Turducken! 10 is the new 3.

Want!


via videosift.com

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's a time for food, family, and fatigue. I am spending the week in LA, assisting my mom move into my grandparents. Needless to say, it is occupying my time, energy, and sanity. I hope that wherever you find this, you are having a good time and a good meal.

Family: Be real to yourselves and each other.

The picture was forwarded to me in the past, I haven't been able to source the artist just yet.

Photo Phriday

Raw Fish + Bare Hands + Towel = Clean? maybe in Wageningen, Netherlands

Sunset comes for us all on a daily basis.

This should be familiar. Milpitas, CA

An American Picture of Paris

One of many paths in Hyde Park, London.

Thanks for the motivation, Ken!

Recycling is amazing, especially when you turn a million bottles into a buddhist temple in Thailand. I want some details on this, and I want to build a bar of the same ilk. Thanks Tracy!
Treehugger

Hibiscus Tea lowers blood pressure.
USDA

Mushrooms higher in Vitamin D are available now. Since your body produces Vitamin D naturally with sunlight, why don't you just go outside instead? And how are mushrooms producing it if they're grown inside?!
Montery Mushrooms

11 tips to avoid those holiday pounds. Mostly good, but the article tells you to skip sampling the buffet and focus on a few foods...and then tells you to try just a bite of everything a few tips later.
It's all in your mind!!
MSNBC

If you didn't already know, America runs on corn. It's in the food, pharmeceuticals, fuel, and just about everything else you could think of. Oh yeah, there's a good chance it's genetically modified.
Yahoo! News

The EU now allows for crooked vegetables to be sold - what was wrong with them in the first place? Variety is the spice of life. Let the market decide! Here's my favorite part:

In practical terms, this means that an apple which does not meet the standard could still be sold in the shop, as long as it were labelled "product intended for processing" or equivalent wording.

I've got some equivalent wording for you EU: Cooking Apple.
Europe Press Release

Following Up

Yesterday I fasted for 16 hours, mostly because I slept in before I went to get my blood tested for glucose, which would indicate diabetes. The long duration was largely unintentional, I slept in 4 hours longer than expected. Doing that gave me some perspective on food, when I finally did eat, it only took some water and a piece of pizza to fill me up. But I was hungry within and hour, and ended up nibbling the rest of the afternoon.


Helping my mom has helped my diet, she has some good food to be eaten, and she has let me stock my pantry. during her excursion down south, I will have use of her salad spinner, yogurt maker, cast-iron muffin tray, and a slew of pantry ingredients (my mom buys in BULK). When I do get a place, it will have a well-stocked kitchen.


Without a doubt. Sam Calagione is one of my heroes.

The turning point came in 1999, when Calagione was watching a cooking show on television. The chef, who was making a soup, was saying that several grindings of pepper, added to the pot at different points, would give the dish more flavor than a single dose added at the beginning. Not long afterward, at a Salvation Army store, Calagione came across an old electric football set—the kind with a playing field that vibrates to send miniature players skittering across it. Back at home, he found a five-gallon bucket and drilled some holes in the bottom. He laid a pair of wooden blocks on the football set, put the bucket on the blocks, and strapped the whole thing together with duct tape. (“Pretty high-tech M.I.T. stuff,” he says.) Later, when his kettle was boiling, he put hops in the bucket, perched his contraption at a slant above the kettle, and set the game vibrating. Soon, a steady stream of hops was falling through the bucket onto the playing field and sliding into the kettle.

The beer born of that experiment, known as 60 Minute I.P.A., is still Calagione’s biggest seller. He calls it a beer geek’s idea of a “session beer”—mild enough to be consumed in quantity, but with an unexpected kick. It has the bright, citrusy bouquet of a much hoppier brew, without the bitterness. Wine Enthusiast tasted hints of rose petal, tangerine, orange zest, and nutmeg in it, and rated it a “classic.”

The extreme-beer era was under way.

The New Yorker


And in beer news, if you are you curious about which countries are producing the most beer? Ask men has composed a list of the top 10 producing beer nations. Thanks Urethra Franklin!
AskMen.com

The Big D.

