#I know it's sourdough country. can you even beer there?

[egregiousderp]

When you see this post an excerpt from a WIP!

Fuck. Okay. I saw this through @unicornsandbutane . Uh. So. Remember that Spiritassassin past life dreaming AU I was talking about? It. Uh. Goes something like this.

(Sorry this is huge. This was going to be a chapter. They didn’t say how long the excerpt had to be and I don’t know when I’ll next get to this because I’m…well…me.)

Context: force sensitive people in one life dream about their past lives. Baze and Chirrut dream about one another. Baze denies this. Heavily. That some new age shit.

He meets Chirrut for the first time after dreaming about him dying in his arms.

Chirrut has retinitis pigmentosa. He can still see but is in the process of becoming fully blind. Baze doesn’t know.

Okay. I- Uhm…

/VAGUE PRESENTING GESTURES ——– ——–

The client can smile as much as he wants as long as he pays is a personal rule.

Baze is starting to question that rule.

He is hours in and halfway through being swallowed by the innards of a sink that probably hasn’t been replaced or altered in more than fifty years, and still can’t make head or tail out of what the client actually wants him to do.

“If,” the man says, still smiling like the sun, “if I wanted to make the house safe for a blind person, how would it be modified?”

Baze grunts something about the stairs and keeping a clear floor. None of which particularly requires an interior contractor. He sees no reason to lie about the difficulty of his work when the man is probably just looking to sell a house.

“If I wished to install disabled ramping what would I do?“

Baze grunts again.

Not enough space for ramping. Install a chair lift like everyone else.

“If I-”

“Pipes and wiring,” Baze interrupts, his patience narrowing.

“Come again?”

The tilt of the other man’s head is birdlike, cheerful. The nightmare from the night before has unsettled Baze too much to be easily shaken. He rubs his forehead to clear it, feeling the start of a headache.

“Old house, old wiring,” Baze grunts.

“And…what does that mean?”

Baze sighs through his nose, and pulls his glasses back on. He dislikes doing so. Dislikes the looks of amusement he gets while holding documents at arms-length and studying layouts even more.

He hates old manses. The owners are either stingy or gullible, and rarely know what needs to be done.

If this guy wants a pretty interior job he should have called Jyn first, gutted all the beautiful wood paneling, the antique tiling of the floors and remade with a modern interior, calling him up when they were done. Baze chews on the end of his pen in distaste.

“Means the house came first. Electricity came later.” He thinks of the trio of children he saw giggling together on the trolley, barely six years old, watching a video on their parent’s phone. “And usage has gone up. You want that done first."

The owner just gazes at him, eyebrows lifted.

He has no idea what he is talking about, obviously.

Baze taps the sink in the kitchen on the print.

“Is this an original?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea,” the other man laughs.

He comes uncomfortably close to see the print, then turns his head to look at Baze. He is grinning at the beaded chain for his glasses. Librarian comments incoming, no doubt.

Baze’s mother would have knocked his knees out from under him with a volume of the Britannica, and she was barely five feet tall, with a limited grasp of English–-a textbook example on why quiet wasn’t the same as peaceful and neither were librarians.

Baze foregoes the commentary by folding the print back under his arm.

Might as well take a look.

Judging by the sink fixtures, the kitchen had a rehaul during the sixties. He wrinkles his nose as he opens the cabinet, pulling out bottles.

He half-expects to find a bag of weed somewhere under the sink. Keeps his nose out for the stink of it.

The client’s perpetual smile makes him seem the type.

He half-expects protests, the defensiveness of a dealer.

The stillness and the slight creeping sensation down his spine makes him crane his head back to find said client instead matter-of-fairly checking out his ass.

Baze snorts.

Well. That’s this city for you.

Nobody has much to look at in steel-toed work boots and tan coveralls. And Baze has even less to look at these days. He’d once been a trim man. Now he’s just a sad forty-year-old nearsighted divorcee checking the nuts of an S-pipe as a favor to a brilliant young architect who’d found him at random by looking up welders in the phone book.

Jyn Erso is twenty-two, driven, and all business. Something more than a client. A grudging friend. He’d done all-night work with her in near-silence together for her grad display. You don’t pull rush jobs like that for just anyone.

They meet once a week for drinks. They aren’t what he’d think of as particularly close friends because Jyn has a guardedness to her that tells you it isn’t a date, and if you try anything she’d crack your nose and leave you in the hospital. Not that Baze would try anything. But there is something particularly depressing about meeting up with an attractive and intelligent young woman who talks shop, having a nice evening, and then going home alone to your own unfinished house.

When Jyn had said her best friend needed to have his house looked at for renovations, Baze had had the sinking feeling that that was it, that he was being couched into approving of some future boyfriend, herded headlong into some sort of fatherly role.

He did not expect Chirrut Îmwe, answering the door before he could knock.

“You’re the inside man?“

Baze had blinked.

“Something like that.”

“Chirrut. Chirrut Îmwe.”

His handshake had been firm, vigorous, his hands as calloused as Baze’s.

“You’re…Blaze Malbus?”

“Baze,” Baze corrected with the long patience of a lifetime with an unusual name.

He’d kept clean-shaven and his hair close-cropped for years to try to cut down on the drug dealer jokes. He’d been a child during the Haight-Ashbury days, and still had never taken a hit. Straight A student. Good future.

Then his father had died when he was seventeen, and someone needed to bring in money for the house.

He knows all about how being good at something doesn’t cancel out bad luck, how the unexpected normally goes hand-in-hand with ‘unpleasant’.

In fact, Chirrut is unexpected in a lot of ways.

Trim black turtleneck. Woven bag. Loose pants and sandals. A red wrap around his waist that’s got an interesting and subtle woven texture to it. Clean-shaven. Close-haired. Chinese, like him, which had been another surprise. And definitely older than fresh-faced Jyn, though he has the peculiar agelessness to him that comes with a heavy fitness lifestyle. Probably another fucking righteous vegan, Baze thinks.

He thinks again of his dream, the details all blurred together, just a lingering sense of unease, of loss. Something that makes him want to wipe his fingernails on his coverall and expect to be talked down to by another idiot who doesn’t know which way a screw turns but makes more money than him and believes that’s because he’s lazy. Unintelligent.

The bad dream seems to be leaking into his sense of the man. He’s seen plenty of people like Chirrut. Has been checked out by far more intimidating-looking ones.

Baze wonders with a snort if he’s being set up, if Jyn has made some assumptions. Unlikely. Jyn usually keeps her head down when it comes to the affairs of others.

“I’m not that kind of plumber,” Baze says, too tired to keep any real heat in his voice.

Chirrut gives a bark of laughter that’s completely unselfconscious, a smile that’s much too even not to have been set that way as a child, with plenty of complicated orthodonture. Money, Baze thinks a little bitterly. Something he doesn’t have much of even before the ex-wife remarried, stopped demanding alimony in advance, and filed a totally unnecessary restraining order.

“Aah, well, you never know,” Chirrut breezes.

He is so blithe even Baze has to snort.

“Try turning the water on,” Baze mutters.

Chirrut steps over to the sink and Baze listens to the pipes, squints with his little penlight tucked behind his ear, the red beads of the chain clinking on pipe.

“Pour a glass for me. I want to check the clarity. Something transparent.”

Chirrut shuffles slightly above him.

“Don’t worry. There’s beer in the refrigerator if you get thirsty.”

“Beer,” Baze repeats.

Chirrut gives a noncommittal noise.

The only thing that’s thirsty here is you, Baze thinks a little uncharitably, making his way gingerly out from under the sink and unbending slowly, and with a wince.

“You don’t seem the type.”

Chirrut’s face shifts into comic dismay.

“My feelings are grievously injured and I rescind the offer of my specialty homebrew. You can drink out of the sink.”

Baze laughs, despite himself.

“That your business?”

“A hobby.”

Something odd has passed into the man’s face, the smile sagging at the corners.

Baze doesn’t ask.

Somehow it doesn’t surprise him that Jyn befriended a microbrewer.

“It was once women’s work, you know, the making of beer,” Chirrut calls.

His voice is a little too loud and bright in the low space.

Baze considers this tidbit, and how he’s probably supposed to react to it. What might be hinted and what might not be.

“Don’t tell that to Jyn,” he decides on.

Chirrut rips out another laugh, this one with a wicked edge.

He has a great laugh, Baze thinks absently. He must have caused plenty of trouble in his time. This too doesn’t surprise him in terms of Jyn’s choice of friends.

Against his better instincts he finds himself oddly okay with being watched by this hovering fellow. Always asking questions about what he’s doing, why he’s doing it. It should be annoying. Somehow it isn’t, comforting to talk about tangible things with that lingering dream hanging over top of him. The sense of incoming, inevitable failure and loss.

Baze often dreams of failure.

“How did you meet?“ Chirrut asks out of the blue, after hip-checking a table by accident.

Clumsy, Baze notes. Like anything that isn’t directly in front of him isn’t there.

"Hm?”

“You and Jyn.”

Baze is surprised at the heavy, intent look on the other man’s face. Blinks as he realizes.

Oh.

“Phone book.” Baze grunts, “Under ‘Welders’.”

Nothing weird, he wants to add. Doesn’t, since he’s sure somehow that would make it worse.

…Is he actually going to be given the shovel talk by a Five-foot-Eight beatnik?

Baze doesn’t know whether to be flattered or concerned. Jyn is a very pretty girl, with a good head on her shoulders. Nice tits, too, if he’s completely honest. She could do a lot better than him for sure. He hopes, in a blaze of worry, that she knows it. Good God does he hope it.

He blinks.

The rising, tight tilt of the other man’s chin is very much like Jyn’s.

“You?” Baze asks, trying to keep the uneasy frown off his face.

“Destiny,�� the other says.

Baze laughs before considering whether he’s supposed to. A dry noise.

“Really.”

The corners of Chirrut’s mouth go mercifully up. He leans back against the counter.

“I wandered into the grad installations by accident and she almost murdered me with a power sander.”

He makes it sound like the most casual and reasonable thing in the world. Baze swallows down another laugh.

“Get out.”

“That’s what she said,” Chirrut deadpans back, dislodging Baze’s laugh from his throat despite himself. Despite how utterly cheesy it is. Chirrut, he notices, turns his whole face like a cat when he peers at him. A flicker of surprise.

“…Have we met before?” Chirrut asks faintly, something uncertain in his features.

Baze snorts, shaking his head.

“Definitely not.“

Chirrut frowns but goes on with a shrug.

"Anyway, my Tai Chi was completely ruined, I offered her free self-defense lessons to compensate her for the fright, and we’ve gotten along famously ever since.”

Baze makes a listening noise.

The thought of anyone weaponizing Jyn Erso’s anger is completely terrifying. He’s half-convinced Jyn’s lambent rage is its own renewable energy source.

“You give her your beers?”

Chirrut gives him a look of practiced disdain his mother would have been impressed by.

“Forget I asked.” Baze mutters, shrugging.

“Have you met Galen Erso?”

Chirrut’s dark eyes are narrow, intent. Without the easy smile his whole face is narrow and long, proud-looking somehow. Something in the combination of lips and chin and brow.

Baze searches his memory for the name. Finds nothing with a slow shake of his head.

“Who?”

“The father,” Chirrut’s chin tilts up again, a slow fury in his dark eyes.

Baze frowns, guessing.

“…Alcoholic?”

“Mm,” Chirrut agrees, his chin set and stubborn like a little fist, “The quiet kind.”

Baze considers this more carefully, a slow frown settling. Next Thursday he’ll relocate them to a cafe, he thinks. Cut down on the girl’s intake. Someone has to take care of her.

“You try talking to her?”

Chirrut gives a sharp laugh again.

“Have you tried stopping Jyn from doing something before?”

Baze thinks. Chirrut’s already grinning, shaking his head, utterly fond.

“When Jyn Erso rebels, the whole world follows,” the man says.

Baze frowns. He’s starting to realize why a thirty-something-looking bohemian fitness freak of a man in a Bill Gates turtleneck is Jyn’s best friend.

“I have Thursdays,” Baze says stubbornly.

“Are you serious?” Chirrut laughs.

“Your day must be either Tuesday or Wednesday–”

“It’s Friday, actually,” Chirrut cuts him off, the laughter still in his eyes. He looks utterly unintimidated. Amused, even, arms folded across his stomach.

“Then if she matters to you–”

“Good God, you’re like an old woman,” Chirrut interrupts, laughing.

Baze’s fingers tighten. He’s a big man, and he knows it.

Chirrut is not, and still meets his look without an ounce of fear, a blasé arrogance. Baze notes suddenly the outline of his shoulders. The trimness of his waist, remembers he’d said self defense classes.

“Jyn’s an adult. She does her work and does it well. Life doesn’t end because of a bit of Black Porter on a Friday Night,” Chirrut says, shaking his head slightly.

Baze’s disapproval sits heavy in his belly, welling up in frustration. A great weight of words he can’t say to a stranger, a friend of a friend.

“I can see why you and Jyn are friends,” he settles for, leadening it with the full force of his disapproval.

Chirrut shrugs, a manic glitter in his eye.

“I like a straightman with me when I cause my trouble,” he pauses, inclines his head with a smile, “Or woman.”

Baze lets out a breath in disgust.

He bets it’s the same bar on Friday. He has half a mind to make the time to fish them both out. A growing protectiveness.

“Don’t drag Jyn down with you in whatever trouble you get into.”

Chirrut makes a rude noise, his dark brows knitting irritably, ”Yes, mother hen. Will that be all?”

It comes so sharply, so abruptly Baze just stands there for a moment, realizing how far he’s overstepped.

He almost wants to apologize. Feels the sting instead of the comparison. Dismissal.

Baze bits down his words.

“…I’ll send you an estimate.”

“Well, good. You stay right there and estimate,” Chirrut drawls, bumping the same table, catching the same vase, “while I get you a crate.”

Baze blinks.

“A…what?”

“You need a drink!” Chirrut hollers down the hall, “You need about five drinks!”

“I don’t need anything!” Baze yells back.

He winces at the sound of his own voice.

Chirrut Îmwe has apparently gone selectively deaf.

“I don’t accept drinks from strange men,” Baze mutters, a little hot around the ears when he realizes the other man is indeed bringing up a loose crate filled with dark bottles.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m a painfully ordinary man cursed with spectacular beauty,” Chirrut replies back, making a face, “and not at all strange.”

Baze doesn’t laugh. Can’t. Caught by a strange sense of panic.

Chirrut taps a finger against the little barrel, something challenging in his dark eyes.

“Stardust Ale. Last year’s vintage. It’ll give you something to talk about with my friend.”

“I…can’t accept this,” Baze says quietly.

Chirrut is waving him off with a noise of irritation, shoving the thing into his hands.

“Go on. Get lost. Make your estimates. Come back when this,” he taps the crate, “is gone. Get drunk with some friends. This is my number,” he’s scrawling something large and loose on the side of the wood.

Baze gives him one last, exasperated look as he does so, as he’s manhandled to the door by prodding and pushing hands.

“And wear something different next time,” Chirrut adds, calling after him down the steps to the tilted street, “You look like a Ghostbuster!“

[believerindaydreams]

I was not expecting to channel Tuco Ramirez energies into a young pregnant hatmaker but Carla has very promptly become the sardonic loveable glue in this ongoing ball of poly!energies

This'll all show up on a03, properly edited. Eventually.

Into the fire, part 3

"He's scared stiff," Carla says, looking at Arcade sleep. "I mean, literally stiff. Look at how tightly his hands are clenched."

She fluffs a pillow to put under his head and I'm falling in love with her all over again, just to see her. That calm, sure way she moves, the sparkle of earrings she ground herself from broken beer bottles. Utter self-confidence wrapped in a hand-knit shawl.

"He's not as important as you. Nobody could be."

She snorts. It's cute. "You keep thinking you need to surrender something for me. That's not true and it never has been."

"Might be this time. Uh- we weren't planning to stay in the Mojave. What with him both of us being marked by Legion assassins, a friend of ours was gonna help us get out."

"Ooh. Friend friend, or-" She gestures, disgracefully. Makes me bark with laughter.

"No. Dyed in the wool lesbian. On the outs with the Brotherhood...she says she can get us cross-country. I don't know if it's by Vertibird or what, but if she says she can do it, she can."

"Are you sure she's trustworthy?" Hell, just the way she wrinkles her nose half kills me. Manny used to tease me about the way I'd keep on about her.

That was before he met her, though. "Yeah. If she wanted us dead, she had plenty of chances she didn't take. And we didn't tell her anything about...you know."

"I still say we need a better way to refer to that." A big smile appears. "Maybe we could say baby names. That's personal but not strange in a conversation."

I run my hands along the inviting bump of dress; she's pretty far along now. "What happens when the baby's born, though?"

"We can say we're planning for the next one." She laughs, pins my arms back in a bear hug; and I don't mind a bit. "But hey. If you were planning to go, let's go. God knows I'm hardly stuck on this two-bit town."

Whatever that means. Her Vault had some funny expressions. "I'd like to say it'd be safer to stay put...but honestly, it wouldn't be. Not while I'm still here."

"And I am not letting you wander off without me," Carla says, cupping my chin in her hands. "Bad things will happen. I want you where I can see you."

"...okay. Then I guess we'd better pack. Your sewing machine is under the bed."

"Not anymore," Carla says, tapping a footlocker with her bare toes. "Manny fetched it for me, all the way to Arizona and back."

"Guess I wasn't up to much compared to him, was I."

"Listen," Carla says, her small face suddenly turning intensely serious. "You're here, I'm here, Manny is here. And your new boyfriend. We're all alive, that's what matters."

She makes me blush, sometimes; and it doesn't help when Manny comes out of the bath, drying his hair with a towel and butt naked otherwise.

"Damn. Your Arcade looks cute curled up like that."

"He says it's a habit. Bedrolls aren't ever long enough for him."

"I can fix that with my magic sewing machine," Carla says, grinning dryly. "And I'll make him a hat. That's an important order of business."

"Don't know what I did, to deserve you two...look. You're sure you're okay, him coming along?"

"Would you be here if he hadn't helped you?"

"...no."

"Then let's bring him," Carla says conclusively.

"If it's good enough for your wife," Manny says with a wink, "it's good enough for me. Besides. That ass."

"Definitely one of the more shapely asses populating this wasteland," Carla agrees, straight faced.

"Fuck...you two don't talk about me that way when I'm asleep, do you?"

Manny gives me a patient look. "Don't be stupid, Boone."

"Huh."

"Of course we do."

***

It's ridiculously late by the time Arcade wakes up; and he has a pretty good idea why. There's a part of him that never quite feels safe falling asleep, without the hum of conversation and a trustworthy guard around; and he hasn't really had that since the Old Mormon Fort.

(Avoided going places for exactly that reason, if he's being honest. He's still never seen the Strip.)

He looks at the Sierra armor, frowns, puts on light doctor fatigues instead. It's hot already, that's a fair excuse.

Manny's asleep on a spare mattress, but there's no sign of the other two. He heads out and finds Carla cooking at the motel campfire, a tired Boone besides her.

"Oh good," she says when he approaches, poking her husband. "Boone, go to bed. Someone else is here to play bodyguard."

"Mmm...'s Manny?"

"No, it's Arcade. Go to bed."

He grunts and goes, slightly to Arcade's surprise. Carla looks after him fondly.

"They always were a little paranoid, even when we thought Novac was safe. And it wasn't really good for them, being on opposite shifts...they missed each other." She shoves beans around in a cast iron pan, takes the lid off a milk crate filled with tortillas. "Would you enjoy a burrito for breakfast? Or I can just give you some caps to buy from Cliff, if pre-war food's more your thing."

Right. After being taken as a slave and then dumped into a pre-war casino he is in fact broke right now, at least until he and Boone split the pre-war money stashed in the room. "Burritos sound fine. Trust me, you don't have the luxury of choosiness at the Old Mormon Fort, it's too chaotic."

"Sounds terrible. But then I'm a luxury hatmaker and I enjoy what I do, I'm probably the last person who'd understand charitable impulses." She places a tortilla on a grill to warm. "It did seem simpler in the vault, when we used lotteries and left morality out of it...my other vices include overpacking, an impatience with village idiots who think that three cornfields equal New Vegas, and I will bite you if you hurt Boone or Manny. Hard. Just getting that out of the way upfront."

"Ah." He's been expecting something like this conversation, but had rather expected he'd have to go first. "Um. I'm a poor liar, despite being privy to more secrets than I ever wanted to know. I seem to have mislaid an inherent pacifism in favor of wanting to shoot any Legionary I see, which despite Boone's opinion I can't really see as an improvement. And despite my ostensible position with the Followers, my medical capabilities leave almost as much to be desired as my bedside manner."

"You seemed to handle it well when my husband passed out."

"Battlefield medicine is one of the things I can do, yes. Along with making broc flowers grow anywhere and boiling homemade bagels."

" ...actual bagels? You're hired. Damn shame no NCR caravan imports lox yet, Boone took me to Shady Sands for our honeymoon and that's the only time I've had it...do you want to make bagels? Do you need ingredients?"

"Uh. I would need to buy a few things, yes, and it would take time to grow a new culture." He thinks with a mild pang of the last sourdough he had going, left unattended in a Followers tent. Hopefully someone found it before it started to smell. "What I mostly did for the Followers was garden, actually. We've figured out ways to emulate stimpaks with herbs, but they always put the subject in a fever, and there are ailments that's contra-indicated for. And of course nobody wants that on a battlefield...except the Legion, apparently, they don't seem to care."

"A crafter rather than a soldier. I'm not outnumbered anymore, that's great news." She has buck teeth and it shows when she smiles. "Honestly, I've had to become a regular Crusoe just because the boys aren't. Want them to turn any kind of ammunition into any other kind, they'll do that for you. Anything else, it's strictly DIY." She forks a piping hot burrito onto a plate, hands it to him. "There's sour yoghurt in the fridge if you prefer topping."

"Mmm...this is fine." Better than fine, actually, there's grilled iguana in the mix and a hint of jalapeno. "You've read Crusoe?"

"Oh, we had education machines in the vault, they worked great. Mr Gutsy reading your ABCs to you and blasting radroaches...we were happy." She starts on her own burrito, looking a little pensive. "I'll never forgive Mr House for that, never. Half the kids my age ended up in the Gomorrah turning tricks for sleazeballs, a lot of the others signed up for the NCR and died right away at Hoover Dam...there was a rumor going around," Carla says, a little vicious now. "That House cut a deal with the NCR, so many warm bodies in exchange for not appropriating the Strip. I'd believe it, but then I'd believe anything of the bastard."

Arcade nods, mentally notes one more vice: Carla, for all her sunny disposition, certainly can hold a grudge.

But then, she is Boone's wife; not entirely surprising. "So you got to Novac and hoped it would be home sweet home?"

"If such a place exists, it isn't here," Carla says; and violently pokes out the fire.

[cuppatealove]

Some Home Crafts to try if staying at home is a novelty for you

From a SAHM for whom it really very much no longer is ;-)

These are all things that don’t take a lot of actual time, but need to be attended to briefly every couple of hours, or need to have someone home to keep an eye on them.  That sort of thing.  Any questions, please feel free to ask and I’ll do my best.

Homemade Stock.  I swear, nothing has transformed my cooking as much as learning to make my own stock.  It is a flavour BOMB, and it’s virtually free!  Save up all your bones from the meals you eat in a bag in the freezer until you have a decent amount (roasting a whole chicken is a good way to get a lot of bones).  Alternatively, you can sometimes buy chicken carcasses or soup bones from the supermarket.  Chuck them in your biggest pot with a couple of carrots, an onion and some celery, all chopped up into chunks.  Also some fresh herbs if you have them, a bit of salt and some peppercorns, and a dash of vinegar.  Fill up with water and simmer ALL DAY, as long as you can.  The longer you go, the richer the flavour.  Keep the lid on so you don’t lose it all as steam.  Strain, and freeze in ice cube trays!  Then you can have a bag of easy-to-grab stock cubes to glitz up your next sauce.  You can keep the stock in the fridge as each tray sets, and each morning freeze another batch.  It may go solid in the fridge - that just means you’ve made AWESOME nutrient-dense stock.

Grow some herbs.  This was the second greatest discovery that transformed my cooking.  If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, now’s a great time to throw some herbs into your garden or some pots on the windowsill.  I recommend rosemary, thyme and oregano, because they grow into woody little shrubs that survive perennially and need very little attention.  You can buy seedlings, or if your supermarket sells living herbs just plant those.  They may need a little love and tending now (which, conveniently, is when you’re at home all day), but once they’re established they are very hardy. I basically ignore mine, and they grow faster than I can use them, and I am NOT in a climate anywhere near as hot as their native Italy.  You will be amazed how much flavour fresh herbs add to pasta, casseroles and soups - and, again, it’s basically free!

Yoghurt.  You can buy cultures to make yoghurt (depending on how locked down your country is), or you can just make it from the last spoonful of your store-bought yoghurt (if it has live cultures).  It’s hard to make it seriously from leftover yoghurt (I usually found I could only perpertuate it through a couple of batches before it seemed to lose strength), but it’s a fun thing to say you’ve done :-D  Here are some ways to keep the fermenting yoghurt warm if you don’t have a yoghurt maker.

Kefir.  Even easier than yoghurt, if you can get your hands on it, is milk kefir grains (different from water kefir grains), because it sets at room temperature, so you don’t even need a warm place!  It is VERY tangy but a lot of fun to play around with, as you can add different flavours.  Lots of good info videos here.  

Make a sourdough starter.  Yep, that finnicky little hungry pet on your kitchen bench that the hipsters love to brag about!  If ever there was a time to give it a go, it’s now.  All you actually need for a sourdough starter is flour and water.  And patience.  And maybe a sense of humour.  (When it goes wrong, it does it spectacularly!)  Myself, I’ve found I like to use strong bread flour and add a bit of rye and a bit of wholemeal, just because they seem to have a bit of oomph.  These guys have an amazing, no-frills approach and will get you started in no time!  And, for the record, YES you can bake sourdough in a boring old tin!  You don’t have to make fancy artisan loaves that are free-standing.  Darn it, I want my slices to be all the same size and fit in the toaster!!

