Smoke Water

My Thanksgiving was wonderful, thanks for asking. Turkey smoked, Beaujolais drank, Home Alone watched, Rock Band played, friends enjoyed.

Now it’s time to detox, but not before I direct you to a cocktail phenomenon that I’m now fully on board with, smoke:

But smoked ice? That’s how Daniel Shoemaker, an owner of the Teardrop Lounge in Portland, Ore., sneaks smoke into his drinks. A block of ice goes into a perforated pan set above another, unperforated pan inside a smoker. Three hours and a whole lot of cherrywood smoke later, the melted ice emerges as smoke-infused water in the bottom pan, which is refrozen into a block, then hand-cracked for cocktails. In September Mr. Shoemaker introduced his ice in an autumnal mixture of bourbon, lemon juice, sherry and roasted pecan syrup. “But it works really well in a Hemingway daiquiri,” he added.

I was at Teardrop a few months ago and ordered that drink, the bourbon-lemon-sherry-pecan syrup-smoked ice concoction. I told the bartender that it tasted like Texas. It was pecan-tastic.

Plastic Beaujolais

Last night at Whole Foods I tried to corral the ingredients for my Thanksgiving responsibilities (cornbread-andouille stuffing and two pies, in case you’re interested). There was an enormous display of Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau, but in plastic bottles. I picked one up and assumed I’d nabbed the fake display bottle, but after a few seconds I realized that this was indeed a green marketing ploy writ large. On the Whole Foods blog, they announced this product packaging with breathless enthusiasm. A string of commenters immediately proceeded to whine about how plastic is doubleplusbad for the environment, despite a lengthy explanation that the point of the plastic bottles was to reduce the shipping weight, and in turn, reduce the carbon footprint of the wine. Or something. I got lost in their righteous indignation.

All of this obscures the real issue: Beaujolais Nouveau sucks. It’s flimsy, watery, wan crap, and it exists only to put a little extra holiday cash into the pockets of wine bars and retailers. In the Whole Foods post, for example, a store employee describes the stuff:

The crazy complex flavors of roasts, game, mushrooms, squash, root vegetables and flavorings such as sage, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, peppers, and the like are perfectly complemented by Nouveau’s grapey flavor and refreshing acidity.

First of all, any one who describes a wine as having a nice “grapey flavor” should immediately be fired, banned, exiled, and slapped repeatedly. “Grapey”? Yeah, I guess this fermented grape juice does taste oddly of grapes. Second, “refreshing acidity” in this context does not mean that the wine has a crisp bite, like, for instance, a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. It means that it’s so sharp that you’d best swallow it like a shot, without letting any part of it actually touch your taste buds.

That said, I think a lot of wine columnists who write about what wines to pair with Thanksgiving food take the easy way out by uniformly recommending Beaujolais (real Beaujolais, not the Nouveau garbage). A decent Beaujolais Cru is a good workhouse of a wine, and certainly isn’t a bad choice for the Thanksgiving table, but the truth of the matter is that Thanksgiving means a ridiculous array of competing flavors, spices, herbs, and textures—it’s pretty much impossible to pick wines that will complement the whole spread, or even a fraction of it. Luckily, no one cares. Just head blindly into your local wine shop or grocery store and pick up a half-dozen bottles of anything that’s a) red; b) not Zinfandel; and c) doesn’t come in a jug. Like anyone’s going to be talking about your sommelier skills during the Cowboys game.

How to Cook Kale!

Speaking of food, my friends over at the stellar new food blog the Internet Food Association, whose Top Chef live-blogging makes alcohol and narcotics entirely unnecessary, have inspired me to give you the secret to kale. Kale: it’s big, bushy, ugly, and frankly, disgusting-looking. Let’s face it, you’ve no idea what to do with it besides throw it in a pan with some garlic and olive oil and hope it shrinks down.

But! My trusty Food and Wine subscription has saved the day. What you do is, see, first you go to Whole Foods and buy chicken legs that have at least 10 accompanying adjectives and/or descriptors (you know, like “humanely raised” or “all natural” or “cage-free” or whatever). Then, you tear up some kale and chop up some onions and potatoes, and toss them with salt and pepper and olive oil. Then, you salt/pepper/paprika the chicken legs, cutting them with a knife right along the weird joint that hooks the thigh and drumstick together. Then you roast the shit out of it. All of the chicken juices drip down into the potatoes and onions and kale, and the result is an utterly delicious, yet simple and hearty one-pan meal. Real recipe here.

