Recently in Food Category

Margo and I really enjoy finding and patronizing good restaurants wherever we travel. Not necessarily always fine dining, either. One of the first things we do when we travel somewhere new, we ask around about where the good restaurants are.

The DelMarVa beaches are very familiar territory for us though. Margo has been going there with her family since the 70's. I've been going up with Margo since we met in 96. We've had a lot of time to explore and try out the restaurants in the area. Here are the ones that we hit while were in the area for vacation this year. Typically we eat in the condo for breakfast and lunch and then go out for dinner.

Most of these are in Rehoboth. For us, Rehoboth is easier to get around in than Ocean City is, so we spend more time there.

La La Land, Rehoboth - Kind of French styled but with a lot of world/fusion influences in the food and with large portions. We typically end up taking enough home for lunch the next day. Normally I get their cream of crab soup which is awesome. Their drinks are really good too. They have a hidden back bar that doesn't really start getting busy til the other restaurants close.

Galaxy 66 Grille, Ocean City - We don't go here that often, because it's way down on 66th St in Ocean City. They do have a real nice rooftop bar and dining area though. This last time we ate inside though. Normally they're really good, but this time the food wasn't really done that well (my fish was a little overcooked, as was Margo's steak). I was disappointed this time. Will give another chance next year though. They do have this fantastic dessert though...it's a beautiful chocolate mousse inside a chocolate box. Sized for two. We couldn't eat it all anyway...very tasty but big.

Fusion, Rehoboth - One of our new favorites. Tried it for the first time last year. Food's really well presented. Lots of seafood. Many Italian style dishes on the menu this season. We went three times this year so far. Their "House Cosmo" is basically a Cosmopolitan but the liquor is colored and layered red, white and blue. Nice.

Grotto Pizza (several locations) - Our old standby and a Delaware institution. We ate Grotto a couple times too, including on the way home. We also usually take a couple frozen pizzas home to go (there's two in the freezer now). They're the only place where I'll eat a plain cheese pizza. I don't know what it is about it, but to me it's as close to perfect pizza as I can imagine.

Nicola Pizza, Rehoboth - A Rehoboth institution. Home of the Nic-o-boli, which is kinda like a calzone, but with ground beef, mozzarella, sauce and pizza toppings inside. Great stuff. Usually I get mine with pepperoni and black olive. Margo gets hers with sweet peppers. Actually, we didn't eat in there on the vacation week. We did run in and get 6 plain frozen ones to go. They're at home in the freezer.

Vine, Rehoboth - A new place on Rehoboth Ave next to the fire station. It's a wine bar, mostly. Very small. Interesting wine list. Our server said "cloying" in describing a particular wine. Good appetizers and small-plate kinds of items. The antipasto plate was very good. Didn't try the entrees. Will go back.

Patsy's Bethany Beach - Casual gourmet dining, whatever that is. One of my favorite places, but I don't get there as often as I'd like because in-season parking in Bethany sucks. Very laid back front-porch dining. Caribbean/southern food. We get the conch fritters all the time. Pretty seafood oriented there and everything I've had there was fantastic. Sundays, they have an amazing homestyle fried chicken that knocks my socks off.

Shag, Rehoboth - New for this season. I can't find a URL for it yet. It's where Zeus used to be, next door to Planet X. It's a funky 60s/70s theme decor. The menu's small and the prices are really low for as good as the food is. We didn't get around to trying this place until really late in the day, but the kitchen was still open. We had a broiled scallop and sun dried tomato alfredo that was to die for. They also have a back bar that is full of funky retro atmosphere and night life. They have Harvey Wallbangers on the bar's drink menu. Will definitely be back.

Fager's Island, Ocean City - We used to go here for Margo's birthday all the time. It's been a few years since the last time though. Fine dining upstairs (I tend to dress up a bit here). Pricey but excellent, excellent food with great service. Classy place. They're on the bay side with large windows in the dining area overlooking the bay. At sunset, they play the 1812 Overture timed to end with the sun setting. Downstairs is kind of a beach/parrothead bar. It's nice to go down there and hang out and have fun after a nice dinner like upstairs.

Dos Locos, Rehoboth - Mexican food. Family friendly. Big, loud. Inexpensive. Margaritas by the pitcher. Good food though. Kinda on par with Chevy's and Rio Grande in the DC area. They had a chorizo fajita which I haven't seen around home though. Pretty good. Gets crowded though.