I was young when my mom was diagnosed with Diabetes, type I. Our family still lived in Santa Rosa, so it would have to have been before 3rd grade. The details are fuzzy, but on that day, I had to go directly home from school, and my brother and my dad and I went to the hospital to see my mom. The thing I remember most is seeing the helicopter land, the memories of that are more vivid than the hospital itself. I was always interested in planes and flying and things mechanical, and seeing one in flight was amazing.

But my mind then and now was focusing on what it was interested in, rather than the task at hand. We joined my mom at her bedside, where she look exhausted. When my parents told me that my mom had diabetes, I didn't really understand what it meant. It meant she had a bad pancreas; what does the pancreas do? Her blood sugar had been over 600, when normally it should be around 90-110. I didn't even have any horror stories of diabetes to conjure up, but there are plenty: amputation, blindness, irritation and depression. On that day, I had none of those things, just a mom in a hospital bed and a helicopter outside.

After she came home, we began to learn about the disease. She had type I or juvenile diabetes - the kind that usually starts at birth. Her pancreas is not producing insulin, which regulates sugar. So when she eats a meal, the sugar from that meal gets into her blood stream and stays there. My dad described what was happening to the red blood cells as if they were M&Ms - the cells would get coated with a rigid candy shell of sugar, and these normally flexible cells become rigid, tearing arteries, causing the aforementioned blindness and amputation. Luckily, those things happen when diabetes is untreated, and my mom was and is taking good care of her diabetes. I learned what I could, and did what I thought was right, ate healthier, sought out exercise, but mainly didn't worry about it. My mom's life was different now, she had to check her blood sugar regularly, she had to take insulin shots after meals, and eventually started wearing an insulin pump, which everyone thought was a pager (back in the day, you see). My life wasn't affected, just another thing to prepare for.

Some time later, after we had moved to Milpitas but still before I reached high school, my dad came down with Diabetes type II. Considering type I hadn't affected me earlier, I had very little experience with type II. This is the late-onset version of the disease, and people develop it in their 40's. Insulin is still affected - the body does not respond correctly to insulin, but it can be alleviated by diet and exercise. Oral medication and shots of insulin may be necessary as it progresses, and it is something to manage for the duration of a lifetime. I don't think my dad coming down with the disease was as alarming as when my mom had, I was in some sense desensitized to it, but I knew enough about genetics to know that my chances of getting diabetes had roughly doubled.

Without a doubt, the strongest memory I have of diabetes is this: One day when I was in high school, my mom had been feeling sick. she had been sick all day, and was having trouble getting her sugar in control. We ate dinner together as a family, and everything seemed fine, but my mom seemed a little out of it, but nothing particularly unusual. Everyone was still talking and I headed upstairs to retrieve something. As I reached the top of the stairs, I heard my mom shout, "Lyle!" and a large crash. I raced down the stairs and into the kitchen to see her on floor, my brother and dad attending to her. They gave her a Glucagon shot and she recovered in a few minutes. I was not much more than an active observer, but I was secretly proud that she had called for me in her time of need. Her shout was a wake up call to me, that diabetes is real and not just a name or a blood test or a shot of insulin. There is still much about it that we don't know, and may never know in our lifetime.

These experiences and seeing the effect of obesity shaped my psyche to be aware of food and health. The cause for diabetes is not known, but obese children are developing type II, which should not be happening. I myself carried extra weight as a child and to this day consider myself heavy even when others call me skinny. I can feel the fat on my body, and know that I have taken better care of myself than others, but I could still do better. Inside of me is a dull rage at a food system that preys on peoples wants and wallets by telling them what they like is good for them. I get upset when I go into a worldwide chains serving bad food that is incredibly unhealthy at high volumes. Most of all I get upset at myself for being weak and doing what is easy when I could do what's right. The answers are right in front of us. Vending machines tout racks of sugar and 10 different kinds of sugar water, and nobody cares. Desserts are ok in small amounts, rewards are OK if they are occasional and in proportion to exertion.

