Stuffed to the Gills

Tom and I just got back from the inaugural beer dinner at Thoroughbreds, a brewpub that opened less than a year ago in Leesburg. We've never been before, but my brother-in-law found out about it from the Chile Man and asked us to go. What a pleasant surprise! The food was very good and the beers were excellent. It turns out that our neighbor is the brewmaster there. It's pretty amazing.

So, we started off with a little bit of grilled duck sausage on crostini with creole mustard. No beer with that little tidbit. That was followed by:

• Smoked cheddar and ale soup (Paddock Pale Ale)
• Baked Oysters on the Half shell with Spinach and Bacon (Dry Mill Keller Pils)
• African Spiced Chicken Breast with Preserved Lemons over Basmati Rice (White's Ferry Wheat)
• Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Mole Sauce, Plaintains, and Black Beans (Ball's Bluff Barley Wine)
• Apple Phyllo Tart with Caramel Sauce (Oatmeal Stout)
• A premiere tasting of their Dopplebock

Now, I'm not normally a big beer fan. It's okay is small quantities. But this place served pints (or close to it) with each course. In the interests of staying somewhat sober, I drank less than half of each beer, except for the White's Ferry Wheat and Ball's Bluff Barley Wine. I didn't think I liked wheat beer (or heffeweizen) very much, but this was very good. And paired with the chicken? My, oh my! Was it ever tasty! The Chile Man's Thunderbolt sauce was served with the chicken. It's a habanero-based sauce and it was quite tasty and quite hot.

The challenge now will be to try to get a good night's sleep on a very full stomach (there went the diet) and feeling somewhat decent in the morning.

In knitting news, I was successful in casting off the sock and actually getting it to go over my foot. I'll probably graft the toe on Friday or over the weekend. And then I'll have a picture. The sock isn't perfect, but hey...it's my first sock. And it was fun to knit and finally understand short rows. My very first knitting class was a sock class and the whole concept of short rows gave me a headache that lasted the entire weekend.