Cultured Pearl, Rehoboth - Probably my favorite place for sushi anywhere. Great selection and very fresh well prepared fish. They're in year 3 of the new location and they're still fine tuning the restaurant space. Their rooftop dining area surrounded by a koi pond is probably one of the best dining spaces in Rehoboth though. Extremely popular. Reservations run out quick.

Getting back into town after having been on vacation at the beach over the last 10 days or so. I've never been a "work hard play harder" kind of guy. When I'm on vacation, I want to relax and enjoy myself and decompress because I don't want to be more tired than I was when I left home.

At the expense of maybe making myself look really boring, here's some of the things I did (some of them with Margo, even) while on my summer vacation;

• Read (more details coming)
• Ate (more details coming)
• Celebrated Margo's birthday (sunset photos didn't come out)
• Ate birthday cake for breakfast (I'm getting too old to do it)
• Took pictures
• Dodged grasshoppers (large swarm of grasshoppers on the beach..didn't have camera)
• Watched a school of fish get swarmed by porpoises (also didn't have camera)
• Got in a lot of guitar practice (Tony gave me a lot of work to do and I think I made progress)
• Saw The Dark Knight and really enjoyed it

Now I'm home after my first day back. I'm tired but really enjoyed myself even if the above looks boring. :P

Time to get started on some home projects.

We went to up to the beach last weekend to go to the Sea Witch festival in Rehoboth. It rained Saturday morning so the crowds weren't so bad, but there was still enough going on to be interesting. I took some pictures.

Here's a weiner dog. They have a parade of costumed pets. We missed it, but some were wandering around after.

Here's the bandstand on the boardwalk. The beach is in the background. They have bands play there in-season. The rain hadn't completely cleared yet when I shot this.

The famous Dolle's sign. I still think this is what the "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here!" store was modeled after. Next door is Thrasher's French Fries, Kohr Brothers, and Ibach's. All three of which are staples of our beach visits.

Go Fish and a Thrasher's across the street from the other Thrasher's. I've never been to Go Fish but it's an intneresting looking place.

I cooked the ham on Saturday night, and I'll have to say that it was pretty damn good. I was given a recipe for a simple mustard and brown sugar glaze, scored the skin and studded it with cloves. Pretty basic. Baked at 350 for three hours or so. Sliced thinly, served with diced baked potatoes.

I have to say, the ham was fantastic. I didn't really get much of the glaze but it did pick up some of the clove flavor. It's a country ham, so it's salty but interestingly so. There's also an undertone of herbs and other things I can't quite describe. Very tasty. I'm looking forward to smoking one.

It's from Calhoun Country Hams based in Culeper Virginia. They ship whole hams. I got some sausage too that I'm going to try next weekend.

In the mean time, we have about 8 pounds of ham to eat. Will try some different presentations for the next couple days and freeze the rest and break it out as the mood takes.

There's a photo below. Didn't come out right for some reason...the ham wasn't that red. It still looks nice though.

I've loved country hams since the first time I tasted one. While I love to cook, I've never cooked a country ham though. It seems like a lot of work to prep. A friend of Margo's mentioned that he had a source of some amazing country hams. With their reputation, I have dubbed them "magic hams."

We bought half of an uncooked ham a couple of weeks ago but haven't had time to do anything with it.

Things are calming down a bit so this morning I started soaking it in a cooler. I will change the water every day til Saturday when it comes out and starts a 4-hour cook. Saturday or Sunday, I plan on having a post with pictures and a review. If I like the results, I'll reveal the source of the ham.

I love good fudge but for some reason, I don't really get into eating it unless I'm at the beach. I have no idea if there are any places to get good fudge around the DC area (feel free to let me know) but I'll mention one of my favorite places in Delaware...

The Seaside Country Store is in Fenwick Island. It's an interesting store with a lot of antiques and hose decorations and nick-nacks and the like, but the front of the house is all about snacking. There are sauces by the front door, and cheese. The candy's by the register, as one would expect. Not far from there is the fudge counter. It's all made there in the store...you can watch if you get there at the right time. The fudge is quite good and they have something like 40 different kinds. You can order fudge from the website and get it shipped.

