What you’ll need:
2 potatoes
1 tablespoon butter
Vegetable oil

Start by boiling the potatoes in a saucepan for about 5 minutes.

Take the potatoes off the heat, drain the water, and let them cool. Keep in mind they’ll be warm or hot all the way through (it makes grating them lots of fun).

Once you’ve got your potatoes grated, warm up the griddle. The recipe says to turn it up to medium; I have a thermostat on mine and set it for 275-300. Pour a little oil on the griddle and add the butter.

Once your griddle is nice and warm and the butter has melted and been spread around, get the potatoes on. I had to work them with the spatula to flatten them out and spread them out a bit.

Cooking the hash browns takes some time. The good part is that you can pretty much leave them on indefinitely, turning periodically, while you cook your bacon and eggs and get the coffee going. For extra credit, have them on your deck in the 70 degree weather.

It was a hard run, and I found myself wishing I had trained more than I did, but it was easily one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I’ve got a good baseline time to beat for next year, and now I’ve got a little something tangible to remind me what I get at the end of that run…

What you’ll need:
1-3 tablespoons oil
1C long grain white rice
1 onion, minced
6 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
Cumin
1/4C frozen corn
2C chicken broth
1 lime, quartered

Begin by heating the oil in a saucepan large enough to accommodate the 3 cups of rice we’ll wind up with in the end. Add the onions and saute until they are tender and slightly translucent. Add the garlic and stir it around for a few more minutes.

Add the rice and stir vigorously for a few minutes to get the rice warmed up. Don’t stop stirring or the rice will stick to the bottom and start to burn. Add the cumin and frozen corn, and then the chicken broth. Give it a few good stirs to get everything mixed together, and then cover the pan and cook bring everything to a boil. Once you’ve reached a boil, reduce the heat and cook the rice for about 20 minutes.

Once the rice has cooked, transfer to a serving dish and squeeze the lime quarters over the top, turning the rice over as you go. Enjoy!

Two things I will add to my next batch of Mexican rice, in addition to more cumin, are cilantro and a small amount of tomato sauce. I may also add black beans at some point. The problem with working with such a small amount of rice to begin with is that a regular can of black beans is overkill with only 1 cup of rice; I’ll have to do black bean burritos or something along with it.

Enjoy!

Also, the measurements are almost nonexistent. Use your best judgment.

What you’ll need:
1.5lb chicken breasts
1 onion, minced
Cumin
Garlic powder
Salt
Pepper
Chili Powder
8oz shredded cheese (cheddar or taco blend works well)
Approximately 20 corn tortillas
1 can of green chiles, diced
2 cans of cream of chicken soup (or 1 large family size can)
8oz sour cream

Begin by cooking and shredding the chicken with a fork. I just boiled the chicken on the stove, but you could get fancy and grill it.
Put the shredded chicken in a large mixing bowl and add the garlic powder, cumin, salt, pepper, chili powder, onion, and cheese. Stir it all together until it’s well-blended.

Heat a small frying pan and lightly grease one side of a tortilla. Fry the tortilla for a few minutes on each side until it’s warm and soft. Fill the tortilla with the chicken mixture, wrap, and place in a greased baking dish. Repeat until you’re either out of tortillas or chicken.

In a separate mixing bowl, combine the cream of chicken soup, sour cream, and green chiles. Spoon the sauce on top of the enchiladas.

Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 35 minutes. Top with salsa, if desired, and serve. Enjoy!

Fermentables:
6.6lb Light liquid malt extract
3lb Golden dry malt extract

Grains:
1lb Caramel 80L
8oz Victory
4oz Carapils

Hops:
2oz Columbus pellets (bittering)
1oz Columbus pellets (flavoring)
1oz Columbus pellets (aroma)
2oz Chinook whole leaf (dry hop)

Yeast:
1 sachet (I can’t remember which one we went with)

Heat 2.5 to 5 gallons of water to roughly 150 degrees and steep crushed grains in grain sock for approximately 20 minutes. Remove grains and add malt extract, bringing the wort to a boil.

