Reviewed: Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy

The Midwest is experiencing a debilitating heat wave, which means I haven’t left the house in the past three days. Alright, so Mad Men season 1 is the reason I haven’t left in three days; but it is over now, and I’m still not going to leave the house.

But, if I were to leave the house, it would be to buy some refreshing lemonade to quench the thirst a heat wave like this brings . . . or some beer. Introducing Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy! (That is Shandy with a “d” not shanty with a “t.”) Shandy is a harmonious blend of beer and lemonade, popular with the British. Okay, not real lemonade, but real lemon flavor. When pulled from a draft, it is so cold and refreshing it tastes just like lemonade. Only, after a couple, you’re light-headed and telling stories a little too loudly. After even a few more, you need to make sure you know where the deck ends on your friend’s half finished summer project in order to not fall off the side.

So far it may seem as though I have simply described Mike’s Hard Lemonade or a vodka lemonade. That’s where you are wrong. Ordering a vodka lemonade says to the world, “I’m fancy and don’t know how to relax and knock back a few.” Whereas ordering a Mike’s Hard Lemonade says, “I’m super lame and boring.” However, ordering a beer always says “I’m carefree and here to have a good time. I know how to let my hair down and shake out the curls.”

I do have one complaint though. The shandy doesn't seem to get cold enough in the bottles. However, it is still better than the rest. Just don't ever turn down the draft if it is available.

Oh, and for those adventurous enough to try, the Leinenkugel’s web-site says to mix it with their Berry Weiss for a raspberry lemonade taste.

This seasonal has been around for three summers now, but will be off shelves and out of bars in about a month. Until next year that is.

93 stars: As the evening rolls on, it becomes harder and harder to say: Line-En-Coo-Gulls.

Reviewed: Talking On The Phone To Someone Who Is Kayaking

It's time for me to make an announcement that we're actually getting serious. Blogging, that is. The partnership of randomly reviewing is back on. I pick up the phone and it is my fellow reviewer. She informs me that she's kayaking.

Now? I say. Yes, she says. Right this minute I'm hanging out in this little cove. Cool, I say.

I try to picture her, in her little orange kayak on the lake, paddling and holding her phone. Apparently, it's wedged between her shoulder and neck. She's not wearing her life vest because it would screw up her tan.

We start to talk blog stuff. She can't hear what I am saying. The wind has picked up. It is blowing her further into the cove. She keeps saying, What? What are you saying?

91 Stars. Nature.

Twilight Remix

I'm not one of the Buffy people (though all you Buffy fans recommend it to me all the time), but I can't help but heart the Twilight movie, and this is so incredibly well done and hilarious that I couldn't resist posting. Seriously, it's funny.

Reviewed: Smart Start Original Antioxidants

I am a cereal person. I eat cereal pretty much every morning, even on weekends when we sleep late and much later slide into the kitchen to begin the happy work of pancakes and eggs and, maybe, sometimes, bacon. And this is true because secretly I've gotten up much earlier and already eaten a bowl of cereal.

For a long time, cereal was the first thing I thought about when I woke up. Sometimes I even thought about it while still sleeping, so that cereal popped up in my dreams. I'm kind of....obsessed.

But I'm that way with a lot of things involving breakfast, because writing is all about mornings that stretch way past their end. I have dozens of pajamas, different combinations to satisfy all types of temperatures, seating arrangements (working at the desk this morning? couch? a pile of pillows on the floor?), and holidays. I eat yogurt and fruit, cereal and cereal and cereal. By six o'clock, I haven't been outside all day. I go to water my plants and see that they're dying of thirst. The mail is lonely and waiting in the mailbox. I've missed a package from my mother. My legs are stiff from sitting cross-legged in a chair for hours on end.

Smart Start is one of those double duty cereals. Yummy in milk (and it's gotta be skim in cereal, whole milk in coffee) but almost better by the handful as a snack. I admit, in the morning I usually reach for Honey Bunches of Oats first. Second choice, Smart Start. Third choice, Cheerios. And when I'm sick of sugar, Basic 4.

Listen to me, people. I know about cereal. If I know anything, it's cereal! I am the sister of one girl who ate Cinnamon Toast Crunch every morning as long as I lived with her, the other who couldn't decide if she liked Captain Crunch Original with Crunchberries, or Peanut Butter Crunch better. I am the daugher of a man who mixed Grape Nuts and Cracklin' Oat Bran in a big cup with milk, who later ate tomato soup mixed with chicken soup for lunch. And my mother gave no pause when buying her kids Cookie Crisp, a cereal that is literally a bowl of cookies for breakfast.

My taste has somewhat refined since then.

(I love cookies.)

92 Stars.

Reviewed: The Overshare

I realize that if I'm not careful this blog is going to turn into nothing more than boring work stories, BUT....people are weird! They are really, really weird! 

