Roast chicken, rice, and California blend vegetables. I don’t know why I don’t roast a chicken more often. Less than $5 for at least 4 meals and not a ton of effort.
Cabin Fever 2012
We went to Schlafly’s annual Cabin Fever event this past weekend at their Maplewood restaurant, the Bottleworks. It’s always held around this time of the year as their Winter Festival, featuring somewhere around 30 of their beers.
Generally, you pay $25 for a ticket (or $30 at the door, but it’s always sold out if you wait that long) and, in exchange, you get a nifty tasting glass and eighteen 2 oz samples of various beers. As it’s wintertime, the beers tend to be “high gravity,” meaning they’re a bit heavier and tend to have a higher alcohol content. They always have a few of their lighter beers on tap, too, but the big draw is their other fare.
Now, you say, “well Andy, that doesn’t sound like very much beer for the money you’re spending.” To a degree, you’re right, but the kind folks doling out the beer are kind enough to a). “forget” to bring along a Sharpie to mark off your ticket, and b). start at 2 oz of beer, and as the afternoon wears on, the volume increases. So in the end, you can get plenty of beer and taste just about anything you want to.
In the Picasa album that’s accompanying this post, you’ll see pictures of the list of beers that were available, including a brief description of each one, and my own marks to show which ones I had. You’ll see that I actually did get all 18 beer tastings…
…but my ticket only had maybe 5 of them marked off… 😛
There were quite a few great beers on that list that we tried. The India Brown Ale (pictured above) was probably my favorite, as it was pretty different from others I’ve had before. The similar, yet different, India Wheat Ale was also pretty good, but the hops didn’t seem to gel as well with the “wheat beer” flavor as it did with the “brown ale” flavor as before. The Raspberry Coffee Stout was also exceptional, with a flavor leaning closer to the “raspberry” than the “coffee,” yet not as fruity as you might expect. I had figured I’d prefer the Strawberry-Cocoa Porter over the Stout, but alas.
The Southern Hemisphere IPA was also shockingly good, mostly because it tasted recognizable, yet different. I mean, it was hoppy, as you’d expect, but the hops they used were something from Tasmania called “Galaxy,” so it turned out to have a very different flavor profile than other IPAs I’ve had in the past. Believe you me, I hope they put that beer in bottles so I can get more of it!
Regardless, the event was quite fun. Granted, the weather turned out to be cloudier and cold(i)er than the forecast had led us to believe, but with some good friends to crowd around and some strategically placed fire pits, we weren’t bothered all that much. That, and high gravity beer tends to keep you all warm and fuzzy on the inside.
If you want some additional pictures of the event, STLhops was there taking pictures. We even made it into one of them!
I expect you all to go along next year. 🙂
01.19.12 Dinner
This meal looks pretty boring, but it was fried egg sandwiches, sweet potato fries, and applesauce. The sandwiches made me sad for not having fresh tomato, but soon enough!
Internet Bi-Partisanship
By now, surely you have read and/or heard plenty about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). These two bills were heading through the U.S. House and Senate (respectively) and seemed destined for passage as recently as last week, with the first votes coming up next week.
Also, as you probably know, a shutdown of Wikipedia, Reddit, and other popular websites (as well as a host of other “In Solidarity” messages on homepages across the web) managed to galvanize support against the bills that has never been seen before. In a single day, Google.com collected over 7 million signatures on an online petition. Rather than the English-version of the website, Wikipedia redirected you to a list of your Congressional representatives and senators so you could either phone or e-mail them (I sent e-mails to all of mine; heard back from two of them, so far).
I don’t want to belabor how bad the bills are (or now were). They were pretty bad. They were so vague as to allow for entire websites to be brought down, or at least to make it so cost-ineffective to host any interaction with users and consumers (for fear of copyrighted material being posted) that an entire industry of user-generated content would die. I highly suggest you watch the video above if you want to understand the issue fully. If you’re an internet user in any capacity, it’s an important 13 minutes for you to spend.
