Colorado Vs The Pacific Northwest: This time its Personal

Andrew at long last gets to those beer reviews he's been promising from his summer travels.

Colorado and Washington are two of America's most touted microbrew hotbeds, and having traveled to each this year, and as a man who in his lifetime can claim 425+ beer "notches" on his belt, and because I, unlike 3 or 4 of our oldest citizens, have a personal blog, I am uniquely qualified to compare these two regions and decide once and for all: who makes the best beer west of the Mississippi?

Now, before we begin, I should note that I am lumping Washington and Oregon together to form a Pacific Northwest tag team, which may seem unfair.  However, as Portland is the center of Oregon brewing and beer culture, and Seattle, the heart and hub of Washington is only 2 hours away, and since you can find plenty of Washington beers in Oregon and plenty of Oregon beers in Washington, I think this is sensible.  Besides, to treat them both separately, I would need to set up a bracket tournament, where Portland, Seattle, Denver, Fort Collins, Boulder, Olympia, and a few other cities battled it out for a final champion.  Maybe I will do that inane idea one day, including California cities and East Coast brewers, but for now, its Colorado, verses the Pacific Northwest.  This blog is free, so if you don't agree, leave now and write your own.  I'm sure it will be much better.

So, first, let's do a very informal "feel" comparison.

The Market:
In any grocery store in Washington you can find a whole aisle of chilled microbrews, most available in packs or as singles, of various sizes, prices, and up to 100 varieties.  This is not a specialty store, just any run-of-the-mill grocery.  Gas stations offer a whole rack of single serves and a surprising variety of cases/packs.  Colorado grocery stores offer mostly pedestrian options, mostly in cases, with a few singles. 

Edge: Pacific Northwest

The Culture:
In Washington and Oregon I found many restaurants with thoughtful and long beer menus, loaded with locals, and it was quite natural to sit indoors or out of doors sipping a beer, enjoying atmosphere, music, talking with people, without any pressure (social or from the establishment) to get drunk.  In Denver, every corner has a liquor store, many of them seedy and run-down in appearance, they specialize in hard booze, not beers, and I never once saw a beer specialty store despite being lost a lot, as the roads are appallingly laid out, probably by some high person since the state is so into legalizing marijuana.  When I went with the girlfriend downtown, we came across a band concert with very stoned people, and drug dealers so plentifully packed, the pigeons were intimidated, and a fight was likely to break out any moment.  No cops to be seen.  Menus in my experience were tragically short, with mostly national shit beers only.  In Washington, I attended a beer tasting without looking for one.  In Colorado?  I think anyone slowly savoring a beer would be considered an asshole, or a worse word. 