Technorati Tags: Food, Travel

Went to Planet X like we always do. The decor is fun and funky, the cocktails are fantastic. The food is still the highlight of the experience. The menu has an interesting mix of styles. I don't like eggplant, but I go nuts for the stacked eggplant appetizer. I've had everything on the entree menu but my main go-to's are the red Thai curry or the filet. They started taking reservations this year, and this summer if you didn't make a reservation, you're not getting in.

We discovered La La Land last year. It's on the other side of Wilmington Ave from Planet X. This is another place with a fun atmosphere with great food. The golden lump crab bisque is to die for. I had the seared rare yellowfin tuna. Fantastic stuff. There's also a starlight back bar that's cozy, has great drinks and starts to fill up when everyplace else in Rehoboth is closed.

The Cultured Pearl is our favorite place for sushi. Sometime since last summer they moved from Wilmington Ave to Rehoboth Ave where the hardware store used to be. The new space is gorgeous. Inside gets a little loud and doesn't have the intimacy of the old place, but the rooftop dining is beautiful. This is another place that you're not likely to get in during the summer without a reservation. The sushi and sashimi is top notch. They have a cream of crab soup that's also outstanding.

New to me this year was Dangerously Delicious Pies. They're tucked into the back of Bethany Town Center, and I noticed them by accident. It's a small place with record covers stuck to the walls and wonderful pies under glass. Lots of attitude here (in a good way) but there's not anything to get in the way of great pie. I walked out with a tart key lime slice and I look forward to working my way through the rest of their pies.

I was looking forward to visiting Udder Delights this summer, but it isn't where it was. I'm not sure if they moved or just closed. The website's still there. If I find anything out, I'll follow up here. Also, if anyone else out there knows anything about it, comment or track back here if you want.

Technorati Tags: Food, Travel

If anyone out there has a source for getting those crunchy cereal marshmallows without the cereal, I'd love to hear about it.

I've been googling around and haven't found a potential source that makes me feel confident about doing businesss.

Yeah, it's odd, but it reminds me of being a kid eating all the marshmallows out of my Lucky Charms. I'm trying not to get a freeze drying machine and make my own.

Technorati Tags: Food

Looks like the FDA extended the deadline for comments on the proposed chocolate changes another month to May 25th so there's still plenty of time to comment.

Guittard set up a site called Don't Mess With Our Chocolate that takes it from the point of view of a maker of fine chocolate. There's a lot more information there on the issue.

Update: I caught a link to this site from Slashfood.

Updated Update: This is entry #200 on the current iteration of this site. Go me. I still have a backup of some of the older stuff that was lost in a previous cutover that I will get to adding this year. Nothing hugely interesting, but adding it for completeness.

Technorati Tags: Current Events, Food, Politics

Wow. Slashdot picked up the possible chocolate change.

Someone put in more effort than I did and got the FDA page for the change and a link where you can send in your comments by April 25th.

I'm not up for turning this space into a political soapbox but I'm posting the links in case someone reading this stuff loves chocolate and doesn't read Slashdot.

Technorati Tags: Current Events, Food, Politics

So the Grocery Manufacturers of America lobbying group is trying to get the FDA to change the rules for what defines "chocolate" in America. The new rules would allow manufacturers to substitute cheaper vegetable oil for cocoa butter. I would think that would kind of make chocolate not chocolate anymore, but that's just me.

Here's a Gristmill posting on the subject. I agree with its author that we're better off patronizing small producers of high quality chocolate than sitting around and sucking it up as the mass produced chocolate gets worse and worse. It amazes me how much better even mass produced European chocolate is than most if what we have here.

Try an experiment sometime. Find a European version of the Kit Kat. Around the DC Metro area, there's a chain called World market that usually has them. Taste test the European version of the Kit Kat against the American version. Big difference, huh?

Oddly enough, when I noticed this issue I just got done picking up a couple different varieties of hot chocolate from a producer called Vosges. One is an Aztec-style hot chocolate with chipotle and the other is a Paris-style chocolate chaud. I've heard that they're both fantastic. I'll post a follow-up entry once I have a chance to try them out. I think I have a Swiss Miss packet around that I could do a head-to-head with.

Technorati Tags: Food

Plain Greek yogurt with honey on it. Tonight was Tupelo honey.

I learned this one at Mourayo in DC. I had a gift certificate for diner for two from Christmas that I used in February. Dinner was fantastic. Then the dessert was a fruit plate with honey covered yogurt. Simple and beautiful. Highly recommended....both the dessert and the restaurant.