Nutritionally void foods are cheaper than nutrient dense ones. Profits will continue to be made at the expense of health, ignorance, and laziness. I gain hope knowing that taste is subjective. taste is the product of the entire experience around eating; the sensory characteristics associated with it make some small portion of that. You will work harder to appreciate and like a food if all your friends like it, if it's in an expensive restaurant, or you think it's healthy. Humans will naturally like salt, sweet, and fat, that will never change. But I get bored if there is too much of one thing, and saltiness and sweetness are overused to the point of ridiculousness. These things are necessary and fine in moderation, but they have been exploited for the benefit of profit, and I'm not going to put it in my body.

Exercise is the most important thing you can do, whatever you eat. It's natural. I try to move around 10 minutes of every hour, every day for the rest of my life. I can sit for 3 hours, but I'd better be active for 30 too, just to keep things moving. I spent the weekend walking around San Francisco, and I feel great, I have more energy than if I hadn't done it at all.

But even with everything I do, I am not perfect, and I don't claim to be. My mom tested my blood sugar today and it was at 161 - outside of the range of a healthy individual. This set off alarm bells and floored me. I tested it again 2 hours later and it was down to 110, but I will be having myself examined for diabetes today.

I wonder who I'll call for when the time comes.

Two Weeks of Beer News

Over the past three weeks in beer-related news, these are the things that jumped out at me:

Brewhouse Efficiency is near and dear to my heart, considering that both of my brewing internships were focused on brewhouse efficiency. Additionally, no amount of extract should go to waste, especially in tough economic times. This is an article from the beersmith on all-grain efficiency, chock-full of links to related articles.

BeerSmith

The winds of change are active at Anheuser-Busch: most of the execs will be leaving the company when InBev takes over. This will cut costs and change the corporate dynamic: AB as it is or was will never be again. Even if the deal falls through, as the rumor mill will tell you, AB will never be the same.

Business Journal Milwaukee 

Deschutes puts out "The Dissident" - an oud bruin in the flanders style. This is another page in the sour beer story, and one I am willing to try. I have an open mind about beer, and I don't think that there are any limits to what fizzy alcoholic water can be. Having had traditional sour beer, I will be more critical of the dissident if I get to taste it, but I will let you know my opinion, dear drinker.

PRLog

If you don't have the beer and food pairing chart, get it right now.

Beer Utopia

Video to compliment beer and food pairings:

Culinary Media Network

Santa Cruz Grad Student makes a morphine beer, caught and tried in court.

Mercury News

There may be a market for gourmet beers developing in India, and this brewery wants to meet that need. I could see myself setting up breweries like this once I've established myself.

Business Standard

Kenya's second brewery opens. It is nationally owned, hoping to encourage customer loyalty on that front. I hope so too.

China View

In New Delhi, an alcoholic beverage company forms.

Live Mint WSJ

Heineken opens a brewery in Seville, Spain.

Drinks Business Review

More to come, but I have to go help my mom move.

Berries for Breakfast

My dad buys berries that are pretty well-traveled (Nicauragua, Mexico, Florida, etc...) a practice I can't really condone, but then he lets them go to waste, which really bugs me. So when I stay with him, I eat these worldly berries for breakfast, because fruit is the best way to start the day. I'd like to eat them with yogurt and muesli or granola, but those aren't available to me here. This is today's breakfast:

Blueberries from Argentina

Strawberries from ???

blackberries from Mexico

Raspberries from Watsonville, CA

Pineapple from Whole Foods (pre-cut, definitely not my style)

Half & Half from Colorado

I cut all of these fruits in half or quarter depending on size, and then added some half and half to increase the awesome. I enjoyed this fruit salad with a mix of vanilla teas - one black, one rooibos, but I wouldn't mix the two again. A nice green would work well with this.

Eat locally, but don't let anything go to waste.

Weekend in San Francisco

I just spent the weekend in San Francisco, and here is a summation of the happenings:

For my friend bxchen's birthday, he wanted to make a roast for his party. So we went to the local shops and bought:

5 lbs. of Sirloin Roast

4 large Carrots

3 large Sweet Potatoes

2 heads garlic

4 Onions

1 lbs. Cremini Mushrooms

We also had to buy a carving knife, a small cookie drying rack (to keep the meat off of the pan during roasting), and a meat thermometer. Armed with the aforementioned things, an oven, some pans, and a cupboard of spices/sauces, we were ready to go.