Adult Food Idiosyncrasy Disorder

This Jezebel post on whether or not Barack Obama is a picky eater (NB: he doesn’t actually seem like a picky eater, just a busy guy running for president who doesn’t have a lot of time to eat) prompts me to blog about a theory I have about picky adult eaters. Namely, every adult human being is allowed to have:

• one (1) bizarre, incomprehensible, fiercely-held revulsion towards a food or narrowly-defined set of foods; and
• one (1) clearly-expressed and fiercely-held hatred of a specific vegetable.

All kids are picky eaters, and most of us grow out of it, but an unscientific poll among my friends confirms my hypothesis. Everyone seems to have some incredibly weird food quirk that’s mostly inexplicable. My younger brother, for instance, does not drink and will probably never drink a can of soda, brand be damned. I’ve never been able to figure out why; instead of trying to trace the roots of his fear of soda, my older brother and I just used it to our advantage by popping open cans of Dr. Pepper and chasing the younger one around the house to freak him out. We were good siblings like that. (At this point I feel compelled to express my pity for single children.)

My vegetable nemesis is easy: cauliflower, because it’s disgusting on multiple levels, from sight to smell to taste. (I’ve also just realized that I apparently pronounce the word “cauliflower” incorrectly; I blame Texas). In terms of the bizarre revulsion of a food or narrowly-defined set of foods, it’s a little weirder. It’s chips. Specifically, sour cream and onion chips, barbecue chips, Doritos, and any other brand of chip that’s covered in a wash of chemicals and artificial flavors. Cheetos are an obvious exception, and I’m finding that Kettle brand chips with “stuff” on them don’t squick me out that much, because they’re so delicious. But if you want to see my dry heave—and I’m being deadly serious here—run up to me and make me inhale from a big bag of sour cream and onion chips. I’ll feel sick, and then I’ll punch you. The onion-esque artificial flavor fear also extends to things like onion dip, but I’m not going to go apeshit if you happen to offer me some.

I don’t know what the origin of this fear is; I assume a traumatic childhood experience with flavored chips scarred me for life.

So…what are yours? My informal poll tells me that an ungodly number of people that I otherwise find normal, intelligent, good human beings are actually revulsed by the thought of mushrooms or tomatoes. Are you one of these freaks?

A Way to Cook Things

Accountants are great because their skills are so transferrable that they can pretty much work anywhere. That’s how RV has worked first at a large multinational rental car firm, then a flower-importing business, and now a grill company. Yes, a grill company, one that manufactures and sells niche grills for the, ahem, serious griller. Terry Bradshaw is their spokesman, which is about all you need to know.

One of the attendant perks of this gig is the ability to buy one grill per year at cost, so we are now the proud owners of a grill that is monumentally above our pay grade in terms of affordability. Sadly, it’s not the Lil Pig model, but it’s pretty cool. It has a smoker compartment, a digital thermometer attachment, and a variety of other features that are beyond my skill level. It’s such a niche product that you have to plug it in, and buy special bags of wood pellets to use instead of charcoal. It also has a computer chip, although I guess that was for the digital thermometer thingey.

The point of all this is that this grill is more technologically advanced than the Space Station, and right now, right this very second, it’s being used to make beer can chicken. The extra features mean extra deliciousness.

M-F

I know I mostly blog now about things that are making my life especially pleasant these days, and I know that not everyone is in the same frame of mind, and not everyone likes their life right now, and not everyone feels lucky for what they have going on right now.

All that noted, one of the things I’ve noticed now that I’m working in a pretty traditional corporate environment is that subset of small talk that relates to which day of the week it is and why it being that day is a good or bad thing. These small (and small-minded) comments build on one another, and after a couple of months of hearing people complain and/or rejoice about it being Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday is just too much to take. It is lazy, dishonest talk, and the effect it has on the collective mental well-being of the office is more corrosive than I ever thought it could be. Small talk is fine. The implication that you’d like to throw yourself off a bridge because, sigh, it’s only Tuesday is not. I never knew how much this kind of thing could bother me.

On the bright side, once I start consciously engaging in that kind of depressing chatter, I’ll know my time is up, and my life officially sucks. Until then, I’ll enjoy my weekdays, and my weekends, without feeling the need to re-calibrate myself and my mental state based on how far away Friday is.  You can and should do things you enjoy everyday, right?  Right.

The Golden State

This is somewhat overdue, but I refer you to this cover of “The Golden State” by Corin Tucker and Eddie Vedder (the original was sung by John Doe and Kathleen Edwards). Both versions are excellent, and of course anything new from Corin is like manna from heaven (and btw, happy belated birthday—can I associate myself with the sentiments in Spencer’s post without seeming incredibly lazy at this point?) The bad news is that I can’t find the cover version of “The Golden State” on iTunes, only the original. So listen now.  Via this friend.