Start a ginger beer bug with sugar and ginger.  Recipes abound on the internet.  If you are using fresh ginger, my favourite tip is to FREEZE THE GINGER.  It will grate like a dream!  I always have some ginger root in the freezer, which apart from anything stops it growing furry blue friends when you haven’t used it for a while.  Get some GOOD quality brewing bottles.  Explosions happen.  

Water kefir is another fermented fizzy drink that I’ve had a lot of fun with.  The kefir grains (again, not to be confused with milk kefir grains) are something you probably won’t get at the supermarket, but I actually think it’s lower maintenance than ginger beer.  And you can always add ginger to it.  Instructions here.  I know all the Cool Kids go on about Kombucha, but I think water kefir is much yummier and much less life-consuming ;-)  I used to have a great rhythm where I had it producing one glass for myself every two days, which was just enough to still be special.

Dabble in cheesemaking.  Some great beginner cheeses that require no special equipment or special-order ingredients are whole milk ricotta and mozarella.  If you want to buy some cheese culture but maybe not an expensive cheese press, try a soft cheese like quark, which you simply strain through a cloth.  Flavour it with a pinch of salt and some chopped chives, and slather them on these ridiculously easy and tasty knackebrot crackers, and I promise you will wow your friends when you see them again!!! 

Pin Curls.  This idea’s a little different, but why not give it a go when no one can see you?  I think something that puts a lot of people off is having to wear the pins overnight, but if you’re home all day you can totally do it in the morning and let them down in the afternoon.  They just need at least 6 hours. The key is having your hair just damp, not wet.  I follow the general principles in this tutorial, but to get a more subtle, modern, wavy look, I use far fewer pins (around 20).  This means there’s more hair in each pin, so the curls won’t be as tight and frizzy.  I curl them around three fingers, which gives a pretty big diameter.  I just use boring everyday hair gel when the hair is still very wet (don’t worry, it gets combed through enough that it won’t go crunchy).  The brilliant thing about pin curls is that they last for DAYS.  On the first day, I get a loose-ish version of a ’40s ’do.  On the second day, I get lovely soft waves.  On the third and fourth days, if you can believe it, the waves get more defined and it looks even better. Your family may think that you look like Nora Batty, but inside you KNOW you’re Peggy Carter XD Just...maybe don’t do it on a day when you have a video conference.

That’s all off the top of my head!  Anyone care to add to my list?  No stress or pressure or judgement if this sort of thing isn’t for you, but I encourage you to give something new a go if you feel inspired :-)

[lovemesomesurveys]

FOOD SURVEY

1. What’s the last thing you ate? Ramen.

2. What’s your favourite cheese? I love many different kinds of cheese. Cheese makes everything better.

3. What’s your favourite fish? I don’t have one.

4. What’s your favourite fruit? Banana.

5. When, if ever, did you start liking olives? I don’t know when exactly, but I’ve liked black olives for as long as I can remember. I’ve never liked green olives.

6. When, if ever, did you start liking beer? I never liked beer.

7. When, if ever, did you start liking shellfish? Never. 

8. What was the best thing your mum/dad/guardian used to make? Not used to, they still do cook delicious meals. A few of my faves are my mom’s lasagna, meatballs, and tacos and my dad’s spaghetti and scrambled eggs. Also, I’m not a big burger person and I don’t like steak or porkchops, but the rest of my family loves when my dad makes those things. 

9. What’s the native specialty of your hometown? Probably Mexican food.

10. What’s your comfort food? Ramen.

11. What’s your favourite type of chocolate? Milk and white chocolate. 

12. How do you like your steak? I don’t.

13. How do you like your burger? Not a big burger person, but if I eat one it’s gotta be well done. I don’t want any red in my meat. *gag*

14. How do you like your eggs? Scrambled, sunny-side up, hardboiled, deviled... I love eggs.

15. How do you like your potatoes? Like every way they come, ha. I also love potatoes. 

16. How do you take your coffee? With flavored cream or cream and sugar.

17. How do you take your tea? With a packet of sweetener. 

18. What’s your favourite mug? It’s blue on the outside and yellow on the inside with Peter Pan and the gang on it. 

19. What’s your biscuit or cookie of choice? Sugar cookies or shortbread.

20. What’s your ideal breakfast? Scrambled eggs with shredded cheese and spinach, country gravy, hash browns, and coffee.

21. What’s your ideal sandwich? Either bologna and sharp cheddar or colby jack cheese, mustard, and mayo or turkey, salami, either of those cheeses, spinach, mayo, and mustard. Also, a pickle on the side and some olive oil for dipping. I miss a good deli sandwich, though. That sounds really good.

22. What’s your ideal pizza: White sauce, feta and ricotta cheese, spinach, garlic, and crumbled meatballs with pesto on top and ranch for dipping.

23. What’s your ideal pie (sweet or savoury)? The only pie I like is cheesecake.

24. What’s your ideal salad? Lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, black olives, shredded cheese, shredded carrots, pieces of hardboiled egg, and ranch. I used to love peppercinis as well, but I can’t eat spicy stuff anymore. :(

25. What food do you always like to have in the fridge? I like to have some kind of sandwich fixins so that I can always make a lunch. <<< Same. And eggs. And shredded cheese cause I like to add it to my ramen.

26. What food do you always like to have in the freezer? Healthy Choice steamers pesto pasta meal things, pizza, and Smart Ones breakfast meals.

27. What food do you always like to have in the cupboard? Ramen. 

28. What spices can you not live without? Garlic, salt, black pepper, oregano, basil, chives, paprika (a must for deviled eggs). 

29. What sauces can you not live without? Ranch, olive oil, pesto, marinara, white sauce, mayo, sour cream, gravy, sausage gravy...  I don’t know for sure if a few of those fall under the sauce category, but whatever.

30. Where do you buy most of your food? Walmart and another local grocery store.

31. How often do you go food shopping? We do two big grocery shopping trips a month with a few quick trips in between if we need something.

33. What’s the most expensive piece of kitchen equipment you own? The fridge, probably.

34. What’s the last piece of equipment you bought for your kitchen? Hmm. I think it was the home beer dispenser my brother and I got my dad for Christmas. 

35. What piece of kitchen equipment could you not live without? Keurig, fridge, stove, and microwave.

36. How many times a week/month do you cook from raw ingredients? I never do. I’m not a cook at all, the only things I make are microwavable, cooked in the oven (frozen foods like pizzas), or made on the stovetop (ramen).

37. What’s the last thing you cooked from raw ingredients? Wait, unless you count making hardboiled eggs for deviled eggs. If so, then there’s that. However, that just consists of me putting the eggs in a hardboiled egg cooker thing. I don’t have do much, ha.

38. What meats have you eaten besides cow, pig and poultry? That’s the only kind I eat. 

39. What’s the last time you ate something that had fallen on the floor? I don’t do that ever. If it falls on the ground, it’s trash now to me.

40. What’s the last time you ate something you’d picked in the wild? I’ve never done that.

41. Arrange the following in order of preference: Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Sushi – Italian, Mexican, Chinese. I don’t eat Indian, Thai, or sushi.

42. Arrange the following in order of preference: Vodka, Whiskey, Brandy, Rum – I don’t drink.

43. Arrange the following in order of preference: Garlic, Basil, Caramel, Lime, Mint, Ginger, Aniseed – Garlic, basil, mint, caramel, ginger, lime. Not sure what aniseed is.

44. Arrange the following in order of preference: Pineapple, Orange, Apple, Strawberry, Cherry, Watermelon, Banana. – Banana, strawberry, watermelon, apple. I don’t like orange, pineapple, or cherry.

45. Bread and spread: Wheat, white, sourdough, bagels. Pesto, olive oil, peanut butter, mayo, garlic spread, cream cheese. 

46. What’s your fast food restaurant of choice, and what do you usually order? I don’t have one anymore. 

47. Pick a city. What are the best dining experiences you’ve had in that city? Bubba Gump restaurant is fun place with good food.

48. What’s your choice of tipple at the end of a long day? I don’t drink.

49. What’s the next thing you’ll eat? I’m not sure.

50. Are you hungry now? A little bit. 

51. Do you eat your breakfast everyday? I rarely do now. I was doing pretty good for awhile, but then I started sleeping in past 2PM and having late lunch. 

52. At what time do you have breakfast? If I do eat breakfast food nowadays, it’s for dinner.

53. At what time do you have lunch? Like 4 or 5PM.

54. What do you have for lunch? Usually either a sandwich or a Healthy Choice steamers microwave thingy.

55. At what time do you have dinner? Around 8PM.

56. What do you have for dinner? I have a small list of foods I eat cause I’m picky and have food/appetite issues, but I’ll have something like spaghetti and meatballs, burritos/tacos, breakfast for dinner, or takeout like Wingstop or pizza. Sometimes I’ll just have another sandwich.

57. Do you light candles during dinner? No.

58. How many chairs are there in your dining room and who sits in the main chair? We don’t have a dining table or even a dining room anymore. We had to turn that space into a bedroom.

59. Do you eat and drink using your right hand or the left one? Right.

61. Mention the veggies that you like most: Spinach, broccoli, green beans, and corn.

62. What fruit and vegetable do you like the least? I don’t eat a lot of fruits or veggies to be perfectly honest. As bad as it sounds, I haven’t had any fruit the past few years. Spinach is the only veggie I have somewhat often. And like I mentioned in this survey, there are fruits and veggies that I like, I just don’t eat them often.

63. You like your fruit salad to have more: I don’t like fruit salad.

64. You prefer your vegetable salad to contain more: Spinach.

65. What’s your favourite sandwich spread? Mayo, pesto, or an olive oil/vinegar mix.

66. What’s your favourite chocolate bar? Reese’s white chocolate. 

67. What’s your favourite dessert? Brownies, cupcakes, cheesecake, muffins, donuts. 

68. What’s your favourite drink? Coffee and Starbucks Doubleshot energy drinks (that’s coffee, too, but still it’s different).

69. What’s your favourite snack? Movie theater popcorn.

70. What’s your favourite bubble gum flavour? Minty flavors.

71. What’s your favourite ice cream flavour? Strawberry.

72. What’s your favourite potato chip flavour? Sour cream and onion and original Ruffles with ranch dip.

73. What’s your favourite soup? Pork ramen.

74. What’s your favourite pizza? Didn’t I describe that already?

75. What’s your favourite type of dish? Just give me boneless garlic parm and lemon pepper wings from Wingstop, please.

76. What food do you hate? Seafood.

77. What’s your favourite restaurant? Wingstop.

78. Do you eat homemade food, or food delivered from outside? Both.  

80. Who cooks at home? My parents and brother.

81. What kind of diet (e.g. low-fat, high-fiber, high-carbohydrate, balanced diet etc.) do you have? I’m supposed to incorporate a lot of protein.

82. How do you keep yourself fit? I don’t do anything.

[wineanddinosaur]

VinePair Podcast: Drinks Projects You Can Make at Home

With Covid-19 keeping many of us at home indefinitely, we’re finding all kinds of new projects to provide creative outlets. While some people are busy deep cleaning their bathrooms and perfecting their sourdough starters, we’ve opted to dial in our home drinking game — and maybe you’d like to join us? From whipping up batches of vermouth and bitters, to making quick infusions and syrups, to becoming a home brewing hobbyist, there are plenty of ways to put your at-home time to good use.

That’s the topic on this week’s VinePair podcast, where Adam, Erica, and Zach discuss their own experiences with DIY beverage projects and offer some suggestions on what to make, and how to turn those projects into great drinks.

Listen on iTunes

Listen on Spotify

LISTEN ONLINE OR CHECK OUT OUR CONVERSATION HERE:

Adam: Still from my Brooklyn, NY Apartment, I’m Adam Teeter.

Erica: From Jersey City, I’m Erica Duecy.

Zach: And in my house in Seattle, Washington I’m Zach Geballe.

A: And this is the VinePair podcast and guys, I’m excited about our topic today. Which is getting into alcohol projects you can do at home. I know I’ve been taking on a ton of projects myself, not just obviously alcohol- related. I’ve been baking some bread. I’ve been….well, baking a lot. But also doing some projects around the house but, before we jump in to all of that. What have you guys been drinking? What’s been getting you through for the last week? Anything exciting? Erica?

E: Yeah, I have been tasting through a ton of rosés for the big list that we put out every year – our top 25 rosés. And I’ve been excited by some of the really affordable selections that I’ve found. You know, usually when I’m thinking about rosé, I’m thinking [about] the south of France, but actually there were some sneaker hits out of Italy for me. So, I found the Planeta rosé from Sicily, that’s a $16 bottle. And it’s on the bolder side of the rosé flavor spectrum; it’s got strawberry, guava, crushed peach notes; I was totally surprised. And this would be the type of wine that I would pair with like barbecue chicken, tacos, even pizza, it’s got that kind of bolder flavor profile which is gonna be so wonderful with all of the summertime back-yard barbecue foods.

A: Yeah man, Italian rosés.

Z: That’s awesome!

A: That was a big thing last year, in our list last year; I think Planeta made the list, and the number one was Graci. Both from Sicily, ‘cause I think, yeah those wines are surprisingly amazing. Even though you normally think of France, right? Which is nuts!

E: Totally!

Z: And it makes sense in a way ‘cause you’re dealing with a similar climate, right? You’re Mediterranean, obviously if you’re in Sicily you’re IN the middle of the Mediterranean, but we think of all the great French rosé that, in particular that come from Provence and [have a] very Mediterranean sort of influence, so I think it’s definitely the case that you can find some great rosés from […] other wine regions that border the Mediterranean. Because they’re going to have, I think generally speaking, a culture of rosé drinking that goes back, ‘cause those kinds of wines are, sometimes the red grape… or what you wanna do with red grapes in those kind of places is turn ‘em into rosé.

A: Totally. So Zach, what about you, what are you drinking man?

Z: Well as you might have noticed on Instagram yesterday, as we’re recording this on Friday, I took the opportunity, and I have been taking the opportunity, to go in and pull some bottles out of my collection that I wasn’t saving for the most special of occasions, but might have been a little loathe to open under the general mentality of, “Fuck it, I might as well!”. And as Erica might recall I wrote a piece for the site, which now feels like it ran about a million years ago, but it was I think actually just last month, on the joys of aged Italian white wines. So last night I was looking…

A: Yeah, you’ve also talked about this on the podcast multiple times. This is your thing.

Z: I have, It’s true. It’s one of my things, but for good reason! I had the opportunity…

E: I love old Italian white wines.

Z: Yeah, and I had the opportunity to have a ten-year-old bottle of Arneis, which is one of my favorite varieties, and it’s not the kind of thing that I would necessarily have every single night, but I made risotto and roasted a chicken and it’s a wine that both my wife and I love. And you know, it… I mean look, there’s a lot of horrible news and everything going on in the world and we’re gonna try to kind of sort of steer away from that in this podcast, but for me, it’s like every now and then it’s important to really center my own, or our own joy and pleasure when we can, and wines like that are opportunities to do that. So I was really glad that I was like, “OK it’s the last bottle of this I have, it’s a kind of special wine but we’re gonna open it, we’re gonna enjoy it and then I guess we’re gonna talk about it on the podcast the next day as it turns out,” so that is what I have been drinking. Adam, how about you?

A: So you know I’m going through the eight stages of… I don’t know, mourning, drinking, etc. So I have been drinking a lot of rosé for the tasting, but I won’t talk about any of those here ‘cause I think Erica already hit on that. But you know like last week when we were first like “this is happening,” I drank a lot of brown spirits. So, I found a few bourbons that I really enjoyed. I was drinking a Jefferson’s bottling that was really delicious, I was drinking some Lagavulin, so you know Scotch that I really liked. Somebody gifted me a bottle of Whistle Pig, so I enjoyed a little bit of that last week. And also like dirty Martinis for my wife — I don’t take them dirty, but I was drinking just a classic gin Martini, a little dry with a lemon twist. So I was really drinking liquor last week, and then this week I definitely transitioned back to like beer and wine. So I had a few pretty delicious IPAs that I enjoyed earlier in the week. I’m also trying to go back to my normal schedule of not drinking three to four nights a week. So I guess… so if I didn’t drink Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, so Wednesday night I had a really nice New England style IPA from Monday Night Brewing that was pretty cool, and then last night I did enjoy one of the rosé from the round up that I was like, “wow, this is just amazing.” We featured it a bunch before, Kathleen Inman’s wine, so Endless Crush is just a beautiful wine.

Z: Oh yeah!

E: Yeah, that’s great.

A: And so it was submitted again for the tasting this year, and then I was like, “well I’m not gonna dump this,” so I drank it. I have to say, Erica, I’ve been impressed for the past few years actually that there’s some really stellar rosés coming out of other countries. A lot out of California or just the West Coast in general and you know, a lot of bad ones coming out of Provence. A lot of ones that are really trading on that regional name that are getting away with like a true lack of balance or just like really harsh, off flavors, fruit that doesn’t taste super high quality. But [which] are still being [sold] for over $20 bucks because they put Provence on the label. So I thought that was interesting. There was another one that I really liked a lot that surprised me called Seaglass, that was like I think it’s like $10.99. And I remember… so I’ve been tasting with my wife Naomi which has been fun. ‘Cause you know, she loves wine but never gets to come to our office tastings when we have people in, and she turned to me and was like, “What is this wine? This is really good!” And it had come after a string of not a lot of very good wines… and I was like, “Yeah! This is really good.” And so then like we looked at it and we were like holy shit! And then we looked at the price and we were blown away. So yeah, I think it’s been fun, and then I don’t know this weekend… Tonight is pizza night, so I’m gonna make some delicious pizza and pop something good, who knows? And then maybe get back on my spirits wagon, I don’t know.

E: Yeah, I mean I’ve been going the same way too. I think I’m sort of alternating at this point. So I’ll do wine one night or a cider, and then I’ll switch over and have a cocktail but yeah, I think the things we’re gonna talk about today with the cocktail projects that’s actually gotten me pretty excited to start back into my cocktail experimentation land, I definitely went through a phase of that a couple of years ago, but I’m right back on the train now.

A: I know you’re a wine lover but when I was first introduced to you it was through the fact that you have written this cocktail book and really have this expertise in cocktails. Like the things you tell me you’re trying to do at home, like recreate a classic Martini from… I would never do. Like, I can make a really good Negroni, I can make a really good straight-up Martini, but if you ask me to recreate some of my favorite cocktails from some of my favorite cocktail bars in New York I’d be like, “nah, I’m just gonna wait ‘til they re-open.”

E: ‘Nah, I’m good!’ Yeah, I mean I definitely went through a phase like years ago where I was just making bitters all the time, making bitters from like Buddha’s hand and like all sorts of crazy citruses and so forth so I mean that’s… I think that’s one of the nice things right now, is that if we have a little bit extra time where we’re looking for something creative to do, hey start on those holiday gift projects now, you’ve got nothing else to do, [so] you might as well get creative.

A: I mean yeah, so I guess jumping straight into the topic: Zach, what sort of projects do you have in mind that people could be doing now? Or what are you working on, or wish you were working on?

Z: Well I would say that I’ll let Erica talk about things like bitters because that’s something that I don’t have a lot of experience with personally. But what I would say, and I think this is the operative thing here is, for the most part I think most of us in our daily lives, we don’t have time, and really it’s not even just that we don’t have time because a lot of these things don’t take a lot of active time. It’s just we don’t really want to commit to a couple of week-long projects, even if most of that time is spent sitting in a closet or something. And what I have started doing at home, because I anticipate having some time to commit to this, is working on some infusions. That’s something that I started doing as a bartender years ago. Basically, it’s a simple way to add flavor to a spirit. I’m mostly working with clear spirits at the moment because, while you can certainly do cool things with brown spirits, I find that if I kinda just wanna get like a simple flavor, like a fruit flavor, like I’ve got some blueberry gin going on right now, the idea there’s is basically to extract the flavor from the blueberry into the gin, and I imagine that in a couple of weeks, which is about how long these things tend to take, that the weather in Seattle may have turned to the point where sitting outside and having a drink made with blueberry gin is gonna sound really, really delightful as opposed to [how] it sounds now, which is pretty miserable ‘cause it’s pouring rain. [That’s] kinda what I’m aiming at. And then one thing that I’ve mentioned on the podcast before that I’ve done, and I think is another thing to think about doing especially for people who are home more, maybe opening wine more often but aren’t necessarily drinking a lot is vermouth. Which is a little tricky to make in that you kind of have to find the right balance in ingredients and sweetness but I’ve had some success with making vermouth and I find it actually to be more useful as something to kind of sip, a way to kind of preserve that wine – if you’re not interesting in cooking with it – or making vinegar which you can also do. I like to make vermouth and then it’s just something that I’ll pour over ice, maybe add a little bit of soda water to and it’s my afternoon (maybe while I’m cooking) beverage, ‘cause it’s lower in alcohol. And it retains some of the wine flavor but has some spice notes that you expect from vermouth.

A: So Zach, quickly. ‘Cause you know you’re talking about these things, I’m loving it, I’m getting into it, but now I’m like “how do I do it?” So first of all, with your blueberry gin, can you please explain the process, and also tell me what kind of drinks you’d put it in? And then could you please do the same for the vermouth?

Z: Yeah, absolutely!

A: Thank you.

Z: So I would say, with the blueberry gin, it’s basically, the only things you really need are gin – for one. And I like to look at something that’s not… I’m not going for top shelf gin, I’m looking at something that’s probably like a London dry, cause I want something with a relatively neutral palate, so I’m using Gordon’s ’cause it’s kind of a relatively inexpensive…

A: It’s a very… yeah that’s a good one.

Z: Yeah, I find the flavor unobjectionable, but it’s not that expensive so I’m not putting it in my really premium gin. And then you basically just need a jar or other vessel that you can close. It doesn’t have to be air tight, you don’t have to worry because of the alcohol of the gin, it’s not like anything is gonna go bad, in terms of like the fruit rotting, but you just don’t want it spilling and you do wanna be able to capture the flavor. And then, basically what I do is, I have a [container that] you would put a punch in that’s got a spigot. And so I just put the gin in, and I usually do like 2 liters at a time, and then it ends up being about… oh gosh I should probably measure these things, right? It probably ends up being about 2 pounds or so of blueberries. And I throw maybe a bay leaf or two in also ‘cause I like a little bit of that additional herbal flavor, and I let it sit. And I let it sit for about ten days and then I start tasting it. And really what you’re tasting for is, you want there to be a noticeable blueberry flavor. But what I don’t want, is I don’t want it to start tasting like… if you’ve ever had dried blueberries? Or like really concentrated candy blueberry flavor, then I feel like you’ve extracted a little too much. So at that point then you just literally strain the gin off, you throw the blueberries away. I made the mistake once when I was very young in the restaurant industry of eating them and they are miserable, it just tastes like alcohol. But basically yeah, you just dump that out. I think you could theoretically do something with the blueberries, like maybe you could cook them down but there’s really very little flavor left in them…

A: Put em in pancakes and give ‘em to your kids.

Z: God! Yeah, If you want them to take three naps a day….

A: Like, Yo! I need to get some work done, I made you blueberry pancakes, enjoy!

Z: I would worry that the pan might catch on fire with all that alcohol in there. And then as far as cocktails, one of the things I like to use it in, one of my favorite spring cocktails [is] the Aviation, which is typically made with crème de violette: so gin, crème de violette, lemon and Maraschino liqueur. And what I do is, I basically just cut down a little bit on the crème de violette and Maraschino ‘cause with the fruit flavor in there, even though the gin isn’t sweet, I feel like the whole drink can get a little syrupy if you’re not careful. But I basically just do that, you get this even deeper blueberry, kind of blue color than you would get normally from the crème de violette. That’s one thing. I like it…I mean you can make just a simple gin flip. So basically, again just in, lemon juice and an egg white. [A] little bit of simple syrup or sugar if you want, to kind of sweeten it up. But really, I mean I think it’s pretty versatile, and also just as a gin and tonic, frankly. Like if you just want to pour that over some ice with some tonic water, it’s fucking delicious, it’s got a nice little kind of pale blue color, or pale purple color really and it’s great when and if the weather improves, which it will eventually here in Seattle, I promise.

E: Yeah, that sounds great!

A: So we’ll come back to you on the vermouth tip. But Erica what about you? Gimme a project.

E: Yeah, super simple project. So yesterday we launched this article with 5 simple projects that you can do at home to up your cocktail game, and the thing that I made was oleo-saccharum, which… do you guys know about this? It sounds like a crazy Latin thing but it’s actually a super-simple citrus syrup. So, it’s been used since like the 1700’s if you read David Wondrich, in either of his books, you’ll see him refer to it as really the essential ingredient in punches in classic times. You take the peels from citrus, usually you could use lemon or orange or grapefruit, and you just steep it and mix it with some sugar. And then the sugar pulls out all of those wonderful essential oils to create this beautiful syrup that, you know, in Wondrich’s telling, creates the difference between a good punch and a great punch. So it has a lot of uses other than a punch though, [and] my favorite way to use it, and I’m gonna be posting this all up on Instagram because it’s really one of the best cocktails, is an Old Fashioned. So just a rum Old Fashioned with an aged rum like El Dorado 12 year which is my favorite on its own – it’s such an incredible rum, but then I just do one teaspoon of the oleo-saccharum syrup, and bitters over a big ice cube. It’s such a beautiful cocktail. And really the only thing, like I said, to make the oleo-saccharum is that you steep the orange or citrus peels in sugar overnight, you mix it occasionally and then in the morning, anywhere from 3 to 12 hours later you can decide based on the taste. You’ve got a ready-to-go syrup. From a quantity perspective, just get and peel a cup or so worth of the peels and then you just add about a half a cup of sugar, and it creates about a little bit more than a third-cup of syrup. That can be kept in the refrigerator for a week and used in a variety of ways. You can use it in a French 75, you can use it in a whiskey sour, you can use it in a Sidecar, I mean there’s so many different applications for it. And it’s just such a wonderful lifted citrus flavor that you can’t really get any other way.