For the roast:

We made a rub of salt, peppers, and herbs, - strong flavors to hold up the strong flavor of the beef. We rubbed the roast ever-so tenderly and then allowed it to come to room temperature.

With the oven at 400f, we browned the meat for 20 minutes until the outside looked delicious. Then We lowered the heat to 250f to slow cook the roast, and waited until the internal temperature reached 145f. It took a few hours.

Sweet Starch:

I quartered the yams and carrots and then put them in a pan the all the cloves from 2 heads of garlic, as well as soy sauce, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, mustard, and brown sugar. If I were to do it again, I would cut the pieces into smaller chunks  to speed the cook time up. When they were tender, I just barely mashed them, covered with foil, and heated them in the oven for 10 minutes more. I then added milk and mashed until they were the ideal consistency - smooth and spreadable, but with chunks of carrot and potato bursting with flavor.

Onions:

bxchen thin sliced the onions and seasoned them with worcester sauce, fish sauce, oil, salt and pepper, and they cooked in the oven until tender and carmelized. 

When the roast finished, we let the meat rest covered in foil for a good long while, and deglazed the pan with beef stock, cooking wine (use real wine next time - too salty), green tea, herbs, and the pound of mushrooms, chopped finely. This reduced to a sauce and then was thickened with cornstarch.

A mound of potatoes; thinly sliced sirloin, a shower of onions; and a drizzle of sauce. Happy Birthday.

***

I also went to a green festival and got organic chocolate, tea, coffee, soap, milk, and pretty much anything else you could imagine. I talked to some dairy producers about running a dairy (about one acre is needed per cow), and about raw milk, kefir, and kim chi.

There is a new malt-based non-alcoholic kambucha beverage - what a mouthful, right? I have the card somewhere in my belongings, I haven't fully unpacked yet.

I found out about a sustainable business MBA offered in SF - definitely something that I am considering acquiring in the future, depending on which direction the wind blows.

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I caught up with a lot of old friends and met some great new ones. I am incredibly happier to be back on the west coast, partly because of the generous bounty that this area has to offer, and mostly because of the wonderful friends and family that I have traveled away from for the bulk of this year. I have my sights set on San Francisco, I will live and work there for at least one full turn of the seasons. I would like to establish a 'home base' before I travel again, so that I will be able to travel with a purpose. You can't have an internationally-themed brewery without traveling around the world drinking beer, correct?

I'm looking forward to starting a business in the near future, and I have ideas coming in all the time. I see a food company in my future. The tough economy is to be accounted for, but I tend to agree with Warrent Buffet: "Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful." Now is that time.

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Apparently, wearing glasses is a conversation starter.

Names for beers that I will make:

Rooftop

Peacock

Coffee Pot Brewing

The best coffee you'll ever taste - malt+oats waiting to become beer.

Ever since I read about brewing beer in a coffee pot, I've wanted to try it. When I got back to California on Friday, I told my brother I wanted to brew Saturday. We were missing my Lauter Tun, so we couldn't do the whole 5 gallon batch he had ordered. Instead, I figured we could do a test batch of our kit in his coffee pot. This is what we used:

8 ounces by weight of Malt/Oat Mix from the Irish Stout Kit from Morebeer.com
24 ounces of tap water

We put the grains in the coffee pot, and the water in back, and hit brew. after an hour with the warmer on, we moved the mixture to a pot on the stove to warm it up to 170 F. This was to help the sugars separate from the grains.

Waiting patiently for the grains to reach 170 F - hot to flow, but not leach out bitter tannins.

Once this was done, we poured the sweet wort and grains through the filter into the coffee pot. Only half of the grains would fit into the filter, so we put the first half in, added a cup of water to the back, and then ran it through on the 'aroma' setting (which diffuses the hot water.) We repeated that for the second half, and had some unboiled wort on our hands.