Extremely sharp edge: Pacific Northwest

The Captains:
Now, let's take the 3 top brewers from each region, based on (my) ease and frequency of finding them, without really trying when perusing beer shelves in Utah, Washington, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Illinois, Arizona, Virginia, and New Mexico.  Yeah I just put my "luggage" on the table, as the saying goes.  That's credentials.  This is a fair assessment.  So my 3 Pacific Northwest team breweries are: Deschutes of Portland, Rogue of Ashland, and Pyramid of Seattle.  My top 3 for Colorado are: Breckenridge, Left Hand, and New Belgium.  All 6 of those breweries offer several varieties and ship national.  Pyramid and New Belgium are essentially everywhere.  I think I would take note of them only in absence: that is, should a store not carry their "crafts" (and I use the term lightly), I would notice, but when they are available, I look right past the bottles.  Rogue is the blue jeans of beer: generic mostly, but in a wide variety of somewhat redundant flavors/shades/options, only good for certain occassions, and completely conformist, but still promoting itself as a statement of individuality.  Kids who want to stand out buy blue jeans to blend in, but hope their pair proves they are a rebel.  Rogue is a large national brewer still pretending to be the little guy they once began as, but whom they sold out.  However, some of their beers are good.  Or is that all of them, but that most of them taste the same?  Breckenridge makes a wide variety of beers, with a few I have liked, and a few of which are good.  Of all these brewers, none names a beer as cleverly as Breckenridge.  Deschutes is of all of these probably the best, if you consider the primary function of a beer to be taste and drinkability, but that is like saying an orange with a little fungus is less rotten than one that spent a year behind a dumpster.  Left Hand wins some points for putting the most consistent effort into their labels, but its really more of an apology than an artistic statement.  Kind of like: hey sorry you are actually going to drink this, but if you do just pour it down the sink, you can at least add this little cartoon-covered bottle to your collection of empties to impress people with.  As home decor, I approve of Left Hand Beers.  Now, that leaves me only to comment on New Belgium, a hugely popular and acclaimed brewery with a signature draft: the red ale, Fat Tire.  This is one of college culture's most treasured gems.  Many an underclassmen will, while dusting off his Hawaiian-style dress shirt collar while his date is in the bathroom, explain to you how Fat Tire introduces culture and even class to a whole generation who know better than to drink Miller Light.  He says this with the superior air of an Ivy Leaguer or a proud papa at a dance recital.  There is only one problem with it: Fat Tire is a terrible beer.  It is undrinkable swill.  It is trash.  The only worse beer I've ever had (note: I have never lowered myself to taste a product by Miller, Coors, or Budweiser in my life and will not I hope) is called 2 Below, a winter ale, sold by...wait for it...New Belgium.  Actually, New Belgium cleaned up at my Worst Beers in the Worlds Award post last year.  There was only one rival.  New Belgium also tipped me off to the word "style" as evidence of danger.  Its like a skull and a cross bones on a beer label.  For instance, Belgium "style" ale, translates approximately to: trash swill made with cheap ingredients for poor losers who don't know better and are already drunk anyway, have 20 pothead friends over, and can't take pride in their prowess with women or on the field and so consider themselves beer snobs.  

Edge: Neither top 3 is impressive and perhaps I should not declare a winner, but I'm going with the Pacific Northwest.

So clearly, the Pacific Northwest is my winner. Colorado also houses a Budweiser, Coors, and Miller plant, basically the big 3 of evil, bad beers produced solely to get jerks drunk.  I'd say that should count against them, when assessing microbrew culture.  But now I will get more scientific.  Here are some specific beer reviews that I recommend from the top brewers I have found in each region.

Let's start with Elysian of Seattle.  This is a very inventive, passionate, and dedicated beer snob's beer snob's brewery.  I wrote about the amazing and inspired "12 Beers of the Apocalypse" before: a 2012 feature where they released a limited edition brew with unique, wide-ranging ingredients each month of the year, all with labels drawn by a famed graphic novelist.  The original kernel of thought was: what would people make beer from if society largely collapsed. Here are the 11 releases thus far:

Torrent Pale Beet Bock
Dragon's Tooth 
Ruin Rosemary Agave
Nibiru Yerba Mate Tripel
Rapture Heather Ale 
Peste Chocolate Chili Ale
Fallout Green Cardamom Pale 
Maelstrom Blood Orange Ale
Wasteland Elderflower Saison
Blight Pumpkin Ale
Mortis Sour Persimmon Ale

That list alone makes them a top American brewer in my book.  Of these I tried the Elderflower, which I do not remember a thing about and so will simply give a passing grade to, and the Beet Bock, which was brick red, earthy, tangy, strong, and very unique.  It certainly felt like something you'd not want to brew with ideally, but it was drinkable, and I thought, very good.  I covet the rest of these and hope to find a 12 pack end of the year release, which does not cost $200.  

I tried 2 other Elysian brews: Dragonstooth Stout, a serviceable, even a fine, stout, but not a life-changer, and Avatar Jasmine IPA, which claimed to be the perfect companion for "food".  Not a certain kind, just all food.  I tried it with curry, I tried it with pasta, I tried it alone, and with crepes.  It is perfect with foods.  Flowery, and aromatic with a refreshing mystique, a satisfying almost sweet aftertaste which lasts a long time, this should also pass for the alcoholic's mouthwash each morning.  Don't let your friends know you have a problem.  Interventions are not fun.