A: Dude that sounds delicious. Like…

E: It’s pretty good.

A: I also kinda wanna make some pancakes from [Zach’s] blueberries and then put your syrup on top of it, that sounds pretty good. I mean that sounds pretty good.

E: I mean that sounds pretty good.

A: That sounds pretty good.

Z: Adam, are we recording this before you have lunch or something? ‘Cause I feel like all you wanna do is eat our drinks projects.

A: Nah man I had lunch. I actually had lunch with bread I baked myself… So for me one of the things that’s fun to make is bathtub gin. So like, yes I know it’s not real gin, but basically you take a vodka, and you… I like to again, same with you Zach, not an amazing vodka, but a quality vodka, right? So like, we’re not going out here and putting Ketel [One] in this, but I’ll usually do it with something like, honestly it works really well with Smirnoff or Tito’s or something. So take a 750 ml bottle, dump it in a Mason jar – a large enough Mason jar or some sort of vessel and then it’s the same kind of idea, right? You basically flavor it with gin flavorings. So as opposed to distilling those gin flavorings into the gin, you’re just steeping them into the vodka, so I use like, cucumber peel, lemon peel, dill, you have to use…. I think you have to use juniper berry, some people disagree, but I kinda feel like it’s not gin without the juniper berry, so some dried juniper berries, you can get those at a lot of grocery stores so you shouldn’t have a problem even in the quarantine. But you can throw in a lot of other stuff too, right? You could do different kinds of teas, you can do orange….any other kind of citrus peels, I think grapefruit would be really awesome, you could also do like heat if you like it, some sort of spicy you know note to it. And then you let it sit for basically the same idea, 10 days to 14 days, stirring it I think every other day just to make sure it’s still doing its thing, and then you start tasting. And once it tastes good to you, you strain off the liquid, I like to bottle it and then you have your own kind of gin to use in a lot of different cocktails. I use it to make straight-up Martinis, I use it to make Negronis, I use it to make gin Gimlets, like all these things you would normally use regular gin for but now you have your own gin. And it’s also fun to then give to people, it’s like “hey, here’s this like gin I made.” It’s always like a good time, which is a lot of fun. We’ve talked a lot about spirit style projects, but I know Zach, we’re gonna get to your vermouth, but have either of you ever brewed beer?

E: No

Z: I have not. But you have?

A: Ahh. Yes, the best! I’ve had a lot of explosions too.

E: Really?

A: Yeah, so… I mean, I think the worst explosion was… Josh and I, the other co-founder of VinePair, we attempted to brew a Belgian tripel, that was a really bad idea. And it started re-fermenting in the bottle ‘cause it was just… it’s so much sugar and so much yeast in a Belgian tripel, and they exploded all in his closet, there was beer everywhere.

E: Oh no!

A: So that was when Naomi told me that we were never allowed to brew beer in our apartment, only in Josh’s. [But] brewing beer is super fun ‘cause I think it’s one of the easiest ways to sort of see how alcohol happens, if that makes sense?

E: Yeah.

A: You know, it’s not that… I think people get really freaked out about it because…like “oh, I read that the kitchen has to be super clean.” Like yes, cleanliness is important, but I mean you have to be clean when you cook, right? Like no one is sitting there being like “Oh, I’m gonna make some cookies and there’s like, dirt everywhere.” So as long as the counter is clean and you’ve washed the equipment with hot water and soap, the way you should wash your hands right now, everything is fine and it’s a fun project that takes, you know, four weeks. So, at the end of this whole bullshit you should emerge with a really good beer that then you can take out in the park and drink and there’s lots of amazing recipes online and you can buy kits which I’m sure are still shipping right now, to make beer and it’s a really fun project. I love doing it, we did it for like 2 years and then just sort of moved to places where we felt like it wasn’t as…we didn’t have as much space. Josh was really lucky in that one of his first apartments in New York was a big loft. So we were able to sort of brew… but you know, I bet your husband’s studio would be a perfect place to brew beer, just saying Erica.

E: I bet he does, we’ve got plenty of space up in his studio.

Z: I was gonna say, you’ve got… you can probably start a whole brewery, let alone just home brew. I have a question for you Adam, about brewing though, at home. Which is, are there styles of beer that are easier for people who’ve never done it to kind of take on? Obviously, it sounds like a Belgian tripel is a bad idea for a first beer, but is there kind of an ideal first beer?

A: Ales are the easiest. It’s very hard to do lagers because of the cold fermentations. So lagers are much more difficult than ales. And then pale ales and IPAs are actually very easy to brew at home, as long as you have the right ingredients, which again you can buy online and I have to say like we definitely brewed a bunch of different batches of IPAs and pale ales that came out really well. We actually have a home brew columnist on VinePair that writes I think monthly, or bi-weekly with different ways to brew.

E: Yep.

A: So there’s a bunch of resources there. But then also, I mean you can go down rabbit holes on Reddit and stuff like that of people who’ve like literally recreated beers. You can brew Heady Topper for yourself at home or someone’s like “Oh, I think I figured out the Pliny recipe,” so you can brew Pliny, which is crazy. So there’s a lot of fun you can have, and then the kits are easy to at least get you started, like the recipe’s there. So like literally “dump into water, boil, strain, you have this style of beer that we’ve already perfected the recipe of,” but it’s just a cool way, again, just to see how fermentation works.

E: Totally, and if you’re looking for the column on our site its BIY, “Brew it yourself,” it’s with national home-brew competition gold medal winner and certified cicerone Mandy Naglich. So that’s where you can check out dozens of articles to get a sense of best practices and projects you might wanna try out yourself.

A: Exactly, so now Zach back to you. How do you make vermouth?

Z: So I think the simplest way to do it, and I’ve mostly done it with red wine, because I find that it’s a little more…. I’ve only talked about making a white vermouth once, and I think I screwed up, so I don’t think that it’s not doable, I [just] think it’s that I didn’t kind of approach it the right way. But I will say that, before we get into the specifics, one I find about making vermouth at home is that, at least so far, I haven’t been able to kind of get the exact texture that you might expect from certain kinds of vermouth. Like if you like a really kind of rich vermouth like Carpano Antica or something like that, without adding a lot of essentially really, really reduced sugar syrup, you’re gonna have a hard time getting that real richness. And I don’t know that I can offer you a suggestion for how to get that at home, I’m not an expert. But otherwise, I mean basically what I’ve done is: I’ll take a certain amount of leftover red wine, in this case usually like you know about, yeah about 2 liters or so. So about two and half bottles, three bottles or something like that. And you take about a third of it and you reduce it over, you know over really low heat. You’re just trying to kind of cook it down a little bit. And then I would say once it’s about reduced in volume by about half, you add about a cup of sugar, and there’s your base syrup. And so at that point that’s had all the alcohol cooked out of it, so you’re not dealing with booze from that. And then basically you let it cool back down to kind of room temp, you add it to the remaining wine along with some…I mean again, you kind of want to use spices. I like to use like there’s certainly black pepper, again bay leaf I throw in there, I like to use things like coriander and cardamom, and a little bit of even cumin seed. Infusion of that along with a little bit of… you want to add some sort of spirit cause you want to bring the alcohol level up a little bit. So I sometimes will use Cognac, it definitely adds more flavor. If you have like… you can use vodka if you’ve got that that you wanna use. If you have… I mean ideally I think you would add a little bit of even higher-proof spirit, but I don’t have moonshine lying around so… that’s not an option for me…

A: What?

Z: I know, right? We haven’t talked about home distilling which is a bad idea. And also illegal most places.

A: I kinda want to do it though, but anyways keep going.

Z: Well we’ll see you at Jono’s studio too. So then… basically again, it’s just a process of waiting. It doesn’t take long. I find that within a week I’m kind of at the place I wanna be flavor-wise. But, you can kind of taste… give it a few days and then taste every day, and then at that point you just again, strain everything off, I put it right in the fridge. I find that it lasts for about a month in a pretty good state, and like I said, you know, my favorite use for it is just drinking it over ice with a little soda water or tonic because it’s kind of the best way to sort of enjoy that flavor. But it works in cocktails… I find that it actually, interestingly, does better in cocktails where you might use a fair bit of vermouth, so it works well in a Negroni. I haven’t loved it in my Manhattans, and maybe that’s just me. Again, I think it’s a texture thing. I think it feels like it waters them down a touch because it doesn’t have the viscosity that a commercially produced vermouth might have.

A: Right

Z: So in a Negroni I don’t mind it as much in part because Campari already has a lot of, you know, kind of richness and body, so it being a little lighter in flavor isn’t such a big deal. Or no, not lighter in flavor but lighter in body. But in something like a Manhattan I do find that I miss it a little bit, I miss that body that you get from vermouth a little bit. But you know you can find it… you can put it in a lot of different things. But like I said, I just like it a thing to sip over ice, with a little bit of soda water or just as is. Which is one of my favorite ways to enjoy vermouth period, so it’s not like I’m only doing that with this. But yeah… and again, if you’ve got open bottles, the nice thing about it is, you can just kind of combine stuff together. I haven’t found any issue with mixing… as long… I mean maybe if you’re mixing Beaujolais and Zinfandel you might find it a little weird but frankly even then I don’t think so. It all kind of comes together in the end. You might find slightly better results or more sort of homogenous results if you use the same wine but I don’t think any of us are at that stage so your leftover bottles… and I’ve used it with wine that’s been open for a week and it’s fine.

E: Wow!

Z: You know, you’re not looking for freshness and brightness in your vermouth for the most part, at least I’m not in the way that I would be in my wine. So you know, I wouldn’t use a three-week-old bottle. You know, another thing you could do is go buy a relatively inexpensive box of wine, you know a three liter and use that and probably end up with a very cost-effective vermouth solution.

E: Sure, sure. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea, I’d try it.

A: I dig.

Z: Well I would share it with you guys but that’s probably not gonna happen for a little while.

A: I think these have been like some really good ideas. I mean, Erica, have you got anything else?

E: Yeah, I mean I do have one more.

A: Yes!

E: I would say that a lot of people don’t realize that bitters is just a pretty simple infusion. So for that…

A: I didn’t.

E: Everyone’s talking about Everclear and how you can make your own hand sanitizer from it, but you can also use Everclear as the base for your bitters. So, really all you do to make bitters is you can take some like zest of lemons or oranges or whatever you want that main flavor base to be. And then you add cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, lemongrass, coriander, pepper, and then kind of the bittering agents that you wanna have in all bitters which are cinchona bark and gentian root, you know you can get those at natural stores or even at some bigger grocery chains. So for those things you just, you really just prepare the ingredients, divide them out into some Mason jars, and fill it up with grain alcohol. And for that you just let it sit there and kind of agitate it maybe once or twice a week for a month. And then portion it out into tiny little dropper bottles, and that’s one of my favorite holiday gifts that I typically make for people. Like to package that up with a cocktail book or something like that. And it’s a fun way to go. Maybe in this case it’s gonna be a post-apocalypse drinking gift that you can give to all your friends once you finally see them this summer.

A: I dig, I dig. Cool, so I guess you know, go home….well stay home, make one of these projects, and if you do shoot us an email at podcast@vinepair.com and let us know that you made one of the things we suggested, take a picture and share it with us, that would be awesome! Agreed?

E: Agreed.

Z: Yeah absolutely! And if you have other projects too. I would love to hear if people are trying other stuff out there that’s not stuff we covered too, cause I need some new projects.

E: Yeah, definitely. And try the sourdough, gotta move on, gotta keep going.

A: Well, as always everyone, thank you so much for listening, we hope you’re also checking out our podcast [Covid-19] Conversations, our corona diaries if you will, that we’re running in the feed three times a week. We’d love to know what you think about those as well. As always if you enjoy the podcast, if you feel like you’re getting a lot of amazing information and we’re helping make your day a little bit better please drop us a review or rating in iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever else you get our podcast. It really helps other people discover the show. And Erica, Zach, I’ll talk to you again right here, next week.

Z: Sounds great

E: See you then.

A: Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair podcast, if you enjoy listening to us every week please leave us a review or rating on iTunes, Stitcher, spotify, or wherever it is you get your podcasts, it really helps everyone else discover the show. And now for the credits:

VinePair is produced and hosted by Zach Geballe, Erica Duecy, and me: Adam Teeter. Our engineer is Nick Patri and Keith Beavers. I’d also like to give a special shout out to my VinePair co-founder Josh Malin and the rest of the VinePair team for their support. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you again right here next week.

The article VinePair Podcast: Drinks Projects You Can Make at Home appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/vinepair-podcast-drinks-projects-you-can-make-at-home/

[johnboothus]

VinePair Podcast: Drinks Projects You Can Make at Home

With Covid-19 keeping many of us at home indefinitely, we’re finding all kinds of new projects to provide creative outlets. While some people are busy deep cleaning their bathrooms and perfecting their sourdough starters, we’ve opted to dial in our home drinking game — and maybe you’d like to join us? From whipping up batches of vermouth and bitters, to making quick infusions and syrups, to becoming a home brewing hobbyist, there are plenty of ways to put your at-home time to good use.

That’s the topic on this week’s VinePair podcast, where Adam, Erica, and Zach discuss their own experiences with DIY beverage projects and offer some suggestions on what to make, and how to turn those projects into great drinks.

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LISTEN ONLINE OR CHECK OUT OUR CONVERSATION HERE:

Adam: Still from my Brooklyn, NY Apartment, I’m Adam Teeter.

Erica: From Jersey City, I’m Erica Duecy.

Zach: And in my house in Seattle, Washington I’m Zach Geballe.

A: And this is the VinePair podcast and guys, I’m excited about our topic today. Which is getting into alcohol projects you can do at home. I know I’ve been taking on a ton of projects myself, not just obviously alcohol- related. I’ve been baking some bread. I’ve been….well, baking a lot. But also doing some projects around the house but, before we jump in to all of that. What have you guys been drinking? What’s been getting you through for the last week? Anything exciting? Erica?

E: Yeah, I have been tasting through a ton of rosés for the big list that we put out every year – our top 25 rosés. And I’ve been excited by some of the really affordable selections that I’ve found. You know, usually when I’m thinking about rosé, I’m thinking [about] the south of France, but actually there were some sneaker hits out of Italy for me. So, I found the Planeta rosé from Sicily, that’s a $16 bottle. And it’s on the bolder side of the rosé flavor spectrum; it’s got strawberry, guava, crushed peach notes; I was totally surprised. And this would be the type of wine that I would pair with like barbecue chicken, tacos, even pizza, it’s got that kind of bolder flavor profile which is gonna be so wonderful with all of the summertime back-yard barbecue foods.

A: Yeah man, Italian rosés.

Z: That’s awesome!

A: That was a big thing last year, in our list last year; I think Planeta made the list, and the number one was Graci. Both from Sicily, ‘cause I think, yeah those wines are surprisingly amazing. Even though you normally think of France, right? Which is nuts!

E: Totally!

Z: And it makes sense in a way ‘cause you’re dealing with a similar climate, right? You’re Mediterranean, obviously if you’re in Sicily you’re IN the middle of the Mediterranean, but we think of all the great French rosé that, in particular that come from Provence and [have a] very Mediterranean sort of influence, so I think it’s definitely the case that you can find some great rosés from […] other wine regions that border the Mediterranean. Because they’re going to have, I think generally speaking, a culture of rosé drinking that goes back, ‘cause those kinds of wines are, sometimes the red grape… or what you wanna do with red grapes in those kind of places is turn ‘em into rosé.

A: Totally. So Zach, what about you, what are you drinking man?

Z: Well as you might have noticed on Instagram yesterday, as we’re recording this on Friday, I took the opportunity, and I have been taking the opportunity, to go in and pull some bottles out of my collection that I wasn’t saving for the most special of occasions, but might have been a little loathe to open under the general mentality of, “Fuck it, I might as well!”. And as Erica might recall I wrote a piece for the site, which now feels like it ran about a million years ago, but it was I think actually just last month, on the joys of aged Italian white wines. So last night I was looking…

A: Yeah, you’ve also talked about this on the podcast multiple times. This is your thing.

Z: I have, It’s true. It’s one of my things, but for good reason! I had the opportunity…

E: I love old Italian white wines.

Z: Yeah, and I had the opportunity to have a ten-year-old bottle of Arneis, which is one of my favorite varieties, and it’s not the kind of thing that I would necessarily have every single night, but I made risotto and roasted a chicken and it’s a wine that both my wife and I love. And you know, it… I mean look, there’s a lot of horrible news and everything going on in the world and we’re gonna try to kind of sort of steer away from that in this podcast, but for me, it’s like every now and then it’s important to really center my own, or our own joy and pleasure when we can, and wines like that are opportunities to do that. So I was really glad that I was like, “OK it’s the last bottle of this I have, it’s a kind of special wine but we’re gonna open it, we’re gonna enjoy it and then I guess we’re gonna talk about it on the podcast the next day as it turns out,” so that is what I have been drinking. Adam, how about you?

A: So you know I’m going through the eight stages of… I don’t know, mourning, drinking, etc. So I have been drinking a lot of rosé for the tasting, but I won’t talk about any of those here ‘cause I think Erica already hit on that. But you know like last week when we were first like “this is happening,” I drank a lot of brown spirits. So, I found a few bourbons that I really enjoyed. I was drinking a Jefferson’s bottling that was really delicious, I was drinking some Lagavulin, so you know Scotch that I really liked. Somebody gifted me a bottle of Whistle Pig, so I enjoyed a little bit of that last week. And also like dirty Martinis for my wife — I don’t take them dirty, but I was drinking just a classic gin Martini, a little dry with a lemon twist. So I was really drinking liquor last week, and then this week I definitely transitioned back to like beer and wine. So I had a few pretty delicious IPAs that I enjoyed earlier in the week. I’m also trying to go back to my normal schedule of not drinking three to four nights a week. So I guess… so if I didn’t drink Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, so Wednesday night I had a really nice New England style IPA from Monday Night Brewing that was pretty cool, and then last night I did enjoy one of the rosé from the round up that I was like, “wow, this is just amazing.” We featured it a bunch before, Kathleen Inman’s wine, so Endless Crush is just a beautiful wine.

Z: Oh yeah!

E: Yeah, that’s great.

A: And so it was submitted again for the tasting this year, and then I was like, “well I’m not gonna dump this,” so I drank it. I have to say, Erica, I’ve been impressed for the past few years actually that there’s some really stellar rosés coming out of other countries. A lot out of California or just the West Coast in general and you know, a lot of bad ones coming out of Provence. A lot of ones that are really trading on that regional name that are getting away with like a true lack of balance or just like really harsh, off flavors, fruit that doesn’t taste super high quality. But [which] are still being [sold] for over $20 bucks because they put Provence on the label. So I thought that was interesting. There was another one that I really liked a lot that surprised me called Seaglass, that was like I think it’s like $10.99. And I remember… so I’ve been tasting with my wife Naomi which has been fun. ‘Cause you know, she loves wine but never gets to come to our office tastings when we have people in, and she turned to me and was like, “What is this wine? This is really good!” And it had come after a string of not a lot of very good wines… and I was like, “Yeah! This is really good.” And so then like we looked at it and we were like holy shit! And then we looked at the price and we were blown away. So yeah, I think it’s been fun, and then I don’t know this weekend… Tonight is pizza night, so I’m gonna make some delicious pizza and pop something good, who knows? And then maybe get back on my spirits wagon, I don’t know.

E: Yeah, I mean I’ve been going the same way too. I think I’m sort of alternating at this point. So I’ll do wine one night or a cider, and then I’ll switch over and have a cocktail but yeah, I think the things we’re gonna talk about today with the cocktail projects that’s actually gotten me pretty excited to start back into my cocktail experimentation land, I definitely went through a phase of that a couple of years ago, but I’m right back on the train now.

A: I know you’re a wine lover but when I was first introduced to you it was through the fact that you have written this cocktail book and really have this expertise in cocktails. Like the things you tell me you’re trying to do at home, like recreate a classic Martini from… I would never do. Like, I can make a really good Negroni, I can make a really good straight-up Martini, but if you ask me to recreate some of my favorite cocktails from some of my favorite cocktail bars in New York I’d be like, “nah, I’m just gonna wait ‘til they re-open.”

E: ‘Nah, I’m good!’ Yeah, I mean I definitely went through a phase like years ago where I was just making bitters all the time, making bitters from like Buddha’s hand and like all sorts of crazy citruses and so forth so I mean that’s… I think that’s one of the nice things right now, is that if we have a little bit extra time where we’re looking for something creative to do, hey start on those holiday gift projects now, you’ve got nothing else to do, [so] you might as well get creative.

A: I mean yeah, so I guess jumping straight into the topic: Zach, what sort of projects do you have in mind that people could be doing now? Or what are you working on, or wish you were working on?

Z: Well I would say that I’ll let Erica talk about things like bitters because that’s something that I don’t have a lot of experience with personally. But what I would say, and I think this is the operative thing here is, for the most part I think most of us in our daily lives, we don’t have time, and really it’s not even just that we don’t have time because a lot of these things don’t take a lot of active time. It’s just we don’t really want to commit to a couple of week-long projects, even if most of that time is spent sitting in a closet or something. And what I have started doing at home, because I anticipate having some time to commit to this, is working on some infusions. That’s something that I started doing as a bartender years ago. Basically, it’s a simple way to add flavor to a spirit. I’m mostly working with clear spirits at the moment because, while you can certainly do cool things with brown spirits, I find that if I kinda just wanna get like a simple flavor, like a fruit flavor, like I’ve got some blueberry gin going on right now, the idea there’s is basically to extract the flavor from the blueberry into the gin, and I imagine that in a couple of weeks, which is about how long these things tend to take, that the weather in Seattle may have turned to the point where sitting outside and having a drink made with blueberry gin is gonna sound really, really delightful as opposed to [how] it sounds now, which is pretty miserable ‘cause it’s pouring rain. [That’s] kinda what I’m aiming at. And then one thing that I’ve mentioned on the podcast before that I’ve done, and I think is another thing to think about doing especially for people who are home more, maybe opening wine more often but aren’t necessarily drinking a lot is vermouth. Which is a little tricky to make in that you kind of have to find the right balance in ingredients and sweetness but I’ve had some success with making vermouth and I find it actually to be more useful as something to kind of sip, a way to kind of preserve that wine – if you’re not interesting in cooking with it – or making vinegar which you can also do. I like to make vermouth and then it’s just something that I’ll pour over ice, maybe add a little bit of soda water to and it’s my afternoon (maybe while I’m cooking) beverage, ‘cause it’s lower in alcohol. And it retains some of the wine flavor but has some spice notes that you expect from vermouth.

A: So Zach, quickly. ‘Cause you know you’re talking about these things, I’m loving it, I’m getting into it, but now I’m like “how do I do it?” So first of all, with your blueberry gin, can you please explain the process, and also tell me what kind of drinks you’d put it in? And then could you please do the same for the vermouth?

Z: Yeah, absolutely!

A: Thank you.

Z: So I would say, with the blueberry gin, it’s basically, the only things you really need are gin – for one. And I like to look at something that’s not… I’m not going for top shelf gin, I’m looking at something that’s probably like a London dry, cause I want something with a relatively neutral palate, so I’m using Gordon’s ’cause it’s kind of a relatively inexpensive…

A: It’s a very… yeah that’s a good one.

Z: Yeah, I find the flavor unobjectionable, but it’s not that expensive so I’m not putting it in my really premium gin. And then you basically just need a jar or other vessel that you can close. It doesn’t have to be air tight, you don’t have to worry because of the alcohol of the gin, it’s not like anything is gonna go bad, in terms of like the fruit rotting, but you just don’t want it spilling and you do wanna be able to capture the flavor. And then, basically what I do is, I have a [container that] you would put a punch in that’s got a spigot. And so I just put the gin in, and I usually do like 2 liters at a time, and then it ends up being about… oh gosh I should probably measure these things, right? It probably ends up being about 2 pounds or so of blueberries. And I throw maybe a bay leaf or two in also ‘cause I like a little bit of that additional herbal flavor, and I let it sit. And I let it sit for about ten days and then I start tasting it. And really what you’re tasting for is, you want there to be a noticeable blueberry flavor. But what I don’t want, is I don’t want it to start tasting like… if you’ve ever had dried blueberries? Or like really concentrated candy blueberry flavor, then I feel like you’ve extracted a little too much. So at that point then you just literally strain the gin off, you throw the blueberries away. I made the mistake once when I was very young in the restaurant industry of eating them and they are miserable, it just tastes like alcohol. But basically yeah, you just dump that out. I think you could theoretically do something with the blueberries, like maybe you could cook them down but there’s really very little flavor left in them…

A: Put em in pancakes and give ‘em to your kids.

Z: God! Yeah, If you want them to take three naps a day….

A: Like, Yo! I need to get some work done, I made you blueberry pancakes, enjoy!

Z: I would worry that the pan might catch on fire with all that alcohol in there. And then as far as cocktails, one of the things I like to use it in, one of my favorite spring cocktails [is] the Aviation, which is typically made with crème de violette: so gin, crème de violette, lemon and Maraschino liqueur. And what I do is, I basically just cut down a little bit on the crème de violette and Maraschino ‘cause with the fruit flavor in there, even though the gin isn’t sweet, I feel like the whole drink can get a little syrupy if you’re not careful. But I basically just do that, you get this even deeper blueberry, kind of blue color than you would get normally from the crème de violette. That’s one thing. I like it…I mean you can make just a simple gin flip. So basically, again just in, lemon juice and an egg white. [A] little bit of simple syrup or sugar if you want, to kind of sweeten it up. But really, I mean I think it’s pretty versatile, and also just as a gin and tonic, frankly. Like if you just want to pour that over some ice with some tonic water, it’s fucking delicious, it’s got a nice little kind of pale blue color, or pale purple color really and it’s great when and if the weather improves, which it will eventually here in Seattle, I promise.