We put the wort back on the stove and brought to a boil. I added 3 hop pellets in and 1/2 a cup of brown sugar since it tasted only weakly sweet - probably from the 5 cups of water in the recipe, and the very hot water coming out of the coffee pot. The final product had the right balance of sweetness and bitterness.

We let it cool on the stove while we sanitized the fermenter. We added a few drops of liquid yeast, and are eagerly awaiting the results. I'll let you know how it turns out.

It was hard to seal this 2L growler, so I covered the seal with saran wrap.

Watch This Space

This is a period of transition, for both my life and the blog. I am moving across the country once again, with no job, living situation, and a handful of plans and dreams. The blog is becoming a reflection of who I am and what I want it to be, but it will take time and technology. I will update again when my life has achieved some sort of regularity.


It's time to go back to California, the land of fruits and nuts. Stick to your guns, Virginia.

Good Day Lamburgers

Good Day Lamburgers (Four 1/4-pound burgers, ~600 calories each)

I had a good day. On the eve of the election, I became a plumber at work. I’m such an average Joe, I don’t have a lot of time, and I have some ground meat and a loaf of bread and an onion. I’m going to make some toast burgers. OK, Lamb isn’t average, but it averages out to be delicious.

1 lb. ground lamb
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon seasoning blend (I used a rib rub)
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
9 slices 100% whole wheat toast
4-8 lettuce leaves
1 large tomato
fry oil, skillet.
1 onion
ketch, mustard, mayo, hot sauce.

This can easily be accomplished in 11 steps.

11. Toast one piece of bread extra toasty, but not extra burnty.

10. When that’s done, toast your bread if you want a toasty burger.

9. Season meat with above seasonings.

8. With a knife, scrape toast over meat to make crumbs, then fine chop rest of bread. Mix in with meat.

7. Make 4 flatties (flat patties)

6. Medium heat your home skillet, add some oil, add your first patty. Mine can hold 2 patties comfortably, so when I flip my first patty, I add my second, and so on to infinity, or 4, whichever comes first.

When patties are done, place on a rack or plate with paper towels to drain.

…meanwhile…

5. I’m all kinds of lazy for dressing each burger individually with ketchup, mustard, mayo, and hot sauce, and it’s too easy to go overboard. So I sauced them up in one bowl:

1 part mayo, 1 part ketchup, 1/2 part mustard, 1 dash hot sauce.

…and then…

4. Slice an onion. Mine made me cry, probably because of my blunt knife and love for onions. I cut it in half longitudinally, and then perpendicular to the onion axis, to make onion semi-circles.

…and then…

3. Slice your tomato. The thinner the better! If you hate sog, first slice tomato in half horizontally, and press juice out with your finger…into your mouth. No one is looking.

…now…

2. When all your burgers are cooked to your liking (ground meat should have no inner color, or even better, reach 160 F internally), don’t throw away the sauce juice that came out of them. Sauté the onion in it. Damn son/girl, that is high class.

1. Assemble your burgers, I go bread, sauce, patty, tomato, onion, lettuce, and bread.

How it do?


Wish list- If you have fresh herbs, finely chop some mint, basil, and garlic. Mix in with the raw meat. Serve with mint jelly.

Foodisms

Feeling overweight? Don't be bored with a diet that leaves you hungry, new research is working on foods that make you feel full faster. Tricking the body into thinking its full with encapsulated fats and alginates are currently being researched, and could be on the shelves in a couple of years.

"Dieting is an awful bore and most human beings are very gullible," Bloom said. "We need all the help science can provide."

I agree with that statement, but I think the research being done is putting lipstick on the pig. Ultimately, I don't think that your body will be fooled by these foods. To benefit from them, you will have to buy them at the premium food producers will charge, and won't be able to eat them all the time - creating the potential for binge behavior in restaurants or social eating situations. These foods treat the symptoms, not the disease. Associated Press Article

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Feeling smart? Look for some smart choices: I like this, the simplicity and visibility will tip consumers off as to how much calories are in a product, and how many servings a package contains. Simplicity is beautiful. Chicago Tribune Article

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I wanted to start this business: fresh food in your local neighborhood. check them out - Fresh & Easy

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Drink your cancer away with anti-cancer beer. Yes, beer is healthy. Press Release