Chicken-Pumpkin Tacos with a Post Road Pumpkin Ale

Well, if you checked the calendar today, you saw that today is October 1st.  You know what means, right?  Stores are already selling Christmas stuff!  Tis the season!  It also means were are moving towards the single coolest holiday of the entire year - Halloween.  

What makes Halloween so cool? Scary (but fun) themes, cooler temps (a frost last night here in southeast Michigan), changing leaf colors (they don't really change color so much as they expose colors that were already there), the end of ragweed season (yay!) and, of course,  pumpkins. In the hands of crafty people, pumpkins can mean two things for sure: witty dinners and craft beer . 

Using "Pumpkin: A Super Food for All 12 Months of the Year" (you can get it here), the Chicken-Pumpkin Tacos hit the spot. The Cliff Notes version of the recipe is this: use chicken, pumpkin, red peppers, and a small mix of onions, cumin, tomatoes, salt, hot sauce, cilantro, and chili powder for the filling.  Top it with cheddar cheese, sliced avocado, salsa and sour cream  in a flour tortilla,  and you have one hell of a meal.  Leftovers galore, too!   Pop 'em in the nuker and you  have food for the next few days.   If I weren't such a pig, I could easily get three days out of it. Careful with the filling, though. It does not take much to turn your taco into a super burrito.

Unfortunately, while the tacos were awesome, the Post Road Pumpkin Beer (#648) was a bit rough.  Brewed in Brooklyn, New York by the Brooklyn Brewery (no way!), you had better like spices if  you are going to give this one a go.  Cloves, allspice and cinnamon are all there and in big quantities.  In the aroma, the body,or the  finish, it doesn't matter - you can't escape it.   I really like beer to be a journey of the senses (smell, taste, and feel).  This beer is a journey of...cloves, allspice and cinnamon.  Also, that small limbo between the swallow and the finish was cluttered with a weirdness that is hard to describe.  You might think of it as acidic before it gives way to a bitter, somewhat icky completion.  The color, body, and head are all great, but the spices were simply overdone.  It is very unlikely you would want more than one.  On the best day, I can't give this a three out of five.

I guess you could say I had a Halloween-style dinner last night - a seasonal meal with a somewhat scary beer.