Elysian offers only large bottles, but they go for around $6 each and are worth it.  I've not had a bad beer yet.  I wish Utah carried their beers rather than Epic's wine-size bottles of meh and whatever.

Flyer's Porter: Classy label, classy beer, steep price at $7.  If you want the bottle to save buy this, otherwise remember that no style of beer is harder to screw up than the porter.  Every brewer in the country besides New Belgium probably offers a good porter.

Widmer Brothers: Wild Berry Gossamer- a thin, red sweet ale without much distinction, but nothing to gripe about either.  A bit of a man's man's chick beer.  I'd recommend this over their Brewmaster Limited Edition labels though.  The most expensive beer I ever paid for was a Chocolate Raspberry 2012 summer Stout, which was not even worth 1/3 its price.  Steer clear of expensive beers from mediocre brewers, this is my advice to you.

Breckenridge Vanilla Porter: The optimist in me remembers my first experience with this beer when I found it a very unique take on one of the least experimental styles of beer.  The pessimist in me, who tried it again, thought it did not live up to nostalgia, was a little rotten, thin, and that if you were a poor brewer who had even screwed up a porter, that adding vanilla might be a good way to hide the thinness of body, flavor, and chocolate undertones that make people call for a porter.  Decide for yourself.  A better idea than looking for this one might be to find your favorite porter, pour a little into a glass, add some vanilla, see what you think, and then evaluate your options from there regarding the rest of your beer.

I hope this inspires some of you to find some good beers, and to plan vacations.  As far as beer culture goes, Washington is tops, Oregon is good too, and Colorado stinks in my opinion.  For scenery, and specifically mountains, I'd say Utah has better skiing than Colorado, and the Cascades kick the ruckus out of the tuck-us of Rockies.  Better climbing, flowers, views, hiking, and forests.  Less pine beetles too.  Colorado is the trailer park of the wild west.  Only Easterners and rednecks believe its many tourist claims.  However, Denver and Colorado Springs do have spectacular museums, zoos, and an aquarium.  Let's be fair and give credit where its due.

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Veggie Burgers and Press-n-seal: the Return of Camila

Hi there! My name's Camila. You might remember me as the person who used to post to this blog and who then fell off the face of the planet. I'm back, and from my intergalactic voyages, I have a message for you:

Every vegetarian should have an awesome veggie pattie recipe in their repertoire. In fact, I will go farther: EVERYONE should have an awesome veggie patty recipe ready to go at all times.

You're probably not convinced. Most people that I've met don't make their own veggie patties: either they don't eat veggie burgers, or they consider the prospect of making them akin to baking their own bread, or making their own yogurt, or other kitchen absurdities that only crazy food-obsessed people attempt.

But here's the thing: veggie patties are totally NOT a crazy thing to make. Whipping up a batch of burgers is no more difficult than making a meatloaf. It's downright easy: one food processor, one bowl, one spoon, two hands. And on top of being easy:

• veggie burgers are cheap cheap cheap
• they are healthy (instead of eggs, use just the egg whites to make them even healthier)
• they freeze beautifully
• they scale up easily (take an hour, make a dozen meals)
• they can be cooked in a multitude of ways
• you can flavor them pretty much however you want, with great success
  and above all:
• store-bought veggie patties SUCK.

Seriously, every single store-bought vegetarian burger substitute is pretty much awful. Some are better than others: the ones with vegetables in them are miles better than the "fake-meat" ones. But even the best ones have a terrible, dry texture and an awful blandness. Fresh off the grill, slightly charred, loaded up with onions and mustard and ketchup, they're great. Because anything* fresh off the grill, slightly charred, and loaded up with onions and mustard and ketchup will pretty much be delicious.

But would you ever cook one of those burgers on your stovetop and have it for a quick weekday dinner? Probably not. Would you break it into bite-sized pieces and eat it, plain, standing in front of your grill as you turn over your asparagus? Heck no. Would you offer one of those patties to your meat-eating friends and say "no, I'm serious, you have GOT to try this?" Not if you like your friendships, you won't.