Technorati Tags: Food

Business & Technology | Starbucks launches Hear Music record label:
via Slashfood

So is this part of Starbucks' new strategy to re-find its soul?

Things like starting a label and signing Sir Paul take time so it's my guess that this is another way Starbucks us losing it instead. It kinda makes sense given that part of the "Starbucks Experience" is the music played in their shops. The Hear station has been on XM for a while...I even had it in my presets before I dropped my subscription.

I'm still waiting for a coffee-related change that shows they're serious about getting that lost soul back though,

Technorati Tags: Food, Marketing, Music

Starbucks must find lost "soul," Schultz says: Business & Technology: The Seattle Times

This is a little old now but I've been focused on more tangible (i.e. offline) activities the last couple weeks.

I'm glad to see that someone at Starbucks is aware that something's not right.

It's easy and almost trendy now in some circles to bash Starbucks these days. They're literally everywhere (there are 28 within 10 miles of here) and it's hard not to get overloaded by that.

I got my start in good coffee at Starbucks so I'll always have a soft spot for them. I eventually graduated to better coffee that's better roasted and more skillfully prepared in locally owned shops (Jamie's General Bean is a favorite). In the last couple years I have been roasting my own coffee as well.

The more I learned about what makes good coffee, the less satisfied I was with what the local Starbucks' were putting out. It didn't help that they were getting rid of the La Marzocco machines and replacing them with those automatic machines. When it takes skill to pull an espresso shot, sometimes you get crap, but sometimes you get gold.

Anyway, I'm rambling. I hope this means that Starbucks is going to start focusing on making and serving great coffee and less on making an "experience" for people who don't like coffee. I think easily available, well-roasted, skillfully prepared coffee would be a wonderful thing regardless of what name's on the door.

Technorati Tags: Coffee, Food, Marketing

I make them myself and they're quite tasty. I don't understand why everyone insists on putting macadamias in with the white chocolate. It tastes OK too but I think that the white chocolate chip stands quite well on its own in a cookie.

Some day I'm going to start Famous Scott's "keep your nuts out of my cookies" Cookies.

Technorati Tags: Food

I try not to just pass along links that can be found in the usual places but I can't help myself this time.

The DIY Guide to Roasting Your Own Coffee! [via Lifehacker]

Lots of links and some good information to help with the decision to home roast your coffee.

I started roasting coffee at home a few years now. I didn't do the ultra-low-budget approach mentioned first in the article. I picked up a Zach & Dani roaster because it has a catalytic converter (no smoke!) and I can just set it and go without messing with it. I don't have the tolerance or patience to smoke up the house with a skillet or popcorn popper and neither does Margo. I do enough of that when I do steaks indoors.

Roasting your own coffee is a lot cheaper if you can find a local roaster that is willing to sell you green beans. I used to go up to Mayorga til it really started to be a pain in the butt to get up there. Jamie's General Bean is a lot closer but I haven't actually been able to buy green beans from them. When I don't have any green I get my roasted coffee from there because I know their coffee is fresh. It's not quite as cheap to home roast if you have to get your coffee shipped from somewhere. When I order online, I go to Sweet Maria's and the shipping adds up when you're ordering 5-10lbs at a time. At least I'm able to count on sampler packs from family as an easy Christmas/bitrhday gift.

I think that the best part of home roasting my own coffee is the taste. Truly fresh coffee (1-7 days from roasting) is a lot different than what we're used to. The flavors are brighter and more complex. It's hard for me to describe. If you can find a good local roaster/cafe give them a try and you'll see. If you have a good espresso machine (I don't) you can even see the difference fresh coffee makes in your crema.

I'm not a fan of Starbucks' roasting style either...almost every variety of coffee is burnt so you taste the 'Starbucks roast' as much as the flavor of the coffee. In the DC area, it seems that a lot of the non-Starbucks cafes are using over-roasted coffee these days too. When I roast my own, I roast to city or full city which to my taste brings out more of the flavor character of the bean. I do enjoy their Breakfast Blend occasionally though.

There's also the creativity in home roasting of creating your own blends...putting together multiple varieties to make a more balanced and flavorful cup of coffee.