Cape Disappointment

It’s nice to own a car made by a company that isn’t asking for a bailout; it’s nicer to use that car to take frequent, unplanned day trips to some of the area’s scenic attractions, of which there are many. Portland’s value derives not only from the stuff in the city itself, but from its proximity to oceans, rivers, mountains, beaches, and vantage points of all kinds.

This weekend I drove up to Cape Disappointment in Washington state, right across the Oregon border. I went there mostly because it had the coolest name of all the coast-related parks and attractions, not to mention an interesting history involving disgruntled English explorers (who gave it its name), Lewis and Clark, and hundreds of ships that wrecked here, apparently because of the currents created where the Columbia River pours into the Pacific.

I keep thinking that each place I visit in the PNW couldn’t possibly be more beautiful than the last, but I’m always pleasantly surprised. I also got to revisit Astoria, which I blogged about earlier, but this time I drove in from the west rather than from the south, and I also finally got to drive across the awesome, ridiculous, stunning, huge, terrifying, amazing bridge that links up OR to WA over the water. That’s an experience I recommend if you’re ever in the area. So, bridges, rivers, oceans, waves, surfers, lighthouses, beaches, and a couple hundred miles driving through the woods and listening to things like Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which was oddly appropriate. Now that I’ve thrown my giant book of CDs into my car, I’m listening to all the CDs I bought 7 and 10 and 12 years ago, comforting and embarrassing as they are.

Natural riches below the jump:

Portland Fail

I know it’s obnoxious to blog about things unrelated to politics on All Elections’ Eve, but nothing changes on New Year’s Day, and also: this is my blog and I’m stickin’ to it.

So here’s a story about upper middle class white girl problems and how laughingly trivial they are. I had been going to this yoga studio in an inconvenient part of town, because I was dumb enough to buy a 10-class card there. This is where I once skipped out on the last day of a prepaid yoga weekend because I had been so thoroughly humiliated and fleeced by a situation involving a locker, my lock, and any shred of patience and dignity I’d ever possessed. Also their yoga room is carpeted. And attached to a vegan cafe. So you can see the problem(s) here.

Doing yoga at my gym, 24 Hour Fitness, is no substitute. The A/C is blasting, the instructor plays terrible music (Jack Johnson, if you’re keeping score), and half the people don’t have their own mats. It’s a cesspool of fluorescent lights and mediocrity. I say this as someone who has practiced yoga for almost 2 years and is still incredibly mediocre. I want to at least pretend to be good. But the carpeted vegan cafe hellhole did have one wonderful instructor, whose name rhymes with “Zany”, which she is—not to mention ripped. I followed her to another studio where she teaches on Mondays, which is closer to my house and seems friendlier. It’s more expensive, but since we’re talking about frivolities here, an extra $3 per 90 minutes can’t possibly make things worse.

The class and the studio turned out to be exactly what I’m looking for. The heat is turned up—really turned up—to 90-95 degrees. (And no, it’s not Bikram). The set-up of the classroom is such that half of the class faces the other half, so there’s no possibility of hiding in the corner. No shitty music. The mirrors get fogged up within half an hour and thus become worthless as a distraction. I got nauseated. It was nice. Almost like what I left behind in Boston.

I went outside after class hoping to catch the bus quickly, since it was pouring and I had no umbrella. I called Portland’s “transit tracker” phone number, where they tell you, in real time, when your next bus is coming (best service ever?) It told me my next bus was coming in 215 minutes. I sensed a problem. I started walking home and quickly realized how ridiculous that was. I called the transit number again–214 minutes. I called RV. Four times. The thing about the new Google phone is that, much like the iPhone, it drains batteries quickly. Too quickly, some would say. No answer. My bus ran by right as I was in between two stops. I hated that bus.

What yoga does is help calm and relax you to the point where getting stuck in a volley of rain, with no prospect of getting home soon, in a wool coat and flip-flops, with a huge gym bag and yoga mat, and clutching your other purse because it has books and an iPod—where all that doesn’t necessarily faze you. Where that happening doesn’t make you want to cry (a little). And so maybe it’s working, because for about 5 minutes I was able to convince my feeble brain that this was a refreshing counterpoint to the 95-degree 90 minutes I’d just been through. But 5 minutes doesn’t last long.

And that’s why, when I got home, I made RV (which, again, stands for Roommate V________) take The Oath.

“On my honor, I will try, to keep my phone charged and accessible

So as to pick up when my roommate calls

And needs help extracting herself from crises

Both foreseen and unforeseen.”

Amen.