Teresa, Give Me That Knife!

So you can eat with metal silverware after security now at least at PDX. The Laurelwood even has them for the grabbing near the door. But if you were to try and go through security with say a knife and a fork in your carry-on they would more then likely take you away somewhere and question you for an hour possibly missing your flight. I don’t see a threat from these items anyway since most anyone would jump someone trying to takeover the plane. Just an observation from my last business trip...

Local Grubs

We went over to the Portland Farmers market this past weekend to A. enjoy the day and B. get some grub for dinner. If you haven’t been I highly recommend going if you like fresh grub. The market was already bustling and it was still just the end of April.

The first thing we spotted was rhubarb my request for strawberry rhubarb pie was immediately placed with the chief pie maker. The salad makin’s looked wonderful with fresh arugula, mesculn, spinach etc. but we still had store bought organic salad to use up so we moved on. We did buy some brie from a local cheese maker in Scio, OR., bread from the Pearl bakery, and grass fed rib eye steaks from Deck Family Farm out of Junction City, OR.

The menu for dinner went like this:

Organic salad with blue cheese dressing
Bruschetta with white bean spread
Roasted Red Potatoes in garlic cloves and EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
Ribeye steak with cabernet sauce
Amavi Cabernet-sauvignon from Walla Walla Valley ‘05
Strawberry rhubarb pie and vanilla ice cream.

Here is a couple of pic.

The Steaks.

The Cabernet Sauce

The Pie.

Over dinner the conversation moved to the discussion of the difference in grass fed beef vs. grain fed which was better tasting and so on. I knew that grass fed was better for you because they area eating grass duh. And feedlot cattle are not very healthy due to there close quarters to each other, large amounts of antibiotics, etc.

Whenever I travel to the Midwest everyone always brags to me about grain fed, dry aging, marbling etc. but I didn’t know if grass fed beef has/could develop the flavors from being grain fed so some research was in order. I found this link that offers somewhat of a comparison between grain vs pasture raised beef.

http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/food/beef/index2.html

Pretty interesting check it out.

Beer Movie

Among the long list of documentaries my wife and I have been watching lately, the latest is “American Beer ”. This was moderately interesting to watch but only if you truly love craft beers. This documentary is about a group of six guys that go on a road trip to see 38 brewpubs in 40 days. For me the main appeal with this film was the great interviews they got from the brewers/owners who threw their nuts on the dashboard and mashed the throttle to make a go at starting a microbrewery before the brewpub/craft brewing craze really got started. The exception would be the interview with the RedHook founder he was kind of a dick. There beer has gone to pot anyway since their partial sellout to AB. The 6 guys (really only 5 since the 6th was doing the filming) didn’t bring a lot to the table but was still watchable. Their selection of breweries was pretty good with the likes of Pelican, Dogfish, Anchor Steam etc. until the next to the last stop at New Belgium. Whaaa?! I cannot stand New Belgium. The beers I have tried just don’t do anything for me. The Fat Tire Amber just seems a little light in the malt area. Of course I tend to compare all ambers against Full Sail Amber in color and body. But honestly it is not the taste that bothers me as much as their graphics on the bottle. Something about it just irritates me I don’t know what it is. Could it be there successful marketing that Fat Tire is available almost everywhere? I’m sure they have plenty of beers at the brewpub that are great but I would have a hard time trying them after Fat Tire. Anyway I digress back to the movie. These guys who in my opinion spent too much time boozing on the east coast try a little too hard to be funny and made only a few stops in Oregon and one or two in Washington. I was hoping they would have hit some of my favorites although lesser known say New Old Lompoc, Roots Brewing, Lucky Lab or even Tugboat Brewing as one of the smallest brewpubs in Portland. Oh well.

Cornholio

Saw a free screening of King Corn the other night at St. John's Theater. The place was packed and people were being turned away as the place reached over capacity. Curt Ellis co-writer of the film was also in attendance to speak afterwards for a panel discussion along with the Pres. of New Seasons, Guy from the Oregon Food Bank and Sauvie Island Organics as well as a local organic farmer from the Clac. The film was well done as far as documentaries and far better then the last documentary I watched. King Corn is about two friends who decide to grow an acre of corn in a small Iowa town and see where there corn ends up. They go into detail with only two products of corn; animal feed and corn syrup. I thought they could have spent some time going into Ethanol production as well but perhaps that is another documentary in the making.

Now I already new most things they brought up about corn production and animal feed when I am working in the ag industry. One thing I didn't know which was disturbing to me was that continually feeding cattle corn makes them sick that is one of the reasons why they give cattle antibiotics. In fact the feed lots have it down so precisely by the time the cow gets the fatal nail in the head they would have died anyway soon from there diet of corn. Grass fed nuf said.