One thing that is a pain about home roasting is that you have to keep track of your coffee consumption if you have to have your beans shipped. Even if you have a local source, you don't want to roast a batch and brew it right away...you want to let it sit 12-24 hours. So, if you run out, you're kinda stuck. I have a go-to of Starbuck's Breakfast Blend at the local Shopper's Food Warehouse if I mis-read my bean supply and I don't think of it til after Jamie's is closed.

Technorati Tags: Food, Gadgets

I seem to be collecting allergies as I get older. This past weekend, I had lunch at the local Corner Bakery and had an allergic reaction that I've never had before (I'll spare the details). It started an hour or so after eating and lasted all day.

Margo called her allergist, and they were really concerned about the reaction. I have an appointment on Friday, but in the mean time they wanted me to get a list of everything I had for lunch that day.

I was expecting it to be difficult to get a complete ingredients list from a restaurant. I was wrong. I asked to talk to the manager and I explained my situation and what I ate. She pulled out a binder, flipped through it, pulling out a few pages, and then went in the back to make copies. She came back and handed me a copy of the pages in the binder that listed all of the ingredients in what I ate that day.

I was surprised and impressed. I wonder how many other places have lists like that.

Technorati Tags: Customer Service, Food, Health

JonVon turned 41 on Saturday. He and some friends had goat vindaloo for dinner. That got me thinking that I haven't had non-vegetarian Indian food for quite a while. My favorite Indian restaurant in the area is Woodlands, but they're souther Indian which means it's vegetarian.

Margo came home tonight, and asked what's for dinner. I asked what she'd like me to go get (haven't been shopping since we got back from the beach yet). She goes, "How about Indian?". I didn't need to be asked twice. Preet Palace is the closest Indian restaurant to our house. No goat vindaloo. Still very good though...I had mug tikka masala. No beer in the house (!). Should have made a lassi but didn't want to go shopping for yogurt.

Technorati Tags: Food

Well, I did it. I dropped in at Udder Delight on Saturday night after dinner and was ready to do my duty as I posted on the 6th. Unfortunately, the camera didn't make it on this trip for some reason so I don't have any pictures. Maybe next time I'll get some pictures of my ice cream in the orange glow of the Hooters next door.

I didn't see cucumber anymore which was my favorite of their odd flavors. I didn't see Memphis BBQ out either and I wasn't going to make them make a batch just for me to taste.

(They have a ColdStone style cold marble slab behind the counter that they use to mix together the ice cream and the fixins that you want, and I expect that some of the odd flavors might be made up on the fly that way)

I did luck out (?!) and there was a batch of the bacon flavor out front and center. I asked for a taster of it, braced myself and had at it. Oddly enough, it wasn't that bad. You mostly taste vanilla ice cream and a little caramel up front. There's a little bacon taste that comes up behind it, but it's definitely not the dominant flavor in the ice cream. It was actually rather tasty in an odd way.

The only problem I had with it is probably my normal weird relationship with food and texture. There were little meat chunks mixed through it, and I really had a hard time getting around the little meat chunks being where meat chunks shouldn't be and it got to be kind of a turn off. So while I enjoyed the taste, the texture kind of blew it for me and I know that's just me being weird about food.

The normal ice cream flavors at Udder Delight are fantastic, by the way. I stop by there for a couple scoops of whatever whenever I'm out here. I ordered a scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough and a scoop of cake batter after I tried the bacon, and was quite happy. The flavors are quite tasty and ice cream itself is smooth and silky. They have a lot of different toppings and things to add to your ice cream Coldstone-style as I mentioned earlier. I wish I'd been able to get a picture of that. Oh well.

At least I'm not at work, near the ocean and the weather's been good. :D

Technorati Tags: Food, Review

Back on July 19th, Slashfood posted an article about a place in Vancouver called the Amato Gelato Cafe which makes a Viagra-flavored gelato. It reminded me of a place that I visit regularly when I'm up by Rehoboth, Delaware:

1. There's an ice cream shop in Rehoboth, DE called Udder Delight that has a Viagra ice cream flavor too. They have a lot of other odd flavors too like bacon, Memphos BBQ, and cucumber (which is actually quite good).

http://udderdelighticecreamhouse.com/Icecreamflavors.html

Posted at 8:48PM on Jul 19th 2006 by Scott Gentzen

Today, they posted an article about Udder Delights today. It made my day.

