This past Friday night my wife and I ventured out to do something we hadn’t done in a while, enjoy dinner out by ourselves, meaning without our year old son. My sister-in-law offered to take him to Disney On Ice, so we took full advantage of her offer. Since we have accumulated a large number of Groupon style certificates, I choose from them and picked the place I thought our son would least enjoy. That’s not to say that Strong’s Brick Oven Pizzeria isn’t kid friendly as we saw numerous families with children during our visit.

Mural Outside Strong’s

Strong’s is in Newport, Kentucky just a block down Monmouth Street from Newport on the Levee. Though I’ve likely driven past their location in the past, I have never noticed the restaurant before. I think that is partly due to the fact that they are relatively new in town. From my very brief research it looks like they opened in early April of this year.

Entry To Strong’s

Strong’s is built into an old house and has a bit of a funky layout because of this. Upon opening the front door there is a hallway to the back where the restrooms are. Turning right and through a narrow doorway lies the entry to the restaurant itself. The first thing you will see in the restaurant space is the large brick oven as well as most of the food prep area. We were greeted by one of the employees who took our name for the  wait-list  and offered us a bottled beer. There is no bar and only bottled beer is available, along with wine. There are not many areas to sit while waiting, but fortunately it was only a ten minute wait for us.

Back Dining Room At Strong’s

There are two dining rooms off of the main room described above. Each has just four or five small tables. There is also an outdoor patio with picnic bench seating. The brick walls are covered in memorabilia of  New York and other Americana styled items. We sat in the back room and while all the tables were close together and conversation often bled from table to table, it didn’t feel overly cramped. With that said I don’t think large parties would enjoy the space.

Bruschetta

We started with the bruschetta – six slices of fresh bread baked in the brick oven covered with marinated diced tomato, onion, herbs and garlic ($7.45). The bread was wonderful and the imported tomatoes were very good. Easily enough for the two of us to share, and larger parties would have had enough too.

Pizza Alla Vodka

Just as we had finished the bruschetta, our 16″ pizza alla vodka was delivered to our table. This specialty pizza combines fresh mozzarella, Strong’s famous cream vodka sauce, seasoned fresh mushrooms, spinach and Prosciutto Di Parma ($16.95). The pizza looked and smelled great. The toppings were all placed on top of a generous amount of mozzarella. The dough was very soft and chewy, with just a hint of crispness on the outer edges. The taste was great and I really enjoyed the vodka sauce as it wasn’t overpowering and it let the other ingredients really shine through. This definitely ranks high on my list of Cincinnati pizzas.

I know, you are probably just as sick of politics these days as I am, but I’m trying something new this year. With the help of my Facebook friends I’m trying to predict the results of the election. Since I have lived in two of the so-called battleground states, I feel that my friend distribution in these states gives an interesting insight into the election.

Since I announced what I am trying to do nearly two weeks ago, I have seen over one friend per day cast their Facebook vote for one candidate or the other. Votes are cast by “liking” either the Facebook page of Barack Obama or the one for Mitt Romney. Though the number of votes has increased nearly 15%, I was still hoping for even more votes being cast. Of my 669 Facebook friends only 141 have endorsed a candidate, just over 20%. If you are afraid that your Facebook feed will be taken over by the candidate of your choice, you can easily remove all of their posts from your timeline, so there is no reason not to.

Currently Barack Obama leads the popular vote 71 to 70. However things get quite a bit more decisive when you look at electoral college votes, as a few of my friends have suggested. Taking those into account Obama is up big with 241 votes versus Romney’s 60 with 237 still undecided. With that said, my Facebook poll still says it is anyone’s game. What are you waiting for? Cast your vote today!

Though I have yet to have any Oskar Blues beer in Ohio, I’m super excited to have one of my favorite Colorado Breweries regularly available to me again. As of Monday, cans and kegs of Dale’s Pale Ale (along with their other offerings) are available throughout Ohio. Take a look at all the events in the Cincinnati area alone. Be sure to pickup some of their stuff and let me know what you think.

Sunday afternoon we headed down to Big Bone Lick State Park in Kentucky. Go ahead and laugh at the name if you’d like, I’m guilty of doing so on  occasion. With that out-of-the-way understand that the area was named  after the big bones, including  mammoths  and  mastodons, found in the  swamps  around the nearby  salt lick.

