1. Normally, tasting rooms in the breweries in our nations's capital don't open until 4 o'clock on Monday -- if they open at all, but this Monday was different. It was Labor Day. Four breweries sit within about a half an hour of our apartment home in NE Washington, DC and I'd been to three of them (DC Brau, Atlas, and 3 Star), but never to Hellbender. That changed today. I zipped down New Hampshire and after a few turns on a few streets I found the cul de sac at the end of 2nd St. NE where Hellbender is located. I ordered a flight of Red Line Ale, Ignite IPA, Te Pahu Pale Ale, and Bare Bones Kolsch. These were tasty beers and I relaxed for quite a while, listening to conversations in the room and thinking about how much I enjoy low key times like this in these DC breweries. Today, it was so low key, I was able to concentrate and read another chapter or two of A Lincoln.
2. DC Brau is only about three miles or so from Hellbender and I thought it would be fun to pick up some Corruption IPA for dinner at the Diazes tonight and to buy a sixer of On the Wings of Armageddon for our apartment home. The small tasting room at DC Brau had plenty of customers, but I spied a chair at a little round table against a wall and bought myself a pint of Corruption and slowly enjoyed its hoppy and, to me, slightly nutty, splendor and started reading Jay Parini's compact biography of Jesus, a contribution to Kindle's Icon Series. I enjoyed the introduction a lot and thoroughly enjoyed being back in the friendly confines of DC Brau after a two months absence.
3. I buzzed by our apartment home and picked up the shakshuka sauce, the batata harra, a half dozen eggs, our container of crumbled feta cheese, parsley, and my electric frying pan. I arrived at the Diazes, set up the frying pan, got the leftover eggplant, chickpea, tomato casserole out of the fridge, combined it with the shakshuka sauce (a perfect combination), and poached the eggs on top of the sauce. The shakshuka was relatively mild but the batata harra was more spicy, complementing each other, and, served with the pita bread leftover from Thursday night, we had ourselves a top-notch Mediterranean dinner. I was very happy that the Deke, Molly, and Hiram enjoyed this meal.
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