E: Yeah, that sounds great!

A: So we’ll come back to you on the vermouth tip. But Erica what about you? Gimme a project.

E: Yeah, super simple project. So yesterday we launched this article with 5 simple projects that you can do at home to up your cocktail game, and the thing that I made was oleo-saccharum, which… do you guys know about this? It sounds like a crazy Latin thing but it’s actually a super-simple citrus syrup. So, it’s been used since like the 1700’s if you read David Wondrich, in either of his books, you’ll see him refer to it as really the essential ingredient in punches in classic times. You take the peels from citrus, usually you could use lemon or orange or grapefruit, and you just steep it and mix it with some sugar. And then the sugar pulls out all of those wonderful essential oils to create this beautiful syrup that, you know, in Wondrich’s telling, creates the difference between a good punch and a great punch. So it has a lot of uses other than a punch though, [and] my favorite way to use it, and I’m gonna be posting this all up on Instagram because it’s really one of the best cocktails, is an Old Fashioned. So just a rum Old Fashioned with an aged rum like El Dorado 12 year which is my favorite on its own – it’s such an incredible rum, but then I just do one teaspoon of the oleo-saccharum syrup, and bitters over a big ice cube. It’s such a beautiful cocktail. And really the only thing, like I said, to make the oleo-saccharum is that you steep the orange or citrus peels in sugar overnight, you mix it occasionally and then in the morning, anywhere from 3 to 12 hours later you can decide based on the taste. You’ve got a ready-to-go syrup. From a quantity perspective, just get and peel a cup or so worth of the peels and then you just add about a half a cup of sugar, and it creates about a little bit more than a third-cup of syrup. That can be kept in the refrigerator for a week and used in a variety of ways. You can use it in a French 75, you can use it in a whiskey sour, you can use it in a Sidecar, I mean there’s so many different applications for it. And it’s just such a wonderful lifted citrus flavor that you can’t really get any other way.

A: Dude that sounds delicious. Like…

E: It’s pretty good.

A: I also kinda wanna make some pancakes from [Zach’s] blueberries and then put your syrup on top of it, that sounds pretty good. I mean that sounds pretty good.

E: I mean that sounds pretty good.

A: That sounds pretty good.

Z: Adam, are we recording this before you have lunch or something? ‘Cause I feel like all you wanna do is eat our drinks projects.

A: Nah man I had lunch. I actually had lunch with bread I baked myself… So for me one of the things that’s fun to make is bathtub gin. So like, yes I know it’s not real gin, but basically you take a vodka, and you… I like to again, same with you Zach, not an amazing vodka, but a quality vodka, right? So like, we’re not going out here and putting Ketel [One] in this, but I’ll usually do it with something like, honestly it works really well with Smirnoff or Tito’s or something. So take a 750 ml bottle, dump it in a Mason jar – a large enough Mason jar or some sort of vessel and then it’s the same kind of idea, right? You basically flavor it with gin flavorings. So as opposed to distilling those gin flavorings into the gin, you’re just steeping them into the vodka, so I use like, cucumber peel, lemon peel, dill, you have to use…. I think you have to use juniper berry, some people disagree, but I kinda feel like it’s not gin without the juniper berry, so some dried juniper berries, you can get those at a lot of grocery stores so you shouldn’t have a problem even in the quarantine. But you can throw in a lot of other stuff too, right? You could do different kinds of teas, you can do orange….any other kind of citrus peels, I think grapefruit would be really awesome, you could also do like heat if you like it, some sort of spicy you know note to it. And then you let it sit for basically the same idea, 10 days to 14 days, stirring it I think every other day just to make sure it’s still doing its thing, and then you start tasting. And once it tastes good to you, you strain off the liquid, I like to bottle it and then you have your own kind of gin to use in a lot of different cocktails. I use it to make straight-up Martinis, I use it to make Negronis, I use it to make gin Gimlets, like all these things you would normally use regular gin for but now you have your own gin. And it’s also fun to then give to people, it’s like “hey, here’s this like gin I made.” It’s always like a good time, which is a lot of fun. We’ve talked a lot about spirit style projects, but I know Zach, we’re gonna get to your vermouth, but have either of you ever brewed beer?

E: No

Z: I have not. But you have?

A: Ahh. Yes, the best! I’ve had a lot of explosions too.

E: Really?

A: Yeah, so… I mean, I think the worst explosion was… Josh and I, the other co-founder of VinePair, we attempted to brew a Belgian tripel, that was a really bad idea. And it started re-fermenting in the bottle ‘cause it was just… it’s so much sugar and so much yeast in a Belgian tripel, and they exploded all in his closet, there was beer everywhere.

E: Oh no!

A: So that was when Naomi told me that we were never allowed to brew beer in our apartment, only in Josh’s. [But] brewing beer is super fun ‘cause I think it’s one of the easiest ways to sort of see how alcohol happens, if that makes sense?

E: Yeah.

A: You know, it’s not that… I think people get really freaked out about it because…like “oh, I read that the kitchen has to be super clean.” Like yes, cleanliness is important, but I mean you have to be clean when you cook, right? Like no one is sitting there being like “Oh, I’m gonna make some cookies and there’s like, dirt everywhere.” So as long as the counter is clean and you’ve washed the equipment with hot water and soap, the way you should wash your hands right now, everything is fine and it’s a fun project that takes, you know, four weeks. So, at the end of this whole bullshit you should emerge with a really good beer that then you can take out in the park and drink and there’s lots of amazing recipes online and you can buy kits which I’m sure are still shipping right now, to make beer and it’s a really fun project. I love doing it, we did it for like 2 years and then just sort of moved to places where we felt like it wasn’t as…we didn’t have as much space. Josh was really lucky in that one of his first apartments in New York was a big loft. So we were able to sort of brew… but you know, I bet your husband’s studio would be a perfect place to brew beer, just saying Erica.

E: I bet he does, we’ve got plenty of space up in his studio.

Z: I was gonna say, you’ve got… you can probably start a whole brewery, let alone just home brew. I have a question for you Adam, about brewing though, at home. Which is, are there styles of beer that are easier for people who’ve never done it to kind of take on? Obviously, it sounds like a Belgian tripel is a bad idea for a first beer, but is there kind of an ideal first beer?

A: Ales are the easiest. It’s very hard to do lagers because of the cold fermentations. So lagers are much more difficult than ales. And then pale ales and IPAs are actually very easy to brew at home, as long as you have the right ingredients, which again you can buy online and I have to say like we definitely brewed a bunch of different batches of IPAs and pale ales that came out really well. We actually have a home brew columnist on VinePair that writes I think monthly, or bi-weekly with different ways to brew.

E: Yep.

A: So there’s a bunch of resources there. But then also, I mean you can go down rabbit holes on Reddit and stuff like that of people who’ve like literally recreated beers. You can brew Heady Topper for yourself at home or someone’s like “Oh, I think I figured out the Pliny recipe,” so you can brew Pliny, which is crazy. So there’s a lot of fun you can have, and then the kits are easy to at least get you started, like the recipe’s there. So like literally “dump into water, boil, strain, you have this style of beer that we’ve already perfected the recipe of,” but it’s just a cool way, again, just to see how fermentation works.

E: Totally, and if you’re looking for the column on our site its BIY, “Brew it yourself,” it’s with national home-brew competition gold medal winner and certified cicerone Mandy Naglich. So that’s where you can check out dozens of articles to get a sense of best practices and projects you might wanna try out yourself.

A: Exactly, so now Zach back to you. How do you make vermouth?

Z: So I think the simplest way to do it, and I’ve mostly done it with red wine, because I find that it’s a little more…. I’ve only talked about making a white vermouth once, and I think I screwed up, so I don’t think that it’s not doable, I [just] think it’s that I didn’t kind of approach it the right way. But I will say that, before we get into the specifics, one I find about making vermouth at home is that, at least so far, I haven’t been able to kind of get the exact texture that you might expect from certain kinds of vermouth. Like if you like a really kind of rich vermouth like Carpano Antica or something like that, without adding a lot of essentially really, really reduced sugar syrup, you’re gonna have a hard time getting that real richness. And I don’t know that I can offer you a suggestion for how to get that at home, I’m not an expert. But otherwise, I mean basically what I’ve done is: I’ll take a certain amount of leftover red wine, in this case usually like you know about, yeah about 2 liters or so. So about two and half bottles, three bottles or something like that. And you take about a third of it and you reduce it over, you know over really low heat. You’re just trying to kind of cook it down a little bit. And then I would say once it’s about reduced in volume by about half, you add about a cup of sugar, and there’s your base syrup. And so at that point that’s had all the alcohol cooked out of it, so you’re not dealing with booze from that. And then basically you let it cool back down to kind of room temp, you add it to the remaining wine along with some…I mean again, you kind of want to use spices. I like to use like there’s certainly black pepper, again bay leaf I throw in there, I like to use things like coriander and cardamom, and a little bit of even cumin seed. Infusion of that along with a little bit of… you want to add some sort of spirit cause you want to bring the alcohol level up a little bit. So I sometimes will use Cognac, it definitely adds more flavor. If you have like… you can use vodka if you’ve got that that you wanna use. If you have… I mean ideally I think you would add a little bit of even higher-proof spirit, but I don’t have moonshine lying around so… that’s not an option for me…

A: What?

Z: I know, right? We haven’t talked about home distilling which is a bad idea. And also illegal most places.

A: I kinda want to do it though, but anyways keep going.

Z: Well we’ll see you at Jono’s studio too. So then… basically again, it’s just a process of waiting. It doesn’t take long. I find that within a week I’m kind of at the place I wanna be flavor-wise. But, you can kind of taste… give it a few days and then taste every day, and then at that point you just again, strain everything off, I put it right in the fridge. I find that it lasts for about a month in a pretty good state, and like I said, you know, my favorite use for it is just drinking it over ice with a little soda water or tonic because it’s kind of the best way to sort of enjoy that flavor. But it works in cocktails… I find that it actually, interestingly, does better in cocktails where you might use a fair bit of vermouth, so it works well in a Negroni. I haven’t loved it in my Manhattans, and maybe that’s just me. Again, I think it’s a texture thing. I think it feels like it waters them down a touch because it doesn’t have the viscosity that a commercially produced vermouth might have.

A: Right

Z: So in a Negroni I don’t mind it as much in part because Campari already has a lot of, you know, kind of richness and body, so it being a little lighter in flavor isn’t such a big deal. Or no, not lighter in flavor but lighter in body. But in something like a Manhattan I do find that I miss it a little bit, I miss that body that you get from vermouth a little bit. But you know you can find it… you can put it in a lot of different things. But like I said, I just like it a thing to sip over ice, with a little bit of soda water or just as is. Which is one of my favorite ways to enjoy vermouth period, so it’s not like I’m only doing that with this. But yeah… and again, if you’ve got open bottles, the nice thing about it is, you can just kind of combine stuff together. I haven’t found any issue with mixing… as long… I mean maybe if you’re mixing Beaujolais and Zinfandel you might find it a little weird but frankly even then I don’t think so. It all kind of comes together in the end. You might find slightly better results or more sort of homogenous results if you use the same wine but I don’t think any of us are at that stage so your leftover bottles… and I’ve used it with wine that’s been open for a week and it’s fine.

E: Wow!

Z: You know, you’re not looking for freshness and brightness in your vermouth for the most part, at least I’m not in the way that I would be in my wine. So you know, I wouldn’t use a three-week-old bottle. You know, another thing you could do is go buy a relatively inexpensive box of wine, you know a three liter and use that and probably end up with a very cost-effective vermouth solution.

E: Sure, sure. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea, I’d try it.

A: I dig.

Z: Well I would share it with you guys but that’s probably not gonna happen for a little while.

A: I think these have been like some really good ideas. I mean, Erica, have you got anything else?

E: Yeah, I mean I do have one more.

A: Yes!

E: I would say that a lot of people don’t realize that bitters is just a pretty simple infusion. So for that…

A: I didn’t.

E: Everyone’s talking about Everclear and how you can make your own hand sanitizer from it, but you can also use Everclear as the base for your bitters. So, really all you do to make bitters is you can take some like zest of lemons or oranges or whatever you want that main flavor base to be. And then you add cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, lemongrass, coriander, pepper, and then kind of the bittering agents that you wanna have in all bitters which are cinchona bark and gentian root, you know you can get those at natural stores or even at some bigger grocery chains. So for those things you just, you really just prepare the ingredients, divide them out into some Mason jars, and fill it up with grain alcohol. And for that you just let it sit there and kind of agitate it maybe once or twice a week for a month. And then portion it out into tiny little dropper bottles, and that’s one of my favorite holiday gifts that I typically make for people. Like to package that up with a cocktail book or something like that. And it’s a fun way to go. Maybe in this case it’s gonna be a post-apocalypse drinking gift that you can give to all your friends once you finally see them this summer.

A: I dig, I dig. Cool, so I guess you know, go home….well stay home, make one of these projects, and if you do shoot us an email at podcast@vinepair.com and let us know that you made one of the things we suggested, take a picture and share it with us, that would be awesome! Agreed?

E: Agreed.

Z: Yeah absolutely! And if you have other projects too. I would love to hear if people are trying other stuff out there that’s not stuff we covered too, cause I need some new projects.

E: Yeah, definitely. And try the sourdough, gotta move on, gotta keep going.

A: Well, as always everyone, thank you so much for listening, we hope you’re also checking out our podcast [Covid-19] Conversations, our corona diaries if you will, that we’re running in the feed three times a week. We’d love to know what you think about those as well. As always if you enjoy the podcast, if you feel like you’re getting a lot of amazing information and we’re helping make your day a little bit better please drop us a review or rating in iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever else you get our podcast. It really helps other people discover the show. And Erica, Zach, I’ll talk to you again right here, next week.

Z: Sounds great

E: See you then.

A: Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair podcast, if you enjoy listening to us every week please leave us a review or rating on iTunes, Stitcher, spotify, or wherever it is you get your podcasts, it really helps everyone else discover the show. And now for the credits:

VinePair is produced and hosted by Zach Geballe, Erica Duecy, and me: Adam Teeter. Our engineer is Nick Patri and Keith Beavers. I’d also like to give a special shout out to my VinePair co-founder Josh Malin and the rest of the VinePair team for their support. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you again right here next week.

The article VinePair Podcast: Drinks Projects You Can Make at Home appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/vinepair-podcast-drinks-projects-you-can-make-at-home/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/vinepair-podcast-drinks-projects-you-can-make-at-home

[syrupeel6-blog]

Birds & Brews at WingMill, Neutral Bay

Heads up! There's a brand new American chicken wing and burger joint in town and it's as authentic as you can get. WingMill on Young Street in Neutral Bay is all about birds and brew i.e. chicken wings and beer. There are 8 types of American style wings, loaded fries, frickles, salads gigantic poured root beers and beer on tap!

There's this thing that Ryan always does when he enters a restaurant. He walks over to the chef or someone else in charge, shakes their hands and introduces himself. I don't know whether it's a 1) guy thing or 2) an American thing or 3) a Ryan thing.

By the time Mr NQN and I arrive there Ryan has done his thing and he and Ivy have already ascertained what's good and found out a bit about the place and the chef. And speaking of Americanisms, Ivy found the fortnight old WingMill on her expat facebook group. One woman had vouched for the authenticity of the wings and so a quick date was set to visit WingMill a few days later (we don't mess about!).

The menu is a good size, enough choice but not too much so that you're paralysed with choice. There's a list of eight types of wings as well as other American/Canadian sides and desserts. There are two large flat screens playing American sports games and bluegrass and country musician Robert Earl Keen plays in the background. There is also some outdoor dog friendly bench seating.

Chef Ahmed Kalil is from Modesto, California and he used to work in marketing at General Motors. This is his first food related venture. He moved to Australia in 2009 and he started off doing informal wing parties for friends. What started as 1 friend grew to 5, then 8 and then 14 and then neighbours he didn't even know were showing up at this house for wings.

He is stickler for authenticity-the burger buns are imported from New York and the pickles are real American crinkle cut pickles. Prices are very reasonable, like American prices. He is very modest and friendly.

Root Beer Float $9

My root beer float arrives and it's enormous. It's cold, fizzy and creamy and just about everything that you'd want to toss back with a half dozen wings.

Original Buffalo Wings 6 for $9 plus blue cheese sauce $3

Oh that brings me to the wings. So American wings are single wings, not the double ones that you tend to get here. They are deep fried and served with a hot sauce and blue cheese dressing as well as celery sticks. These original buffalo wings send Ivy and Ryan into raptures from the first bite - I even think there's some swearing. Suffice it to say that these are the real deal.

Hot Hot Wings 6 for $9

The "hot hot" wings are made with a combination of habanero and ghost chilli peppers which gives you an indication that these are hot indeed. Not fiery hot and intolerable like the ghost pepper wings at Wings X Tins (which seem more a death defying novelty). There's a definite, strong kick but they're not self defeating.

Poutine $9

What's a border between countries? I adore Canadian poutine and this one has soft, squeaky cheddar cheese curds (yes real cheese curds!!) and just about the most perfect rosemary and thyme gravy. "That's Thanksgiving dinner gravy right there," says Ivy while I devour half of this serve.

American Smash Burger one x one $9

Round Two! Ryan gets up and orders again because now he's Ahmed's best buddy. You can order the American smash burger with either one or two patties and given how many wings we had ordered we went with the single patty. It's has a seasoned beef patty, melted American cheese, lettuce, tomato, thinly sliced onion, pickles and mill (aka burger) sauce on a potato bun. It's like an In-N-Out burger but better. The bun is soft perfection melting into the patty when you bite into it and we wish we had order two.

Garlic Parmesan 8 for $12 (2 flavours)

Hands down my favourite wings (I do tend to like saucy wings) are the garlic parmesan made with roasted garlic and parmesan cheese served in a creamy sauce. It's intensely flavoured and I just love that creamy sauce against the crispy wings.

Honey Chipotle BBQ Wings 8 for $12 (2 flavours)

These are more the bbq wings that Australians are more familiar with and they describe it as "American BBQ meets smoked chipotle peppers," with the sweetness of honey. I also liked these because of the saucy quality of these where Ivy and Ryan like the drier texture of the original buffalo wings.

Georgia Frickles $8

Ivy is very excited to see the Georgia frickles aka fried pickles (she's from Georgia y'all) and these are American crinkle cut pickles that are battered and deep fried and served with a Sriracha mayonnaise. They're crazy moreish and we also dip them in the blue cheese dressing ($3) and my favourite, the herby ranch dressing ($3).

Mo's Corn Salad $7

You do need some veggies when you go for wings and I loved the salads as much as the wings. The corn salad is simple but so tasty. With juicy corn kernels, mayo, capsicum and onion with crispy tortilla chips it is well seasoned but sweet from the corn.

Apple Coleslaw $7

The coleslaw is made with shredded cabbage, carrot and apples with a creamy dressing. The apple gives it a fresh sweetness without being too distinctly apple in flavour.

Sourdough Grilled Cheese $9

We were enjoying the food so much that we decided to order two more things: the sourdough grilled cheese made with herb crusted sourdough bread with four types of cheese: Monterrey jack, asadero, con queso and cheddar cheeses. It comes meltingly good and dripping with cheese with a side pot of tomato sauce, a pickle spear and some kettle chips on the side.

Cauliflower wings $10

This is a choice that they designed for the vegans. It's lightly battered cauliflower "wings" or florets with a cajun seasoning and Sriracha mayonnaise. It's a pretty damn good imitation of chicken wings in terms of flavour and somewhere between the wings and a salad.

Fried Banana Split $10

There was only room for one dessert and there are two on the menu. Ryan asks his now best buddy to recommend a choice out of the fried banana split or the brownie and Ahmed recommends the banana split. This is a halved banana coated in a cinnamon crumb and deep fried with scoops of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, strawberry sauce and chopped up Reese's peanut butter cups. I think I'd prefer a caramel sauce to this but the two Americans at the table are smitten.

As we leave, they're already making plans to come back...

So tell me Dear Reader, do you chat to the staff or the chef when you go to a restaurant? Do you have a favourite wing sauce? Do you prefer them saucy or drier?

This meal was independently paid for.

9 Young Street, Neutral Bay, NSW Open: Tuesday to Thursday 12pm-1pm Friday & Saturday 12pm-11pm Sunday 1pm-9pm Closed mondays wingmill.com.au/

Source: https://www.notquitenigella.com/2019/04/29/wingmill-neutral-bay/

[passionate-baker]

Monthly Musings: August

Hello friends!

I’m so happy you’re here for yet another monthly musings post. Wow, didn’t summer just fly right by? I feel like I just got the hang of this whole surviving-in-the-heat thing and now the days are starting to get just a touch cooler. Oh well. 

How was July for you? We spent a lot of time with our families over the last month as, coincidentally, both mine & Boyfriend’s mothers underwent knee replacements. Watching my mother go through the recovery phase of the whole thing has me awe-struck at how strong she is. It also leaves me feeling pretty grateful for my functioning knees that carry me around without much protest. 

We also spent a lot of time eating donuts this past month. Krispy Kreme is located conveniently close to the National Orthopaedic Hospital, and amen for that. 

The offering for the month ahead is below, and generally it’s pretty easy going. I get so much out of writing these posts; something about being able to look back over the last month and planning a few things for the one to come calms me. These have fast become my favourite posts to share, and I hope you find some solace in them also. 

Enjoy!

I’m entirely fascinated by the whole knee replacement malarkey that my mom is going through - I can barely take my eyes off it. With the help of an epidural, she was awake for the 2-hour surgery, and she was out of the hospital within 4 days. As of today, she’s two weeks past the surgery & one day away from getting the 20 staples holding her knee closed taken out. She is 100% braver than me and I can only hope to be as strong as her when my already gammy knee gives out in the future. I found this guide very informative. 

As a surprise for our anniversary last month, I decided to push the boat out & book us a trip abroad. We haven’t been out of the country since last October and I felt like we deserved it.. so we’re heading to Berlin this coming Friday! We’ll be in the city for four days & I’m already salivating thinking about all the food we’re going to eat and all the beer we’re going to drink. I’ll be posting more on my Instagram stories if you’d like to follow along!

Enrique, our eldest chili plant that we grew from seed, is truly flourishing in this hotter weather we’ve been having! I mean, he is a serrano chili plant that came to us by way of Mexico, so he obviously loves the heat. On my last count, there are 15 gorgeous little chilies waiting to ripen. It is just the most satisfying feeling!

Related: remember when I mentioned last month that we have a newly discovered little patch of soil? I’ve 97% decided that I’m going to plant some rhubarb and I’m so excited about it. This website has so much helpful information about planting fruit and veg!  

I know I promised you a recipe for Sourdough Maple Blueberry Brown Butter Crumble Muffins last month. I also know that said recipe hasn’t been posted yet. I have good news! The post is finished now and will be hitting the blog later this week - and thank heavens for that. Stay tuned!

I found myself alone in the house for an evening recently, and I can’t tell you how much I truly enjoyed it! I danced wildly around the kitchen listening to 90s music (Fairground by Simply Red was especially wonderful to bop to), I treated myself to a couple glasses of white wine, & I re-watched some early Gilmore Girls episodes and found myself laughing out loud within the first few minutes. Living my best life!

Our trip to Kilkenny last month was bonkers awesome. The beautiful city just seems to get better & better each time we go. The food, the ambiance, the adorable little pubs, everything is so lovely there! I’m working on a blog post about our visit at the moment, so more on that soon, but... let’s not forget the real reason we went there: to see Bob Dylan and Neil Young! The concert was amazing. We sang our hearts out from beginning to end & loved every second. And obviously, Bob was the clear winner for us, duh.

We had Boyfriend’s sister & brother-in-law over for a belated birthday dinner last week and we went all out by serving a mini dessert plate. I whipped up a batch of my Extra Fudgy Brownies - that are literally always a treat - and a small bowl of white chocolate mousse, all served with a dollop of lightly whipped cream and a drizzle of raspberry coulis, respectively. Pop a candle into the birthday girl’s brownie & you’re winning!

The bad news: I finished reading all of the available books in the Harry Bosch series. The good news: the latest Harry Hole book came out exactly when I needed something to read! It. Is. Amazing. Perhaps my favourite of the whole series!

This Dave Matthews Tiny Desk Concert has been playing in my mind lately. Two particular highlights for me are the inter-singing banter and the unintentionally hilarious faces he makes when he sings. 

I have my eye on a new pair of Birkenstocks. They’re the classic Arizona style and I’ve been having shoe envy at heaps of strangers walking past me for weeks. I’m heading into town this week to try them on, wish me luck!

I haven’t been baking a whole lot recently, but I’m going to make a conscious effort to get back into the kitchen during the month to whip something up just for me, not the blog or Instagram. What should I make? I'm currently leaning towards Christina Tosi’s Crack Pie. 

Have a great month, friends! 

Let’s catch up all over again in September, okay? 

Hugs, 

Vicki xo

R E L A T E D    P O S T S

2019:  July  //  June  //  May  //  April  //  March  //  February  //  January  

2018:  December  //  November

[activekidney73-blog]

Birds & Brews at WingMill, Neutral Bay

Heads up! There's a brand new American chicken wing and burger joint in town and it's as authentic as you can get. WingMill on Young Street in Neutral Bay is all about birds and brew i.e. chicken wings and beer. There are 8 types of American style wings, loaded fries, frickles, salads gigantic poured root beers and beer on tap!