A guy came in the other day and we offered him a small plate for his muffin. He got super excited about it, bemoaning the fact that the bakery down the street charges $3 for a muffin and they don't even give you a plate. 

My co-worker says, good-humored, "What do they do, make you share a napkin?"

No, says he, "but I got hepatitis that way in Morocco." 

!!!!! 40 Stars !!!!

Reviewed: Yellow Cake

My wedding cake was white--delicious and gorgeous all at once--but I have no idea where it came from. Since our wedding took place in New Orleans just 7 months after Hurricane Katrina, a lot of the details were left in the hands of the thoroughly elegant and lovely general manager of the Hotel St. Marie. The cake appeared, we cut it and everyone else ate it, so it wasn't until a week later I realized how awesome it was.  

Now I work at a bakery and it seems at least once a week someone comes in from somewhere ridiculously far away to gobble up some nostalgia. "I had this cake at my father's 70th birthday party, ten years ago!" they say. Or, "All my mom wanted for Mother's Day was to have a piece of your cake again." Our specialty is chocolate cake, the famous Brooklyn Blackout, but if that's not your cup of tea we make yellow cake. Not white cake, yellow cake. 

People want it to be named differently, I can tell. Especially the snobs in the bunch. They say, "is it vanillla cake?" or "is there a little bit of lemon in this?" and I imagine saying, "Nope, that thar's just the yeller cake" to make them flee the store. Everyone wants to feel special.

The customer that makes me feel special is a high school kid who loves yellow cake with chocolate frosting. He comes in almost every day. Sometimes I save the good slice especially for him. I wish I could go back in time and be 17 again and have him be my boyfriend. He's got these incredibly nerdy glasses and an incredibly nice smile. 

He never comes in with friends like some of the other kids do--the boys talking loud and obnoxious, asking us in their most manly voice which cookies cost 50 cents, the girls that crush on them sipping hot chocolates and giggling. If he was part of that group, I would totally flirt with him in front of them. And I wouldn't even mind if he told them he was 'doing me'. I hope some 17 year-old little lady pretty soon figures out how awesome he is.  

79 stars.

Reviewed: Applesauce Jars, Eggs, and iPods

There's been this issue at work lately. An issue involving thieving. It's irritating me. The past few years of living in New York and Philadelphia, where there is actual, real life, honest-to-god crime, have slowly jaded my naivety. (I grew up in a place where I never even thought about locking my car, where my best friend didn't even have a key to her own house.) 

My grandparents once got robbed in the small, corncob of a town in Illinois where I am from. It happened either before I was born or shortly after, and as a little girl I remember whenever the subject of jewelry came up my grandmother went on and on, mourning the things she lost, the violation she suffered. She never could forget it, and didn't replace any of the items lost out of sheer dread it would happen again. 

Recently, I've felt a little more empathy on the subject. Imagining some of the things that I've come to possess in my life being snatched away, never to be seen again starts to break my heart. Nothing I have is wildly extravagant or even close to it, but...the delicate heart-shaped pendent I wore at my wedding, my collection of blue-glass birds. Even newly acquired things, like the simple little antique ring with garnet stones my grandmother just gave me as a birthday gift. Yes, I would live without them, but there would be things...missing. Oh, ouch...just thinking about it.

This is all to say that ipods are being stolen from work. Mine was the second one. It happened a few months ago, where my previously mentioned naivety kept me from realizing the theft for a week. (I kept assuring my coworkers, "Oh, I probably just misplaced it somewhere around here" like a fool.) The third one happened recently. 

Now we've targeted a culprit, who recently showed up with a similar-looking iPod and last night I was enlisted for a mini-suberfuge: check the questionable iPod for the stolen iPod's serial number without arousing suspicion. 

Here's the thing I'm leaving out. I used to be good at this stuff, i.e. filching things. Always stupid, inconsequential things. Back in the day my friends and I (my fellow reviewer included) got our hands on quite a few random ridiculousnesses that did not belong to us: pantyhose, Tootsie Rolls, a bottle of iodine, a baby Jesus, sale stickers taken from an unlocked delivery truck. Things that no one would miss, the more ridiculous the better. Success was infinite glee. None of it mattered to anyone, we were sure.

Last night when the task required those sticky fingers, that quick reflex, that easy casualness upon completion, my heart was hammering like crazy. I couldn't even read the number. Mission: Failed. 

The youthful nerve is starting to waver, that quick abandonment of ethics starting to fade. I was thinking, what it is for. How does it matter. There have been many nights I want to throw eggs, applesauce jars at the neighbors porch. I don't do it. I would have before. 

My iPod is long gone. I want the one just taken to be returned. I want justice. Terrified of theft, I have started to hide things. A necklace goes in a little jar in the corner over here. Slip the Hummel figurine into the bottom of that pot over there. Soon I will be sewing bills into the curtains, putting my wedding rings in the freezer. Soon I will spend my afternoons being entertained by the birdbath. 

Hm. Stars.