In one scene they actually pull a couple ears from there field and take a bite. The look of disgust after they tasted it reminded me of the time when I was ten years old I was in Minnesota staying for a few days with my then step moms family on there family farm. There was corn everywhere and I had a hankering for an ear of corn. So one day I snuck off not wanting to be seen stealing there corn (like they would miss an ear) I remember going through these woods and on the other side there was another huge field of corn so I went in and selected an ear based on my knowledge from picking corn from our own small field (maybe ten rows) back home. I husked it back and took a bite and about gagged. I had no idea there was corn other then sweet corn we grew back home. I tried a few more ears just to be sure yup they all tasted like dried turds. I went back to the farm house confused on why they grew all this inedible stuff. They later informed me that they grew it strictly to feed there hogs. So it is pretty amazing to me when I am in Iowa or other states in the corn belt that there growing all of this corn and none of it is edible without processing or feeding it to animals.

The panel discussion after the movie was not as lively as I thought it would be but I stuck around anway to here what they had to say. If you want to check out the film PBS will be airing it on April 15th.

Loaves

I ran across the recipe my mom used to make homemade bread the other day. Instantly memories of being a child watching my mom make bread filled my head. She would use this huge no humongous green plastic bowl in which she would add the yeast, warm water, and brown sugar and let that sit for awhile to let the yeast come alive and start devouring the sugar. Next the flour (18 cups worth!) was added along with some salt and wheat germ. Then she would cut in the shortening and add more water.

Now the work started. She would flour the counter and her hands and begin working the dough kneading it for what seemed like hours. My mom did this bizarre thing where when she kneaded the dough she would lock her jaw so tight you could here her teeth creaking from the stress. After the kneading was done she would put the dough back in the bowl and cover with a towel and let the dough rise for awhile. I probably disappeared to watch Sesame Street or bust up my brothers Lego creation or something. After several repeated kneads and rises she would grease the loaf pans and form the dough into loaves and place in the pan except for one loaf which she just kept in a ball. This ball of dough is why I think I hung around to watch the process. After this ball of dough went through the final raise she would cut it into smaller balls and then roll them flat for what we called fried bread. This is basically what you get at the county fairs but they call them Elephant ears and there typically deepfried and covered in cinnamon. Anway she would poke holes in the middle of them and place 4 or 5 in a frying pan and fry them a nice golden brown. As soon as she took them out of the pan I was reaching for one I'm sure burning my hand more then once. I didn't put anything on them other then butter. These were some good eats. One time me and my brother ate too many and they made our stomach swell up from the dough rising from the inside. Don't ever do that. It hurts. Hmm I think there was an episode about that same thing on Emergency!

Her bread was fantastic and lasted the whole fam for at least a week or so. Here is the recipe in case you are interested. (the numbers in () is for tripling the recipe

(3) 1 cup warm water
(6) 2 teaspoons sugar Mix in a bowl, cover and set aside
(3) 1 pkg. Fleishmans dry yeast

(12) 4 cups whole wheat flour
(6) 2 cups white flour Measure in a large bowl, mix with hands, make well in center
(7 ½) 2 ½ teaspoons salt
handful of wheat germ

(3/4) ¼ cup shortening
(4 ½) 1 ½ cups warm water

Put in well, cut shortening with large spoon, mix slightly add yeast mixture, mix thoroughly with spoon, then grease hands and knead thoroughly.
Let rise in warm place free from drafts about 45 minutes.
Knead, let rise 30 minutes.
Knead let rise another 30 minutes
Put into loaf pans let raise 45 minutes
Bake at 375 degree oven for 40-50 minutes
Makes 2 or 3 loaves
(6-9 loaves)


I have been baking the shit out of some bread lately with on FMLA. We picked up a Cuisinart bread machine so I have been experimenting with some different recipes that was included with the machine. My fav thus far is the basic Rustic Loaf. This loaf uses the Artisan setting which does not actually bake the loaf but takes the dough on a magical trip of multiple rises and kneads for 5 1/2 hours. After the final knead the machine tells you to remove the dough by a series of annoying chimes. From there it is all manual labor of shaping it and letting it rise one more time before baking. This type of bread can be cooked in the oven but I prefer to use my gas grill with the awesome pizza stone my awesome wife got me. The stone is thicker then average to hold the heat better but also sits on an stainless steel elevated platform so the stone doesn't actually touch the rack but is a couple inches off the rack. This gives the proper air flow above so one side of the grill is cooking the top down while the side underneith the stone is cooking from the bottom. This is tricky to get the temperature adjusted just right especially with my cheap burners and temp controls but I think I finally got it dialed in.