Bacon ice cream is an Udder Delight - Slashfood

If I had known that they were going to do an article on this, I could have helped out with some research. I'm up that way quite a bit during the year so it's not much effort for me really to try out a bunch of the weird flavors and report back. I had the cucumber and really liked it. The bacon one has bacon in it so I haven't tried it, but if I was going there as a reporter, I would have given it a shot.

Actually, I think I'll do that. I'm going to be going back up there next week sometime. Will be brining the laptop so I should be able to post before I get back. I'll try out some of the odd flavors and give a report back. Will be interesting...their regular ice cream is fantastic.

Their flavor list is here: Udder Delights Ice Cream Flavors. That isn't everything (I've had the cucumber and it's not on the list) but it's all I can point to for now. I'll check out the menu when I'm there and try some stuff out. If anyone's curious about anything else on the list on their website, let me know and I'll make sure I try that too.

Technorati Tags: Food

MSNBC: "Report: DHS employees wasted thousands"

When you don't have strict controls and monitoring, stuff like this is going to happen on government purchase cards. It should be a given by now. Some agencies understand this. It amazes me when there are reports out there of agencies that still don't. This caught my eye though:

A beer brewing kit and ingredients for more than $1,000 for a Coast Guard official to brew alcohol while on duty as a social organizer for the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. "The estimated price for a six-pack of USCG beer was $12," the investigators noted, adding: "Given that the six-pack cost of most beers is far less than $12, it is difficult to demonstrate that the Academy is achieving cost savings by brewing its own beer."

For the record, I've paid more than $12 for a sixpack of beer before and I enjoyed every bit of it.

I'd be interested in seeing how they're coming up with a cost of $12 for a sixpack with that rig. A brewing setup that's going to cost you $1000 is probably going to be doing 5-gallon batches of beer at a time. That's almost 9 (8.888) sixpacks. Allowing for being sloppy, that's 8 sixpacks worth of beer, which comes to $96 per batch. How are they coming up with that number?

Depending on what combinations of ingredients you get, the cost could vary a lot, actually...beer is pretty diverse. They had to get per-batch costs from somewhere and it's a lot easier to pick some arbitrary "average" beer kit cost than survey costs of all possible ingredients and create an "aeverage beer recipe cost" profile or something.

A kit for brewing a 5-gallon batch of beer tends to run $14-30. You're looking at spending $15 every 5 batches or so for propane. Once or twice a year, maybe you might need to replace a plastic hose or a rubber gasket. There's other incedental costs here when you really think about it...water, a little electricity maybe. The upfront cost of $1000 for brewing equipment dilutes over time as you brew your batches of beer...there's no telling how frequently they decided that the $1000 had to be re-spent to replace worn-out parts. I would tend to think that it probably takes longer than they're estimating...at $1000 worth of gear, a lot of it's going to be stailness and glass probably instead of plastic like the starter kits tend to be.

I'm not an auditor or anything like that, so I'm not going to be able to find and calculate all of the possible costs of brewing a batch of beer. That said, once the equipment is bought, you're looking at an average of $24 per batch of beer. That breaks down to an average of $3 per sixpack.

Where's the other $9 coming from? Some of that's going to end up being the startup costs of the equipment pro-rated over some arbitrary amount of time (and I'm not going to do the math to figure out what that period is). Realistically, it's probably not all of that $9 because I'd expect that $1000 of brewing equipment would last more than 111 brews. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they're calculating it with the brewer being on the clock....if they're brewing on government time, then the person's hourly wage comes into play.

I would think that if it's at the USCGA that it would be for the students to use. Brewing is a fine hobby. It teaches a lot about chemistry and sanitation, proces control, quality control, experimentation and attention to detail. When you're done, you (hopefully) have a tasty brew that you can proudly say you made with your own hands. Those benefits don't come out when you're doing a cost analysis of homebrewing versus picking up a sixer of Bud at the 7-11. If you're just looking for a cheap buzz, homebrewing isn't the way to go.

Have I ever thought about homebrewing? Yes, I have. :D

Recommended reading:

The Complete Joy of Home Brewing by Charles Papazian

http://www.homebrew.com/
http://morebeer.com/

Technorati Tags: Fraud, Government, Beer, Homebrew

When I heard about CocaCola Blak on the net a while back, I thought it was a bizarre idea. Kind of one of those things that sounded like a drunk marketeer idea...."I know! Kids like coffee these days, so we'll put coffee in Coke!"

