Forget your pumpkin spice lattes. You want a fall beverage that’s really going to warm up your ugg boots and steam up your Han Solo vest and stretch pants? Head over to your friendly neighborhood HyVee Marketplace Café and get yourself the O’Fallon Vanilla Pumpkin Beer, which is now on tap. After having a couple of these, you’ll feel like you’re cheating on your Starbucks in the best of ways and the worse of ways. When I first saw the Vanilla Pumpkin Beer on tap, of course dozens of basic white girl jokes came tumbling out of my brain like so many wicked treats out of a Halloween bag,... Read More

Pumpkin spice latte. It’s become a harbinger of fall and a punch line for coffee aficionados, but the fact is, it never would’ve become either if not for one simple fact: Damn, it’s really good. Anyone who knows me well knows I’m pretty much addicted to caffeine. And I have two regular haunts I hit here in my Rock Island hometown to get that fix – Theo’s in downtown and Cool Beanz in College Hill (1328 30th St., Rock Island.) And so it was, on a sunny Thursday afternoon that I was pitched my first PSL of the season at Cool Beanz and decided to check it out. Now, to start, let me say... Read More