This is why, my friends**, you need to step away from the over-priced, under-flavored veggie burgers in your local freezer section, and stock your own freezer with some homemade veggie patty tastiness.

The basic equation is simple:

Mashed or pureed beans (or lentils, or occasionally a vegetable) +
Bread crumbs as filler +
Egg as binder +
Delicious additions =
grill-ready tastiness.

What kind of additions, you ask? Depends. Veggie patties can be delicious in almost any flavor. Black bean veggie patties, spiced with chili powder and some adobo***, with guacamole instead of ketchup: brilliant. Lentil veggie patties, spiced with curry powder, topped with yogurt and parsley: a delight. Red kidney bean patties loaded up with your favorite spicy pepper: pass me that plate, man. Mark Bittman has a recipe for zucchini and corn veggie patties that will truly blow your mind.

What kind of veggie patty you stock your freezer with will depend on your favorite bean and your favorite spice. It just so happens that I have a deep and enduring love for garbanzo beans and cumin is the only spice I've ever considered building an altar to, and my default recipe reflects that.

Here 'tis:

• 1 can garbanzo beans, mashed (use a potato masher and patience if you don't have a food processor)
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• Bread crumbs (about a cup, or 4 slices of bread)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 a red bell pepper, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup ground walnuts (optional, if you're trying to make this as cheap as possible, but it does wonderful things to the texture)
• A teaspoon or so of salt, two teaspoons of cumin, a teaspoon of coriander, a teaspoon of hot red pepper powder (these are estimates: unless I'm baking, I'm a dumper of spices, not a measurer.)

The process, simply put, is: mash all that together, shape into burgers, and apply heat however you fancy.

If you want more detail, and you have a food processor, here's how it goes:

• Put 1 can garbanzo beans, 1 small onion (chopped into quarters), half a red bell pepper and three cloves of garlic into the food processor. Process until there are no more big chunks, but stop before it gets totally soupy. Dump that mixture into a bowl. 
• Put four pieces of stale or slightly toasted bread and a heaping 1/4 cup of walnuts into the food processor. Process until everything is finely ground.
• Add half your bread-crumb mixture and all your spices to the bean mixture. Then break in two eggs and mix well. Add the rest of your bread crumbs.
• I like my burgers on the moist side: they're a little messy to make, but it's worth it. If you'd like a firmer mixture, though, add up to 1/4 cup of flour after you've added the bread crumbs. Be sure to mix very well.
• Take this mixture and form into burgers, with about 1/2 a cup of mixture per burger. 
• If it's too wet to hold its shape, add another 1/4 cup of bread crumbs (or flour, if you haven't added flour). If it's too dry, add another egg, or a tiny bit of water..

TO COOK:

• Let the burgers sit for about 5-10 minutes, so they can think about their life, and decide that they do really want nothing better than to be cooked and delicious. It helps them hold together if you let them have this moment to themselves.
• Carefully transfer to any of the following:
• A grill. Let the bottom char a little before you flip it, to reduce the chance of the burger falling apart.
• A hot skillet, with a little oil in it if it's not non-stick. Turn the heat down to medium-high and let it cook for a few minutes before you flip it: let both sides get golden brown before you turn the heat up to get a nice dark outside (on a stovetop, if you start out with the heat on high, the middle won't cook through).
• A cookie sheet or broiler pan. Put beneath a broiler on high and flip when the top starts to char.
• If you have any trouble transferring the burger - if it gets misshapen or a little bit falls off - just use your spatula to squish it back together. Everything will be fine. Deep breath.
• Serve:
• on a burger bun, with traditional toppings
• on a bed of rice, quinoa or pilaf, with a salad
• on a slice of french bread, with fresh greens and a lemon-yogurt sauce
• on a bed of sauteed kale, with melted cheddar cheese on top
• between two slices of whole-wheat bread, with goat cheese and some chutney
• crumbled up on a warm salad
• OR HOWEVER ELSE YOU WANT IT, because you choose the course of your own life. Mm-hmm. Own that veggie burger.

