Asheville "Chef's Assistant" Research Weekend.

 

We took a little research trip to Asheville recently and attended the Winter Warmer Beer Festival. Beer is a great ingredient to use while cooking. It's loaded with flavor and sugars that cook down to nothing but delicious goodness. It also tenderizes, which is great for stew meats and ribs...heck it's great for chicken and pork too. :)

 

Mmmm....beer.

 

Enjoying the event.

 

As an added bonus, Chris' cousins from Charlotte joined us. We've spent every southern Thanksgiving with them since moving here and absolutely love these guys! So glad they made the trip.

 

So in our research we made the following discoveries.

Asheville ROCKS. It has a load of microbreweries and craft beer. Our favorite beer of the weekend quite possibly was the Green Man ESB. (Though their Porter...and their Stout were also quite tasty.) We were able to enjoy it on Friday night at Jack of the Wood pub along with some live bluegrass music. (The good kind a la O Brother Where Art Thou, not the scary backwoods, rambling kind.)

 

We ate at LAB the night prior to this and had some good beer here too. Chris had an amazing burger (cooked in a wine and caramalized onion sauce) and I had Frog's Legs. It was my first time...and probably my last. The recipe was delicious. The meat was....well my cousin Karen described it well "Like chicken marinated in pond water." That said, the Dunkelweizen was very good!

 

Organic beer is becoming big.

 

Despite how I look, I was not inebriated. Just posing. :)

 

Happiness is...

 

Ok. Seriously. This mullet was child abuse. And I have to be honest - not sure if it was a boy or a girl. Hoping a girl...

 

Fenway was queen of the King sized bed this weekend. Special treat: she was allowed on the bed. She had no idea what to do at first but took to it pretty quickly. She loves us both but is definitely a momma's girl and gave Chris all the room in the world to sleep while curling up so tight against me, she left me with a sliver of bed to sleep on. It honestly felt like a cow was on the bed with us (and she is not a big dog...)

 

Mountains on the ride home. So pretty.