Hop additions:
60 minutes: bittering hops
20 minutes: flavoring hops
5 minutes: aroma hops

Chill with ice bath or wort chiller to approximately 70 degrees, rack into primary fermenter, and pitch yeast. If necessary, add clean water to increase volume to 5 gallons. Ferment in primary for approximately 1 week, then rack to secondary fermenter and add dry leaf hops. Ferment an additional two weeks prior to bottling or kegging.

I’m not sure what this is going to taste like yet, but at this point it smells an awful lot like Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo IPA. I’ll be interested to taste one in a few weeks and see what we get.

- Most active month on RunKeeper (21+ workouts)
- Best running month ever (42.1 miles)
- Best running distance ever (9.3 miles)

It certainly helps that for about a week in the middle of the month we had the warmest weather ever recorded. For a week in there, while it was still technically winter, we had 80 degree days and 60 degree nights. Trips were made to Captain Sundae, windows were thrown wide open to let in the warm air, runs were done outdoors in shorts and t-shirts, and I drove around town with the sunroof open. It was glorious.

My challenge at this point is to avoid complacency. Last year, as the weather improved, I started to slack off a bit. My running mileage fell by two-thirds, from around 30 miles in March to barely 12 in April. I’ve got River Bank Run training this year, which should help keep me motivated, and now I’m trying to push myself just a little bit more, to see just how far I can go. So far I’m injury-free, and I’d like to stay that way, but I’d also like to continue to pile on the mileage and push the records a bit further. So, here are my goals for April:

- 50 miles of biking outdoors
- 60 miles of running

If the running distance sounds like a big jump, it’s because it is, but also consider this: in the next four weeks, I’ve got four long-distance runs to do as I get closer to the River Bank Run. Each week this next month I’m adding another mile to the route, which adds up to 46 miles of running if I only do that, and I’d like to do some shorter runs during the week with my friends. 15 miles over four weeks is easily doable.

Here’s to pushing the envelope!

Thus, here we are, one week out from having the first beer I’ve had since Mardi Gras. I thought that tonight would be a good time to reflect on the journey so far.

I was originally a bit concerned that I wasn’t going to make it the entire season and just give up part way through and order a PBR at Butch’s after a long day at the office, or have perhaps just a sip of the beer that I was bottling with my friends today. This is the longest I’ve gone without drinking since I was 19, and it’s been an interesting experience. While I’m not saying I’d continue this whole not drinking thing (I like beer too much. And wine. And Captain Morgan), it actually has not been as hard as I thought it was, even though I didn’t join my friends in drinking to celebrate a good friend’s birthday, or St. Patrick’s Day, or winning the soccer game, or breaking a personal best for distance on a run this morning. Although I pretty much stayed at home and didn’t partake in any St. Patty’s Day activities, I still had a good time at my friend’s birthday party in Grand Rapids, and I still head across the street after work and have fried melty cheese or half-priced boom boom shrimp while they sip on microbrews.

I’m glad that I did this, and I’ll probably look back on it in a few months and decide that I was just a little insane, giving this up. It’s been good for me, though; I’ve lost about 10 pounds, and I’ve had no excuse to not work out in the mornings or go on long runs. Hopefully this will help restore a little balance in my life.

Now, for these last six days, I have just one last challenge: deciding what on earth am I going to have to celebrate. The first Oberon the year? A PBR at Butch’s?

Here’s what you’ll need:

1lb Fettuccine pasta
1lb chicken breasts or chicken breast tenderloins
1lb shrimp, cooked, with tails removed
1T butter
2T Olive oil
6 cloves garlic, minced (if you’ve got issues with texture, garlic powder works too)
1pt heavy whipping cream
1T Cajun seasoning
2-3C shredded Parmesan cheese (I prefer to shred it fresh on the spot, but pre-shredded is fine. Just don’t use the Kraft stuff in a can)
Pepper and salt, to taste

Start by heating the water for the pasta.

Slice the chicken breasts into small pieces. I just sliced them short ways across.

In a large skillet, heat the tablespoon of butter until it’s melted and has covered the entire pan. Add the chicken and cook for a few minutes, turning occasionally. If you want to go for a crispier texture, leave it in a while after it turns white and is cooked through. Don’t worry about the brown crud the accumulates in the bottom of the pan; it’ll be gone soon.

Once the chicken is cooked all the way through and crisped to your liking, remove it from the pan and set it aside.

