Cigar City beer has hit the shelves.

Check out the Warmer Winter Winter Warmer from this sweet little brewery in Tampa.

Here's what they say about their beer:

We brew this English-style Old Ale with American hop varietals to celebrate the idea of a snowy winter landscape, if not so much the reality of it as we experience it here in Florida. Dark copper to amber in color, it has a complex citrus and caramelized toffee aroma with underlying notes of chocolate. The flavor begins with a dark caramel to medium toffee sweetness balanced by a firm citrus dryness and then moves into a forward malt character with hints of chocolate and rye in the finish and a lingering citrus and pine note. It pairs well with spiced ham and ridiculously warm winters. Enjoy one with the air conditioner turned down low.

The Warmer Winter is the only thing available in bottles at the moment but there's a beer store down the block (Bierkraft) that often has their beer available in growlers if you like this one.

Cheers, Anngel

No spring chicken.

When you want a full-flavored, wintertime chicken soup, there's no bird like an old bird. Bobo Farm stewing hens are tough old birds, retired egg-layers whose flesh, fat, and bone melts into the most scrumptious broth you can make from any Coop chicken.

Our other chickens are all broiler/fryers. They're young and tender. They're for roasting, broiling, grilling, sauteeing, and frying. The stewing hens, though....when it's cold outside, when there's a dark drizzly rain coming down, that's when they come into their own.

So get out the tattered file-card recipes for Aunt Rose's matzoh balls and Aunt Rosa's albondigas. Google pho. Lay in a supply of onion and garlic, ginger and scallion, carrots and celery root, noodles and rice.

In a celebration of the current national economy, Bobo stewing hens are only $2.20 a pound.