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2 chicken breasts chopped into large pieces

1 bottle of draught

1 tbsp chopped thyme

1/2 leek finely sliced

1 tsp sugar

2 tbsp butter

6 pitted dates

1 cup mushrooms sliced

1 tbsp cornflour

1 bay leaf

salt and pepper

Fry the chicken in 1 1/2 tbsp of the butter until golden in a heavy based pot. Remove from the pan and add remaining butter. Add leek and sprinkle with salt and sugar, fry until transparent. Add the beer, bring to the boil and return chicken to the pan, add the mushrooms, thyme, bay leaf and prunes. Simmer and then add the cornflour mixed with a small amount of cold water and stir until mixture thickens. Cover and simmer on low heat for an hour. Season to taste with salt and cracked black pepper.

Serves 2

This is my own recipe. Hope you like

Whilst I enjoyed my blink-and-you’d-miss-it trip to Queensland, I do have a bit of an issue with the Sunshine State’s drinking habits. For a start the drink of choice is XXXX Gold. Now, when I travel, my outlook is this: wherever you are drink the local drop. If it’s good enough for them, it should be good enough for you. Besides, what’s the point in drinking your usual beer while you’re away anyway?? Where’s your sense of adventure?? That’s how I feel NORMALLY. However in Queensland I have an entirely different opinion…

I’ll start by saying that I think it’s largely because of the climate that almost everyone - even the biggest , hairiest men I have ever seen - drinks mid-strength beer in Queensland. Let’s face it - it’s hot and sweaty and you need to drink a lot to stay hydrated. So I guess if you were slamming down full-strength beer all the time you’d be spastic in minutes.

So that would explain why it seems to be home to every conceivable kind of mid-strength beer. I didn’t even KNOW Crown Lager had a mid strength version. Until my parents told me they had a couple of Crownies downstairs and I almost tangled myself up in myself trying to actually get in the fridge with them until I realised they were a slightly alarming gold colour….. That’s right. Crown Lager Gold.

Cast Thee Out.

It’s not that I’m a beer snob - you should know by now that I’m not. It’s just that mid-strength beer to me is the single most abhorrent thing you could drink - next to a shandy. (Sorry Cash!)

It bloats me, seems to lack taste and most of all it lacks that delightful ability to get me drunk.

And I just don’t like the way it makes me feel. Probably because I am sober enough to realise that the beer tasts terrible.

So that’s why drinking in Queensland can be an awkward experience. I have no doubt that if I spent more time there that I would aclimatise and end up drinking middies with pleasure. But until such time, I will continue to fight for the full-strength beer’s rights. Mostly because I live in a place that is so cold for half the year that you need to drink full-strength beer just to stop you from slipping into hibernation.

But also because mid-strength is wrong. Wrong, wrong WRONG!!! It’s half a beer. It’s not quite a beer. It’s the apathetic beer!!

FIGHT THE APATHY!!!

Crack a full-strength beer now!!!

On the weekend I did a funny thing…. I flew 3000kms north to regional Queensland just to surprise my dear mum for her birthday. It was 7 hours worth of travelling. 7 hours of delays. 7 hours of avoiding all forms of liquid lest I should need to use that vacuum-sealed suction-cap they try to pass off as an aircraft toilet. And finally, 7 hours of trying to avoid the lolling head of my fellow passenger as she dozed, completely oblivious to the fact that she was becoming increasingly and uncomfortably intimate with me.

And she had bad breath. Poo breath. I personally believe that she was was put together upside down and hiding somewhere beneath her jeans and between her butt-cheeks is a perfectly formed mouth.

So you can see that by the time a reached my destination I was not only horribly dehydrated but also horribly sober. It’s ok. I found an Irish Pub called Dicey’s. They had Guinness on tap.

In order for you to truly understand my delight you’ve got to have have a brief outline of this town. It’s an industry town, so basically it exists to employ workers to refine aluminium and oil, make cement, toxic chemicals and other things that are too messy/dangerous/ugly for the rest of Australia to deal with. The people that live and work here work damned hard and they party hard. It’s honest. It’s down-to-earth. It’s naive and it’s corrupted all in one. It’s certainly not a place where a woman such as myself who lacks both the ability to swear like a man and look like one would drink alone. And yet, an hour and a half after stepping off my odourous flight that’s exactly what I found myself doing.

I was curled up in a cute leather lounge in a massive, dimly-lit pub drinking Guinness and reading Shakespeare by Bill Bryson. It was like I had stumbled across a little oasis in the middle of desert that knew no full strength beer. Hmm, this is sounding just a bit too refined…. I should mention that at this time there were four other patrons sharing the pub with me who insisted on shouting Fuck to each other instead of using actual words. I have no idea how one knew what the other was saying - but somehow they did.

