The virtue of whatever dish I'm making is that the individual ingredients taste good when you cook them into one dish - I'm not making toothpaste and orange juice casserole.

As an adult, some nights I spend my time looking over open enrollment paperwork, trying to decide which plan really feels like "me." Other nights I tell my husband not to fill up on dinner because we have seven different kinds of candy to pair with beer while we watch Stranger Things 2.

Thanksgiving is a weird holiday – it’s basically like a dress rehearsal for how everyone is going to get along at Christmas. This year, why not shake things up a little by pairing beer with your Thanksgiving dinner?

This past weekend I had the opportunity to flex my beer muscles for my first-ever beer and food pairing at a dinner with Shawn, Jenny, and Nicole from The Naked Pig Meat Company of Oakboro, North Carolina. The Naked Pig Meat Company is owned by husband and wife team, Shawn and Jenny Hatley, and sells animal welfare approved meat that does not have added antibiotics, hormones, or artificial enhancements. The Naked Pig is planning to start selling local craft beer soon and wanted to explore some beers that will compliment their exceptional products.

I’ve heard and read a lot of stuff about what you should do and should not do the morning of the exam: don’t eat, don’t drink coffee, don’t smoke, don’t wear perfume. I’m a brat when it comes to being hungry. My day is 15% eating snacks and 85% worrying I may be too far away from snacks at any given time, so not eating the morning of the exam was not an option for me.

A word of warning: as great as American craft beer is, I would buy the commercial examples listed in the BJCP Guidelines rather than buying an American craft version of a style because there is a high likelihood that an American craft beer that purports to be a style like an ESB is probably not going to be the best way to train your palate and brain to recognize the classic beer style.

Beyond the expense of the exam itself the other costs can up quickly. However, the good news is that if you don’t have a lot of cash to throw around, it’s still completely possible to have all the study materials you need for next to nothing.

My road to Cicerone was a long one full of hard work, failure, and self discovery. In this series of posts, I'll talk about how I approached the exam, the resources I used, how I conducted tastings, how the day of the exam went for me, and what I learned along the way.