Mealtime success. Done.


TO FREEZE:
Freezing is great not only because you get to have an instantly delicious meal on hand, but also because it makes veggie patties much easier to work with: the hardest part is getting the soft patties onto the grill or pan, and if they're frozen, that's not an issue at all. So even if you're not usually a big food-freezer, consider freezing your veggie patties.

• Lay each of the patties on some GLAD Press-n-seal, with the sticky/sealing side up. Place them about an inch and a half apart, and at least an inch from the outside edge.
• Once you've laid down each of the patties, fold the GLAD Press-n-seal over top of the patties and press it down between each individual patty and around the outside.
• Put the patties in the freezer. It's not necessary to flash-freeze them by spreading them out or anything like that. You can fold the Press-n-sealed rectangle o' patties in half, thirds or quarters, stacking the patties on top of each other so they take up less room.
• When you're ready to cook, remove only as many patties as you want: the rest will remain individually sealed. Cook using any of the methods listed above - you don't need to thaw the patties, just give them some extra time on/under the heat.

I suppose it's possible to freeze veggie patties without GLAD Press-n-seal. You could try wrapping them in regular plastic wrap, or flash-freezing them (place on a cookie sheet, freeze overnight, pry off cookie sheet, place in plastic bag, return to freezer). But I don't know why you would bother when there is GLAD Press-n-seal in the world.

I should note that GLAD is not paying me any money to say this. But GLAD, if you are listening: I will totally take money in exchange for hawking your product.

This is what my pitch would be:

"You know plastic wrap? You know how it says it will stick to itself, and not to your food? And how it says it will seal to your containers, too, sticking to your glass or plastic or metal bowls so that they can be covered?

You know how it NEVER does that, how it always turns into a giant ball of stuck-togetherness that will never stick to anything else, or how it clings to the side of your bowl for two seconds before falling off, or how it looks at the plastic wrap on the bottom of your container, where you're trying to get it to seal together, and decides that it just doesn't feel like doing that today, and you always end up wrapping everything in like three layers of plastic wrap that all threatens to float off at the slightest provocation and vanish in the wind, and you wind up attaching it with a rubber band anyway?

GLAD Press-n-seal works. That's it. It doesn't really do the magical things it says it will do, like turn into a lid for your bowls that is so strong you can stack other bowls on top of it. But it WILL stick to itself, and when it sticks, it won't unstick until you peel it off, and it WON'T mess up your food, and it WILL stick to your containers, and it WON'T blow off or spontaneously crumple. And isn't it just so freaking comforting when SOMETHING in this disastrous monstrosity of a messed-up world, and particularly the stressful segment of the world that is Your Kitchen, just DOES what it's SUPPOSED to?

Buy GLAD Press-n-seal, and move on with your life."

So, basically, you wrap your burgers up in your Press-n-seal, throw them in the freezer, and they're there for you. Waiting, ready. Eager to be cooked. Absolutely delicious.

I freaking love veggie burgers.

*Okay, not literally anything. But darn close.
**Including any strangers on the internet who are currently reading this.
***Not adobo like the Filipino dish: adobo like the spice blend of salt, garlic, oregano, pepper and turmeric. If you want to cook any Mexican or Latin American food at all, you need this in your life. I know, I know, you're thinking, "but I already have salt, garlic, oregano, pepper and turmeric in my spice cabinet! Can't I just add them all separately?" Well, maybe you can. I can't. It's just not the same.

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A Few Belated Dishes

Various recent successes.

I whipped up a quick and delicious salsa with grape tomatoes- which I love, though about 1 in 10 is a bomb when you bite it- sour and gross. So: grape tomatoes left whole, diced jalapenos and chunks of orange bell pepper. Onion powder, a handful of fresh cranberries, cilantro, tomato paste, olive oil, brown sugar. Chunky or thin as you like. Its different, colorful, a mix of flavors, and familiar enough.