There's this thing that Ryan always does when he enters a restaurant. He walks over to the chef or someone else in charge, shakes their hands and introduces himself. I don't know whether it's a 1) guy thing or 2) an American thing or 3) a Ryan thing.

By the time Mr NQN and I arrive there Ryan has done his thing and he and Ivy have already ascertained what's good and found out a bit about the place and the chef. And speaking of Americanisms, Ivy found the fortnight old WingMill on her expat facebook group. One woman had vouched for the authenticity of the wings and so a quick date was set to visit WingMill a few days later (we don't mess about!).

The menu is a good size, enough choice but not too much so that you're paralysed with choice. There's a list of eight types of wings as well as other American/Canadian sides and desserts. There are two large flat screens playing American sports games and bluegrass and country musician Robert Earl Keen plays in the background. There is also some outdoor dog friendly bench seating.

Chef Ahmed Kalil is from Modesto, California and he used to work in marketing at General Motors. This is his first food related venture. He moved to Australia in 2009 and he started off doing informal wing parties for friends. What started as 1 friend grew to 5, then 8 and then 14 and then neighbours he didn't even know were showing up at this house for wings.

He is stickler for authenticity-the burger buns are imported from New York and the pickles are real American crinkle cut pickles. Prices are very reasonable, like American prices. He is very modest and friendly.

Root Beer Float $9

My root beer float arrives and it's enormous. It's cold, fizzy and creamy and just about everything that you'd want to toss back with a half dozen wings.

Original Buffalo Wings 6 for $9 plus blue cheese sauce $3

Oh that brings me to the wings. So American wings are single wings, not the double ones that you tend to get here. They are deep fried and served with a hot sauce and blue cheese dressing as well as celery sticks. These original buffalo wings send Ivy and Ryan into raptures from the first bite - I even think there's some swearing. Suffice it to say that these are the real deal.

Hot Hot Wings 6 for $9

The "hot hot" wings are made with a combination of habanero and ghost chilli peppers which gives you an indication that these are hot indeed. Not fiery hot and intolerable like the ghost pepper wings at Wings X Tins (which seem more a death defying novelty). There's a definite, strong kick but they're not self defeating.

Poutine $9

What's a border between countries? I adore Canadian poutine and this one has soft, squeaky cheddar cheese curds (yes real cheese curds!!) and just about the most perfect rosemary and thyme gravy. "That's Thanksgiving dinner gravy right there," says Ivy while I devour half of this serve.

American Smash Burger one x one $9

Round Two! Ryan gets up and orders again because now he's Ahmed's best buddy. You can order the American smash burger with either one or two patties and given how many wings we had ordered we went with the single patty. It's has a seasoned beef patty, melted American cheese, lettuce, tomato, thinly sliced onion, pickles and mill (aka burger) sauce on a potato bun. It's like an In-N-Out burger but better. The bun is soft perfection melting into the patty when you bite into it and we wish we had order two.

Garlic Parmesan 8 for $12 (2 flavours)

Hands down my favourite wings (I do tend to like saucy wings) are the garlic parmesan made with roasted garlic and parmesan cheese served in a creamy sauce. It's intensely flavoured and I just love that creamy sauce against the crispy wings.

Honey Chipotle BBQ Wings 8 for $12 (2 flavours)

These are more the bbq wings that Australians are more familiar with and they describe it as "American BBQ meets smoked chipotle peppers," with the sweetness of honey. I also liked these because of the saucy quality of these where Ivy and Ryan like the drier texture of the original buffalo wings.

Georgia Frickles $8

Ivy is very excited to see the Georgia frickles aka fried pickles (she's from Georgia y'all) and these are American crinkle cut pickles that are battered and deep fried and served with a Sriracha mayonnaise. They're crazy moreish and we also dip them in the blue cheese dressing ($3) and my favourite, the herby ranch dressing ($3).

Mo's Corn Salad $7

You do need some veggies when you go for wings and I loved the salads as much as the wings. The corn salad is simple but so tasty. With juicy corn kernels, mayo, capsicum and onion with crispy tortilla chips it is well seasoned but sweet from the corn.

Apple Coleslaw $7

The coleslaw is made with shredded cabbage, carrot and apples with a creamy dressing. The apple gives it a fresh sweetness without being too distinctly apple in flavour.

Sourdough Grilled Cheese $9

We were enjoying the food so much that we decided to order two more things: the sourdough grilled cheese made with herb crusted sourdough bread with four types of cheese: Monterrey jack, asadero, con queso and cheddar cheeses. It comes meltingly good and dripping with cheese with a side pot of tomato sauce, a pickle spear and some kettle chips on the side.

Cauliflower wings $10

This is a choice that they designed for the vegans. It's lightly battered cauliflower "wings" or florets with a cajun seasoning and Sriracha mayonnaise. It's a pretty damn good imitation of chicken wings in terms of flavour and somewhere between the wings and a salad.

Fried Banana Split $10

There was only room for one dessert and there are two on the menu. Ryan asks his now best buddy to recommend a choice out of the fried banana split or the brownie and Ahmed recommends the banana split. This is a halved banana coated in a cinnamon crumb and deep fried with scoops of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, strawberry sauce and chopped up Reese's peanut butter cups. I think I'd prefer a caramel sauce to this but the two Americans at the table are smitten.

As we leave, they're already making plans to come back...

So tell me Dear Reader, do you chat to the staff or the chef when you go to a restaurant? Do you have a favourite wing sauce? Do you prefer them saucy or drier?

This meal was independently paid for.

9 Young Street, Neutral Bay, NSW Open: Tuesday to Thursday 12pm-1pm Friday & Saturday 12pm-11pm Sunday 1pm-9pm Closed mondays wingmill.com.au/

Source: https://www.notquitenigella.com/2019/04/29/wingmill-neutral-bay/

[isaiahrippinus]

VinePair Podcast: Drinks Projects You Can Make at Home

With Covid-19 keeping many of us at home indefinitely, we’re finding all kinds of new projects to provide creative outlets. While some people are busy deep cleaning their bathrooms and perfecting their sourdough starters, we’ve opted to dial in our home drinking game — and maybe you’d like to join us? From whipping up batches of vermouth and bitters, to making quick infusions and syrups, to becoming a home brewing hobbyist, there are plenty of ways to put your at-home time to good use.

That’s the topic on this week’s VinePair podcast, where Adam, Erica, and Zach discuss their own experiences with DIY beverage projects and offer some suggestions on what to make, and how to turn those projects into great drinks.

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LISTEN ONLINE OR CHECK OUT OUR CONVERSATION HERE:

Adam: Still from my Brooklyn, NY Apartment, I’m Adam Teeter.

Erica: From Jersey City, I’m Erica Duecy.

Zach: And in my house in Seattle, Washington I’m Zach Geballe.

A: And this is the VinePair podcast and guys, I’m excited about our topic today. Which is getting into alcohol projects you can do at home. I know I’ve been taking on a ton of projects myself, not just obviously alcohol- related. I’ve been baking some bread. I’ve been….well, baking a lot. But also doing some projects around the house but, before we jump in to all of that. What have you guys been drinking? What’s been getting you through for the last week? Anything exciting? Erica?

E: Yeah, I have been tasting through a ton of rosés for the big list that we put out every year – our top 25 rosés. And I’ve been excited by some of the really affordable selections that I’ve found. You know, usually when I’m thinking about rosé, I’m thinking [about] the south of France, but actually there were some sneaker hits out of Italy for me. So, I found the Planeta rosé from Sicily, that’s a $16 bottle. And it’s on the bolder side of the rosé flavor spectrum; it’s got strawberry, guava, crushed peach notes; I was totally surprised. And this would be the type of wine that I would pair with like barbecue chicken, tacos, even pizza, it’s got that kind of bolder flavor profile which is gonna be so wonderful with all of the summertime back-yard barbecue foods.

A: Yeah man, Italian rosés.

Z: That’s awesome!

A: That was a big thing last year, in our list last year; I think Planeta made the list, and the number one was Graci. Both from Sicily, ‘cause I think, yeah those wines are surprisingly amazing. Even though you normally think of France, right? Which is nuts!

E: Totally!

Z: And it makes sense in a way ‘cause you’re dealing with a similar climate, right? You’re Mediterranean, obviously if you’re in Sicily you’re IN the middle of the Mediterranean, but we think of all the great French rosé that, in particular that come from Provence and [have a] very Mediterranean sort of influence, so I think it’s definitely the case that you can find some great rosés from […] other wine regions that border the Mediterranean. Because they’re going to have, I think generally speaking, a culture of rosé drinking that goes back, ‘cause those kinds of wines are, sometimes the red grape… or what you wanna do with red grapes in those kind of places is turn ‘em into rosé.

A: Totally. So Zach, what about you, what are you drinking man?

Z: Well as you might have noticed on Instagram yesterday, as we’re recording this on Friday, I took the opportunity, and I have been taking the opportunity, to go in and pull some bottles out of my collection that I wasn’t saving for the most special of occasions, but might have been a little loathe to open under the general mentality of, “Fuck it, I might as well!”. And as Erica might recall I wrote a piece for the site, which now feels like it ran about a million years ago, but it was I think actually just last month, on the joys of aged Italian white wines. So last night I was looking…

A: Yeah, you’ve also talked about this on the podcast multiple times. This is your thing.

Z: I have, It’s true. It’s one of my things, but for good reason! I had the opportunity…

E: I love old Italian white wines.

Z: Yeah, and I had the opportunity to have a ten-year-old bottle of Arneis, which is one of my favorite varieties, and it’s not the kind of thing that I would necessarily have every single night, but I made risotto and roasted a chicken and it’s a wine that both my wife and I love. And you know, it… I mean look, there’s a lot of horrible news and everything going on in the world and we’re gonna try to kind of sort of steer away from that in this podcast, but for me, it’s like every now and then it’s important to really center my own, or our own joy and pleasure when we can, and wines like that are opportunities to do that. So I was really glad that I was like, “OK it’s the last bottle of this I have, it’s a kind of special wine but we’re gonna open it, we’re gonna enjoy it and then I guess we’re gonna talk about it on the podcast the next day as it turns out,” so that is what I have been drinking. Adam, how about you?

A: So you know I’m going through the eight stages of… I don’t know, mourning, drinking, etc. So I have been drinking a lot of rosé for the tasting, but I won’t talk about any of those here ‘cause I think Erica already hit on that. But you know like last week when we were first like “this is happening,” I drank a lot of brown spirits. So, I found a few bourbons that I really enjoyed. I was drinking a Jefferson’s bottling that was really delicious, I was drinking some Lagavulin, so you know Scotch that I really liked. Somebody gifted me a bottle of Whistle Pig, so I enjoyed a little bit of that last week. And also like dirty Martinis for my wife — I don’t take them dirty, but I was drinking just a classic gin Martini, a little dry with a lemon twist. So I was really drinking liquor last week, and then this week I definitely transitioned back to like beer and wine. So I had a few pretty delicious IPAs that I enjoyed earlier in the week. I’m also trying to go back to my normal schedule of not drinking three to four nights a week. So I guess… so if I didn’t drink Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, so Wednesday night I had a really nice New England style IPA from Monday Night Brewing that was pretty cool, and then last night I did enjoy one of the rosé from the round up that I was like, “wow, this is just amazing.” We featured it a bunch before, Kathleen Inman’s wine, so Endless Crush is just a beautiful wine.

Z: Oh yeah!

E: Yeah, that’s great.

A: And so it was submitted again for the tasting this year, and then I was like, “well I’m not gonna dump this,” so I drank it. I have to say, Erica, I’ve been impressed for the past few years actually that there’s some really stellar rosés coming out of other countries. A lot out of California or just the West Coast in general and you know, a lot of bad ones coming out of Provence. A lot of ones that are really trading on that regional name that are getting away with like a true lack of balance or just like really harsh, off flavors, fruit that doesn’t taste super high quality. But [which] are still being [sold] for over $20 bucks because they put Provence on the label. So I thought that was interesting. There was another one that I really liked a lot that surprised me called Seaglass, that was like I think it’s like $10.99. And I remember… so I’ve been tasting with my wife Naomi which has been fun. ‘Cause you know, she loves wine but never gets to come to our office tastings when we have people in, and she turned to me and was like, “What is this wine? This is really good!” And it had come after a string of not a lot of very good wines… and I was like, “Yeah! This is really good.” And so then like we looked at it and we were like holy shit! And then we looked at the price and we were blown away. So yeah, I think it’s been fun, and then I don’t know this weekend… Tonight is pizza night, so I’m gonna make some delicious pizza and pop something good, who knows? And then maybe get back on my spirits wagon, I don’t know.

E: Yeah, I mean I’ve been going the same way too. I think I’m sort of alternating at this point. So I’ll do wine one night or a cider, and then I’ll switch over and have a cocktail but yeah, I think the things we’re gonna talk about today with the cocktail projects that’s actually gotten me pretty excited to start back into my cocktail experimentation land, I definitely went through a phase of that a couple of years ago, but I’m right back on the train now.

A: I know you’re a wine lover but when I was first introduced to you it was through the fact that you have written this cocktail book and really have this expertise in cocktails. Like the things you tell me you’re trying to do at home, like recreate a classic Martini from… I would never do. Like, I can make a really good Negroni, I can make a really good straight-up Martini, but if you ask me to recreate some of my favorite cocktails from some of my favorite cocktail bars in New York I’d be like, “nah, I’m just gonna wait ‘til they re-open.”

E: ‘Nah, I’m good!’ Yeah, I mean I definitely went through a phase like years ago where I was just making bitters all the time, making bitters from like Buddha’s hand and like all sorts of crazy citruses and so forth so I mean that’s… I think that’s one of the nice things right now, is that if we have a little bit extra time where we’re looking for something creative to do, hey start on those holiday gift projects now, you’ve got nothing else to do, [so] you might as well get creative.

A: I mean yeah, so I guess jumping straight into the topic: Zach, what sort of projects do you have in mind that people could be doing now? Or what are you working on, or wish you were working on?

Z: Well I would say that I’ll let Erica talk about things like bitters because that’s something that I don’t have a lot of experience with personally. But what I would say, and I think this is the operative thing here is, for the most part I think most of us in our daily lives, we don’t have time, and really it’s not even just that we don’t have time because a lot of these things don’t take a lot of active time. It’s just we don’t really want to commit to a couple of week-long projects, even if most of that time is spent sitting in a closet or something. And what I have started doing at home, because I anticipate having some time to commit to this, is working on some infusions. That’s something that I started doing as a bartender years ago. Basically, it’s a simple way to add flavor to a spirit. I’m mostly working with clear spirits at the moment because, while you can certainly do cool things with brown spirits, I find that if I kinda just wanna get like a simple flavor, like a fruit flavor, like I’ve got some blueberry gin going on right now, the idea there’s is basically to extract the flavor from the blueberry into the gin, and I imagine that in a couple of weeks, which is about how long these things tend to take, that the weather in Seattle may have turned to the point where sitting outside and having a drink made with blueberry gin is gonna sound really, really delightful as opposed to [how] it sounds now, which is pretty miserable ‘cause it’s pouring rain. [That’s] kinda what I’m aiming at. And then one thing that I’ve mentioned on the podcast before that I’ve done, and I think is another thing to think about doing especially for people who are home more, maybe opening wine more often but aren’t necessarily drinking a lot is vermouth. Which is a little tricky to make in that you kind of have to find the right balance in ingredients and sweetness but I’ve had some success with making vermouth and I find it actually to be more useful as something to kind of sip, a way to kind of preserve that wine – if you’re not interesting in cooking with it – or making vinegar which you can also do. I like to make vermouth and then it’s just something that I’ll pour over ice, maybe add a little bit of soda water to and it’s my afternoon (maybe while I’m cooking) beverage, ‘cause it’s lower in alcohol. And it retains some of the wine flavor but has some spice notes that you expect from vermouth.

A: So Zach, quickly. ‘Cause you know you’re talking about these things, I’m loving it, I’m getting into it, but now I’m like “how do I do it?” So first of all, with your blueberry gin, can you please explain the process, and also tell me what kind of drinks you’d put it in? And then could you please do the same for the vermouth?

Z: Yeah, absolutely!

A: Thank you.

Z: So I would say, with the blueberry gin, it’s basically, the only things you really need are gin – for one. And I like to look at something that’s not… I’m not going for top shelf gin, I’m looking at something that’s probably like a London dry, cause I want something with a relatively neutral palate, so I’m using Gordon’s ’cause it’s kind of a relatively inexpensive…

A: It’s a very… yeah that’s a good one.

Z: Yeah, I find the flavor unobjectionable, but it’s not that expensive so I’m not putting it in my really premium gin. And then you basically just need a jar or other vessel that you can close. It doesn’t have to be air tight, you don’t have to worry because of the alcohol of the gin, it’s not like anything is gonna go bad, in terms of like the fruit rotting, but you just don’t want it spilling and you do wanna be able to capture the flavor. And then, basically what I do is, I have a [container that] you would put a punch in that’s got a spigot. And so I just put the gin in, and I usually do like 2 liters at a time, and then it ends up being about… oh gosh I should probably measure these things, right? It probably ends up being about 2 pounds or so of blueberries. And I throw maybe a bay leaf or two in also ‘cause I like a little bit of that additional herbal flavor, and I let it sit. And I let it sit for about ten days and then I start tasting it. And really what you’re tasting for is, you want there to be a noticeable blueberry flavor. But what I don’t want, is I don’t want it to start tasting like… if you’ve ever had dried blueberries? Or like really concentrated candy blueberry flavor, then I feel like you’ve extracted a little too much. So at that point then you just literally strain the gin off, you throw the blueberries away. I made the mistake once when I was very young in the restaurant industry of eating them and they are miserable, it just tastes like alcohol. But basically yeah, you just dump that out. I think you could theoretically do something with the blueberries, like maybe you could cook them down but there’s really very little flavor left in them…

A: Put em in pancakes and give ‘em to your kids.

Z: God! Yeah, If you want them to take three naps a day….

A: Like, Yo! I need to get some work done, I made you blueberry pancakes, enjoy!

Z: I would worry that the pan might catch on fire with all that alcohol in there. And then as far as cocktails, one of the things I like to use it in, one of my favorite spring cocktails [is] the Aviation, which is typically made with crème de violette: so gin, crème de violette, lemon and Maraschino liqueur. And what I do is, I basically just cut down a little bit on the crème de violette and Maraschino ‘cause with the fruit flavor in there, even though the gin isn’t sweet, I feel like the whole drink can get a little syrupy if you’re not careful. But I basically just do that, you get this even deeper blueberry, kind of blue color than you would get normally from the crème de violette. That’s one thing. I like it…I mean you can make just a simple gin flip. So basically, again just in, lemon juice and an egg white. [A] little bit of simple syrup or sugar if you want, to kind of sweeten it up. But really, I mean I think it’s pretty versatile, and also just as a gin and tonic, frankly. Like if you just want to pour that over some ice with some tonic water, it’s fucking delicious, it’s got a nice little kind of pale blue color, or pale purple color really and it’s great when and if the weather improves, which it will eventually here in Seattle, I promise.

E: Yeah, that sounds great!

A: So we’ll come back to you on the vermouth tip. But Erica what about you? Gimme a project.

E: Yeah, super simple project. So yesterday we launched this article with 5 simple projects that you can do at home to up your cocktail game, and the thing that I made was oleo-saccharum, which… do you guys know about this? It sounds like a crazy Latin thing but it’s actually a super-simple citrus syrup. So, it’s been used since like the 1700’s if you read David Wondrich, in either of his books, you’ll see him refer to it as really the essential ingredient in punches in classic times. You take the peels from citrus, usually you could use lemon or orange or grapefruit, and you just steep it and mix it with some sugar. And then the sugar pulls out all of those wonderful essential oils to create this beautiful syrup that, you know, in Wondrich’s telling, creates the difference between a good punch and a great punch. So it has a lot of uses other than a punch though, [and] my favorite way to use it, and I’m gonna be posting this all up on Instagram because it’s really one of the best cocktails, is an Old Fashioned. So just a rum Old Fashioned with an aged rum like El Dorado 12 year which is my favorite on its own – it’s such an incredible rum, but then I just do one teaspoon of the oleo-saccharum syrup, and bitters over a big ice cube. It’s such a beautiful cocktail. And really the only thing, like I said, to make the oleo-saccharum is that you steep the orange or citrus peels in sugar overnight, you mix it occasionally and then in the morning, anywhere from 3 to 12 hours later you can decide based on the taste. You’ve got a ready-to-go syrup. From a quantity perspective, just get and peel a cup or so worth of the peels and then you just add about a half a cup of sugar, and it creates about a little bit more than a third-cup of syrup. That can be kept in the refrigerator for a week and used in a variety of ways. You can use it in a French 75, you can use it in a whiskey sour, you can use it in a Sidecar, I mean there’s so many different applications for it. And it’s just such a wonderful lifted citrus flavor that you can’t really get any other way.

A: Dude that sounds delicious. Like…

E: It’s pretty good.

A: I also kinda wanna make some pancakes from [Zach’s] blueberries and then put your syrup on top of it, that sounds pretty good. I mean that sounds pretty good.

E: I mean that sounds pretty good.

A: That sounds pretty good.

Z: Adam, are we recording this before you have lunch or something? ‘Cause I feel like all you wanna do is eat our drinks projects.

A: Nah man I had lunch. I actually had lunch with bread I baked myself… So for me one of the things that’s fun to make is bathtub gin. So like, yes I know it’s not real gin, but basically you take a vodka, and you… I like to again, same with you Zach, not an amazing vodka, but a quality vodka, right? So like, we’re not going out here and putting Ketel [One] in this, but I’ll usually do it with something like, honestly it works really well with Smirnoff or Tito’s or something. So take a 750 ml bottle, dump it in a Mason jar – a large enough Mason jar or some sort of vessel and then it’s the same kind of idea, right? You basically flavor it with gin flavorings. So as opposed to distilling those gin flavorings into the gin, you’re just steeping them into the vodka, so I use like, cucumber peel, lemon peel, dill, you have to use…. I think you have to use juniper berry, some people disagree, but I kinda feel like it’s not gin without the juniper berry, so some dried juniper berries, you can get those at a lot of grocery stores so you shouldn’t have a problem even in the quarantine. But you can throw in a lot of other stuff too, right? You could do different kinds of teas, you can do orange….any other kind of citrus peels, I think grapefruit would be really awesome, you could also do like heat if you like it, some sort of spicy you know note to it. And then you let it sit for basically the same idea, 10 days to 14 days, stirring it I think every other day just to make sure it’s still doing its thing, and then you start tasting. And once it tastes good to you, you strain off the liquid, I like to bottle it and then you have your own kind of gin to use in a lot of different cocktails. I use it to make straight-up Martinis, I use it to make Negronis, I use it to make gin Gimlets, like all these things you would normally use regular gin for but now you have your own gin. And it’s also fun to then give to people, it’s like “hey, here’s this like gin I made.” It’s always like a good time, which is a lot of fun. We’ve talked a lot about spirit style projects, but I know Zach, we’re gonna get to your vermouth, but have either of you ever brewed beer?

E: No

Z: I have not. But you have?

A: Ahh. Yes, the best! I’ve had a lot of explosions too.

E: Really?

A: Yeah, so… I mean, I think the worst explosion was… Josh and I, the other co-founder of VinePair, we attempted to brew a Belgian tripel, that was a really bad idea. And it started re-fermenting in the bottle ‘cause it was just… it’s so much sugar and so much yeast in a Belgian tripel, and they exploded all in his closet, there was beer everywhere.

E: Oh no!

A: So that was when Naomi told me that we were never allowed to brew beer in our apartment, only in Josh’s. [But] brewing beer is super fun ‘cause I think it’s one of the easiest ways to sort of see how alcohol happens, if that makes sense?

E: Yeah.

A: You know, it’s not that… I think people get really freaked out about it because…like “oh, I read that the kitchen has to be super clean.” Like yes, cleanliness is important, but I mean you have to be clean when you cook, right? Like no one is sitting there being like “Oh, I’m gonna make some cookies and there’s like, dirt everywhere.” So as long as the counter is clean and you’ve washed the equipment with hot water and soap, the way you should wash your hands right now, everything is fine and it’s a fun project that takes, you know, four weeks. So, at the end of this whole bullshit you should emerge with a really good beer that then you can take out in the park and drink and there’s lots of amazing recipes online and you can buy kits which I’m sure are still shipping right now, to make beer and it’s a really fun project. I love doing it, we did it for like 2 years and then just sort of moved to places where we felt like it wasn’t as…we didn’t have as much space. Josh was really lucky in that one of his first apartments in New York was a big loft. So we were able to sort of brew… but you know, I bet your husband’s studio would be a perfect place to brew beer, just saying Erica.

E: I bet he does, we’ve got plenty of space up in his studio.

Z: I was gonna say, you’ve got… you can probably start a whole brewery, let alone just home brew. I have a question for you Adam, about brewing though, at home. Which is, are there styles of beer that are easier for people who’ve never done it to kind of take on? Obviously, it sounds like a Belgian tripel is a bad idea for a first beer, but is there kind of an ideal first beer?

A: Ales are the easiest. It’s very hard to do lagers because of the cold fermentations. So lagers are much more difficult than ales. And then pale ales and IPAs are actually very easy to brew at home, as long as you have the right ingredients, which again you can buy online and I have to say like we definitely brewed a bunch of different batches of IPAs and pale ales that came out really well. We actually have a home brew columnist on VinePair that writes I think monthly, or bi-weekly with different ways to brew.

E: Yep.

A: So there’s a bunch of resources there. But then also, I mean you can go down rabbit holes on Reddit and stuff like that of people who’ve like literally recreated beers. You can brew Heady Topper for yourself at home or someone’s like “Oh, I think I figured out the Pliny recipe,” so you can brew Pliny, which is crazy. So there’s a lot of fun you can have, and then the kits are easy to at least get you started, like the recipe’s there. So like literally “dump into water, boil, strain, you have this style of beer that we’ve already perfected the recipe of,” but it’s just a cool way, again, just to see how fermentation works.