At this point, your pasta water should be boiling. It took about 9-10 minutes for me to cook the fettuccine; you’ll want to start this next step immediately after putting the pasta in the water.

Turn the heat down to medium and add the olive oil and garlic. Toast the garlic lightly in the oil.

Turn the heat down to low. Add the heavy whipping cream, pepper, Cajun seasoning, and, gradually, the cheese. The sauce will thicken as you add cheese and stir. If you’ve got brown stuff on the bottom of the pan from the chicken (we call this flavor), you’ll find it’s actually pretty easy to scrape off at this point.

When you’ve got about 5 minutes to go on your pasta, put the chicken and the shrimp in the sauce to get it warmed back up. At this point you can increase the heat a bit. Turn the chicken and shrimp around a bit to get it good and mixed up in the sauce.

When the pasta is ready, drain and transfer to a large bowl, and then add the sauce, chicken, and shrimp. Toss as best you can.

Serves approximately four to six.

The 10K was a rough one; in terms of complexity, it fell somewhere between the River Bank Run (which wasn’t all that hard) and the Lakeshore Miracle Run (which had the dune of death). There were some nasty hills on the run, although none came close to what I dashed up in California. I finished a little slower than my River Bank time at 59:29, but my only real goal was to finish within an hour. I was pretty tired later in the day after the run, but it was exhilirating to think that my friends and I were doing runs like this in March. It gives me a little more confidence that the 25K I’m running in May will be doable.

Now I just need to find another 10K to do in April.

Anyways, in the spirit of keeping lists, here are my brewing goals for 2012:

Vanilla Bourbon Mead (in production)
This is my attempt to replicate the first mead I ever drank. It was made by my friend and still remains one of the finest forms of alcohol I have ever consumed. The 2012 Vanilla Bourbon is presently in secondary awaiting flavoring (beginning of April) and bottling (end of May) before it is forgotten for the next six months. This was done in a slightly different way than most meads, and seems to be maturing a lot faster than normal. I’m going to have to work pretty hard to forget about it.

1492 IPA (in production)
1492 IPA is my attempt to dress up a kit IPA that I picked up a few weeks ago. It’s got about a week left in the secondary fermenter before I bottle it and condition it. I took a basic IPA kit and after allowing it to ferment for a week, dry-hopped it with 2 ounces of Chinook hops. Because it’s Lent and I gave up alcohol, I haven’t tasted this since it was wort, but I’ve been told that it tastes “like an IPA.” I guess that’s all I can ask for.

Fauxberon (planned)
The advantage of being so close to Bell’s Brewery is that you have a lot of homebrewers around who have had a chance to try and clone this spectacular seasonal beer. I love Bell’s Oberon, and while our first attempt to make it went south (I used a 6.5 gallon carboy as a secondary; big mistake), I intend to take another crack at it. This will probably be the next beer I get going after the 1492 IPA.

Irish Red Ale (planned)
A few weeks ago I got my hands on a Groupon for a homebrew starter kit from Midwest Brewing, which included a kit. I went with the Irish Red, because it’s spring and it’s time for something light and flavorful. Once it shows up I’ll rotate it into the plan. Might be what I make on Easter Vigil.

Oaked IPA (planned)
The first batch of beer that I ever had a hand in making was about a year ago on my friend’s back deck the day before Easter. He took a stab at making an Oaked IPA, and it turned out pretty well, if slightly overcarbonated. My hope is to make a batch of this at some point this summer, perhaps when my supply of 1492 is running low.

Summer Shandy (planned)
I’d like to make a beer that’s sufficiently light enough that the ladies would drink it. Since pilsners are probably beyond my reach at this point, I figure trying to clone the Leinenkuegel’s summer beer would be a little more doable.

Victory Lap (planned)
I haven’t decided what type of beer this will be yet, probably some kind of lighter wheat beer, but the intent for Victory Lap is to make the kind of beer that you’d have after accomplishing great feats, like running a 25K, biking 100 miles, or brewing a spectacular batch of beer. In a perfect world I’d can this stuff so I can take it into the shower, but if I did that I’d completely replace any use I have for PBR.

This list will surely grow as the summer wears on and I try and think of more things to brew. As I finish beers I’ll update the list and grant them their own post.