The Birthplace of American Paleontology

This was actually my first visit to the park, despite it being just over a half hour drive from Cincinnati. The attraction that drew us in was the annual Salt Festival, which celebrates American pioneer life. It was sort of life a small Renaissance festival but geared much more toward explorers like  Lewis and Clark. I saw demonstrations on fire building, musket shooting, and even a shotgun wedding.

Festival Site

Fire Building

The Critters in the Classroom group were also present with a variety of birds on display.

Critters in the Classroom

We finished off our day at the festival by eating kettle corn, drinking root beer fresh from a keg, and listening to some traditional Kentucky bluegrass music.

Bluegrass Band

After our time at the Salt Festival, we drove further back into the park to see the bison herd. I’ve seen plenty of bison before, but these were very close to the fence line and didn’t seem bothered by us at all.

Bison Herd

I think this was the 27th annual Salt Festival, so be on the lookout for it next October.

Saturday morning I ran my first half marathon at the third annual Cincinnati Half Marathon. Prior to the race I said that I was shooting for an 8:30 pace and I hit it pretty much dead on. According to the results  I finished in 1:50:39.3, which is an 8:27 pace. I was the 235th overall finished out of 1,260. Also finishing 33 out of 96 in my age group (male 30-34).

Running Group

Despite running nearly every other race in town, my dad had never done the Cincinnati Half. He decided to join in and run the race with me. We also ran with my neighbors, who originally told me about the race a few months ago.

On The Course

Overall the course was nice. The first five miles weaved through downtown, with the only real hill coming at about mile 4. The rest of the course was an out and back on Riverside Drive, which is very flat and pretty easy to run. The last mile was through Friendship Park and Sawyer Point, which provided a nice spot for spectators and finishers to gather.

Finish Line

My legs were completely dead at the end of the race but are pretty well back to normal today. I don’t have any future race plans at this point, but I’ll probably return to my shorter three and four milers starting tomorrow.

If you’ve been thinking of refinancing your mortgage with today’s low rates, I have a great recommendation for you. We just closed on our refinance this afternoon and were able to drop our rate down to 3.5% from 4.25% with absolutely zero closing costs. After shopping around a little bit, we used a recommendation from my brother and it couldn’t have been any easier. I contacted Ron Erdmann Jr.  with First Place Bank on October 1 and we closed less than 20 days later. Most of the work was done through email and faxes, with just a couple of minutes spent on the phone to put together our application. Now that’s how I like to do business!

This morning I finally wrapped up my training for my first ever half marathon. After seeing that the  Cincinnati Half Marathon  would take place just a month after the Hudepohl 14K, I decided that now would be as good a time as any to try running a farther distances. The 14K was previously my longest run, just under 9 miles, so it would be about another 4 miles of running to finish a half marathon. In my training I peaked with long runs of 10, 11, and 12 miles on back to back to back Saturdays, so I should be well prepared for the race on Saturday. If anyone would like to see me in action, the race starts just after 8am from the intersection of Pete Rose Way and Eggleston Ave. The course winds through downtown for 5 miles before jutting out Riverside Dr. to Delta Ave. and back.

This past Friday a large group of Kim’s family members headed to Creepy Ridge, a haunted house experience near our lake house in Williamstown, Kentucky. After a couple of beers around a campfire at the lake, we all piled into a few cars and made the quick trip down route 22.

Creepy Ridge

Upon our arrival we immediately saw a magic show in progress in the barn pictured above. Most of us found seats inside to see the entertaining but overall poor quality magic show. This attraction didn’t cost, but the magicians (which there were 2 separate acts) solicited tip money after each of their performances.

Titanic

After the first magic show we all decided who was going to head into the haunted house. Since we had a few kids with us, I opted to stay behind along with a couple of other adults. We did see a couple of other families taking smaller children into the haunted house, but afterward our group said they were glad that we left our’s behind.

The haunted house starts with a trip on the haunted Titanic, which is constructed on top of a flatbed trailer. Once full the Titanic is pulled by a  semi-truck  a quarter of a mile down a trail to the haunted barn. I’m told the both the inside of the Titanic and the barn were very dark and full of narrow hallways. Overall it didn’t seem to scary to the more experienced in our group, but was frightening enough for our junior high school aged crowd.

Creepy Ridge is open  7 pm  – midnight  every Friday & Saturday night in October. Adults are $15 and children (12 & Under) cost $6. Print the coupon below for $4 off each adult admission, if you do decide to go.

