Lighthouse Beer Riptide Pale Ale Veggie Chili

It's an amazing experience when two things you love separately come together to create something truly magical. Like beer and snowboarding. Or beer and camping. Or beer and... ok, you get it. This week I had the fortune of stumbling upon one of these mash-ups from above whilst nerding about on the internet. And thus I present to you: beer and chili, together at last.

I found the original recipe on the Lighthouse Brewing website and decided to use it as a base for my chili feast, with a few tweaks & additions.

Beer adventures: Montreal & Ottawa

Earlier this month, I left my humble west coast abode and headed 4,000+km east for a week with my bestest buddy from university. The plan was to spend a night in Montreal, a night in Ottawa and then head to her cottage in Quebec. Although the focus of the trip wasn't beer, and we only really had one day in each city, I figured there had be some way to work a beer adventure or two into the agenda. And luckily, I was right.

We started with Montreal. Although we only had 24 hours in the city, I was determined to get at least a taste of fresh local beer on my lips. And so, after a quick meal at my favourite cheap Montreal eatery, we headed to Dieu du Ciel, an artisinal brewpub in the Plateau area of the city.

Camp like a (green) champ

Ah, camping. That coveted chance to head to the woods and get away from it all - to get off the computer, enjoy being with nature and drink a few cold ones on a lake. Unfortunately, sometimes "getting away from it all" also means buying a pile of unnecessary stuff, creating a bunch of garbage, and, in a few select cases, burning entire trees on a fiery inferno started with gasoline (guys on the east side of Harrison Lake, I'm looking at you).

But, that doesn't always have to be the case. Here are some tips on how to enjoy staying in the great outdoors without being a jerk to the earth:

Photo by Thruhike98 on Flickr

Beer adventures: Bellingham, WA

Lately, more and more of our travel plans seems to revolve around beer. And I don't mean just drinking it - I mean beer as a destination, whether it's a brewery, an event or just a bar with amazing craft beer selection. And this is a trend I am totally okay with.

The idea of a Bellingham beer trip started with Boundary Bay Brewery. I'd been thinking about visiting Boundary Bay ever since I tried their IPA at the Central City Cask Festival in June (needless to say, it was good). A couple weeks ago, I got tired of talking about it and decided to finally pick a date. The plan was to camp out at one of the nearby state parks and ride our bikes in to visit Boundary Bay. But... since we were going to be in Bellingham anyway, surely we could squeeze in more than one brewery? And with this logic, 1 brewery became 3. In 24 hours. Here's how it went down:

Cheaper by the (half) dozen

Ok, let's get one thing straight: I love BC. I'm all about supporting the local goods (including beer) whenever I can. But... sometimes you just happen to be in the United States, staring at a cooler full of delicious craft beers, all of which are $5 or less. And you just go with it. And then you end up with 6 tasty tall bottles in the fridge, straight from Point Roberts, Washington, just begging to be swilled.

Here are some highlights, courtesy of my tongue:

Easy ways to cut down on food waste

I've always felt guilty about throwing out food - and we eat so many vegetables in our house that it ends up being 3/4 of our weekly garbage (living in an apartment means no city food scraps pickup). I'd had a compost for a while, but was still throwing out fruits and veggies every week, much to my frustration. Finally, the kick in the ass I needed to start getting creative came in book form: American Wasteland by food journalist Jonathan Bloom. The stats are shocking (almost 1/2 of all food produced in the US ends up in the landfill), but some of his big- and small-picture ideas on what we can do to change it are pretty inspiring.

Here are some of the simple ways I've been able to cut down on food waste over the last few months:

Central City Cask Festival 2011

There's this funny thing that seems to happen every time I attend a beer festival - as the day wears on, the glasses go down quicker, the friends become more plentiful... and the notes get messier.

wait... what?!

But thankfully, it's hard to forget a particularly delicious brew (no matter how many of them you consume). The Central City Brewing Cask Festival - the first of what I hope will be an annual tradition - saw the craft beer crowd gather at the brewery in Surrey to sample specially-made casks from 25 breweries.

my lovingly-filled tasting glass

The beer started flowing just after 11 am, and flow it did. Nobody seemed to mind that it was June 25 and looked more like Feburary outside - we had beer! So much beer!