Made a good "Rancher's Pie" today. Been craving "Shepard's Pie", which originally was done with mutton, but in America now is more common with pot roast or ground beef. I kept the same principle which is to layer mashed potatoes and shredded melted cheese atop a base of beef stew. Mine was slow cooked stew beef shreds and chunks cooked in red zinfindel wine, tomato paste, and a touch of olive oil and ground white pepper, touch of onion powder, little garlic, then cooked atop a bed of no-boil lasagna noodles (Barilla's are excellent), mixed with green beans, kidney beans, corn, peas, fresh organic cauliflower (which has more flavor and is about the same price), then topped with my Patriot Potatoes (red, purple/blue, and yukon gold spuds with butter and a touch of chives and dill), and then shredded cheddar, baked to perfection at 375 for 35 minutes. Not life-changing, but a deluxe version of an old dish. So I named it Rancher's Pie, as a humble shephard would be outclassed. It could use some coffee bean grounds in the slow cooker with the zinfindel. Just a few. Really. And go with what you have and like on vegetables. In summer, I'd have had golden squash and zuccini in there.

My new favorite seasoning blend on fish is to use cajun butter and McCormick citrus rub. The rub has lemon and orange but needs a little more pep. So I use my trusty flavor injector (a syringe the size of a pistol which is always fun to play with and which I got precisely to make use of this butter marinade, which I bought in a quaint gas station that only had bathrooms open to paying customers a few vacations ago when my girl really really needed one. So I bought this for $8 and hated it- until mixing it with the fruity rub. I have used this blend on salmon and halibut, and someday soon, catfish. Three lucky people heartily approved. Teresa said it smelled good- for fish- which is the first word she's ever had to say about fish other than eeeeewwww, and she even ate a bite. Her opinion then was eewww, but with a lot less emphasis and eeees.

As for that dehydrator: I still enjoy it, though it is really a harvest tool. But with a two week vacation coming, I dried a celery stalk, a carrot disced, 6 potatoes of 4 colors (red, purple, yukon gold, and sweet) into natural unflavored chips, some kiwis, green beans, a bell pepper, and more of my already stated samples. The carrots and kiwi stay gummy, but are very flavorful. The kiwi is so sour it makes me wince and I cannot keep my eyes open- so this is another in the file of preserved trail mix foods that are sugared or dyed to make them more appetizing in stores. However, I love them anyway. Its like a sour candy slice. The potatoes dry very crunchy and with a touch of oil while hot and any seasonings, would be better than potato chips. Sweet potatoes dry more slowly, stay softer, are harder to slice thin anyway, but are my favorite. So delicious. Green beans and bell peppers shrivel to very crisp stalks and are almost unrecognizable with little volume. They are not preferred drying foods, though they do for travel, and the flavor is still there, mostly, though a little altered. I have not tested them for re-hydration yet. Potatoes should be blanced in a rolling boil before drying, for around 5 minutes to preserve color. I left their skins on. All of this will make for welcome variety on a trip of 12-14 days I am going on. Some weather means I will have to cut dirt road driving I intended out, thus I will not be doing a few hikes I was excited about, though I will be in Arizona and doing what I like and getting a nice little rest from work and the rut. I put together a wild trail mix of dried raspberries, blueberries, cherries, blackberries, craisins, coconut, papaya, pineapple chunks, banana chips, pecans, almonds, walnuts, kiwi, and seeds along with the typical 10 mile trail mix blend of mine. Also I have a fine product called "Just Tomatoes", a mix of freeze dried peas, corn, carrots, tomatoes, and peppers (bell in the mild and jalapeno in the hot: I mix the two varieties to create a mildly hot) which is great in soups or by the handful and a good way to get vitamins while hiking. I added celery, green bells to the red peppers, and also have mushrooms (white and brown), the green beans, and of course, more of the apple chips from the wind storm harvest which should last through June I think. Add them to 19 cent ramen noodles or $1.79 Ready Rice, with whatever else you like- freshly caught fish, or dried venison, or protein candy crappo bars labeled "Meal Replacement Energy" and that's good eating. I have no idea why anyone would pay $6.00 or more for a calorically similar dried meal that takes no less work and tastes no better once they knew how simple and cheap this was. Yes there is the cost of the $70 dehydrator to work off, but I should "turn a profit" (if a penny saved is a penny earned) if my dehydrator, the Nesco American Harvest, lasts more than one year. And that is not accounting my alternative meals at $6.00 per serving, which as an avid hiker, I have never paid. I'd rather starve for two days, and I used to just eat cereal and fresh fruit.