Here is the dough after a few rises and kneads























Dough ready to be baked




























Finished Product.

Warming Hut

I have not been blogging lately. Obviously.

Here is a shot of the warming hut at Ski Bowl from the day I went boarding. There is an insane amount of snow up there. The snow level in this picture is a couple feet higher then the Eaves.

The inside is pretty cool too. Huge fireplace old wooden skis, tables and a bar. Perfect. Not perfect they only had one czech lager and I needed to quaff an IPA.

Sales call

I took a business trip to Sacramento (Los Molinos actually) the other day. The plan was to fly into SAC get picked up by one of my companies outside sales reps who is from the area and drive several hours to the plant to give a presentation to the owner, board of directors and plant personal. We get there and are greeted by the plant manager who walks us past the conference room but yet ducks in the room for just a second and then leads us into his office. Mmmkay. He was obviously considering if the conference room is appropiate. I'm thinking well maybe he thinks we are all going to try and gather in his small office. The sales rep and I gave each other a look of wtf and got our presentation stuff out anyway. I barely got my laptop turned on before he started talking about changing the layout and the need to go out and look at the area. So we go out to the production area where the equipment would go, discussed a few options and the subtle changes we needed to make, then walked back to his office to hopefully discuss the project in more detail or at least learn what happened to giving a presentation to erveryone. Nope. "I need to get a new drawing and proposal from you". That was it. We did get him to say we were "right in there" on price which means we are cheaper in sales lingo. (Otherwise he would have said we are a " little high") That was the extent of the meeting a whopping 40 minutes to have traveled several hours by airplane and car and many more hours before I got home. Crazy.

Luckily we had one more stop to make on our way back. The mighty Sierra Nevada Brewery. The sales rep had promised me we would stop to try a few if we had a good meeting. The meeting definitely did not go well but we stopped anyway because a beer was needed, and it was Sierra Nevada afterall. The brewery was much bigger then I was expecting and very industrial looking on one side more like a large commercial brewery. (I guess it kind of is) and more of your typical brew pub restaurant look on the other sides with the exception of everything was very upscale for a brewpub.


Here is a pic of the parking lot with solar panels above that also pivot with the angle of the sun. This covers the entire parking lot and it is a large parking lot. This should be a requirement for all parking lots and roofs of most commercial buildings (at least in warm climate areas). Along with the landscaping design this fits in nicely with the environment, looks cool, free energy, and a great use of space. There is also some benefit by parking there as you get some shade from the panels. The steel structure holding up the panels is not elaborate and would be inexpensive to build. The expense of the solar panels is another matter.




This is what all the ashtrays look like at each entrance.

The company logo is CNC milled into the side of the brushed stainless steel housing. As we went inside we noticed the huge polished copper brew kettles which is pretty common for brew pubs but these were a beaut. Even the HVAC ducts throughout the bar and restaurant were made out of copper. Those must have cost a fortune.

We sat down at the bar and ordered a pint. I started with there IPA which was really good but not into my top 10 list for IPA's. He had a Scotch Ale which was a seasonal and quite good. Next up was a toss up between the 20th St. Greenhop and their flagship Pale Ale. I couldn’t recall if I ever had there pale on draft before so the bartender gave us a couple samples of each. The 20th St. was delicious but was just another dry hopped IPA to me. The pale on the other hand is much better (and fresher) on draft then out of the bottle which carries a lingering but subtle bottle taste to it. We sat at the bar and rapped about what had happened earlier with the sales call; going through all the scenarios. Did they buy from someone else? Was there just a mix-up in scheduling? when we noticed this guy carrying a tap and hose with a clamping style mounting apparatus and clamped it to the side of the bar and disappeared. Then a while later he comes back rolling in a keg we find out to be special keg of Bigfoot Barleywine Style Ale they have been aging for six months. We could barely contain our excitement as we ordered two pints. The bartender later told us that we shouldn't have gotten full pints because of the high ABV. I told her we can keep her mistake a secret, oh and you should probably only charge us for 1/2 pints then. This is a BIG hoppy beer and needless say we were all smiles. Better eat something.

After finishing our pints and an order of wings which btw were not even close to the mighty goodness of FOTM back in P-town we headed out to get me back to the airport. He had satellite radio in his car so I took over the controls and landed a classic punk rock station as we blasted down the road.




Oh, one more stop to empty my bladder. We whipped into this bankrupted prune farm to water the prunes.

He dropped me off at the airport with an hour left before my flight departed. Perfect timing. The flight was on time since Southwest rules and made it safely home by 8:30. Today was not entirely a waste.