Actually, from the Wikipedia entry on Coke Blak it looks like it's Diet Coke.

I avoided trying it since it started appearing in local stores because they were all selling it only in 4-packs. I'm not going to try something new if I have to commit to buying more than one to do it. I'll buy one to give it a try. If I don't like, it's not a big deal. If I bought 4 and don't like it, I have three more sitting around. Anyway, while I was in Blacksburg, VA over the weekend I was at Kroger and they were selling Coke Blak individual bottles, so I thought I'd give it a try.

So that's the lead-up. How does it taste?

Interesting.

The coffee taste is barely coffee-like to me. The coffee taste reminds me of those Starbucks Frappuccino bottles...if you take away the milk. It resembles more what I imagine coffee candy to be than actual real coffee. Coffee for people who don't like coffee, basically. Then you mix Diet Coke into that except that it doesn't seem as fizzy as Coke...more like Mountain Dew). That's really the only way I can think of to describe it.

I don't know yet if I like it or not. If it's any indication, I'll admit that I didn't drink the whole thing. I got about a quarter of the way through the bottle and then recapped it and tossed it. I think it satisfied my curiosity for the taste of the new drink without giving me any reason to confinue. I think it's an odd combination of tastes, and I don't think I'll be trying it again any time soon.

I'm glad I didn't get the 4-Pack.

Technorati Tags: Food, Review, Coke, Blak

101 Cookbooks - Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream: I'm speechless. Why hadn't I tried this before? Probably because I assumed that LN2 was expensive. Lots of good links to get started on thinking about LN2 cooking. That'll definitely get me back in the kitchen. Started up the grill today and did some filets mignon. I got a taste for BBQ this week, so I'm getting ready to fire up the smoker if the weather holds.

Technorati Tags: Food, Gadgets

Deconstructing the McRib - Slashfood:

I haven't had one in years but I have to admit that the McRib is a guilty pleasure of mine. It's offensive to me on several levels (the sauce, the fact that it's a rib-shaped pork McNugget, etc) but I can't help it. They're tasty. I'm just glad that I don't to to McD's anymore really, so I don't have to worry about it. Having gone through Fast Food Facts deconstruction of the McRib, I'm not sure if I could make it through another one anyway.

That reminds me...I need to get back in the saddle and do some BBQ soon.

Via Slashfood.

Technorati Tags: Food

Well, not quite. We spent 24 July to 3 Aug at the beach.

When we came in, Bootsie's in Ocean View was open. We got a pair of baby back rib racks and some pulled pork. The ribs were ok. We never did get to the pork.

Later in the week, we got around to seeing the new place....Bethany Blues in Bethany Beach. It's a nice looking upscale kind of place. All of their BBQ is hickory and oak-fired which is a nice change. Margo said it was really good. I was sick so I couldn't taste it too well. Looking forward to going back next weekend.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Food

On Sunday afternoon, I heated the oven up to 250 and put the foil-wrapped leftovers in for 1h 30m or so, then dropped them back into the fridge because we were having (a nasty) steak that night.

I brought the ribs to work this afternoon. The guys downstairs had a grill going so I threw them on to warm them up.

They still tasted good. They softened up a lot. Still not falling apart, but very nice. I'm pleased. Looking forward to this weekend's cook.

Technorati Tags: Food

Started wit baby back ribs. Cryovac'd package of three racks from Costco which weighed in at 8 lbs. Pulled two out, put the third one in the freezer.

Washed and patted dry. Rubbed with a mixture of my leftover rubs. Wrapped them in plastic and foil and let them sit in the fridge overnight.
Started a chimney of lump. Laid down a bed of unlit lump in the firebox. When the chimney was ready, added it to the firebox with the air intake wide open. When the temp hit 250-ish, closed the intake down to about a quarter.

Added the ribs to the cooker box. Temperature held for over an hour without touching it. Nice.

Started spraying ribs with vinegar at about 1h 30m. for every hour or so.

At 4h 10m and 4h 20m I brushed on the sauce. At about 4h 45m the ribs came off, and were wrapped in foil and blankets and put in the cooler.

Pulled it out and served it 30 minutes later.

The inside meat was nicely flavored. The outside crust was a little salty for my tastes. And the meat was a little chewy.

Lessons: Less/milder rub. No spraying during cooking. Let it cook til it's really, really done, timing be damned.

Technorati Tags: Food