I have no reason to think my American Harvest will not last at least a year -except that after letting my friend and roomate know he could make "SOME" banana chips if he liked, the next day 21 pounds of bananas were on our floor. After a disturbing 7 day binge, 21 more pounds of bananas were on the floor with the promise: "I will make these ones last." 10 days later he asked me to dig out my dehydrator which I had hidden to make "a few more" banana chips before I was out of town. He then, after securing the machine, came in with "a few" bananas. I said it looked more like 50 pounds. He said it was actually only 42 pounds. If you are wondering, that is about 100 bananas. Which is close to 2,500 grams of sugar (though he still in the same sentence tells me fruit has no sugar because it is full of fructose and badmouths high FRUCTOSE corn syrup, and also says I should stop eating sugar and sweeten things naturally with honey- which is a liquid form of sugar.) As I will have to pay to replace the machine should it break, I told him I was putting it away. So he called his sister to borrow hers which has a 10 year warranty. Mine comes with a 1 year, and I have no reason to suspect the product of defect, but I also cannot anticipate that the motor will run forever. I am quite happy with it and still give it a glowing recommendation. I will try after this spring to only use it with local vegetables. I stored what I could this fall, and finally had to buy non-local potatoes the first week of February after my stash was exhausted. Kiwis of course are never in-season or local, but I only dried 3 of them. And we all have to eat something. If I had an acre I would only eat what I grew, but until then, if I want to eat 3-5 kiwis per year, I'll allow it.

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Stromboli Baby

I have a new favorite word, and perhaps a new favorite food.

Can you tell it is raining, and hailing? Yes we just as of five minutes ago set a new record for latest snowfall in Utah at valley elevations. Five straight weeks of precipitation, and moping, my usual coping method, got old, and I just don't have the young energy anymore to drink hard as a hobby, so I decided I'd better start cooking. I figure I have a lot of hiking to catch up with in June, so I might as well store a lot of good stuff to eat now. Preferably portable. And also I started to make muffins from scratch (3 kinds), am baking more breads, and invented some recipes to try soon, I hope.

Stromboli is an Italian dish defined on Wikipedia as being a calzone with the sauce inside. This tripped me up as I thought I was making calzones to throw in the freezer, but as I was over-ambitiously trying to put tomato sauce inside them without rupturing their thin skins, I learned I was making stromboli. Stromboli can be made in a swirl log shape too though, and I wanted to try that. The pics are above.

To start, just make a pizza dough as you normally would. Throw down a lot of flour on your counter and roll it into a rectangle. Then put down whatever you want, roll it up as you would a yoga mat or a sleeping bag, coat the edges with egg, seal, sprinkle with something good on top, bake, and carve it like a roast with a big bread knife. It is delicious, artistic, structurally sound, stores well in freezer, and will make you seem like you are an actual Italian in a way pizza will not, even when you make it from scratch.

My first roll stromboli was: tomato paste, black olive, red bell pepper, spinach leaves, whole basil leaves, slices of provolone cheese, roast beef, and salomi, mustard, garlic powder and sprinkled with asiago, romano, and parmesan cheese, and oregano on top. My dough was half whole grains- a mix of rye and whole wheat flours with unbleached standard baking flour. I think this is one sturdy food you could get away with all whole grain flour- it doesn't need to rise much, you are coating it with egg anyway, sprinkling it with good things, and stuffing it with sandwhich fixings and pizza toppings. No one will mind.

Some other ideas:

Vegetarian: tomato paste, bell pepper, olives, whole basil leaves, eggplant, squash, onions, provolone, sprinkled parmesan, romano, and asiago.

