I'll Make It Myself!

Craft beer wasn’t the only delicious thing I had on my trip to Nagano. Let’s recap!

今回日本語でも書いてみようと思って、日本語で読む興味がある方がいらっしゃいますか？スノーモンキービアライブのんために長野へのROAD TRIP、行こう！

[...]

I finally got to attend the 2013 Snow Monkey Beer Live, an annual craft beer and live music festival in Shiga Kogen, Nagano, which took place from March 16-17.

[...]

Source: coffeefirstalways

While I’ve regrettably come to expect national-brand beers to perpetuate the stereotype of beer as a man’s drink and insult women in the process, what about craft beers? Caroline Wallace of  Bitch Beer recently discussed this in her article “How to alienate female beer drinkers in one easy step.”

Bitch Beer is a Austin, Texas-based beer blog written by a group of women. Bitch Beer’s name is similar to that of Bitch Magazine/Bitch Media:

We went with the name Bitch Beer because we want to disprove the old adage that women aren’t really beer drinkers. We’re evoking a name often given to sugary, low-alcohol content beer substitutes like Smirnoff Ice or Mike’s Hard Lemonade to prove that, from a stout to an IPA, these so-called bitches can drink any damn beer they please. You heard us, every beer is a Bitch Beer.

Wallace starts with a comparison of two beer ads seen at a local roller derby event. (Please refer to article for photos per BB‘s request that “All beer labels and photos of advertisements are displayed for educational purposes and should not be reused”). The first ad

was for [craft brewery] South Austin Brewing and features a bottomless woman toting a bottle of beer with the tagline “Your Champagne Just Got Jealous!” Now, as opposed as we are to the use of exclamation marks, and as confused as we are about why she’s still wearing her cowboy boots, the more disturbing thing here is definitely the use of a half naked female to sell beer.

[...]

I caught up on a lot of reading over the holidays, so I’m going to do a separate post on what I cooked and ate.

In this edition of Kitchen Library: cupcakes in Tokyo, craft brewing designations, a review of one of Kirin’s “low-malt” drinks, cherpumple, and more!
[...]

Thanks to Jessica Goodfellow of Axis of Abraxis and Ashley of Surviving in Japan for featuring my kabocha purée recipe on their sites!

Kabocha daifuku at the Don Don Matsuri in Komatsu

[...]

Note to self: when you are at a beer festival, it’s best to go with your gut instinct of voice-recording your comments on the beers into your phone instead of trying to write them down. You can barely read your own writing when you are sober, and participating breweries will fill your commemorative half-pint glass full each time. With your penchant for stouts and, speaking of half-pints, your stature, you can’t expect to produce anything legible or necessarily logical three drinks in, let alone five or six.

Also, don’t forget to begin each audio entry with, “Diane–.”

The Tanabata Beer Festa Toyama, held the first full weekend of July each year in Toyama City, Toyama, is one of Hokuriku’s only beer festivals. Miraculously, my husband and I were both free of obligations that Sunday and hopped the train south with a couple of our friends for an afternoon of craft beer. I hadn’t been to a beer festival since I left Michigan three years ago, so I was beyond thrilled.

What does one drink when confronted with 20 breweries’ worth of Japan’s finest craft beer? Make a game plan. When I attended the Michigan Brewers’ Guild Summer Beer Festival, I decided to only drink cherry beers, as those are much harder to get on draft than stouts. This time, after three years of living deprived of regular access to stouts, I circled 5 stouts I’d like to try, got a pizza for lunch, and set to work drinking.

[...]

There are few phrases I hate more than “guy food.”

As it’s now mid-June, Father’s Day has come and gone, and, like any proper holiday, we celebrate it with food. However, as a food blogger and perpetual recipe-hunter, I’ve been bombarded with so many blog posts, articles, and recipe suggestions for “guy food,” “guy-friendly food,” and “meals for dad” that I’m starting to wonder if the gender police are about to knock on my door and arrest my husband and me for willful negligence of the hunter-gather roles we so clearly agreed to in our wedding vows. Because all gender roles are totally fixed and set from time immemorial, and culturally-informed personal preferences have nothing to do with food consumption!

Someone didn’t get the memo. Image via imgur. For the meme, see Know Your Meme: “Stock Photo Cliches”

Somewhere along the line, American culture decided that cooking meat over charcoal was the epitome of manly cookery, as it combines the three tenets of heteronormatively masculinizing your home-life: gadgets, the outdoors/the yard, and meat. [...]

While on my coast-to-coast beer-adventure, my friends and I stopped in a brew pub around Buffalo because when is it not time for delicious beers when you have good company?

I love brewpubs, but I confess that I’m not skilled at pairing beer with food. The great thing about brew pubs is that they know what pairs well, since they make it all. So here we four (two heterogamous couples) are, torn between the maibock and the amber ale. Female friend decides she wants the maibock, but the rest of us decide to ask for the waitress’s recommendation.

I don’t want to be able to see through it.

“I think the amber ale pairs well with most foods because it’s really smooth,” she says. “The maibock is also smooth.” And literally right as I’m about to agree with her that a smooth amber sounds great with this veggie dish I am about to order, she says to the group, “Oh, but that’s just my girl brain. Maybe your boy brains are different.”

[...]

Slight change of pace today as I have just returned to Kanazawa from an ambitious trip to the US. Since food and food culture are never far from my mind, much of my culture shock was culinary: actual vegetarian options! The cereal aisle! The peanut-butter aisle! Food labeled with allergy and dietary restriction information! Take-away boxes for large meals! Sourdough bread! Being able to substitute side dishes and ingredients!

Mostly it was neutral or positive shock; I was really happy to have plenty of choices to eat in the major metropolitan centers, rediscover some hometown favorites, and–you guessed it–have a constant flow of craft beer on draft. You all know how much I love Michigan and Michigan beer, but we didn’t visit my beloved second-homestate on this coast-to-coast whirlwind adventure. But between the two coasts and the Midwest, everyone I visited in the US, from my high school friends to my parents and in-laws, were determined to show me the beer time of my life on my trip home. Even the bride made sure there’d be nice dark beer for me and our real-beer-loving Japan cohort at the West Coast wedding! As a result, I got to enjoy some old favorites and try some new contenders, including some from Mt. Carmel Brewing Company, a microbrewery in my hometown of Cincinnati. [...]

I’ve noticed an increased interest by foreign bloggers and media regarding Japan’s (read: Tokyo, Kyoto) street food culture in the last month, and as I was at a large food fair in Kanazawa, I figured it was time to add my comments and photos to the table.

[...]