Mostly, I wanted to address how ridiculously cool it was to see the entire internet united, even if for only one day. For that 24 hr period, this is all anyone was talking about across social networking. For that 24 hr period, people were engaged in the politics of what was going on with an issue that applied to them directly. For that 24 hr period, it didn’t matter if you were a Democrat or a Republican posting on some message board: both political parties supported the bills, and both party’s voters were against it.
For that 24 hr period, the internet and its users had more political power than the lobbyists from the motion picture industry and the music industry. And that’s saying something.
We’ve seen something like this before, in the form of the Arab Spring nearly a year ago, where social networking and the internet helped spawn a revolution across the Arab world, in multiple countries, casting down dictators long thought to be invincible by their people. Their citizens got organized, coalesced behind a belief that they could make a difference in their lives, and decided to take action. And in some small way, the internet did the same thing for the people of the United States this week.
And I just think that’s kinda cool.
01.11.12 Dinner
Ham and veggie frittata, toast with homemade grape jelly, and grapefruit. January’s meal plan called for several soups, but it’s been so warm that we’re improvising with some of the soup ingredients to have warmer weather meals, because who wants soup when it’s 70 degrees outside??
01.08.12 Dinner
Corn chowder and honey brown ale beer bread (don’t worry, the cheap beer wasn’t very good on its own). Word to the wise: don’t add a couple of grated potatoes to a big pot of soup if you don’t intend to let it cook for a good long while. The uncooked potato will turn what you had hoped to be two more nights’ dinner into stinky black mush.
01.06.12 Dinner
Homemade Pad Thai. I was pretty impressed with myself for getting it pretty close! Also, the internet taught me that if you put the white part of a green onion in a cup of water, the green part will grow back given some time. No more buying green onions for us!!
Another Reason to Buy American
A few months ago, I started listening to This American Life, a weekly Public Radio International show typically broadcast on NPR (Sundays around here, I think). Back in late July, they broadcast an episode about “patent trolls” that was particularly engaging, so I’ve been hooked ever since.
Last week’s episode, which I highly suggest you listen to, focuses on manufacturing in China, specifically, of products in Shenzhen. Products from Samsung, Dell, HP, and more specifically, Apple. Mike Daisey is something of a story-teller, so he gets up on stage in front of live audiences and talks in one-man shows. As an Apple lover, he expounds upon his history with their products and how he always sought to understand how his iPad, iPhone, MacBook Pro, etc. worked, even going so far as to take his laptop(s) apart, clean them, and put them back together. Through various circumstances, it occurred to him that he knew very little about how these products were actually made, however, so he took a trip to Shenzhen to visit the Foxconn plant where practically all Apple products are manufactured. As others have reported in the past, he found harsh working conditions, that unions were illegal, and that underage girls were employed in the factory.
More to the point of what I’m getting at, Daisey says that Apple is actually doing relatively well with their manufacturing practices, holding yearly audits, requiring that their manufacturers follow strict guidelines, and so on. Others in China and Southeast Asia, as a whole, aren’t as careful. Some have even suggested that, while these practices are obviously unfortunate, in many ways, it still provides a better living than these individuals had prior to industrialization. And furthermore, in many ways, these countries are currently ascending much as the United States did in the Industrial Revolution. It’s something of a “growing pain” that countries must go through before they can decide what work practices will be most efficient for the company, and most beneficial to the worker.
This issue is something I’ve never associated with the idea behind “Buy American,” or at least, “Buy From Companies You Know Are Providing Some Level Of Non-Exploitative Treatment To Their Workers.” Many (most?) manufacturing plants in North America are pretty good about treating their workers fairly, with some limit on hours worked, over-time pay, a minimum wage, and so on (depending on unionization and other factors, of course). There are a variety of European companies that do as well or better in the treatment of their workers, and I’m sure there are even some in Asia that do right by their employees. While I’m suggesting a focus on looking into the manufacturing processes of companies we tend to buy from, I just see the whole endeavor as another reason to just Buy (North) American.
