, but it generally means higher in alcohol.  I brought home two different ones and neither will see my fridge again.

Sadly, it was the one I was most looking forward to that was the biggest dud.  If the guy in the store told me it was still (no carbonation), I missed that.  I like me some bubbles.  What had really sold me on this particular bottle were two things… 1) the bottle itself, a pretty blue bail bottle.  2) it had some infusion of juniper berries.  This meade has an odd after taste that just did  not work for me.  Sadly, their website kinda sucks and also left a bad taste.

The second meade was better than the first, but not by much.  I was happy to see this one has fizz, but it had a strange chemical finish that I couldn’t place at first.  After going back to the bottle after a walk with Coe, the chemical finish reminded me of artificial sweetener like aspartame.

I don’t need to get either of these meade’s again.  I have had meade in the past that I’ve enjoyed, so please do not think I don’t like meade, because I do.  Just not these two.

I’m going to pour myself into bed now, at a respectable hour and hopefully wake when my alarm goes off to start a new day and a new adventure.

Cheers!