Coupon

Friday afternoon my wife and I decided to head somewhere new (both for us and Cincinnati) for lunch, BrewRiver GastroPub. BrewRiver opened in mid August on Riverside Avenue in the former Maribelle’s space. Though it is less than three miles to downtown Cincinnati down Riverside, the restaurant isn’t very easy to get to from certain directions. The other main route is a  couple of miles on Riverside from Delta in Columbia-Tusculum, as we did on our visit.

Bar Area

Though it was sunny outside the day of our visit, it was still a little too chilly to enjoy the really nice looking outdoor patio. Upon entering the main side door to the first floor dining area and bar, we quickly saw how crowded the space already was. I was expecting to have to wait for a table or decide to come back again another time. Fortunately the host/server who greeted us just moments later led us to a table on their spacious second floor. Normally this space isn’t open during the day, but the staff was more than  accommodating  for us as needed.

Upstairs Dining Area

Having a completely empty second floor to ourselves was actually nice in a few ways. First, we brought our toddler aged son along with us, so he had room to run around when sitting for lunch was no longer fun. But even more importantly we were able to have extended conversations with the chef and hear the cooperative effort coming from the upstairs kitchen.

Finishing Touches

There is a large selection of beer available, including some house beers which are brewed by the Great Crescent Brewery in Aurora, Indiana. I sampled the  Calliope India Pale Ale, which is a British style IPA meaning that it is more balanced than the more hop forward West Coast style. The beer was quite good and I wish it weren’t lunch so I could have sampled more than one of their offerings.

Chicken & Sausage Gumbo

After placing our drink orders we were told the soups of the day, one of which was a chicken and sausage gumbo. Being that the chef  spent 6 years working under Emeril Lagasse in New Orléans and Atlanta, we were excited to try this dish. As our server pointed out, the gumbo isn’t as spicy as what you might find in New Orléans, but it was still very good and full of large chunks of chicken and andouille sausage.

B.L.T.

For lunch I selected the B.L.T. sandwich served with fries and house made catsup ($10). Our server was quick to point out that the bacon is actually pork belly that is ale-brined and  cured  in-house. And while it still looked a lot like bacon, the taste wasn’t as smoky, which I missed. With that said the sandwich was still pretty good and I like that it was served with  local lettuce and tomatoes on toasted farmhouse bread. The fries were hand cut and fried to perfection. The serving size was more than enough and I found the plantain based catsup very interesting and a refreshing change from the normal tomato based.

Fish And Chips

My wife went with the fish and chips ($16). The fish is an ale-battered cod and it came served with a  house-made kimchi tartar sauce. Again this dish was served with plenty of fries and the same catsup as before. I tried a couple of small bites of the fish and it was very fresh and tasted great, especially with the tartar sauce. My wife proclaimed this as the best fish she has had in quite some time, and that includes a recent trip to San Francisco, so you know this is the real deal.

Even though it may not be the easiest place to get to, BrewRiver GastroPub is definitely worthy of a visit for great food and an awesome beer list.

Stone Brewing Co. released a beer last week called Enjoy By 11.09.12 IPA. From the brewery:

Let us present to you a new, devastatingly fresh double IPA. While freshness is a key component of many beers – especially big, citrusy, floral IPAs – we’ve taken it further, a  lot  further, in this IPA. You see, we specifically brewed it NOT to last. We’ve not only gone to extensive lengths to ensure that you’ll get this beer in your hands within an extraordinarily short window, we made sure that the Enjoy By date isn’t randomly etched in tiny text somewhere on the label, to be overlooked by all but the most attentive of retailers and consumers. Instead, we’re sending a clear message with the name of the beer itself that there is no better time than right now to enjoy this IPA.

This was the second time they’ve done this style of release, and early indications are that it is even more popular this time around than the last. It’s been just a week since the beer first appeared in Cincinnati and it seems that our supply is already gone. I had the opportunity to sample the beer on draft at the Cock & Bull in Hyde Park  on Thursday night. I also was fortunate enough to find a bottle at a liquor store near my office for my dad, a friend, and I to split over the weekend.

Devastatingly Fresh

This release of Enjoy By was kegged and bottled on October 5th, so I had it six days and then eight days after being shipped. And while that seems like an insanely quick turnaround, a new local brewery in town has a different take on things. Getting fresh beer from local breweries is each brewery’s number one goal. However it is often hard to tell how fresh a particular offering is, especially on draft. Fortunately this particular brewery does a great job of announcing when their beer is tapped throughout the city. All of this will definitely have me stopping to check for dates on bottles a little closer when making future purchases.