Acetio | Blogma

I've tried to make tofu at home and other than putting the really soft stuff in soup, I've had no success. It always comes out mushy and without absorbing any of the seasoning I put on it. This is a mystery since when I have tofu at a restaurant it's almost always good, or at least not horrible like mine. This article gives a little how-to, however, demonstrating how to first dry the tofu in an oil-free pan, then marinate it, and only then actually sautéing it. I haven't tried it yet, but it makes sense.

We went to the Hazelnut Kitchen in Trumansburg, New York and had a fantastic meal.

It's definitely worth a visit if you're in Central New York.

The pancakes were stacked three-high and were tender enough that I needed no knife.
I sipped from my mug and carved an inch of breakfast from the stack, then speared the bite of pancake and made figure-8 patterns in the syrup.
The inside of my cheeks were still wet with coffee when I put the fork in my mouth and allowed everything to sit for a moment.
I breathed slowly and deeply through my nose in order to smell the sweet cake and maple with a smoky hint of coffee.
I chewed slowly and continued to take deep breaths through my nose.
I closed my eyes.
I swallowed almost as slowly as I could, hastened only by the thought that I was making room for the next bite.

The thought occured to me that there was a maximum of joy one could feel at any moment and I was currently at that maximum - no more neurons could fire, no more chemicals could be released.
Then I wondered whether I was worthy of this bliss; should a man be permitted to feel such complete joy at 8:00 am?

I expressed this to my wife. She said, "I'm glad you liked the pancakes, but you should know the day will only get worse from here."

I don't have a name for this (I think you need to do something twice before it's worthy of a name).

What I like about this drink is that the spiced rum and orange juice work together in such a way that the resultant flavors are not identifiable. You would not say it's a fruity drink or a creamy drink. You just can't put your finger on it.

1pt Orange Juice
2pt Spiced Rum
3pt SOUR MIX:

• 1pt lemon juice
• 1pt SIMPLE SYRUP:
  • 1pt sugar
  • 1pt water

Mix the above in a cocktail shaker with ice. This froths the juices slightly giving a fuller texture in the mouth.
Pour into 2 glasses (or one big one) and add seltzer/club soda to taste. Using about twice as much seltzer as everything else (so about 12 parts in this case) seemed to work well.

Orange Juice: The juice here is a flavor, not a base, similar to how you would use something like Grand Marnier, or vermouth in an American-style martini - The martinis I had in France had more vermouth than vodka

Rum: I used Captain Morgan-brand spiced rum - the spices complimented the orange juice very well

Sour Mix: Sour mix is really just equal parts simple syrup and lemon juice (or other acidic flavor). You will have lots of sour mix left over. Just keep it in the fridge. It tastes better than what you buy in the store and has no HFCS.

Simple syrup is just equal parts sugar and water. You may want to heat it in order to guarantee that the sugar dissolves, but that isn't necessary.

Sugar: I used less-refined cane sugar from a co-op food store, which gave the resultant syrup a light brown color. Brown sugar could be interesting

Another way to make it, without making the sour mix separately is:
1 jigger sugar (use agave syrup or confectioner's sugar, otherwise it may not dissolve entirely)
1 jigger lemon juice
1 jigger orange juice
2 jiggers rum
(the water was omitted, but we can make up for that by using a little more seltzer)
One 12oz can of club soda

When we were in Iowa we heard stories of Templeton Rye, a whiskey made in illegal stills during Prohibition that was supposedly one of Al Capone's favorites. It was kept in 1-gallon metal cans and smuggled 400+ miles due east to Chicago. The bootleggers sometimes buried the cans at drop points along the way, and my grandfather, as a little boy, would dig up the cans and sell them for 50¢

We visited the distillery, but on July 3^rd and 4^th pretty much everything in the state was closed. We looked around for where we might buy some, but it seemed to be sold out everywhere.

So we were happy when we were visiting Chicago and discovered that Lush West Lakeview Liquors, a local liquor store (with a very good selection of beer, even some of the more obscure Dogfish Head ones) had several bottles. We got two.

My Uncle Tom said that back in the day the stills were actually in Dedham, Iowa - one town over. The moonshiners called it Templeton Rye to confuse the federals.

Wikipedia entry

Templetone Rye site

I will never abandon Dogfish Head's 90-minute, but super-hoppy ales can only take me so far, particularly in this intense summer heat I'm experiencing in Georgia. I still want a full-flavored beer, but not one as cloying as the high-ABV beers tend to be.

I've been enjoying porters and stouts more lately, but those can be too heavy as well
- meaning I feel physically full after one or two.

So here comes New Belgium (best-known for their Fat Tire) with something that is like a stout or porter but not as heavy - and similar to Guiness but much more flavor.

I have not heard of "Black Ale" as a distinction before. Saranac makes a Black Forest Ale that is somewhat similar (and also quite good) but that is the only other example I know of.

info on the New Belgium site

Beer Advocate gives them a B+
ratebeer.com gives them an 87%
(but what do those jerks know?!)

I used to look down on porters because of a story I heard long ago about the pubs in Olde England: Whenever a keg got down below 1/4-full, the barkeep would dump the remains in a common cask, glasses of which were sold for half-price. This beer tended to be flatter and tended to be a very average ale - not light or dark or sweet or hoppy - but also unpredictable, and likely starting to go a little sour. The porters, who were the equivalent of all our FedEx and UPS and DHL and USPS delivery men (and some women) would stop in a few times per day to fill up, but only had enough for the cheapest ale, and tended to drink from the common cask as it was cheaper. Hence the tradition of calling the common-cask ale "Porter's Ale".

I don't know of that's true, but from my knowledge of couriers and FedEx delivery guys in New York, they smoke a joint every two hours, and/or pick up their "lunch" from the corner liquor store. Given that they are our modern-day porters, naming a beer after a group known for having a low-cost and perpetual buzz on makes sense.

"Porter" nowadays seems to mean an ale somewhere between a "red" and a stout, often with distinctive smokiness. The good ones are very good.

I made the mistake of buying beer at the Kroger's. About a third of the time I've gotten beer there it's been bad - had that hard-to-describe off taste that's not really skunky the way Corona is, but musty and just not right.
1/3 the time is far too often, and I should have learned my lesson a long time ago.

Beer going bad at the store is a problem that I've had more frequently in the south, and more frequently in the summer which tells me it's probably light/heat related.

So, I have some bad beer that I want to drink. How do I fix it?

There is an interesting thread at Chowhound about "cleaning" cheap vodka by passing it through a drinking water filter, and I thought it might be worth trying the same thing with beer.