Up until now, I always thought of it as an economic issue, to keep our money here rather than sending it overseas. Increasingly, this is difficult as manufacturing jobs have all but left the U.S. Even when we “Buy American” in things like cars, they’re only assembled here: all the individual parts are built/assembled overseas. But after listening to this particular story, it makes me consider other reasons to try buying American-made/grown products, where feasible. Unfortunately, it’s probably impossible to buy a TV, an MP3 player, a computer, or a phone that was assembled, let alone built, in the U.S. I guess I’d like to see the “Buy American” ideal extended so it not only encompasses the economic need to keep our money here, but also the need to extend the rights of workers and the belief that each individual has value to the countries that make all the “stuff” we keep buying. Perhaps something like the “Fair Trade” label used on food products from around the world: a certification process companies can apply for to provide some degree of protections for the people they employ.
I dunno. I just never really thought about the concept of “Buy American” as a way to reward companies that treat their workers well. Perhaps we all should.
Edit: In mid-March, This American Life had to retract their initial report, listed above, saying that Daisey had fabricated enough portions of his monologue that they deemed it unfit for their journalistic standards. Generally speaking, things like chronology, specific interviews, and certain details were fact-checked with his translator, Cathy, who told This American Life that it didn’t all happen in that order or in that way. They interviewed Daisey again in the podcast from that week, who felt badly for the ordeal, but wanted to make sure people realized that the things he said are “true” in that they happened at Apple plants: just not necessarily on his particular visit.
Trying Out A New Toy
For mid-January, yesterday ended up being a pretty gorgeous day for brewing. The sun was shining (occasionally) and the temperature held in the mid-40s for most of the afternoon. Thus, with Brooke and Meg out of the house, I opted to make the Chinook IPA Mom and Dad got me for Christmas.
This time, however, I also got to try out one of our new immersion wort chillers, so I figured I’d take the time to explain what this thing does and how to use it. Generally, you boil your wort (i.e. unfermented beer) for about an hour, and you add hops and other components during that period. However, you can’t add the yeast until the beer has cooled to below 100 F, though preferably closer to 80 F. You need to cool it down as rapidly as possible, so you can hopefully get it into your sealed fermentation vessel as soon as possible, including yeast.
For previous batches, we’ve always just put that big 5 gal. pot in an ice bath, though we’d have to add additional ice and cold water throughout, frequently taking well over an hour to cool down. Here’s where a wort chiller comes in: you run cold water through its copper tubing to act as a heat exchanger, removing heat from the wort quickly as cold water takes it away.
As this was my first time using said device, I had to do a few things first, namely, clean it.
In the process of manufacturing, the copper tubing tends to have coatings of various oils and oxidized gunk that you don’t really want in your beer. Reading from John Palmer’s “How To Brew,” I found that before you use the chiller for the first time, you need to clean it with some kind of industrial copper cleaner, or alternatively, just use distilled white vinegar. The oils and oxidation products tend to come off the tubing in acidic solutions, and as beer is slightly acidic, all that stuff would end up in the beer. Thus, bathing the chiller in diluted vinegar (the stuff from the store is 5% acetic acid) shines it up nicely.
After soaking for maybe 20 min in vinegar, I rinsed it off well and let it air dry while the beer was boiling. When there’s about 10 min left in the boil, I then put the chiller in the brew pot, so the act of boiling would help sanitize the chiller. Though I’d just cleaned it in vinegar, there could still be some “bugs” on the outside of the tubing, so the boiling should take care of it.
Once I’d reached the end of the boil, I carried the pot and chiller down to the basement and hooked it up to a sink using an old washing machine hose.
