St Patrick's Day Dinner

What is best for St. Patrick's day?  Brewing and partying.  This year, however, St. Patrick's day fell on a Sunday and it was raining.  We still had a grand Irish dinner, though!

I would have taken a better picture, but I was salivating at the time and incapable of caring beyond the first shot.  My wife put a corned beef, carrots, potatoes and cabbage in the crock pot and set it to stew all day long.  In the afternoon she baked Irish soda bread to tide us over until dinner.  The brew is a stout which I recently tapped.  Although it sates your appetite it entices you to keep eating, because it is scrumtrilescent (Thank You Will Ferrell).  Holidays are about food and I believe this is a tradition which will remain in our household.  I look forward to preparing brew/food combinations for future holidays!

Cigar Culture and Weddings

My wife and I got married four days ago and are now moving on from all the tedious work of planning and executing that wonderful event.  We had an absolutely wonderful time and were reminded of how great our friends and family really are.

During the preparations for the wedding I saw firsthand how much more expensive services become when wedding is attached to the product.  A cake is inexpensive.  A wedding cake, even if exactly the same, can be extremely overpriced.  This phenomenon is true across the board, except with cigars.  

I recently visited J Shepherd's cigar shop on Bardstown Road here in Louisville to purchase the gifts for the groomsmen.  Each of them received a Padron serie 1926, an Oliva V Belicoso, matches, and a double-bladed cutter.  They took twenty percent off the whole purchase, reduced the price of the cutters, provided bags and matches for each of the groomsmen to keep things neat, AND threw in a Padron Family Reserva which is an expensive and delicious cigar.  The culture of cigars is to embrace occasions and celebrate them, not gouge them like wedding vendors often do.  Cheers to you J. Shepherd and cheers to cigar culture everywhere!