Christmas in Edmonton

We had a great time together in Edmonton. It's not all that often that Mom and her kids and most of her grandkids and her great-granddaughter get together, but we did it this Christmas. Mom was in good shape, even making buns and cinnamon rolls. As is usual with our Mennonite heritage, we didn't drink that much, but did we ever eat! Marian and Pete did a great job of keeping us well fed and entertained. I didn't take a whole lot of pictures in Edmonton, or at least pictures that are worth keeping. Here's one of the few that made the cut.

One of the attractions of Marian and Pete's place is watching the birds at the various feeders in their backyard. This year, we were witness to a cold-blooded murder. Or at least a bird-feeding of a different kind. A merlin, a.k.a. a pigeon hawk, swooped down and grabbed a sparrow who was too busy eating the free seed to notice death was lurking nearby. The merlin retired to a nearby spruce tree where he had his Christmas lunch.

As I noted earlier, it's not in the Mennonite tradition to drink much as these kinds of gatherings. But there are some of us who like to bend the rules and push the edge of the envelope. I went out for a wine and beer run, and as I often do when buying beer for a crowd, I bought a bunch of different kinds. Dev had the bright idea to do a blind taste test and see who was best at identifying the various beer we had available. She and Megan labeled the bottoms of a half-dozen glasses, filled them with the appropriate beer, and away we went.

It should be noted that I was in great fear of being exposed as a beer fraud. For most of my adult life, I've loved drinking beer and prided myself on my discriminating palate, but I'd never done a blind taste-test before. So it was with fear and trepidation that I did the test. The beers were these:

Czujsko - a Croatian beer

Castle Lager - a South African brew Pete and I learned to love in Zambia

Hophead - a Canadian super-hopped microbrew

Alexander Keith's IPA - an IPA that's been brewed in Newfoundland forever

Heineken - needs no introduction

Czech Mate - a pilsner from a Saskatoon microbrewery

We were all essentially given the identity of the Hophead. Not only is it super-hopped, it's far darker than the rest of the beers.

After the first round of sips, I was absolutely sure of three of them - Hophead, Heineken (always tastes sweet to me), and Alexander Keith's IPA. I had drunk this IPA on several occasions, and it is definitely not a northwest microbrew style IPA. In fact I've always thought it was downright bland. It took another round of testing the remaining beers to pick out the Czech Mate. It isn't really a pilsner-style beer by my definition, even though it's quite good. I was pretty sure I picked it out because I could taste the microbrew edginess that big brewers somehow get rid of. So I was left with another round of Castle and Ozujsko. I've always liked Castle because it's light and crisp with a touch more hops than you'd expect in a mass-produced beer. Ozujsko is more like a Northern European lager in the Beck's tradition.

So how did I do? Well, alone among the seven or eight competitors, I was SIX for SIX!!! My reputation and self esteem, are still intact!