Getting My Stamp On

 A few years ago when we were at the Royals game, I was told about a Facebook group that is all about visiting different stadiums. I just kind of made a mental note and figured that information would be useful down the road. A few days later we were at the Iowa Cubs game and I saw the Minor League Stadium Passport and bought it. It was a bit outdated since Savannah was still listed but I didn't care. We were on a mission to see all the minor league parks and this would be a good way to track them.

Iowa Cubs versus the Colorado Springs Sky Sox was my first stamp. I would pick up several more minor league stamps including Midland and Nashville. Then the pandemic happened and minor league baseball was restructured.

Then while at spring training the other year, I saw someone carrying what looked to be a passport. Sure enough there is a spring training passport and I had to have it. So now I have 2 passports plus my national park password. It is still 1 park.. 1 stamp. No multiple stamps for me.

I never really felt the need to stamp in at a Major League game since the ballpark app allowed me to check in and track teams and stadiums. Then the pandemic hit and I discovered the Ballpark Stampeders Facebook Group.

This is a group of baseball fans that visit baseball stadiums and stamp in. Some have been to all 30 stadiums and more. This group made me want to stamp in at Major League games as well. However, unlike the minor passport, there are several options for the major league park.

You can get the Big Book -- which has a page for each of the current major league ballparks and allows you to add inserts as new parks become available. It is leather bound and comes with $75 price tag.

Or you can get smaller books like the minor league passport which are $20. Since I got a deal, I got the big book and a little book. Of course, I did....

My little book is set up for Milwaukee games only and 1 page per team. If we see a team more than once (and we always see the Reds or the pirates), extra stamps will go in the back.

Since the minor league has been restructured and teams lost, I need a new minor league passport or four of them.. one for each league. I only got one so far. I will get the rest as I need them. I liked that it is red so it easier tell apart from the Major league ones.

I will continue to use my old minor league passport for duplicate games and special games like a taxi squad game.

So now I have 5 major league passports and 2 national park passports. That's a lot of stamping and book lugging on vacation but it will worth it. 

I love being part of the Ballpark Stampeders Group. I learned I'm probably one of the less crazy stampers out there. Every stamper has stories to tell and their own way to stamp. I met a fellow stamper at the Brewer game this year.. his seats were in the next section over. I'm sure I will meet more as time goes. It is a fun little hobby and if you ever have a desire to visit multiple ballparks, you might want to think about stamping in as well. 

6716. Try Pisco

 After a fellow official's wedding, we went over to another official's house for the after party. Lyle had this "expensive bottle of wine" he said we could try. After a glass of rose, I decided to try this wine. 

Since none of us heard of "Gran Control de Guarda", we googled it and found that it was "Like ‘Tequila’ is to Mexico, ‘Grappa’ is to Italy, ‘Cognac’ is to France, then ‘Pisco’ is to Chile, it is their national drink, and they like to serve it as a ‘sour’. (Lightfootwine.wordpress.com). Pisco is more of a brandy than a wine. It is made from grapes which are distilled. I figured I would initially drink like I normally drink wine -- straight up.

UGH. BLECH. This stuff tasted worse than the chocolate chip martini I had on the Alaskan Cruise. It was stronger than gasoline.

So Lyle made it into a sour for me. Once the ice melted, it was actually drinkable. It was similar to a kamikaze. 

Needless to say, I won't be having any more Pisco in my future. However, if you ever get a chance to try this, I would say go for it. Just make sure it is a "sour" unless you really like strong alcohol. Apparently Gran Pisco is like 86 or higher proof. No wonder it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Salud!

4926. Go to Brewer’s a taxi squad practice/game

 Because the Pandemic messed with baseball in more ways than one, Appleton became home of the Brewers taxi squad, basically AAA players that will float between AAA and the majors to help when players are injured or out due to COVID.  Appleton was picked because it is the home of the Brewers A team and it's only about 90 miles up the road from Milwaukee. It made the most sense. 

Even though the T-Rats would have loved to have fans in the stands last year for taxi squad practices and games, they couldn't. When Major League baseball pushed back the start of the AAA season so there could be a month of taxi squads, just in case, Appleton was again chosen to be the Brewers taxi squad partner. This time fans were allowed in on a limited basis.

I told the hubby I wanted to go. Most of the practices/scrimmages were held during the day for about three hours. The hubby reluctantly agreed to go. I bought tickets. Then he got stuck waiting for Grandma at the doctor for over two hours. I was nervous he wouldn't get back in time to catch any of the scrimmage but he was home by 3:30 and we hightailed it to Fox Cities Stadium.

The taxi squad scrimmage was kind of like being at spring training. The players worked different positions in the field and took swings of the bat. A pitcher pitched a set number of pitches and types of pitches. There was a real minor league umpire calling balls and strikes. I figured a local umpire would have that job. Not every position was covered on the field at all times. The coaches set up different scenarios and that's what they focused on during the half inning.

We were able to watch about an hour of baseball. For $5, it was cheap entertainment. There were probably about 20 people there. Not many foul balls were hit but the one that was, I tried to get but someone else beat me to it.

I did stamp in. I got the first stamp at Nueroscience Field at Fox Cities Stadium since 2019. I was surprised that the stamp had 2021 because some of them did not. Getting a stamp was the real reason I wanted to go to a taxi squad game but it was fun never the less.

The hubby enjoyed it and if more games fit in his scheduled, we probably would have gone to more. It was ALMOST like being at spring training. 

Hopefully we don't need to have any more taxi squads in future seasons but we would definitely go back if we had the opportunity. 

Now we wait for the minor league season to begin and figure out when we can go to to a T-rats game this season.

