Holidays begin in Wisconsin with 60°F weekend

It was gorgeous over the weekend so many Wisconsinites spent time outside - watching the Packers game, grilling breakfast, golfing and going to the park. For the first week of December, it's incredible there's no snow on the ground. In fact, it's rather green and mossy looking in many pockets. It just hasn't frozen everything yet.





Hahaha! 'He's gonna eat me!'


We enjoyed watching these ducks slide slowly across the very thin ice.





Love the seagull that's flying through the photo on the left. The birch trees are so beautiful reflecting in the water.








While running errands I snapped a few pics of old signs of local staples and one new hot spot - mostly restaurants.


The newest La Fuente location was always El Matedor, hence the flashy M.


Gille's has been serving burgers and custard to the city since 1938.








The Miller Brewery Holiday Lights look spectacular this year. The pic's a bit blurry cause I couldn't stop, but will return with more time in the coming weeks as my holiday spirit grows stronger.


Balistreri's has some of the best pizza in town.





Saz's mozzarella sticks are a must have at the Wisconsin State Fair. Their barbecue is very good too.


Blue's Egg is the city's hottest brunch spot.



Have a wonderful week everyone! Enjoy getting into the holiday spirit, maybe at the historical Pfister Hotel downtown.






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Polo Club hosts National Hockey Festival 2012

Each Thanksgiving weekend the United States Field Hockey Association hosts the world's largest field hockey tournament of its kind, the National Hockey Festival. 4,000 athletes from all over the country, mostly teenage girls divided into U16 and U19 groups for competition, play in two games each day. There's also adult co-Ed teams and adult women's teams that play for the division champion title.




This year the event was held in Wellington, Florida at the International Polo Club Palm Beach. It's about 25 minutes inland from the glamorous Palm Beach known for its luxury and wealth.




Over eighty college and university coaches attended the event to scout these up-and-coming athletes. It is 'the hockey tournament' for scholarship hopefuls to shine amongst the creme of the crop in the nation.












The girls don uniforms to represent their club teams. Some are rather outrageous, and certainly catch your eye. We thought the striped socks for this team were one of the best looking creative trys.




One team wears pink and kilts with polka dots. Their socks swirl around their shin guards. They sure are different. But it's not the outfit that matters, it's the talent of the team.




These athletes are skilled, well-trained and there's a good chance for many of the them to play in college. I attended Festival from 1997-1999 playing with East Coast Field Hockey Club for two years and then with Heartland Field Hockey my senior year. Not having a team at my high school in Wisconsin, I played with a co-ed adult club team in Chicago on Sundays after a week of tennis matches and practice.




The experience benefited me well. The majority of the group had played in college and there was a handful of men that had played in other countries where the sport's popular - the United Kingdom, Holland and Pakistan. Basically I played with and against a field full of mentors and tough competitors.




Field hockey has gained more traction in Wisconsin since I was in high school although there's still only a handful of teams including Divine Savior Holy Angels, Brookfield Academy, Arrowhead, University Lake School, Trinity Academy and University School of Milwaukee. When Wauwatosa put turf in the Hart Park stadium field it included lines marked for hockey. In fact, the 2012 State Championships were held there. Ideally the sport is played on artificial turf, but can be done just as well on well-groomed natural grass fields.




There's now Milwaukee Field Hockey Club who took two teams to Florida for the competition, one for each division. And each year Windy City Field Hockey of Chicago fields fantastic talent. Their U16 team, particularly, performed at a high level and demonstrated much tenacity and game comprehension.




The ACC has a long tradition of dominating the top rankings of NCAA Division I Field Hockey. North Carolina played in the finals five times in the last six years. Maryland has won the National Championship five times in the last ten years.




With Maryland moving into the Big Ten, the landscape of the winning program's schedule will drastically change and many long-standing rivalries will become memories of the past. Penn State, Michigan and Iowa have strong field hockey programs and typically rank in the top fifteen. The new match-ups will be interesting to see during regular season.




This bleacher report blog post offers an interesting evaluation of the conference change for Maryland from a number of viewpoints - recent sports dropped from line-up, other accolade achieving athletic teams and finances and long-term sustainability of all programs.