Aside from the conversation being conducted entirely in expletives, it was a beautiful moment. I know some of you are recoiling in horror at the thought of drinking alone but it wasn’t as knobby-no-friends as you’d think. In the middle of a town where I felt out of place and a bit nervous, this beautiful Irish Pub was my security blanket. Well, actually, I think it might have been the Guinness. Whatever it was it was the perfect pre-surpise calm I needed.

Just for the record, the look on my Mum’s face when I walked into her office made the 7 hours of Hell On A Plane well worth it - the Guinness was just a bonus!

Tallies are the free thing we are getting with our slab at the moment. I know I should be grateful because basically I’m getting free beer with my beer - but I’m not grateful. I’m annoyed. Something seems to go horribly wrong with beer when it’s housed in a vessel this big. You pour it out and no matter how much gravity you employ it still remains flat and without head. And it gets warm.

Also anything to do with tallies makes me want to shuffle into to the nearest TAB, put on my checked slippers, start talking with a slight whistle and curiously have memories of serving in World War II.

Much like Cascade Lager, tallies are a bit of a Poppy’s drink. Although the Poppys probably drank them back in the 60’s and 70’s before they became Poppys and now can only manage half a stubby at a time. In fact I can just see the look of joy on hundreds of time-wearied faces as the brewery suddenly announces they are going to produce 8oz pony-sized stubbies!

So really what I’m saying is that tallies are a bit old fashioned. A drink of the past. You can just imagine the looks you’d get if you turned up to your in-laws for Sunday lunch with two tallies. It’s just not socially acceptable any more. But 30 years ago - clearly before anyone realised that beer was best drunk cold and fizzy - it was common practice to cart at least a dozen tallies round in the back of your Holden ute.

Real men drank beer out of a tallie. Or a glass.

Ah those were the days.

What am I saying? I hate beer out of a tallie! Maybe it’s just the thought of tanking round the countryside in a beat up old car, the sound of 12 tall bottles of beer slowly going flat and warm in the back, am radio blaring tinnily from the shot speakers, and knowing that all your worries were soon to be dissolved by those 12 bottles of lukewarm, dead-flat, shaken-up beer.

Or it could be the fact that it’s 10:39 am and I’m sober and any sort of beer would appeal right now.

Yep. That’s definitely it.

I take a certain pride in my son knowing how to say “Cheers!” delightedly as we chink stubby to non-spill cup and then both take a hearty, satisfying swig of our respective beverages. I think somewhere deep down I know that this is probably wrong and that the Department of Child Services might be interested in me, but I can’t help it. I just want to show off his endearing talent to other parents. Especially the ones who smugly tell me that they don’t say “No” to Little Johnny, they like to say “Just Looking” because it’s kinder. They tell me this while Little Johnny is quietly but successfully picking the pocket of a large, heavy-set bouncer.

I do have to admit however, that I felt a bit sickened today when we pulled up to the bottleshop and Felix (afore-mentioned offspring) chirped “Beee-ahh!”

I went cold.

How does he know the beer comes from here?

How many times have we brought him here?

Surely not that many…. oh my god… I started to wonder if we were enjoying a harmless joke or really creating deep-seated memories in a future alcoholic?

And then I thought of weedy, sooky Little Johnny and his behavioral problems and his smarmy, sober, humourless parents, and I thought…. so what?! So what if Felix grows up to enjoy a drink or 5?

At least his parents aren’t dickheads.

Last night I sampled Anchor beer which appears from my half-arsed investigations to be imported from Asia - Cambodia I think. (I had no idea they were a beer-producing nation. They they are now on my Places To Visit list.)

Upon first tasting it I thought it distantly resembled Stella Artois but after a few seconds more I realised that it has quite a strong after-taste. It’s a pilsener so by nature it’s quite crisp and clean, but it seems to have a quirky little bite to it. I think it tastes caramelised - like burnt sugar. Sort of sweet but bitter too - like artificial sweetener used to taste before they removed the carcenogens…. Not unpleasant at all but certainly not a beer I would be likely to buy by the carton.

Although if it was on special and came with something free I could surely be talked into it.

I had lunch at the pub again today. Massive schnitzel. MASSIVE. Two pots. A good time had by all.

You’d think after such a heavy meal followed by several alcoholic beverages that it would take the edge off beer o’clock. But it doesn’t - I find that drinking at lunch time is the best thing you can do because it pretty much renders you immune to any alcohol you consume after that. It’s true! Many times I’ve had 3 or 4 stubbies with lunch and gone on to drink more that evening than I could normally hold in an entire week.

