Pretend Texan Sweets

We passed by this business several times during our San Antonio trip, and it had a big tower that reminded me of a White Castle on steroids. It turned out to be Pioneer Flour Mills. While the company is older, this particular mill was built in 1859 and is still operating today. The make Whataburger's pancake mix as well McDonald's McGriddle buns.

We had dinner at Mixtli which was sort of a contemporary Mexican fancy restaurant where you buy the set menu and let them do the magic. They had a really cool philosophy where they taught you about Mexican history and tried to incorporate historical flavors into the dishes. I thought that it was a good idea but I was less impressed with the execution.

Bread Service

Brioche, foie gras, orange jam

I've had pate and foie gras in the shape of a cherry twice now, and even knowing ahead of time what it is, biting into it is always sad. I wish it was just a cherry.

Chayote Heart Salad

Green apple, white anchovy, citrus vinaigrette

Roasted Beet Mille Feuille

Chipotle, mole blanco

Rutabaga

Turpial Cheese

Salmon

Sauce cardinal

Sweetbreads

Pan seared sweetbreads, black garlic

Sweetbread is another thing that just sounds like it will be awesome. Like pancakes or banana bread or something. Then you get it and it's "thymus (also called throat, gullet, or neck sweetbread) or pancreas (also called stomach, belly or gut sweetbread)". Sad!

They had a couple actual desserts that were really good. One was sort of ocean themed with ice cream and a lot of other stuff going on. I think that was the one part of the meal that I completely enjoyed.

I recall during my Anheuser-Busch days talking about how Texas drinks so much beer that they regularly get special packages just for them. Must be nice.

Post Malone and My Short Roulette Lucky Streak

Post Malone was about to come to town and the local bar The Post did a promotion with a St. Louis radio station to give away tickets. I convinced some work friends to attend, and then some old work friends from Anheuser-Busch showed up as well. It was a weird worlds colliding moment for them to meet each other.

The game was kind of fun. There was a specially marked tallboy in this cooler and if you fished it out you won the tickets. I'm so confused about where the damn can was. I tried 2 or 3 times and so did many of the people I knew and none of us pulled it. What the heck are the odds of that? How many cans could possibly be in there. Eventually someone grabbed it. I was sad.

I did take this magnificent Bud Light home with me so I was happy about that.

Afterward someone came up with the bright idea to hit the Ameristar Casino.

I don't usually play table games because I'm too cheap, but one of our Uber drivers on New Year's said something about betting on 20 black on the roulette wheel since it had just become the year 2020. I put a bet there and a couple other places.. and it landed on 20 on the first spin! I stopped betting immediately. Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, etc.

The New Keurig of Booze

Today at work they unveiled the Drinkworks Home Bar. It is a literal Keurig for beer and cocktails. They had several machines set up in the lobby for everyone to try.

You don't get much more America than drinking mixed drinks you were too lazy to make yourself next to a titanic eagle statue and a flag.

I have a Hawaii trip on the books I'm looking forward to so I made sure to sample the tropical drinks.

I'm less excited about the beer option than the cocktails. I guess they purposefully came up with sort of obscure import flavors of beer for the machine. One reason is I think a facility in Europe might be the only place equipped to create the beer concentrate pods. Also they didn't want to include like say a Bud Light because they didn't want people to start comparing the product in a normal bottle to the product coming out of the machine.

Another grand plan came to fruition today. A few weeks back the office had a fundraiser thing for United Way. Cool. Well part of that was a raffle drawing/silent auction combo for all kinds of Anheuser-Busch themed swag. Things got as fancy as like A-B branded iPads and Apple Watches. Anyway I've wanted a neon beer sign for a long time but they had a price tag that made me sad. All of the neons were on the silent auction side of the game and people were bidding them up to hundreds of dollars each. No thanks. There was one exception: there were two Kirin brand signs on the raffle side. Kirin is less well known to most people probably but I did some time in Japan and I would be happy with that sign. So I stuffed that item's drawing box with $15 worth of tickets.

The day of the drawing I won one of the signs! Hurray. When I went to pick up the box though I could hear stuff rattling around in there. That was not a good sign. Sure enough I opened it and it was broken. I very embarrassedly returned the box to the lady running the operation. Lucky for me she was in Procurement. And she said that she could procure me another sign. A few weeks went by of me bugging them about it until my sign arrived.

They couldn't get the same sign I'd won but I didn't really care. Bud Light was even better!

This is now like one of my prize possessions. It's bright enough that if you look directly at it it will melt your face right off.

Pride Parade Bud Light Float

I'm a parade person. I had fun at the St. Louis St. Patrick's and Mardi Gras parades. I also did that one weird one in Japan where I dressed up like a samurai... Anyway when I heard Anheuser-Busch was sponsoring a float in the St. Louis PrideFest Parade I was all about it.

A day or two before the parade we got our parade supplies at the office. There was lots of swag to be had.

On parade day I suited up and walked to the parade staging site. Parades being downtown all the time is a lot less annoying when you are participating in them.

There was a lot of pre-parade moving of boxes. I don't know why they gave me a bunch of beads that I took home, then brought back to the parade where there were tons of boxes of beads. Oh well.

The main "float" vehicle was sort of like an armored personnel carrier with a giant sound system inside.

Honk honk.

I tried to prepare by taking a lot of beads out their bags and draping them on my arms. I was rewarded by my sweat mixing with the dye on the beads which then stained my arms blue. Fun.

Whipping beads at screaming strangers never gets old.

A Very Anheuser-Busch Christmas Party

After work I took Lydia to the Anheuser-Busch Christmas party. Essentially it was a turbocharged version of the typical brewery lights experience, plus everything was free. And better. Freebetter.

Shrimp eaten off of an ice sculpture really do taste fancier.

Inside the beer garden the place was a circus. I had expected something a little more dignified, but it seemed everyone brought their seven children to see the bouncy castle and the petting zoo. It did have a kangaroo so I can't blame them.

We hit that open bar like a hurricane. They had a slushy machine full of Lime-A-Ritas. Lime-A-Ritas have the delicious taste of the margaritas that you love, with a fun, refreshing twist.

Outside they had Ices Plain & Fancy liquid-nitrogen frozen ice cream and a carnival ride.

Our parting gift was a case of Bud Light, which was exactly what I wrote Santa asking for!

Poor Lydia went to get some and they told her to F off because she doesn't work there. Here she is F-ing right off. Sad!