E: Totally, and if you’re looking for the column on our site its BIY, “Brew it yourself,” it’s with national home-brew competition gold medal winner and certified cicerone Mandy Naglich. So that’s where you can check out dozens of articles to get a sense of best practices and projects you might wanna try out yourself.

A: Exactly, so now Zach back to you. How do you make vermouth?

Z: So I think the simplest way to do it, and I’ve mostly done it with red wine, because I find that it’s a little more…. I’ve only talked about making a white vermouth once, and I think I screwed up, so I don’t think that it’s not doable, I [just] think it’s that I didn’t kind of approach it the right way. But I will say that, before we get into the specifics, one I find about making vermouth at home is that, at least so far, I haven’t been able to kind of get the exact texture that you might expect from certain kinds of vermouth. Like if you like a really kind of rich vermouth like Carpano Antica or something like that, without adding a lot of essentially really, really reduced sugar syrup, you’re gonna have a hard time getting that real richness. And I don’t know that I can offer you a suggestion for how to get that at home, I’m not an expert. But otherwise, I mean basically what I’ve done is: I’ll take a certain amount of leftover red wine, in this case usually like you know about, yeah about 2 liters or so. So about two and half bottles, three bottles or something like that. And you take about a third of it and you reduce it over, you know over really low heat. You’re just trying to kind of cook it down a little bit. And then I would say once it’s about reduced in volume by about half, you add about a cup of sugar, and there’s your base syrup. And so at that point that’s had all the alcohol cooked out of it, so you’re not dealing with booze from that. And then basically you let it cool back down to kind of room temp, you add it to the remaining wine along with some…I mean again, you kind of want to use spices. I like to use like there’s certainly black pepper, again bay leaf I throw in there, I like to use things like coriander and cardamom, and a little bit of even cumin seed. Infusion of that along with a little bit of… you want to add some sort of spirit cause you want to bring the alcohol level up a little bit. So I sometimes will use Cognac, it definitely adds more flavor. If you have like… you can use vodka if you’ve got that that you wanna use. If you have… I mean ideally I think you would add a little bit of even higher-proof spirit, but I don’t have moonshine lying around so… that’s not an option for me…

A: What?

Z: I know, right? We haven’t talked about home distilling which is a bad idea. And also illegal most places.

A: I kinda want to do it though, but anyways keep going.

Z: Well we’ll see you at Jono’s studio too. So then… basically again, it’s just a process of waiting. It doesn’t take long. I find that within a week I’m kind of at the place I wanna be flavor-wise. But, you can kind of taste… give it a few days and then taste every day, and then at that point you just again, strain everything off, I put it right in the fridge. I find that it lasts for about a month in a pretty good state, and like I said, you know, my favorite use for it is just drinking it over ice with a little soda water or tonic because it’s kind of the best way to sort of enjoy that flavor. But it works in cocktails… I find that it actually, interestingly, does better in cocktails where you might use a fair bit of vermouth, so it works well in a Negroni. I haven’t loved it in my Manhattans, and maybe that’s just me. Again, I think it’s a texture thing. I think it feels like it waters them down a touch because it doesn’t have the viscosity that a commercially produced vermouth might have.

A: Right

Z: So in a Negroni I don’t mind it as much in part because Campari already has a lot of, you know, kind of richness and body, so it being a little lighter in flavor isn’t such a big deal. Or no, not lighter in flavor but lighter in body. But in something like a Manhattan I do find that I miss it a little bit, I miss that body that you get from vermouth a little bit. But you know you can find it… you can put it in a lot of different things. But like I said, I just like it a thing to sip over ice, with a little bit of soda water or just as is. Which is one of my favorite ways to enjoy vermouth period, so it’s not like I’m only doing that with this. But yeah… and again, if you’ve got open bottles, the nice thing about it is, you can just kind of combine stuff together. I haven’t found any issue with mixing… as long… I mean maybe if you’re mixing Beaujolais and Zinfandel you might find it a little weird but frankly even then I don’t think so. It all kind of comes together in the end. You might find slightly better results or more sort of homogenous results if you use the same wine but I don’t think any of us are at that stage so your leftover bottles… and I’ve used it with wine that’s been open for a week and it’s fine.

E: Wow!

Z: You know, you’re not looking for freshness and brightness in your vermouth for the most part, at least I’m not in the way that I would be in my wine. So you know, I wouldn’t use a three-week-old bottle. You know, another thing you could do is go buy a relatively inexpensive box of wine, you know a three liter and use that and probably end up with a very cost-effective vermouth solution.

E: Sure, sure. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea, I’d try it.

A: I dig.

Z: Well I would share it with you guys but that’s probably not gonna happen for a little while.

A: I think these have been like some really good ideas. I mean, Erica, have you got anything else?

E: Yeah, I mean I do have one more.

A: Yes!

E: I would say that a lot of people don’t realize that bitters is just a pretty simple infusion. So for that…

A: I didn’t.

E: Everyone’s talking about Everclear and how you can make your own hand sanitizer from it, but you can also use Everclear as the base for your bitters. So, really all you do to make bitters is you can take some like zest of lemons or oranges or whatever you want that main flavor base to be. And then you add cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, lemongrass, coriander, pepper, and then kind of the bittering agents that you wanna have in all bitters which are cinchona bark and gentian root, you know you can get those at natural stores or even at some bigger grocery chains. So for those things you just, you really just prepare the ingredients, divide them out into some Mason jars, and fill it up with grain alcohol. And for that you just let it sit there and kind of agitate it maybe once or twice a week for a month. And then portion it out into tiny little dropper bottles, and that’s one of my favorite holiday gifts that I typically make for people. Like to package that up with a cocktail book or something like that. And it’s a fun way to go. Maybe in this case it’s gonna be a post-apocalypse drinking gift that you can give to all your friends once you finally see them this summer.

A: I dig, I dig. Cool, so I guess you know, go home….well stay home, make one of these projects, and if you do shoot us an email at podcast@vinepair.com and let us know that you made one of the things we suggested, take a picture and share it with us, that would be awesome! Agreed?

E: Agreed.

Z: Yeah absolutely! And if you have other projects too. I would love to hear if people are trying other stuff out there that’s not stuff we covered too, cause I need some new projects.

E: Yeah, definitely. And try the sourdough, gotta move on, gotta keep going.

A: Well, as always everyone, thank you so much for listening, we hope you’re also checking out our podcast [Covid-19] Conversations, our corona diaries if you will, that we’re running in the feed three times a week. We’d love to know what you think about those as well. As always if you enjoy the podcast, if you feel like you’re getting a lot of amazing information and we’re helping make your day a little bit better please drop us a review or rating in iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever else you get our podcast. It really helps other people discover the show. And Erica, Zach, I’ll talk to you again right here, next week.

Z: Sounds great

E: See you then.

A: Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair podcast, if you enjoy listening to us every week please leave us a review or rating on iTunes, Stitcher, spotify, or wherever it is you get your podcasts, it really helps everyone else discover the show. And now for the credits:

VinePair is produced and hosted by Zach Geballe, Erica Duecy, and me: Adam Teeter. Our engineer is Nick Patri and Keith Beavers. I’d also like to give a special shout out to my VinePair co-founder Josh Malin and the rest of the VinePair team for their support. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you again right here next week.

The article VinePair Podcast: Drinks Projects You Can Make at Home appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/vinepair-podcast-drinks-projects-you-can-make-at-home/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/614114218482008064

[shirlleycoyle]

Zombie Capitalism

What if the zombie apocalypse, but in the era of accelerating privatization? Speculative fiction writer Tobias Bucknell gives a whole new meaning to ‘zombie capitalism’, to savage result. Enjoy. –the ed

The dogs started barking at the zombie in the pool long before Sheryl figured out what Zim and Garfield got the scent of. Zim, the German Shepherd, crashed through the picture window to scrabble out after it.

Sheryl yelled at the dogs to get back in the house as Garfield took off to join Zim at the chain fence around the pool.

Then she heard the zombie splashing about in the shallow end of the pool. It snarled when it saw her, and she couldn’t quite stifle a small scream as she realized a rotting corpse had pulled itself through a hole in the pool fence. It had trailed blood and innards all across the decorative brick path, then collapsed in a cloud of black ichor into the crystal clear blue water.

Sheryl ran back inside and got the Remington Seven from the rack by the door, loading it and working the bolt by feel as she jogged to the back of the house. By the time she returned to the pool the zombie flailed around in one of the corners, not able to pull itself out of the pool. A long, black tangle of intestines looped around the pool cleaner had tied it up.

“Jesus Christ.” Sheryl grabbed Zim. “Damn it dog, you stay here.”

She managed to get Zim’s collar, but Garfield had scrabbled off counter-clockwise around the fence to wiggle through the damn hole. He arrowed into the pool along the zombie gut trail like the damn beagle scenthound he was.

Garfield ran around to snarl at the zombie as Sheryl got Zim’s leash on him, clipped him to the fence, and then ran over to the gate.

“Garfield, get over here!”

She fumbled with the padlock for a second. Garfield shrieked as the zombie got clawed, bony fingers into him.

Sheryl kicked the gate open and fired at the zombie. A chunk of shoulder blew away. She swore and worked the bolt again.

The second shot blew the zombie’s head apart, bits of brain raining down into the pool. Sheryl pulled Garfield out of the water, carried him to the pickup, and got him into the passenger seat.

“Hilldale Vet Clinic,” she shouted into her phone.

She was halfway to the vet before she realized she’d left Zim clipped to the fence, and called Kathy next door.

“No worries,” Kathy said. “I’ll send Jaden over, he can plywood up the window and take Zim in.”

*

“I thought,” said Cory from the vet’s curved desk and two sleek computers, “that the National Guard had swept the town. What was the point of all those checkpoints around town? Fucking zombies.”

Somewhere in the back, Sheryl thought, Garfield lay on a table under anesthesia. And that young vet from Chicago that didn’t look like she could legally order a weak beer, or even drive a car, was trying to save him.

“Zombies, huh?” Cory said again.

Sheryl pulled her head out of her bloody hands she realized he was talking to her. “What?”

“National Guard isn’t doing a good job of keeping up,” Cory said.

“They left,” Sheryl said. She took a deep breath and blew her nose.

“They left? When’d they leave?” Cory looked horrified.

“It was on Channel Five,” Sheryl said. “You didn’t see it?”

“I’ve been working extra shifts,” Cory said. “Trying to get ahead on my payments for steel shutters.”

Sheryl had been seeing more and more of those go up. Bars on windows as well. She didn’t like the look. The HOA kept sending out letters pointing out that it violated the community guidelines, but they just kept popping up.

Zombies trumped HOA rules.

“UTD won against the government.” The judge on the case ruled that getting the military involved unfairly influenced the market. Ultra Tactical Dynamics, a company built just to provide zombie and zombie home defense produces, would lose all its business if the National Guard defeated the zombie hordes. And that was anti-capitalist and un-American.

Second amendment rights trumped governmental anti-zombie actions.

“These are fundamental American rights,” a blonde spokeswoman wearing aviator sunglasses told reporters at a press conference on the steps of the court, as Sheryl watched the news and chopped onions and carrots for a stew the previous night.

News reporters noted that the CDC wasn’t allowed to track zombie populations starting next week, and conservative senators had advanced a bill to prevent funding for a cure.

*

“You should buy UTD stock,” Zachariah told Sheryl at BreadWorx the next day. “The dividend is growing, and the stock is flying high after the decision.”

He’d been their financial advisor for three years now. Dale liked him. Zachariah was a high school buddy who came back to town after college with a business degree to take over his dad’s business selling insurance and retirement.

Dale couldn’t make the appointment, told Sheryl she needed to go. What she really wanted to do was stay home and grieve Garfield.

Damn, she’d loved that dog.

Fucking Dale. He was probably off drinking at lunch. Sheryl hated meeting Zachariah on her own. He never took his eyes off her chest. She’d insisted on meeting him for lunch somewhere public to avoid the claustrophobic feeling of doing this in his office.

“They stopped the plague in France,” Sheryl said, ripping off a piece of sourdough bread and dipping it in the potato soup. “What happens when this is all over?”

“We don’t need a whole socialist intervention,” Zachariah scoffed. “Got enough firepower right here for us regular folk to stop the horde. I saw Andy take out one of them in the hardware parking lot. Bang, right between the eyes. People got out of their cars to clap.”

Some of the boys were talking about building blinds out in the woods around town to sit and hunt zombies with their rifles.

Zachariah had a whole prospectus for Cheryl to look over. A glossy brochure full of charts that showed zombie outbreak growth, personal defense sales, and featured UTD’s unique ‘prep parties’ sales system that set up individuals as distributors to sell defense projects on down the line. Like Tupperware parties, but for lawn spikes, shutters, guns, and bitching swords.

Dale loved going to town UTD parties.

“Listen, you see these videos online?” Zachariah asked.

He pulled out his phone and showed her a clip of a three men in full camo gear on ATVs, all of them wearing night vision goggles.

“Watch this,” one of them giggled, and tossed a stick of dynamite out into the dark. When it exploded, dark gore and body parts rained out of the night and everyone laughed.

Local government all over the country lifted limits on what hunters could use on zombies. YouTube was chock full of men filming themselves firing on zombies with all the arms they’d been hoarding since the NRA first started posting about the government coming to take their weapons.

“Okay, look, if you don’t want to invest in UTD, how about something a little more exotic?” Zachariah leaned in and tapped the UTD brochures.

Cheryl sighed. “What’s that?”

“You remember Randy?”

“Chemistry Randy?”

Zachariah nodded. “He’s starting a safari experience for the city folk. You come out, do a few practice rounds on a shooting range, and then they load you into a open-topped bus with a wire cage and run you out into the countryside and you take potshots from the comfort of a vehicle.”

Fifty thousand seed capital to help him get two vehicles with chopped tops.

Who knows how much they’d make?

“It’s zombie capitalism,” Zachariah said with a big grin. “And business is good.”

“I’d have to talk to Dale,” Cheryl said. She could barely focus, her eyes were watering every few seconds and Zachariah was too focused on talking investing at her to notice that she’d been dabbing at her runny nose the whole time.

“He’s good for it,” Zachariah pushed. “He used to run the same business doing feral hog hunting. Same idea. You could hunt them with just about anything because they were spreading too quickly all over the country. We used to go out machine-gunning the things on weekends. Most legal fun you could ever have.”

It looked like so much fun, but the bottom fell out because people started importing feral hogs up to other areas where hunters were all excited to start the process all over again.

And then soon you had feral hogs ripping through farms like a horde of locusts. They’d breed like rabbits. Local authorities would lift hunting restrictions. People would film themselves hunting with machine guns, and then the whole thing would repeat.

“Zachariah, I really have to get going,” Cheryl said. “I have things to do still today.”

*

According to the radio, stocks were up. Lots of companies building new things to deal with the zombie apocalypse. Construction was up. Walls, moats, shatterproof windows, heavy doors. The hardware stores were doing well. Everyone was taking out second mortgages or maxing out their credit cards.

The economy was humming along because everything had to change for the new reality.

CEOs reported that things had never been better. The NASDAQ at new highs. S&P 500 hitting new records.

A shambling corpse stepped onto the road. Cheryl screamed and swerved. Never swerve, she thought, her car insurance agent told her that. Just hit it dead on and keep moving. Call the 1-800 number on the back when you got home.

Do not park the car in the garage, leave it at the end of the driveway.

Dale always mocked her fuel-efficient hybrid. Maybe he was right, maybe she needed a big pickup that could climb over a zombie and keep going.

*

The edge of their two acres needed spikes. And Cheryl needed Dale to dig a moat. She’d called about the steel shutters, but they were back ordered three weeks.

Funny, the magazines Dale had all featured heavy weaponry. But nothing about ditch-digging and defensive features.

Cheryl dug a hole near the Japanese maple at the property marker. Garfield’s favorite spot. He’d sit there and watch the road, waiting for them to come along the curve, then race his way out to the driveway to pace the car up to the garage.

She wept as she returned to the car and pulled the still form out from the trunk. Garfield’s body sagged in her arms as she walked out over to the grave and slid him in.

“You deserved better,” she said to her dog.

*

The zombies came through two weeks later. They wore brand new camo, and many of them had vests with the logo for Randy’s new zombie sightseeing company on them.

“Figures,” Cheryl muttered as she looked out her non-shuttered windows at the undead running across her lawn, ripping up the daisies and boxwoods. “DALE!”

Zim started barking up a storm downstairs. Dale shouted at the dog. Then the dog shrieked and Dale ran up the stairs, eyes wide.

“Safe,” he gasped.

She kept a shotgun by the bed, always at the ready, since Garfield died. Cheryl aimed it down the stairs and fired.

Dale came back with a smile and an AR-15.

Together they stood on the landing and gunned the creatures lurching up the stairs at them apart, one by one, until the walls dripped with gore, the banister fell over, and the stairs creaked with the weight of the dead.

When it was all over, Cheryl sat in the ruination of her carefully remodeled kitchen.

“We fucking crushed it,” Dale shouted, getting himself a bottle of bourbon and stepping over a corpse.

Cheryl shook her head. “Dale, I’m tired of this.”

Why did it have to be so hard? Why couldn’t they all work together? Why did everything have to be extracted? Lobbied for? Why was she sitting here surrounded by all these bodies, her dogs dead, when there had been perfectly good soldiers surrounding the town earlier?

Dale wouldn’t get it. He’d just won. And where was Cheryl going to go? Fucking Europe? She was an American. Her family was here. Her friends were here, her community was here.

Cheryl sighed and grabbed a mop. Tonight she’d clean. Tomorrow, she’d talk to the bank about a zombie disaster relief loan so they could start rebuilding the house, even though they were already up to their eyeballs in debt.

Maybe it was time to buy a little UTD stock.

Zombie Capitalism syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[number06fan]

Bread Bacteria & Baking

Baking bread is a pure joy. Like so many things you can do in your kitchen, it’s basically chemistry, but it feels like alchemy. Add a bit of yeast in warm water to salt and flour, and poof: not only do you get dough, but the dough changes – it expands outwards, swelling with bubbles of gas. Like those small foam dinosaurs that grow in water, it seems to take on larger proportions by magic. Here’s what you need to know about bread bacteria.

You Can Thank Yeast

That growth is thanks to yeast, which are among the simplest and most useful of living things. They’re responsible for all kinds of fermented foods and beverages, including beer, wine, and cheese. The gases that they respire out are the force that leavens the bread. Through their collective exhalation, a kind of miracle is performed; you can see the loaves multiply right before your eyes.

Yeast is also one of the classes of microbe that live on and around us. It’s present in our digestive tracts, our throats, and other parts of our bodies as well. Our cells are likely outnumbered by the total populations of the tiny cellular ecosystems that we carry around with us — all those flora and fauna. Sometimes, their numbers get really out of hand, as anyone who’s suffered through thrush before can tell you.

Yeast in Literature

For the most part, however, yeast works with us, rather than against it. Given this, it should come as no surprise that bakers have a special relationship with yeast and other bread-related microbes. A passage from a recently published book that landed a spotlight on NPR’s website describes just such an experiment.

The book is called Never Home Alone, by Rob Dunn, and it’s a jubilant celebration of the microbial life that we share spaces with in the vein of Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz or The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Never Home Alone is all about the bacteria that are in and around us, and the manifold ways in which they shape our world. It’s a joyous book, one that really believes that our lives are enriched by sharing spaces with these tiny neighbors of ours, and it makes a passionate case for the importance of bacteria.

Here’s how the experiment in question was set up: fourteen bakers from fifteen countries were to make the same sourdough from the same batch of starter. They themselves, and the particular conditions of their home kitchens, would be the variables in the experiment. The goal was to measure the particular microbial fingerprint that the bakers had, and whether that microbial fingerprint could be seen on their hands, in the dough that they worked, in their kitchen, or in the bread that they produced.

The ingredients for sourdough starter were shipped out to the fifteen bakers, who were instructed to use them to make the starter, feeding it flour and attending to it until it was time for the second phase of the experiment. The starters and bakers were brought to a single location; the starter was swabbed, as were the hands of the bakers, and they were instructed to make the starter into bread. That bread was also swabbed, and the various samples were shipped off so that the bacteria therein could be counted and typed genetically.

The experiment revealed that the things we do with our hands greatly influences the bacteria who are living there. We all carry with us a “sheath” of bacteria that lives on our skin. These bacteria are particular to us, and they’re well established; when we wash our hands, Dunn points out, we don’t actually get rid of anything except for any pathogenic bacteria that are new arrivals and thus not yet properly established. Other, more rooted populations of bacteria are as much a feature of our hands as the skin that they live on.

Because the bakers bake, their hands have mostly baking microbes on them. Dunn and his team expected to see something like this, but in his description of the passage, you get a real sense of awe, almost wonder: “The first surprise was that the bakers’ hands were totally different from any hands we had ever seen before. On average, 25 percent and up to 80 percent of all of the bacteria on the hands of the bakers were Lactobacillus and related species. Similarly, nearly all of the fungi on the bakers’ hands were yeasts that can be found in sourdough starters, such as species of Saccharomyces. We had no idea this was even possible, and we don’t yet fully understand it.”

Dunn speculates that the robust microbial community they found might lend the bakers some degree of protection from the vagaries of microbes: “a community of microbes might make the bakers less likely to get sick than are other people. I’m speculating, but this result is really very novel and leads us down many new paths. I wonder whether all people who work with food develop unusual hand microbes. I wonder whether when more people cooked, a hundred years ago, or five thousand years ago, the continuity between food and hand microbes wasn’t much greater in general than it is today. I wonder many things. We will have to do more experiments. And this wasn’t the only exciting result.”

A deeper understanding of the role that bacteria play in our lives and in our kitchens might well reveal to us new and novel techniques for cooking. They might also help us to chart the particular strengths and weaknesses of our immune systems. There’s a lot of possibilities. This writer is mostly excited to have another excuse to bake bread, which he already spends too much time doing.

By: Sean McNulty, Contributing Writer (Non-Lawyer)

The post Bread Bacteria & Baking appeared first on Lange Law.

[marjorieclarkcom]

Is Bread Bad for You? Why Popular Opinion on Bread Is Wrong

Is Bread Bad for You (Why Popular Opinion on Bread Is Wrong)

I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s when lunches involved a sandwich most of the time.

The general public didn’t believe bread was a terrible thing back then.

Our breakfasts also involved a lot of toast.

I’m guessing the average person had 2-4 pieces of bread per day.

Obesity wasn’t a huge issue back then. Maybe we were so active back then that we overcame the negatives of our high-bread diet.

I guess that could be the case. But…

The healthy people who live in the countries along Mediterranean, typically eat a lot of bread.

Possibly their active lifestyle makes up for the “unhealthy” bread habit?

My grandpa ate 2-4 pieces of toast each morning with coffee and lived into his late 90’s.

Maybe he just had great genetics?

There are a lot of examples of societies that thrive with a decent amount of bread in their diet.

And…

Various types of bread, affect the body differently.

I want to dig deeper into that in this article.

I also want to look into studies that examine health, obesity and bread consumption.

I will do that in a sec…

Right after a short music break.

The music theme for this post is very specific.

I call this the “Early 80’s Pizza Parlor Rock” mix.

If you were playing Centipede, Joust or Dig-Dug while waiting for your pepperoni pizza in 1982-1983?

These were the tunes that were always rocking in the background.

This same playlist was cranking at amusement parks around the U.S. during the same time period.

Maybe I should call this Roller Coaster Rock

I have a selfish reason for writing this blog post.

I’m fighting for bakeries.

I stay lean and healthy with a diet that includes bread at least a few times per week.

The keto movement is growing at a rapid rate.

It does work for fat loss but does NOT allow for rice, bread or beer… so a “No Go” for me.

Next time I travel to Europe I want to visit bakeries and cafes.

When I visit Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, I need my fix of fresh Boudin sourdough bread.

Bread is unfairly criticized and blamed for a lot of modern health problems.

I’m hoping this article will make you consider a different point of view than what is currently popular right now.

I realize that bread-phobia is at an all-time high.

But…

I knead bread in my life (sorry).

We must rise above the anti-bread message (sorry again).

Let’s look into a bit of science.

Bread, Obesity and Longevity Research

This section of the post is inspired by an excellent article by Markham Heid, titled:

The Scientific Case for Eating Bread

His article links to a lot of compelling research to increase daily bread consumption.

I will cover many of the same studies cited in his article, but with my own opinions on these findings.

A large-scale study was published in June of 2016, by Dagfinn Aune.

This research is a meta-analysis looking at a total of 45 studies.

This meta-analysis provides further evidence that whole grain intake is associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and total cancer, and mortality from all causes, respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, diabetes, and all non-cardiovascular, non-cancer causes. These findings support dietary guidelines that recommend increased intake of whole grain to reduce the risk of chronic diseases and premature mortality.

This study looked at whole grains in particular, so whole grain bread is what would give these health benefits.

What about white and other refined bread?

The countries along the Mediterranean are some of the healthiest in the world… they eat a decent amount of bread and not all of it is whole grain.

Whole grain has added benefits that are missing from bread made with refined white flower.

Although people along the Mediterranean do fine with some refined bread, a better health choice is to mainly eat whole grain bread.

Look for whole grain as the first ingredient is one way to find healthy bread.

But…

There may be another approach of choosing bread that will allow you a larger variety of bread to choose from.

The 10:1 Carb-to-Fiber Bread Ratio Rule

I like easy to follow and easy to remember rules.

This is a great one you can use next time you are buying bread at the grocery store. A recent study found that you are looking for breads with a carb-to-fiber ratio of 10:1 (or more fiber if possible).

Among proposed WG (Whole Grain) criteria, the 10:1-ratio identified the most healthful WG products. Other criteria performed less well, including the industry-supported WG-Stamp which identified products with higher fiber and lower trans-fats, but also higher sugars and energy.