Bit shit if you’re actually TRYING to get drunk - but quite a useful thing to know if you just like the comfort and monotony of draining one stubby after another.

And I do…

You know what I love? Free stuff that comes with a slab. It’s the best kind of free because you were going to buy that slab anyway - you ALWAYS buy a slab. So it really and genuinely is something free - you didn’t have to lift a finger to get it. I don’t even care what it is that comes free. About 4 months ago the freebie was a Cascade glass with a handle that looked like it could render a large sexed-up bull unconscious with a flick of your wrist. I don’t think it even held beer - it was just a solid mass of glass. But I found myself clapping my hands with glee and arranging them slightly obsessively in my cupboard each time my husband brought one home.

Just for the record we ended up with about 5 and they are still arranged lovingly in our top cupboard and I am still yet to use one.

Stupid handles.

The best thing that I ever got was a Cascade beer glass that was perfect. It made the beer taste even better than it does straight out of the bottle. It made made me feel immediately calm and serene - and that was before I poured the beer. It was a great shape too - not to short and dumpty but not too tall and pretentious either. It just felt right in my hand. I loved that glass. I used to rinse it out after I’d finished drinking out of it and put it in the fridge to chill. Never even washed it - imagine the seasoning on that glass!! The other thing that made it so right was the amount it held. It was a 10 ounce - so you’d pour your can or stubbie into it and then when you were finished - Behold! More beer left in the stubbie! You just don’t get a surprise like that drinking out of the taller glasses that hold the whole can.

Yep. I really loved that glass.

And then someone broke it.

He’s tried to replace it. For the sake of our marriage. But unfortunately for him (and me), because it was a freebie there’s no chance of getting another one.

So I’m drinking out of stubbies now.

But I still get a flutter of excitement whenever I see the bottleshop attendant reaching for a brown paper bag to accompany my slab. I’m just secretly hoping that instead of the stale chips and tickets to a regional footy match, there might be another perfect beer glass in there.

There never is - but a girl can dream can’t she?

I read a news story the other day that women should only consume 2 standard drinks a day for ten years or something before they got some sort of brain damage. Short term memory loss, inability to concentrate, that kind of thing. Nothing major like forgetting how to walk or who you are or suddenly starting to talk with a British accent or anything.

So I was thinking, well, I drink about 3 to 4 stubbies a night on average - some nights less, some nights a fair bit more. Keeping in mind that a stubbie is approx. 1.4 standard drinks… I guess it all evens out in the end. This behavior started around the time I started to earn enough money to be able afford to drink on a regular basis. So about 5 years ago.

That leaves me a damn good 5 years worth of brain-cell suicide!

Woo-Hoo!

Someone get me another beer to celebrate!!

For the men-folk out there reading this - you can rest easy because according to the research you guys can safely consume about 6 standard drinks a night for ten years without causing damage. However the article mentioned that a large percentage of men believed it was ok to consume 20 standard drinks a day for 10 years before incurring any cerebral compromise.

You wish hahahaha!!!!

(So do I!)

Well, now I’ve only got 4 years, 364 days and 23hrs left to continue the abuse on my long suffering brain.

I’ve got to go and make the most of it!

Cheers…

So we have just returned from our pub (see previous post re. Living Next Door to a Pub etc.) having had 3 drinks while our son miraculously sat patiently in his stroller. It’s a beautiful thing because it’s a rare thing. We went for one quick drink - I had a banana, a drink and a Hairy Mclary book in my bag so I thought we could be good for at least ten minutes but I think we made 30 without the wee man turning himself inside out and squealing at a frequency that could shatter glass and deafen small dogs. Bless him.

This all came about because while we were buying stationary, my husband decided he fancied a pint.

Not a drink. A pint.

Ok. I understand more beer is usually better but I truly fail to see the attraction of a pint and here’s why:

1. It’s basically two pots right? Well wouldn’t you rather have one icy cold drink followed by another icy cold drink as opposed to one enormous drink that starts off being cold and ends up being the temperature of your hand?

2. It’s massive. It’s the Toyota Landcruiser of beer. Maybe if you’re 6ft 7 and built like the proverbial brick shithouse, well maybe it suits you. But if you’re 5ft 6, female, weigh less than a heavily packed day-pack and have hands the size of a toddler - it’s just too big. I can’t be arsed even lifting the thing.

3. See either of the above - they’re both good points.

So that’s how I feel about pints. They might be cheaper, they might even make you feel special while you’re ordering one, but in the long run you might as well order a jug and drink out of that.

But don’t tell my husband - he probably will…