Vegetarian 2: tomato paste, eggplant, zucchini, pumpkin strips, crushed red pepper, minced garlic, onions, mozzerella, sprinkled with oregano and parmesan on top

Pink Lady: Ham, mayo, mozzerella, tomato paste, olives, spinach or lettuce, crushed red pepper, a touch of ranch, ground rosemary, sprinkled on top with oregano and parmesan


Hot Italian sausage would be good too. I like parmesan cheese, if you cannot tell.

Now as to calzones, in their crescent shape, they will certainly make better easier to eat stored food, if you are in the habit of keeping tomato sauce around to dip them into, or some other condiment you prefer. They will be dry to travel with though, which for hiking and car trip purposes, is why I wanted them to be complete, with sauce inside, like a Hot Pocket.

I used to consider "Hot Pockets" one of mankind's greatest inventions. Then I got clued in a bit to the way the world used to be, you know, for about 4,000 years until the microwave and massive grocery markets, and realized they were just the corruption of every nation's old lunch pail stand by, the enclosed sandwich, calzone, stuffed na'an, empanada, pasty, etcetera. The coal miners even built a handle into theirs, which they would eat around and then discard, so birds could pick at the filthy black bread stick and die instead of them. Clever. So the original lunch pail was edible, and now it does not decompose for 25,000,000 years- approximately. Now, Hot Pockets are not very good, but I kept buying them in college, on the hopes they would be good, or really, the conviction that they SHOULD be good. I mean they were so convenient and clever and self-contained. Every food good right there, little spillage, eat it hot or just let it thaw as you sleep in class and then eat it coldish.

A better idea: buy a $6 dough press set (mine is by Progressive and can be found at TJ Maxx, Ross stores, and Amish farmers markets) and just make the things yourself, without preservatives and with a lot more flavor and real ingredients. You could make do without the dough press kit. If you can roll dough into a circle then you can fold it over itself. Paint the edges or lips with a little egg yolk, and press them with a fork if you want that artisan's touch. Almost anything can go in them, and you can make empanadas, mini dessert or fruit pastries, calzones, stromboli, and anything else you want to call them with one kit. The largest size my kit makes is about the size of a Hot Pocket, which I know is good to cut down hunger on the run, but not quite fill me. Simple eh? I have not tried empanadas yet, which I think I will fry in corn oil to make them a bit different, or mix in some masa to my dough. But here are some calzone tips, or stromboli tips, depending on how technical you want to be.

Do not overstuff them. That will be the temptation because everything going in them is good, and you like good things. But overstuffing stretches your dough and creates weak spots. They will leak- no big deal, or explode- which may be.

Use tomato paste, rather than tomatoes or tomato sauce. The paste is drier and will not weaken your dough or add to leakage. Then again, the most delicious part of the calzone experience is peeling that crispy patch of mozzerella and tomato goo off your pan after you lift off your calzones.

Type of pan does not seem to matter. I tried pale and dark metals, flat and high walled. What you want is to work your dough as little as possible. My early calzones in each batch were more stable than the ones I formed from the scraps of left-over dough I re-rolled out. Also, don't grease the pan, put down a little corn flour, it will add to your crust and works just as well, and is easier to clean off. Just shake it over the garbage can.

Coat your calzones with egg even if you don't want any herbs or cheese on the outside. It will make the crust less dry and taste better. I put herbs in my dough, which is a fair idea also. And garlic powder will work better than minced garlic. That too can go in your dough for safe keeping.

Bake around 400 degrees, and watch them close. They finish faster than you might expect. I left mine in the oven for 10-12 minutes. They will cook a bit more even after you've removed them, which is true of meat and any enclosed dish or food too.

Ricotta cheese is great in stuffed shells, but I think it is too hard to find good ricotta with the flavor you need to stand up to the crust of a calzone. Stick with mozzerella or provolone. Parmesan and cheddar in little touches will help to enhance either cheese.

Watch out when hot- they spit!

If you are really ambitious, try selling them. Who doesn't love a good portable meal?

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