If a slice of bread has 20 grams of total carbs, you would want it to have AT LEAST 2 grams of dietary fiber.

Luckily a 10:1 ratio is easy math.

I don’t think it always has to have enough fiber to hit 10:1, but the closer the better.

There is a specific type of bread where this rule doesn’t apply.

Sourdough bread.

Here’s Why Real Sourdough Bread is Beneficial Even if it Doesn’t Meet the 10:1 Carb-to-Fiber Ratio

You must understand…

I am originally from the Bay Area.

Sourdough is a way of life there.

I have fond memories of walking the San Francisco Wharf as a kid with my family and eating fresh sourdough bread.

Freshly baked sourdough with apricot jam is one of the best culinary experiences on the planet.

I’d eat it even if it was found to be unhealthy.

Luckily, sourdough has magical properties beyond just the delicious flavor.

Healthline has an extensive article about sourdough bread:

Why Sourdough Bread is One of the Healthiest Breads

Here’s what I found to be the most interesting part of this article:

Sourdough bread may have a better effect on blood sugar and insulin levels than other types of bread, though the reason for this isn’t yet fully understood. Researchers believe that sourdough fermentation may modify the structure of carb molecules. This reduces the bread’s glycemic index (GI) and slows down the speed at which sugars enter the bloodstream (12, 13, 14, 15, 16).

So it provides stable energy while tasting delicious.

You need to buy real sourdough to have these benefits… a lot of the stuff you pick up from the grocery store is simply sourdough flavored.

Real sourdough bread is made from a starter.

A starter is a fermented mixture of flour and water, containing a colony of microorganisms including wild yeast and lactobacilli.

These starters are unique depending upon the ratio of water to flour and each started makes for a different tasting sourdough bread.

The microorganisms in these starters can be kept alive as long as water and flour are periodically added to the starter.

Here’s something crazy.

Some of these sourdough starters have been kept alive for over 100 years.

I can’t remember where I read this, but the saying was something along these lines.

“When you eat a piece of real sourdough bread you are eating a piece of history”.

In Seattle, we have a sourdough bread from the Essential Baking Company that is made from a starter that has been kept alive since the late 1800’s.

After the California Gold Rush a large group of prospectors traveled from California to Alaska in search of gold.

Seattle was a stop on the way to Alaska.

Many would bring sourdough bread to fuel them on their journey.

Quite a few wound up living in Seattle.

Their sourdough starters stayed as well.

These sourdough starters will be making tasty loaves of delicious bread long after low carb mania has died out.

Long live the sourdough starter!

Fiber in Whole Grain Bread Can Protect Your DNA?

We are just beginning to find out how important fiber is to our health.

We have known for decades some of the health benefits, but recent studies have shown it to be even more important for health than we first thought.

Are you familiar with the telomere?

Telomeres are the caps at each end of strand of your DNA… and as we age they shorten.

Preventing the telomeres from shortening is a way to have a younger biological age.

You can’t stop time.

But…

You can change the rate at which you age by doing things that slow down the shortening of your telomeres.

A recent study (Mar 2018) found that adults with high fiber intake had longer telomeres than their counterparts.

Dietary Fiber and Telomere Length in 5674 U.S. Adults: An NHANES Study of Biological Aging

“A difference of 4.8 to 6.0 years in cell aging was found between those in the lowest compared with the highest quartiles of fiber intake. Overall, the present study highlights the risk of accelerated aging among U.S. women and men who do not consume adequate amounts of dietary fiber.”

People eating a high fiber diet in this study were at a biological age that was 5 years younger than those who didn’t.

We have known for a long time that fiber helped in preventing colon cancer and lowering cholesterol levels.

The anti-aging benefits go way beyond that.

Longer telomere length slows aging and reduces the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases.

It’s a big deal.

We didn’t have the technology to measure telomere length until recently.

How much fiber do we need to eat per day?

The ratio that this study found beneficial was 10 grams of fiber for every 1000 calories.

A person eating 2,000 calories per day would want to eat 20 grams of fiber.

Easy math.

* The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2015–2020) recommends 14 grams per 1,000 calories, but it seems that even 10 grams make a big impact.

In my opinion, any diet that limits fiber is a big-time health mistake.

I follow and recommend a high carb high fiber diet.

I know that this isn’t trendy right now.

Here’s a partial list of foods rich in fiber:

Whole wheat spaghetti Whole wheat bread Oatmeal Green peas Corn Potatoes Lentils Beans Berries

If you want to maximize health and longevity, I highly recommend a diet that has a strong focus on fiber.

If you do decide to follow a low carb or keto diet, you can still get fiber.

Here are a few low carb friendly sources of fiber:

Leafy Greens Flaxseeds Cabbage Coconut Chia Seeds Avocado Cauliflower Broccoli Nuts

If you want to avoid bread…

If you are fine with not having tasty sourdough in your life…

If you are are a keto dieter who isn’t scared of angering the sourdough gods?

Make sure you get other sources of fiber (about 10 grams per 1000 calories consumed each day).

Doesn’t Bread Cause Spikes in Insulin Which Lead to Obesity and Diabetes?

I used to think type 2 diabetes was mainly caused by repeated insulin spikes from carbs.

Then I dug a bit deeper into the research.

The traditional Okinawan diet is a high carb diet (85%) and very low fat.

The Okinawanas have been one of the longest living populations on the planet… they eat a high carb diet and type 2 diabetes is virtually non-existent.

They eat high carb and low fat, but the carb source isn’t bread.

What about bread and longevity? Are you familiar with the term “blue zones”?

These are communities where people live much longer lives with much less disease than the rest of the population on the planet.

There are 5 places on the planet that are considered blue zones.

The Italian island of Sardinia Okinawa, Japan Loma Linda, California Costa Rica’s isolated Nicoya Peninsula Ikaria, an isolated Greek island

Out of the 5 blue zones both Ikaria and Sardinia eat bread daily.

All 5 blue zones eat a diet high in carbs.

I’m not saying you HAVE to eat bread to stay healthy, but you can include bread if you choose the right type.

Why do a lot of people consider bread unhealthy?

As mentioned above, it is because of the belief that bread and other carbs spike insulin and create a state that can lead to type 2 diabetes over time.

The problem isn’t insulin.

It’s insulin resistance.

Research shows that excess fat inside the muscle cells is what causes insulin resistance.

The fat inside the cell is called Intramyocellular Lipid.

Studies show this is one of the root causes of insulin resistance.

When you eat carbs, insulin is released and acts as a key to allow glucose the enter the cell.

Excess fat in the diet can gum up the lock over time.

Here’s a Tedx Talk explaining this in detail:

Here’s a summary:

Insulin acts as a key to allow glucose to enter the cell.

A high fat diet gums up this lock over time.

The insulin key stops working properly… so your body has to release more to get the job done.

This is what is meant by Insulin Resistance.

So there are two choices.

Reduce CARBS to limit glucose and have less need for the insulin key to work properly.

Reduce FATS to clear out the lock and get the glucose metabolism working properly.

I prefer to go the high carb low fat route, but a lot of people (keto and low carb dieters) choose option #1.

Again…

If you do decide to go the low carb or keto route, make sure you get enough daily fiber.

It’s looking like fiber is an extremely important part of a healthy diet.

How Many Grams of Fiber Does a Slice of Bread Have?

The amount of fiber obviously depends on the brand and type of bread.

I thought it would be cool to do a bit of bread research and find brands that meet or exceed the 10:1 carb-to-fiber ratio.

Here are 4 brands that are somewhat easy to find.

1. Dave’s Killer Bread

Dave’s Killer Bread is a brand you can find pretty much everywhere in the U.S. I know they sell this brand at Target, Costco, and Whole Foods. All of their sliced bread hits or beats the 10:1 ratio you are aiming for. The only one what is just barely short is the white bread (but close enough). This is all organic and non-GMO verified, etc. A great choice.

I am especially impressed with their Epic Everything Bagel which meets the 10:1 carb-to-fiber ratio and also has 12 grams of protein and 560mg of omega-3. I’m going to buy these next time I go grocery shopping.

2. Rudi’s Organic Bakery

Rudi’s Organic Bakery is a brand out of Boulder, Colorado. You can buy at Whole Foods and looks like Walmart as well. This company also makes a line of gluten-free bread for those who like to avoid the tastiest part of the bread. I love the smell of gluten in the morning.

3. Alpine Valley

Alpine Valley Organic Bakery bread is found at Costco, Sam’s Club, and many other grocery stores nationwide. It looks like most of their bread has a good carb-to-fiber ratio, except for their white bread. The English muffins meet the 10:1 ratio as well. I need to pick up some of those. This is all non-GMO and organic as well.

4. Arnold Organic Bread

Arnold Organic Bread is another great choice and is also a commonly available bread in the U.S. This brand is available in most grocery stores and Target and Walmart. This bread is also certified organic and non-GMO. This brand goes by three names: Arnold (in the East), Brownberry (in the Midwest) and Oroweat (in the West).

There are countless other brands available, I just wanted to list the brands with the widest distribution.

Also…

If you are outside of the U.S. simply look for 1 gram of fiber (or more) for every 10 grams of carbs.

Summary: Is Bread Bad for You?

I certainly don’t think you HAVE to eat bread to be healthy.

The Okinawans don’t include bread in their diet.

But…

You CAN eat bread and be extremely healthy.

Like the people in Ikaria and Sardinia.

Make sure you either eat real sourdough bread or bread that falls in line with the 10:1 carb-to-fiber ratio.

And…

If you do eat a lot of carbs, it is probably best to not eat tons of fat.

Hopefully, these guidelines help you.

Cheers,

-Rusty Moore

The post Is Bread Bad for You? Why Popular Opinion on Bread Is Wrong appeared first on Visual Impact Fitness.

source https://visualimpactfitness.com/is-bread-bad-for-you/

[anthonystopscom]

Is Bread Bad for You? Why Popular Opinion on Bread Is Wrong

Is Bread Bad for You (Why Popular Opinion on Bread Is Wrong)

I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s when lunches involved a sandwich most of the time.

The general public didn’t believe bread was a terrible thing back then.

Our breakfasts also involved a lot of toast.

I’m guessing the average person had 2-4 pieces of bread per day.

Obesity wasn’t a huge issue back then. Maybe we were so active back then that we overcame the negatives of our high-bread diet.

I guess that could be the case. But…

The healthy people who live in the countries along Mediterranean, typically eat a lot of bread.

Possibly their active lifestyle makes up for the “unhealthy” bread habit?

My grandpa ate 2-4 pieces of toast each morning with coffee and lived into his late 90’s.

Maybe he just had great genetics?

There are a lot of examples of societies that thrive with a decent amount of bread in their diet.

And…

Various types of bread, affect the body differently.

I want to dig deeper into that in this article.

I also want to look into studies that examine health, obesity and bread consumption.

I will do that in a sec…

Right after a short music break.

The music theme for this post is very specific.

I call this the “Early 80’s Pizza Parlor Rock” mix.

If you were playing Centipede, Joust or Dig-Dug while waiting for your pepperoni pizza in 1982-1983?

These were the tunes that were always rocking in the background.

This same playlist was cranking at amusement parks around the U.S. during the same time period.

Maybe I should call this Roller Coaster Rock

I have a selfish reason for writing this blog post.

I’m fighting for bakeries.

I stay lean and healthy with a diet that includes bread at least a few times per week.

The keto movement is growing at a rapid rate.

It does work for fat loss but does NOT allow for rice, bread or beer… so a “No Go” for me.

Next time I travel to Europe I want to visit bakeries and cafes.

When I visit Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, I need my fix of fresh Boudin sourdough bread.

Bread is unfairly criticized and blamed for a lot of modern health problems.

I’m hoping this article will make you consider a different point of view than what is currently popular right now.

I realize that bread-phobia is at an all-time high.

But…

I knead bread in my life (sorry).

We must rise above the anti-bread message (sorry again).

Let’s look into a bit of science.

Bread, Obesity and Longevity Research

This section of the post is inspired by an excellent article by Markham Heid, titled:

The Scientific Case for Eating Bread

His article links to a lot of compelling research to increase daily bread consumption.

I will cover many of the same studies cited in his article, but with my own opinions on these findings.

A large-scale study was published in June of 2016, by Dagfinn Aune.

This research is a meta-analysis looking at a total of 45 studies.

This meta-analysis provides further evidence that whole grain intake is associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and total cancer, and mortality from all causes, respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, diabetes, and all non-cardiovascular, non-cancer causes. These findings support dietary guidelines that recommend increased intake of whole grain to reduce the risk of chronic diseases and premature mortality.

This study looked at whole grains in particular, so whole grain bread is what would give these health benefits.

What about white and other refined bread?

The countries along the Mediterranean are some of the healthiest in the world… they eat a decent amount of bread and not all of it is whole grain.

Whole grain has added benefits that are missing from bread made with refined white flower.

Although people along the Mediterranean do fine with some refined bread, a better health choice is to mainly eat whole grain bread.

Look for whole grain as the first ingredient is one way to find healthy bread.

But…

There may be another approach of choosing bread that will allow you a larger variety of bread to choose from.

The 10:1 Carb-to-Fiber Bread Ratio Rule

I like easy to follow and easy to remember rules.

This is a great one you can use next time you are buying bread at the grocery store. A recent study found that you are looking for breads with a carb-to-fiber ratio of 10:1 (or more fiber if possible).

Among proposed WG (Whole Grain) criteria, the 10:1-ratio identified the most healthful WG products. Other criteria performed less well, including the industry-supported WG-Stamp which identified products with higher fiber and lower trans-fats, but also higher sugars and energy.

If a slice of bread has 20 grams of total carbs, you would want it to have AT LEAST 2 grams of dietary fiber.

Luckily a 10:1 ratio is easy math.

I don’t think it always has to have enough fiber to hit 10:1, but the closer the better.

There is a specific type of bread where this rule doesn’t apply.

Sourdough bread.

Here’s Why Real Sourdough Bread is Beneficial Even if it Doesn’t Meet the 10:1 Carb-to-Fiber Ratio

You must understand…

I am originally from the Bay Area.

Sourdough is a way of life there.

I have fond memories of walking the San Francisco Wharf as a kid with my family and eating fresh sourdough bread.

Freshly baked sourdough with apricot jam is one of the best culinary experiences on the planet.

I’d eat it even if it was found to be unhealthy.

Luckily, sourdough has magical properties beyond just the delicious flavor.

Healthline has an extensive article about sourdough bread:

Why Sourdough Bread is One of the Healthiest Breads

Here’s what I found to be the most interesting part of this article:

Sourdough bread may have a better effect on blood sugar and insulin levels than other types of bread, though the reason for this isn’t yet fully understood. Researchers believe that sourdough fermentation may modify the structure of carb molecules. This reduces the bread’s glycemic index (GI) and slows down the speed at which sugars enter the bloodstream (12, 13, 14, 15, 16).

So it provides stable energy while tasting delicious.

You need to buy real sourdough to have these benefits… a lot of the stuff you pick up from the grocery store is simply sourdough flavored.

Real sourdough bread is made from a starter.

A starter is a fermented mixture of flour and water, containing a colony of microorganisms including wild yeast and lactobacilli.

These starters are unique depending upon the ratio of water to flour and each started makes for a different tasting sourdough bread.

The microorganisms in these starters can be kept alive as long as water and flour are periodically added to the starter.

Here’s something crazy.

Some of these sourdough starters have been kept alive for over 100 years.

I can’t remember where I read this, but the saying was something along these lines.

“When you eat a piece of real sourdough bread you are eating a piece of history”.

In Seattle, we have a sourdough bread from the Essential Baking Company that is made from a starter that has been kept alive since the late 1800’s.

After the California Gold Rush a large group of prospectors traveled from California to Alaska in search of gold.

Seattle was a stop on the way to Alaska.

Many would bring sourdough bread to fuel them on their journey.

Quite a few wound up living in Seattle.

Their sourdough starters stayed as well.

These sourdough starters will be making tasty loaves of delicious bread long after low carb mania has died out.

Long live the sourdough starter!

Fiber in Whole Grain Bread Can Protect Your DNA?

We are just beginning to find out how important fiber is to our health.

We have known for decades some of the health benefits, but recent studies have shown it to be even more important for health than we first thought.

Are you familiar with the telomere?

Telomeres are the caps at each end of strand of your DNA… and as we age they shorten.

Preventing the telomeres from shortening is a way to have a younger biological age.

You can’t stop time.

But…

You can change the rate at which you age by doing things that slow down the shortening of your telomeres.

A recent study (Mar 2018) found that adults with high fiber intake had longer telomeres than their counterparts.

Dietary Fiber and Telomere Length in 5674 U.S. Adults: An NHANES Study of Biological Aging

“A difference of 4.8 to 6.0 years in cell aging was found between those in the lowest compared with the highest quartiles of fiber intake. Overall, the present study highlights the risk of accelerated aging among U.S. women and men who do not consume adequate amounts of dietary fiber.”

People eating a high fiber diet in this study were at a biological age that was 5 years younger than those who didn’t.

We have known for a long time that fiber helped in preventing colon cancer and lowering cholesterol levels.

The anti-aging benefits go way beyond that.

Longer telomere length slows aging and reduces the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases.

It’s a big deal.

We didn’t have the technology to measure telomere length until recently.

How much fiber do we need to eat per day?

The ratio that this study found beneficial was 10 grams of fiber for every 1000 calories.

A person eating 2,000 calories per day would want to eat 20 grams of fiber.

Easy math.

* The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2015–2020) recommends 14 grams per 1,000 calories, but it seems that even 10 grams make a big impact.

In my opinion, any diet that limits fiber is a big-time health mistake.

I follow and recommend a high carb high fiber diet.

I know that this isn’t trendy right now.

Here’s a partial list of foods rich in fiber:

Whole wheat spaghetti Whole wheat bread Oatmeal Green peas Corn Potatoes Lentils Beans Berries

If you want to maximize health and longevity, I highly recommend a diet that has a strong focus on fiber.

If you do decide to follow a low carb or keto diet, you can still get fiber.

Here are a few low carb friendly sources of fiber:

Leafy Greens Flaxseeds Cabbage Coconut Chia Seeds Avocado Cauliflower Broccoli Nuts

If you want to avoid bread…

If you are fine with not having tasty sourdough in your life…

If you are are a keto dieter who isn’t scared of angering the sourdough gods?

Make sure you get other sources of fiber (about 10 grams per 1000 calories consumed each day).

Doesn’t Bread Cause Spikes in Insulin Which Lead to Obesity and Diabetes?

I used to think type 2 diabetes was mainly caused by repeated insulin spikes from carbs.

Then I dug a bit deeper into the research.

The traditional Okinawan diet is a high carb diet (85%) and very low fat.

The Okinawanas have been one of the longest living populations on the planet… they eat a high carb diet and type 2 diabetes is virtually non-existent.

They eat high carb and low fat, but the carb source isn’t bread.

What about bread and longevity? Are you familiar with the term “blue zones”?

These are communities where people live much longer lives with much less disease than the rest of the population on the planet.

There are 5 places on the planet that are considered blue zones.

The Italian island of Sardinia Okinawa, Japan Loma Linda, California Costa Rica’s isolated Nicoya Peninsula Ikaria, an isolated Greek island

Out of the 5 blue zones both Ikaria and Sardinia eat bread daily.

All 5 blue zones eat a diet high in carbs.

I’m not saying you HAVE to eat bread to stay healthy, but you can include bread if you choose the right type.

Why do a lot of people consider bread unhealthy?

As mentioned above, it is because of the belief that bread and other carbs spike insulin and create a state that can lead to type 2 diabetes over time.

The problem isn’t insulin.

It’s insulin resistance.

Research shows that excess fat inside the muscle cells is what causes insulin resistance.

The fat inside the cell is called Intramyocellular Lipid.

Studies show this is one of the root causes of insulin resistance.

When you eat carbs, insulin is released and acts as a key to allow glucose the enter the cell.

Excess fat in the diet can gum up the lock over time.

Here’s a Tedx Talk explaining this in detail:

Here’s a summary:

Insulin acts as a key to allow glucose to enter the cell.

A high fat diet gums up this lock over time.

The insulin key stops working properly… so your body has to release more to get the job done.

This is what is meant by Insulin Resistance.

So there are two choices.

Reduce CARBS to limit glucose and have less need for the insulin key to work properly.

Reduce FATS to clear out the lock and get the glucose metabolism working properly.

I prefer to go the high carb low fat route, but a lot of people (keto and low carb dieters) choose option #1.

Again…

If you do decide to go the low carb or keto route, make sure you get enough daily fiber.

It’s looking like fiber is an extremely important part of a healthy diet.

How Many Grams of Fiber Does a Slice of Bread Have?

The amount of fiber obviously depends on the brand and type of bread.

I thought it would be cool to do a bit of bread research and find brands that meet or exceed the 10:1 carb-to-fiber ratio.

Here are 4 brands that are somewhat easy to find.

1. Dave’s Killer Bread

Dave’s Killer Bread is a brand you can find pretty much everywhere in the U.S. I know they sell this brand at Target, Costco, and Whole Foods. All of their sliced bread hits or beats the 10:1 ratio you are aiming for. The only one what is just barely short is the white bread (but close enough). This is all organic and non-GMO verified, etc. A great choice.

I am especially impressed with their Epic Everything Bagel which meets the 10:1 carb-to-fiber ratio and also has 12 grams of protein and 560mg of omega-3. I’m going to buy these next time I go grocery shopping.

2. Rudi’s Organic Bakery

Rudi’s Organic Bakery is a brand out of Boulder, Colorado. You can buy at Whole Foods and looks like Walmart as well. This company also makes a line of gluten-free bread for those who like to avoid the tastiest part of the bread. I love the smell of gluten in the morning.

3. Alpine Valley

Alpine Valley Organic Bakery bread is found at Costco, Sam’s Club, and many other grocery stores nationwide. It looks like most of their bread has a good carb-to-fiber ratio, except for their white bread. The English muffins meet the 10:1 ratio as well. I need to pick up some of those. This is all non-GMO and organic as well.

4. Arnold Organic Bread

Arnold Organic Bread is another great choice and is also a commonly available bread in the U.S. This brand is available in most grocery stores and Target and Walmart. This bread is also certified organic and non-GMO. This brand goes by three names: Arnold (in the East), Brownberry (in the Midwest) and Oroweat (in the West).

There are countless other brands available, I just wanted to list the brands with the widest distribution.

Also…

If you are outside of the U.S. simply look for 1 gram of fiber (or more) for every 10 grams of carbs.

Summary: Is Bread Bad for You?

I certainly don’t think you HAVE to eat bread to be healthy.

The Okinawans don’t include bread in their diet.

But…

You CAN eat bread and be extremely healthy.

Like the people in Ikaria and Sardinia.

Make sure you either eat real sourdough bread or bread that falls in line with the 10:1 carb-to-fiber ratio.

And…

If you do eat a lot of carbs, it is probably best to not eat tons of fat.

Hopefully, these guidelines help you.

Cheers,

-Rusty Moore

The post Is Bread Bad for You? Why Popular Opinion on Bread Is Wrong appeared first on Visual Impact Fitness.

source https://visualimpactfitness.com/is-bread-bad-for-you/ source https://visualimpactfitnessco.tumblr.com/post/178764669087

[sentrava]

A Beer-Filled Idaho Weekend: How to Spend a Perfect Four Days in Boise

Before we moved from California seven years ago, we spent our final months bopping around the Western states, trying to cram as many national parks, scenic vistas and new states in as humanly possible. This was our introduction to Idaho, a dream world of a place we immediately became enamored with as we arrived in Coeur d’Alene on a sunny, hot afternoon after six straight weeks of freezing, spitting rain. The brief three days that followed encompassed a lot of lake exploration and teaching Ella how to swim, and we tried to figure out how we could swing back down to Boise on our way home.

The travel gods worked against us, though, as we were on a schedule to depart San Francisco and move back across the country, so we shelved that idea. But Boise has always been on the back of my mind ever since I felt like I missed out on it the first time.

There’s a happy ending to this story, of course, if you can’t already tell by the title of this post, as Boise finally happened many, many years later.

And boy did Boise deliver! A progressive city posing as a large college town—population 225,000—it’s brimming with craft beer and rainbow flags aplenty, and many people told us it was “the next Portland” or “Denver lite.” I’d go one step further and say I prefer it to both of those places—by now, you know the cities that speak to me: just large, convenient and manageable enough without the true hassles of urban life—so whatever you’re doing, Boise, keep it up.

For those of you looking to plan a trip to Idaho, here’s how our long weekend in Boise went down.

Thursday

Much to my delight when booking our tickets, I found that Southwest flies to Boise, so we hopped an early morning flight out of Nashville, connected in Phoenix, then touched down in Idaho just in time for lunch.

Our first stop was an obvious one for anyone who has known us more than five Internet seconds: Bardenay. If there’s anything I love more than a good distillery, it’s one that also has a top-notch restaurant, and Bardenay bears the distinction of being the country’s first distillery restaurant. We liked it so much—specifically, for me, the vegetarian options—that we came back for a second meal over the course of our weekend, despite Boise having so many delicious restaurant options. Bonus: Our parking garage across the street was adorned with murals! But that was just the start.

When we got back to our car, we headed less than half a mile down the street to check into our hotel, but not before stumbling upon even more murals, including one that was being installed! Boise, it’s like you know us already.

It was completely finished by the time we left, too!

As it turns out, our hotel, Inn at 500 Capitol, also looked onto a brand new mural painted across an apartment building. I don’t know what I expected from Boise, but murals around every turn was not it! (I was quite pleased by these discoveries, clearly.)

I also wasn’t prepared for how truly artsy and adorable the Inn at Capitol 500 would be. From the moment we checked in, and they gave us a local craft beer as an amenity until we stepped out on our floor that had—you guessed it!—a mural staring back at us, I felt right at home.