For years the USFHA has been working to improve the national skill level of the sport. Unlike top teams in Europe, ten years ago there were few feeder programs to teach youngsters. The Futures program offers regional-based skills training where participants complete standardized tests that are comparable at a national level. This program and the increase in the number of camps and tournaments across the US generally has obviously improved talent on the whole. These young ladies appeared far more savvy for their ages than we did back in my heyday. They're learning younger and are playing more frequently at high levels.




On the holiday Saturday, the adult club teams play their championship games. Friends and family gather at the fields, in a much quieter setting after the teens have completed, to play in high level matches. A number of All-Americans, Olympians and International players battle it out heralding the high times of the good ole days. They've still got it.


This daughter of a former Olympic player assisted her kitty in giving mom's team high fives as they exited the field at half time for a rest.


The polo fields were pristine. They always are. There were 26 of them throughout the club with games being played from 7:30AM to 3:30PM. Six hockey fields fit into a single polo field.




It was exciting to experience the progression of field hockey in the US first hand, especially in such beautiful surroundings. I look forward to a long-weekend of it all again next year.




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50/50 Burgers Rock SoCal

City magazines are a great resource for finding the latest and greatest within the local limits - food, happy hour specials, shopping, spa service and events. They're always up-to-date since they're right in the mix of the local beat. San Diego magazine's June edition featured a listing of San Diego's Best Restaurants 2012.


Slater's 50/50 is listed as the reader-elected winner of: Best New Restaurant, Best Happy Hour, Best Burger, Best Beer Selection and Best Late Night - and I think that's all. It has also been featured on The Food Channel show Food Paradise: Bacon. Making time for a visit here is a no-brainer. Did I mention it's only ten minutes from the airport?


The burgers are delivered with the knife stabbed through the center. It holds everything together; there's basically whatever topping your little heart desires. With nine meat options (including a portobello), five breads, eleven cheeses, over forty toppings and twenty sauces, the place offers the best assortment to design-it-yourself (although sun dried tomatoes and muffuletta could be added).


50/50 is coined from Slater's signature patty that consists of half ground bacon and half ground beef. Yes, that is correct, and it's every bit as good as it sounds. Bacon is one of the most popular burger toppings, but it can be difficult to bite through and savored only in a few bites. With Slater's signature 50/50 patty, there's bacon in every single bite.

In good fun during election month, the two founders designed the November Burgers of the Month. The Brad featured a standard Sterling Silver beef patty infused with sweet Heinz 57, while The Scott patty was infused with the ultra savory A-1 Sauce.


The burgers become gargantuan once a few toppings are selected. This monster was being attacked by an older woman sitting across from our table. You guessed it, more than half was taken away in a to-go box.


We were supposed to name our burgers once we designed them up. Mom, who's always been easy to please - Dad would take her out for a nice steak dinner and 'every time she'd order a cheeseburger and a coke' - appropriately titled her classic sandwich laden with pickles, raw onion and cheddar cheese: Cheap Date.

For my concoction of banana peppers, pickles, Swiss, tomato, raw onion and avocado, which are typical toppings for me at home, the burger was named: Dani California.


The 50/50 patty was juicer than I had expected and was packed with flavor. You can see below that the meat remains pink despite being cooked to medium-well because of the ground bacon.


Our sauce assortment included bacon ketchup, Tapitío ranch, bacon mayonnaise and avocado. There was also Sriracha around.


The fries are fresh cut and fairly thick served with the house bacon ketchup. While I love macaroni and cheese, the balls with bacon inside were overwhelming with the breading and frankly not worth the calories.





Slater's 50/50 is located in Liberty Station, which was the first US Naval base in San Diego. The barracks have a traditional Spanish Colonial Revival style of architecture. Each has found a new life filled with restaurants, offices, shops and workout facilities.





Inside the atmosphere is cool and clean with plenty of TVs for watching the games. And with one hundred and eleven (111!) beers on a tap, everyone should be able to find something to suit their taste. I couldn't even fit all of the tappers into one photo! If I hadn't already been won over by the fifty-fifty patty, being a Wisconsin girl, the plethora of beers would've done the trick.





The owners are opening a new location in Pasadena, California by the end of the year, and with their flare for understanding how people want to build burgers, I wouldn't be surprised to see a location pop-up out of the state at some point soon.


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