Beer, baseball & vino...

I had a great trip home a couple of weekends ago, but it was nice to be back in KC.  Last weekend we took in the Cards/Royals game on Saturday.  I was really hoping to go Friday night as there were many KC celebs in town for a charity poker tournament...and they were all at the game on Friday for a celebrity wiffle ball game.  These celebs included some of my faves...Eric Stonestreet and Paul Rudd, just to name a few!  Sadly I did not get to attend the wiffle ball game and drool over Paul Rudd.  However, we did go Saturday and tailgate before the game, which I've grown to appreciate.  I LOVE sitting around the parking lot with a couple of brews while grilling hotdogs and people-watching, one of my favorite past times!!!  It was a great afternoon for tailgating...cloudy & breezy...not hot at all!  Here's a couple of pics from the game.

A sea of red at the Big K...

Jeff and Jen...

...and us, of course, faithfully wearing our Cards attire!

 

We've been tearing up the grill lately grilling some items that we haven't before.  Sunday we grilled scallops for the first time with some tangy sauce.  Last night we grilled a pork tenderloin that had marinated in a rub all day.  They were both fabulous!  I love when new recipes turn our right. 

Here's a pic of the scallops. The brew in the background is the coveted, newly released, Boulevard Love Child #2.  It's a sour beer that they've been working on for awhile.  We first had it at a recent beer fest and loved it!  I'm not a fan of every sour yet, but I sure loved this one.  It's so sought after in KC that you can only buy one at a time...and it's quite pricey too!

Monday night vino was our vice of choice as we headed to Cellar Rat for a wine tasting that we had bought from Groupon.  I had originally purchased it before we moved here...and after rescheduling several times, we finally were able to make it to the tasting.  They have several that you can choose from but they fill up quite fast as they only allow around 14 people at each tasting.  The class we attended was called "$10 vs. $100 Syrah/Shiraz".  They had a distributor conducting the class.  It was set up as a blind tasting of 6 different wines.  Even the distributor was blind tasting!  The pours were nice, and we tasted each of the 6 wines by themselves and then with cheese, which makes them taste quite different.  We each voted on our favorite wines, and then also on which wine was $10 and which was $100. 

The wine voted most favorite, which was also our favorite, was Chocolate Box Cherry Chocolate, which tastes nothing like it sounds.  Most of us voted that it was the $100 wine, but it was actually only $19 (the second least expensive).  So we feel that we won, since we could afford to buy our favorite wine of the night!!  LOL!  Love the vintage label!

My second favorite wine was Molly Dooker Carnival of Love.  This I voted to be between $30-40.  It actually turned out to be the $100 wine!!

It was quite a fun night.  We hope to attend another of their classes soon!  It was informative, low key and fun!  I'll leave you with three fun facts that I learned while at the tasting:

• Cristal is the only brand of champagne that doesn't have a punt in the bottom of the bottle.
• Only serve hard cheese with red wines.  Soft cheese will make the wine taste tinny.
• The longer the cork, the more the winemaker feels it will age.