5356. See the sturgeon spawn on the Wolf River

 The news said the sturgeon were making their annual spawning run from the dam in Shawano back to Lake Winnebago and if you wanted to go see them you had about a three day window. I have always wanted to see the sturgeon run especially after I saw how active they were on Friday when the OM from work went to see them. I made plans with Rick and Shannon to go see them in Shiocton.

We met up at Bamboo Bend in Shiocton. I asked our OM where to park and she told me there was a bigger parking lot across the road from Bamboo Bend. I was thinking many rows with room for a lot of cars. Yeah, two rows. I got lucky and someone was walking to their car as I pulled in the lot so I just waited. I was afraid it was going to be difficult to leave but it wasn't too bad. I lucked out.

We must have caught the tale end of the sturgeon run because they weren't that active. Shannon and I were like this is boring. We were trying to find a dark, prehistoric fish in murky water along with hundreds of other people. Yawn...

We actually did see a few fins. 

I saw a sturgeon jump but didn't catch it on camera. I saw the splash of another sturgeon landing after jumping. 

This year the sturgeon ran early. It is usually another week or two before they run. It was quite the sight to see though. 

Word to the wise, when they say the sturgeon are running, run your butt out to Shiocton or New London to see them that day because if you wait a day or two you might be waiting a while to see anything. Hopefully I will get to see them run again and maybe this time they will be active.

481. Make tamales

 Back when I wrote my bucket list, I had really good tamales at a Mexican restaurant in DePere and decided to add make tamales to my bucket list. Why? Who knows since my family doesn't eat Mexican and tamales aren't really a quick dish to assemble. 

Fast forward many years and Danielle kept telling me about her friend Yolanda and her tamales. I kept pestering Danielle that we need to help make tamales with her so I can cross it off the bucket list. Finally a few weeks ago when I stopped over with some soup for Danielle we set a date for tamales. 

Tamales are a traditional Mexican dish where a corn dough filled with meat and then wrapped in a corn husk and steamed. Usually when tamales are made, you get a lot of tamales in one batch because why go through all that work for only a few tamales. It is usually a family affair that takes all day.

In all honesty, tamales really aren't that time consuming or difficult if you have several people helping. If you are trying to do it all yourself, I can see why it would be a daunting task.

Besides shopping, there are really three stages to tamales -- prepping, filling, steaming. Okay four -- devouring. 

Prepping

First you need to cook your meat and let it cool so you can shred it. Danielle cook the pork the night before. Yolanda cut it up in big chunks. We then shredded it. Cooking the meat is probably one of the most time consuming tasks because it to cook until it falls apart then cool so you don't burn your fingers when you try to shred it.

When I arrived, we had to cut all the peppers and tomatoes. We were making mild and spicy tamales so we had guajillo pepper, jalapeno peppers, and tomatillos. Yolanda put me to work to cut up the guajillo peppers. To do this, I snapped of the stem and then sliced the pepper down the seem and pulled out the seeds. I did this for about 2 pounds of peppers. That's a lot of guajillo peppers. Good thing I wore gloves since my fingers would have been orange. 

In the mean time Yolanda prepped the jalapenos and tomatillos.

Once all the peppers were ready, we had to cook them to soft them up. While they were cooking, we shredded the pork. Multi-tasking at it's finest.

After the peppers were cooked, we had to puree them. Each kind of pepper/tomatillos beat to pulp in the blender. After we pureed the guajillo peppers, it had to be strained so we could remove the remaining skin. That was messy... or maybe I just made it messy.

Then it was time to mix the peppers, tomatillos, and seasonings into the meat. Since we initially didn't have enough jalapenos for the spicy tamales, we cut up some more and let them cook. That nearly killed us all. The smell of the jalapenos nearly choked us to death. Danielle and I ended up going outside for a breather.

The last step in prepping was to make the masa or corn dough. Yolanda bought 15 pounds of masa but we only used 10 pounds. To the masa we added some of the pureed chilis, some lard, some of the broth from the pork and some seasoning. Then mixed it together until it fell off your hands.

Now it was time to fill the tamales.

Filling

The corn husks have been soaking in water this whole time. If you don't soak the corn husks, they don't fold and it's a mess. Soak them until they are nice and soft.

Filling is a three step process.

1. Hold the corn husk in the palm of your hand and spread a fine layer of masa on the bottom half of it. Don't spread it too thick or your outer dough will be thick. You want to leave a nice edge at the bottom and sides.

2. Add a dollop or two of the meat mixture on top of the masa. Don't worry about spreading it out. This was had for me at first. I wanted to spread it but learned just a dollop or two and move on.

3. Fold the sides to the middle and then fold the top down. 

This step is best to have many people helping. We had two people spreading masa, two people putting on the meat, and one person folding. The more hands you have the faster it goes. Remember we had 10 pounds of masa to spread. 

Steaming

Tamales need to steam a good 45 minutes to an hour. Unlike pickles or jam, you can stuff that pot full of tamales. 

You want make sure you put a steamer basket (or something similar) and extra corn husks at the bottom. Then fill with some water. 

Then you just start standing up those tamales. We got over 100 tamales in the pot plus over 3 dozen in the roaster plan. The bigger the pot, the longer they take to cook. When the top once are done, you know the bottom ones are done.

Devouring

I am picky about my tamales. I do not like a tamale with thick masa. These tamales are perfect. We devoured over a dozen tamales before we had to pack them up and take them home.

Now I know why Danielle raved about Yolanda's tamales. The filling is amazing and the amount of masa is perfect. 

I will gladly help make tamales in the future as needed. It is a great way to spend time with family and friends and at the end enjoy a good meal.