Cold water going in and through the tube, then coming out the other end. I didn’t have a hose that fit that end of the tubing, so I just make sure to only keep the water pressure at something manageable, so it would stay within the sink.
The wort cooled down in about 20 min. Good deal!
Now that the chiller’s been cleaned before, I shouldn’t have to soak it in vinegar again, though forum posts on the interwebs will tell you that some people insist on cleaning it every time. In theory, all you should have to do is rinse it with water, then put it in the wort for 10 min while it’s boiling, then rinse it once you’re done.
All in all, it was remarkably easy and cut down on some of the total time spent brewing. Now, we’ll just have to wait another month or so to see how the beer turned out!
Don’t Hate The Band, Hate The Fans
I’ve heard this argument before: “I don’t hate Dave Matthews Band, but their fans are so annoying!” As in, the music isn’t beyond the realm of their enjoyment, but the people they have to enjoy it with are so terrible that it detracts from the intended experience. The same could be said for a variety of other acts, I’m sure.
Except in the case of Coldplay. Both their fans, and the band, are terrible. But this should go without saying.
Increasingly, I find myself seeing a connection between this feeling toward music and toward religion, especially in the case of Christianity. All too often in today’s culture, I feel ashamed by what seems to be the impression that Christianity sometimes portrays to the world at large. Folks like those above, admittedly from the fringe group, the Westboro Baptist Church. Do all Christians feel this way? Absolutely not. Yet any time they get attention, there are folks out there that think this is what Christianity is all about. Much of the same can be said of Islam, where a few bad apples end up making the rest of the world fear a largely peaceful and just faith tradition.
There are examples like this guy, too:
Again, I’m sure he’s in the minority, but when pictures and videos of this nature hit the internet or television, the message being spread isn’t “Love” and “Acceptance:” it’s “Retribution” and “Intolerance.”
I think I’m most sensitive to this issue when it comes to homosexuality and the Church. I know a few folks who are gay, and they’re really good people. Personally, I’d love for them to be able to go to church. And I know some of them would like to. But, their impression, based on images like those above, and from conversations they’ve had with other Christians, means they’ll probably never go. These are people that want to learn more and want to get the same experiences that I’ve had throughout my life, but feel like they can’t, because they’ll either be turned away, or at least told that their lifestyle is going to send them to Hell.
Since when are the Christians the ones doing the persecuting, eh?
I’m tired of these folks above representing me. Of having some bearing on how my faith and traditions are perceived by the world at large. These people do not represent the whole of Christianity. Nor does the feeling that homosexuals are evil. Nor does the feeling that women who have an abortion are going directly to Hell. These feelings are indicative of unacceptance, of intolerance, and of hate. In my opinion, they are inherently unchristian beliefs.
To those people that want to quote Old Testament scripture or the Letters of Paul (neither of which are words of Jesus, for the record…), I give you this:
12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. — Matthew 7:12; NIV
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” — Matthew 22: 36-40; NIV
That is the Christian message, as I see it, straight from the mouth of Jesus Christ. Treat others as you want to be treated. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. These are the important aspects of Christianity, and if you follow these tenets, then you are not only a good Christian, but you’re also a good human being. Unsurprisingly, the Golden Rule transcends Christianity and applies to other world religions, as well. It’s just one of those things you should do. Christians included!
These feelings always get stirred up around election season, when I see self-righteous “family candidates” like Rick Santorum up on a stage, talking about “family values” while denouncing pro-choice women and homosexuality, among other things, all the while representing Christianity on the world scene. I’m appalled by the things this guy says, in the name of Jesus Christ and in the name of the Christian faith, as a whole. I just hope that people around the world don’t think he, and others like him, are representative of all Christianity.
They’re not.
To anyone reading this that has been wronged by people in the name of Christianity, then I sincerely apologize. I just hope anyone that knows me, or Brooke, knows that we’re Christians and we don’t feel the same way as those that seem to represent us.
And we aren’t alone.