The Ram's Bite

I like to think of myself as a new adult. Currently I am 22 but I still live at home with my mother, while I can't afford to move out I do otherwise support myself thanks to a small retail job. I digress, part of being a new adult means I get to go out and conduct myself in an adult manner. That means it's now up to me to make sure I'm visiting my doctor, that my health insurance is available, my prescriptions are filled, I maintain my car, I go grocery shopping, I maybe even consider stock options.

One of my favorite activities as an adult is having dinner parties. After I ask my mom (lol) if I can host I begin to plan. Cooking has been one of my favorite things to do for a long time. I remember as a kid when we were first able to afford basic cable I'd channel surf those 90+ channels, one day I happened to stumble across Iron Chef. This wasn't the Americanized version that is popular today, this was the original Japanese version that was dubbed with cheesy voices and an obvious dub-lag. I fell in love. The ingredients were new to me, I saw sea urchin for the first time. The chefs would cook these incredible, sometimes bizarre dishes and I was just enamored. I'd never seen anything like it before. While my family has never been shy about food, I just wasn't exposed to Japanese cuisine like this before. Yeah, I couldn't taste the food or let alone smell it but just seeing it was so new.

Iron Chef led to me watching a ton of cooking shows, my favorite being Good Eats where I learned about the science behind food. This led to me having a fascination with food that has continued onto my adult life, I love cooking and have cooked dishes from around the world.

I decided to keep it simple and prepare a dinner of steak, potatoes au gratin, a salad, and some strawberry shortcake for dessert. Paired with all of this was Wicked Ram IPA by Shiner. IPA stands for India Pale Ale, a category of beer within pale ales which just means that they are brewed using pale malts which means these beers are hoppy.

I didn't realize my mistake until it was too late. IPAs are bitter, they're about as bitter as they come and honestly I still have a long way to go before I can get accustomed to drinking IPAs. The beer had a nice light yellow color but the hoppiness of the Wicked Ram was unforgiving. The bitterness bit like a bullet and it took quite a few bites of potatoes to get the flavor out of my mouth.

Unfortunately I was not a fan but I think that was mostly due to the fact that my palette hasn't gotten used to the bitterness of beer yet.