I came to find this was just the beginning of the Four Diamond hotel’s extensive art collection. Throughout the course of our visit, we checked out every floor, each of which was decorated with its own custom drawing and other bold, whimsical art. Color me thrilled!

Our room itself was a Premier King decked out in a swanky-cool Rat Pack theme and its own furnished balcony, too.

While the hotel offers a complimentary shuttle service, it’s also very central and the first thing we do in any new place is hit the ground on our own four feet, so we walked toward the capitol, through Freak Alley and over to Hops & Bottles to sample the local water.

Immediately after entering Hops & Bottles—which it bears noting, is hopping any day after work—we got to chatting with owner Mark Sieber, who spent nearly a decade up in Seattle, then moved back home to Boise with his wife at which point they decided to start their own bottle shop.

Hops & Bottles opened this summer and already has more than a dozen beers on tap, in addition to 300+ in cans and bottles. The refrigerators at Hops & Bottles stock some of my favorite West Coast beers that I haven’t been able to track down in years, so SVV and I put together our own six-pack—you can pick and choose as you wish—to enjoy throughout the rest of our stay. And naturally now we’re wondering how we can replicate Mark’s model back in Tennessee!

One of the toughest parts of our trip was narrowing down our long to-eat list to just a few key meals. We’d been told newcomer The Wylder was one not to miss, so we made this our first dinner, chowing down on a charcuterie board, craft cocktails and some bomb pizza, the crust of which was made from a 50-year-old sourdough starter. Setting the stage for one excellent weekend indeed.

Friday

A friend who went to school in Idaho absolutely raved about Downtown Java, so we got up, walked toward the capitol, and dropped in for a healthy breakfast and the signature “bowl of soul” before continuing our aimless wandering.

At 11:30, we headed over to the Basque Market to get in line for Paella on the Patio, which takes place at noon on Wednesday and Friday of every week and dinner on Thursdays. Did you know that Idaho boasts the largest population of Basques outside of their native region? The area is a must-visit for history-lovers and the paella party a can’t-miss for epicures who find their way to Boise. It’s first come, first served, though—and when it’s gone, it’s gone—so you best get there early! The market has been thriving since 2000 and under its current ownership, Tony Eiguren (pictured below) and his wife Tara, for just over a decade. If you don’t care for paella, the market also sells various tapas inside.

After that, we had a bit of time to kill before our next activity, so we checked out the locals’ favorite, Bittercreek Alehouse, for a flight of regional brews.

If you’re not a beer lover and art isn’t your thing—to which I say, girl, you’re crazy—there is still one major reason to visit Boise: the World Center for Birds of Prey.

This world-class facility serves as the headquarters for the Peregrine Fund (established in 1970) and is located just 25 minutes from downtown; it not only serves as a research center and sanctuary for raptors but also an educational facility teaching people why they shouldn’t fear these gorgeous creatures. I learned SO many things about birds of prey during our three hours exploring the grounds; for example, did you know that as recently as the 1950s, the government placed a bounty on the head of many birds of prey, in particular the bald eagle? How insane is that! Or that not very long ago, there were only 22 California condors left on Earth, and 35 years after starting to breed them in captivity and release them into the wild, there are now around 500?

Or how about this one: The main culprit of death for condors is lead poisoning (i.e. humans hunting animals whose carcasses the condors later prey upon). It’s mind-blowing, the amount of information available at this facility.

The six-month-old Milky eagle owl was by far my favorite raptor to observe, but my Potter-loving self squealed when I got to meet Buckbeak’s doppelgänger (from the other side of the glass, I might add!). Those visiting the center in late-September through early-November should definitely sign up for one of the weekly flight demonstrations.

Those who want to further their knowledge on raptors should drive down to the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area in Murphy, a near half-million acres managed by the BLM about an hour south of Boise. We didn’t have time to squeeze it in on this trip, but a visit to Dedication Point Overlook will be the first thing we do next time we’re back.

After our time with the birds of prey, we headed back into Boise to make a dent in the local brewing scene, each stop impressive in its own right (and most of which had a resident food truck, which we took advantage of, as well!). Among our favorites are:

Payette Brewing Company — one of the best taproom backyards I’ve ever seen

Woodland Empire Ale Craft — a more intimate tasting room with an ace staff 

Barbarian Brewing — a heaven for sours lovers

At 7pm, we drove to the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, which isn’t so much a festival per se as a series produced by a local theater company that runs in the outdoor amphitheater from May though September each year.

We already had lawn chairs reserved, nabbed a picnic dinner from Cafe Shakespeare and brought in our six-pack from Hops & Bottles. Gotta love a venue that’s BYOB (or wine)! There’s a pre-show concert to listen to if you arrive early. The play during our visit was Pride & Prejudice, and it was hands-down the best rendition of the classic Austen tale that I’d ever seen. Photos are not allowed during the production, which made me sit back and enjoy the three hours uninterrupted for a change, but let me just say this: I’ve never witnessed such professional-caliber talent in a community production before!

Saturday

We’re early risers these days, particularly when on mountain time, and we were up with the sun and ready to cruise around town by bike. As if our hotel could get any more desirable, they also offered complimentary cruisers that guests could take out in three-hour increments. Even better is the fact that the Greenbelt is just two minutes by bike from the hotel. Sold!

The Greenbelt spans 25 miles of park and trail along the Boise River, and it’s definitely well-used and well-loved by its residents, from runners and bikers to fishermen and canines.

Keep your eyes peeled for giraffes as you clip by—no, really, the giraffe quarters at Zoo Boise overlook the Greenbelt so if you feel as if you’re being watched, there’s a good chance you are!

On our way back from our ride, I was in need of a caffeine drip, so we dropped into Form & Function, just a couple blocks from the hotel, and fueled up.

After our bike ride, we returned our cruisers to the hotel, then walked over to Boise Farmers Market, a thriving public market with so much to look at and all sorts of delicacies like tamales cooked on site and jalapeño wine lemonade to taste.

Also taking place on Saturday mornings and early afternoons from mid-April through mid-December is Capital City Public Market up near the capitol, which is heavier on the arts and crafts than the farmers market.

While in the heart of Boise, we took the opportunity to peek inside the capitol itself and check out its fantastic collection of marble before our stomachs directed us to Bardenay once more for a meal.

Following brunch, we returned to our hotel to kick it for the afternoon, only to discover there’s a hidden gem of an indie theater tucked behind it. Suddenly the cinematic theme of our room made perfect sense! Having not seen a movie all summer long, we grabbed tickets to see a matinee of Eighth Grade in a theater that was born one year before me (that’s to say, it’s been around a lot of years). There was a bar and a restaurant, and the experience was peppered with nostalgia. Boise peeps, you need to be seeing movies at the Flicks if you aren’t already!

When we came out of the movie in broad daylight, the force of the Boise summer heat hit us full force so we ventured across the street from the hotel to a collective of concepts comprising Gas Lantern Drinking Company, White Dog Brewing and LongDrop Cider Company. This grouping of libations also dishes up eats from a local food truck, Smoke and Thyme, which has a permanent location out back.

I’ve never been a huge cider fan before but that’s clearly because I’d never had LongDrop’s creations, as we sampled a full flight and I found myself wanting to come back for more; it was the perfect respite from the Idaho heat. LongDrop was the first cidery in the whole state, and they also sell select products in bottles and cans.

We left LongDrop quicker than we would have liked—just one flight? who are we even?—but that’s because we were racing the sun and wanted to make it to Camel’s Back Park before dark.

There are two ways to get up to the top of Camel’s Back ridge: the longer, windier way with more solid footing or the near-vertical climb up Sand Hill.

We took Sand Hill, though I only recommend doing so if you’re wearing sneakers with good grip as that hill is steep, particularly at the top. I felt like I was going to topple down it as I dug my toes into the sand for stability.

It was a hazy evening, which almost prohibited us from making the trek up, but I’m so glad we did as the smoke made for a dramatic sunset. Moon, too.

Next time we’re in Boise, we’ll bring a picnic to eat at Camel’s Back Park first as there’s a nice, grassy stretch of 11 acres at the bottom of the ridge.

Sunday

Lazy Sunday? Ha, not in our world! But like any good Sunday, ours started with mimosas and brunch at Fork, a downtown staple that luckily takes reservations because we had tried to go Saturday during the market only to find a near two-hour wait. Book your table in advance, as you don’t want to miss Fork.

After brunch, we walked around the sleepy downtown before the collegiates were up and at ’em for the day, then headed 45 minutes north to Horseshoe Bend, stopping along the Payette River to take photos on the way.

It was a bit hazy from the California wildfires, but a gorgeous day for rafting. Idaho gets hot in the summer, and I can’t think of a better way to cool off than a rafting trip down the icy Payette!

We arrived at Cascade Raft and Kayak to find one of the most polished outdoor outfitters I’ve ever seen; in addition to all the usual equipment rentals and shops, there was an outdoor grille, a riverfront patio, a grassy lounge area, a smoothie bar, a cafe, and plenty of space to hang before and after your trip.

We waited until our color was called, then boarded up the bus to drive the 15 minutes to the starting point of our trip.

Given that I have been rafting all of five times in my life, I’ll admit: I was nervous. When the guide told us we’d be on Class III and IV rapids for much of the time, I wondered if it was too late to back out of our trip down the Lower South Fork of the Payette.

Three hours later, I’m so glad I didn’t. This was by far the highlight of our time in Idaho, and that’s saying a lot, as there’s nothing from our trip I’d take off the itinerary.

SVV even “rode the bull” right after we finished Staircase, the most epic series of cascades on this stretch of the South Fork. We had opted for the half-day “rush,” but next time I’d love to do the full-day “plunge” and really soak up the beauty of the region.

We were tired when we returned to Boise, but that didn’t deter us from a couple of brewery stops, followed by a nightcap at the STIL Ice Cream Shop. This brand new ice cream shop not only scoops up booze-infused ice creams, but also serves beer and spirits pairings. Talk about my dream concept!

Monday

Monday morning rolled around, and we knew we’d saved the best breakfast stop for last: Guru Donuts. Better yet, they’re gluten-free (not that I needed an excuse to indulge)!

We didn’t do much shopping while in Boise—primarily because we were too busy tasting all the beer in town—but while driving to Camel’s Back had stumbled upon Hyde Park in the North End and mentally bookmarked it for a little window-shopping. It was just a bonus then that we also spotted a mural that spanned an entire co-op wall on the drive over.

Sadly, our noon airport departure approached far too quickly, and we’d only managed to check off a half-dozen breweries and taprooms throughout the weekend. So we made that one more by heading over to the local outpost of 10 Barrel Brewing Co. for lunch and kiwi sours before we officially bid Boise farewell.

I’m a list-maker (shocking, right?), and I’ll admit we didn’t manage to make it through my entire eat/drink list, specifically to Waffle Me Up, Boise Fry Company, BACON or Wild Root Cafe & Market, because there are only so many meals in a day (or so I’m told…). But all the more reason to return next summer, as if the art and beer and outdoors weren’t already enough of an excuse!

Have you been to Boise? Did you find it an unexpected Mecca of culinary and artistic delights? What would you add to my weekend itinerary for next time?

This post was sponsored by Visit Idaho. All opinions are my own.

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A Beer-Filled Idaho Weekend: How to Spend a Perfect Four Days in Boise published first on https://medium.com/@OCEANDREAMCHARTERS

[brian-cdates]

10 Fantastic Benefits of Fermented Foods To Your... https://drlaurynlax.tumblr.com/post/176454813753 10 Fantastic Benefits of Fermented Foods To Your Gut https://drlauryn.com/uncategorized/benefits-fermented-foods/ The Benefits of Fermented Foods In nutrition world, there are tons of opinions over the “best” way to eat or “benefits fermented foods.” Some say: “Low fat, whole grains!” Others say, “High fat, low carb!”… “Grassfed meat!” Or “No meat!” … “Fresh fruit!” “No sugar (including fruit)!”… “Butter coffee!” “Caffeine free!” There are very few universal nutrition “laws” everyone can agree on, except for these: Water is essential Veggies are good for you  Fermented foods are REALLY good for you Fermented Foods 101 Fermented foods are a “code name” for probiotic-rich foods. Fermented foods are vegetables, fruits, condiments, meats, beverages, dairy and even some grains and nuts that are “cultured” or “preserved” and then transformed into natural sources of probiotics (healthy gut bacteria).’’ Humans have consumed fermented foods since the beginning of time. Without knowing anything about gut bacteria, our ancestors recognized the therapeutic qualities of these foods for staying healthy. Additionally, practically all contemporary hunter-gatherers that have been studied also consume some kind of fermented foods—even without a Whole Foods’ cold case full of kombucha accessible.  What Are Types of Fermented Foods? Most people think about beer or wine when they hear the word “fermented.”  However, unlike beer and wine, the probiotic-rich fermented foods we are talking about here are “lacto-fermented,” meaning these foods contain a specific species of bacteria, namely Lactobacillus (the type of bacteria packaged in many supplements on shelves and common to the digestives system, mouths, and vaginas of humans).  Some examples of fermented foods include: Condiments: ketchup, mayo, mustard, relish Dairy: Cheese, buttermilk, sour cream, yogurt Honey Pickled Cucumbers/Pickles Kefir (coconut, water, milk) Kimchi Kombucha Kvass Sauerkraut Sourdough Soy: miso, tempeh, and natto Vegetables & Fruits (carrots, beets, sweet potatoes, green beans, apples, pears, and any other veggie or fruit that’s specially prepared) CAUTION: NOT all veggies, dairy, soy, fruits, sourdough or even kombuchas are fermented or contain probiotics!  Most fermented foods sold in grocery stores or cans have been pasteurized and cooked at high heat, killing any friendly bacteria.  The best bet? Make your own, or check out my favorite recommended brands below.   Why Are Fermented Foods “Good” For You?” Four words: Healthy gut. Healthy YOU. A healthy gut is a happy gut. Since fermented foods are like nature’s probiotics of lactobacillus strains, eating fermented foods promotes healthy gut bacteria and more bacterial diversity in the gut for most people.  10 Benefits of Fermented Foods Here are 10 benefits of eating fermented foods for most people* (13, 14): Fermented foods…. Help boost digestion Make your skin glow Decrease allergies & boost your immune system Help with nutrient absorption Boost metabolism & hormone balance Boost your mood & brain clarity Regulate your appetite & reduce sugar cravings Decrease inflammation Give your body energy Help your body cleanse and detox How Does Fermented Food Get “Good Bacteria?”  The process of fermentation involves allowing the fresh foods of choice to sit at room temperature in a jar or fermentation container, along with a “starter” of choice, like sea salt, whey from grass-fed dairy or brine (water and salt).  Over time (3 days to 4 weeks), bacterial cultures begin to accumulate in your fermented food products. In fact, the longer a fermented food sits to ferment (2-4 weeks), generally, the more bacterial rich your foods are.  Remind Me…Why Good Bacteria So Important Again?! Your gut microbiome is home to over 100 trillion gut bacteria. We are more bacteria than we are human.  Without gut bacteria you would cease to exist, and our gut bacteria are responsible for dictating how the processes of how every system, cell, organ and function in our body work.  The overall health of your gut influences the health of every other body system that comprises you , including: Cognitive funciton (1) Blood sugar (2) Digestion (3, 4) Energy levels (5) Hormone balance (Fertility, PMS, PCOS, Menopause) (6) Immune function (Allergies, autoimmune conditions, colds, flus, illness) (7) Metabolism (8) Skin health (9) Thyroid health (10) Weight (11) And more! (12) Your gut bacteria metabolize nutrients from food, supplements and certain medications; govern your immune system function to protect your body against infections and disease; produce hormones; and send signals to the brain.  If your gut bacteria is healthy, than these processes work as they should. If your gut bacteria is unhealthy, than these processes are not in tip top shape.  How Do Gut Bacteria Become Unhealthy?  A lot of the bacteria in your gut is “good” (“healthy”), but some of the gut bacteria is “bad” (or pathogenic). Collectively, the good and bad gut bacteria make up the “gut microbiota.”   Ideally, you want more good bacteria (i.e. a healthy gut microbiota), than pathogenic bacteria (unhealthy gut microbiota). In addition, the MORE diverse your gut bacteria (i.e. different types or “strains” in your gut microbiota), the happier, healthier gut environment overall.  Unfortunately, thanks to our modern day lifestyles, the health of our gut bacteria are constantly threatened.  Some common stressors and triggers to unhealthy gut bacteria include: Antibiotic use C-section baby or formula fed Chronic stress Circadian rhythm dysfunction (screen exposure all day; light pollution; erratic sleeping habits) Eating the same thing most days Environmental toxins (cleaning, beauty, hygiene supplies; air pollutants; GMO’s, etc.) Food poisoning High sugar and carbohydrate consumption Illness and infections Industrial seed oils (frequent restaurant eating) Lack of sleep Longterm medication use Long term low fat diets Low pre-biotic fiber diets Nutrient deficient diet Oral contraceptives Packaged, processed & refined foods Poor food hygiene (eating fast, on the go) Sedentary lifestyles Standard American Diet Surgical procedures Travel to a different country     Although your body and immune system is strong to combat some stress, the more stress thrown your gut’s way, the worse off it is in the long run for bacterial balance. Your gut bacteria just can’t keep up.  Eventually gut bacteria may become “imbalanced” or “dysbiotic”—reflecting an overpowering of more bad bacteria than good. You may also suffer from conditions like: small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), parasitic infection, yeast or fungal overgrowth, bacterial infection, IBD (autoimmune bowel disease) and the side effects that come with an unhealthy gut microbiome.  How Do I Know if My Gut Bacteria is Bad?  Common side effects or signs that you have “unhealthy” or “imbalanced” gut bacteria include: “Adrenal fatigue” Allergies Blood sugar control issues Difficulty losing or gaining healthy weight GERD GI discomfort (constipation, bloating, gas) Heart disease markers High cholesterol  Hormone imbalances (infertility, PMS, PCOS, “crazy” menopause symptoms) Poor appetite Poor immune function (get sick often) Skin problems Slow or super fast metabolism Thyroid problems What to Do About Unhealthy Gut Bacteria? Back to eating fermented foods! Fermented foods are one of the essential weapons to arming your gut for healthy gut bacteria success. Aim to eat 1-2 condiment sized portions of fermented foods each day, with meals. Incorporate a variety of these foods.  The cheapest and easiest way to get in your fermented foods? Make them yourself!! 3 Easy Steps to Make Fermented Foods at Home Making fermented foods at home is a “cooking” practice as old as time. It is super easy to do! Here’s all you need to know: Step 1: Decide What You Are Making Here are a few most popular at-home ferments: Fermented Veggies/Fruits Kefir  Kombucha Yogurt  2. Get the Supplies Different foods require a bit of a different process and supplies.  Fermented Veggies:  tightly sealed large mason jar(s)-quart sized sea salt  fresh vegetables spices of choice: 1 tbsp. caraway, cloves &/or mustard seeds for veggies Optional: starter culture  Fermented Fruits tightly sealed large mason jar(s)-quart sized sea salt  fresh fruits of choice (peach, pear, apples, diced) Lemon juice (5 lemons juiced or ¼ cup lemon juice) spices of choice: 1 tbsp. cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves Optional: starter culture Kefir tightly sealed large mason jar(s)-quart size 1-2 tbsp. “starter” (kefir grains or cultures, buy HERE) grass-fed, organic and/or raw milk (cow or goat) A breathable cover for the jar such as a tight-weave towel, butter muslin, paper towel, or paper coffee filter Rubberband Kombucha:  large glass container with a wide bottom “SCOBY” ½ cup mature acidic kombucha (like Health-Ade brand) 1 quart/liter filtered water black tea- 1 tbsp. Loose or 2 tea bags organic cane sugar- ¼ cup  Cloth to cover top of bottler Yogurt  mason jar with tight cap 16 oz. coconut milk or grass-fed, organic milk (cow, goat) 2 quality probiotic capsules (like these)  3. Set Aside 5-10 Minutes to Make Your Ferments No long meal prep time needed. Click on each ferment for the recipe and follow the directions: Fermented Veggies In a large, bowl, mix grated/shredded veggies, 2 tbsp. Sea Salt  Pound with a wooden pounder or a meat hammer for about 5-10 minutes to release juices Place in a quart-sized, wide-mouth mason jar and press down firmly with a pounder or meat hammer until juices come to the top of the veggie or fruit. The top of the cabbage should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jar. Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days before transferring to the refrigerator. The veggies or fruit may be eaten immediately, but it improves with age. Fermented Fruits Combine the chopped fruit, sea salt, lemon juice, and spices together. Place the mixture little by little in your fermentation jar, pounding it vigorously to  release the juices. Make sure the mixture fills the jar up to no more than 1 inch below the top (because of the expansion) and that the extracted water covers the mixture. If not, create a brine of filtered water with a few pinches of salt to cover the mixture. Press the fruits and keep them under the brine by placing a plate or a lid on top weighted down by a boiled rock, plate, or a jug of water. Cover with a clean towel if needed to keep out fruit flies. Place the fermentation jar in a warm spot in your kitchen and allow the fruit to ferment for 2 to 4 days. Check on it from time to time to be sure that the brine covers the fruit and to remove any mold that may form on the surface. . A good way to know when it’s ready is to taste it during the fermentation process and move it to the refrigerator when you’re satisfied with the taste. Kefir Pour milk into jar along with starter cultures (kefir grains) Stir Cover with a cloth Let sit at room temp for 24 hours in a cool, dark place (like a turned-off oven) After the milk changes texture and culturing is complete, separate the kefir grains from the finished kefir. Place the kefir grains in a new batch of milk. Cover lid and store in fridge Kombucha Mix water and sugar and bring to a boil in a small cooking pot. Turn off the heat; add tea, cover, and steep about 15 minutes. Strain the tea into a glass container with a wide bottom Allow the tea to cool to body temperature. Add the mature acidic kombucha. Place the SCOBY in the liquid, with the firm, opaque side up. Cover with a cloth and store in a warm spot, ideally 70 to 85 degrees F. After a few days to 1 week, depending on temperature, you will notice a skin forming on the surface of the kombucha. Taste the liquid. It will probably still be sweet. The longer it sits, the more acidic it will become. Yogurt Pour milk of choice into jar along with probiotic powder from capsules Stir Cover with a lid Let sit at room temp for 24-48 hours in a cool, dark place (like a turned-off oven) Store in fridge Lazy Chef Route Don’t feel like making your own? No sweat! Here are some of the top brands to check out with that “just right” fermented taste and consistency : Local farmer’s market Fermented Veggies: Farmhouse Culture’s   Kombucha: Health Ade   Kefir: Maplehill Creamery   How Long Do Fermented Foods Last? Fresh fermented foods are best consumed within 1-3 months of making them or buying them, and you can tell if they’ve lost their good bacterial properties based on 3 factors: Do they smell stinky? Is there mold on them? Have they changed colors? Do they taste “flat” (non-acidic) To ensure your fermented foods last as long as possible, here are few factors that extend the life of ferments: Temperature – When a ferment is to your taste liking, this is why it gets moved to the refrigerator. The cold temperature slows down the decomposition process and keeps it from fermenting further. Acid – When most homemade ferments reach their best level, acid is formed that helps to preserve them. This is what makes fermented foods taste sour.  Anaerobic Environment – Keep out the oxygen by keeping your ferments tightly sealed! Mold loves oxygen. Essential Fermented Foods ResourcesWant to dive in more? Check out these websites to find recipes and all you need to know! Equipment & Starters  www.CulturesForHealth.com www.TheHappyHerbalist.com www.Gemcultures.com Websites Nourished Kitchen Fermenting for Foodies   Fermented Food Lab   Cultures for Health *Question: Why Do Fermented Foods Make Me Feel Bad? Fermented foods are healthy for most people. However, some people find they cannot tolerate fermented foods. This is often because they have an underlying gut bacteria imbalance or dysfunction to begin with. For instance, if you have SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) or a yeast infection, like Candida, you may find fermented foods make you feel worse—not better. Why?!  Fermented foods contain natural sugars and bacteria strains that can further perpetuate bacterial imbalances if you already have a lot of gut bacteria (SIBO) or yeast that LOVES to feed off sugar.  In these cases, it’s advised you FIRST address the underlying gut pathology (like SIBO or Candida) and integrate fermented foods on a per-food, as-you-feel basis.  For instance, kombucha has quite a bit of sugar in it, so it typically is not advised for those with yeast infections. Sauerkraut and apple cider vinegar on the other hand, in condiment-sized servings, may be better tolerated due to the low sugar and gentle digestive natures of these foods.  It’s all about finding what works for you. Fermented foods can still do a body good, but it is crucial to fix the underlying gut issue in conjunction.  How Do I Eat Fermented Foods? How Do I Easily Make Them at Home? Sources 1. Mayer, E. A., Knight, R., Mazmanian, S. K., Cryan, J. F., & Tillisch, K. (2014). Gut Microbes and the Brain: Paradigm Shift in Neuroscience. The Journal of Neuroscience, 34(46), 15490–15496. http://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3299-14.2014 2. Kristina M. Utzschneider, Mario Kratz, Chris J. Damman, Meredith Hullarg; Mechanisms Linking the Gut Microbiome and Glucose Metabolism, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Volume 101, Issue 4, 1 April 2016, Pages 1445–1454, https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2015-4251 & Tai, N., Wong, F. S., & Wen, L. (2015). 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Current Opinion in Biotechnology. 44: 94-102.  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095816691630266X?via%3Dihub 14. Nevin Şanlier, Büşra Başar Gökcen & Aybüke Ceyhun Sezgin (2017) Health benefits of fermented foods, Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, DOI: 10.1080/10408398.2017.1383355 The post 10 Fantastic Benefits of Fermented Foods To Your Gut appeared first on Meet Dr. Lauryn.