cdh

I second the Ten Ren suggestion. Great teas, and available in pretty gifty packaging.

Well, it seems that they intend to keep making the beers, just at another facility elsewhere. That means that the soon-to-be-former Hoegaarden facility might be available to another brewer. Interesting possibilties...

Read about it here: http://www.realbeer.com/news/articles/news-002780.php Is this a loss to the brewing world, or a new opportunity for somebody new to take over the space and do interesting stuff with it?

I like hot chocolate with both melted bar chocolate and some cocoa powder in it. Lately my technique has been to generate a pile of chocolate shavings from a big hunk of Ghirardelli dark with a microplane ribbon grater, toss it on top of a pot of heated 2% milk, add a spoonful of valrhona dark cocoa powder, a drop of vanilla extract, and then whisk it a bit. That makes 2 or 3 mugs worth of it. Yummy!

I was a member for a couple of years, but let it lapse in light of 1) the scandal and the impending reorganization, and 2) less disposable income in my pocket. I had a number of great dinners there, and really enjoyed it. However I'm reticent to knowingly put my money into the hands of folks who have a history of allowing an embezzler to operate unchecked. When my disposable income rises again, I'm going to compare the membership of the board to what it was back in the bad old days, and if there is enough change, then I'll write 'em a check again. I've never had a bad meal at the Beard House, and some of the meals have been damn good, so I'm not going to say that this decision is based on poor quality product... It is just my own cooling-off period to let them get the house in order.

I'm still reading... Good to know the RTM has 'em sometimes. Guess it is a matter of luck and timing.

Ahhhh.. Dacquoise. I've been singing its praises as the best dessert in the history of the world, anywhere, ever since I tried the version offered by Tartine in NYC many years back. I still go out of my way to stop by Tartine for the Dacquiose when I'm back NYC. Seems an appropriate subject for my thousandth post here. Tartine's version is heavily hazelnutty, and has a wee bit of saltiness in the ganache, and that really demonstrates the veracity of the old saying about chocolate loving salt. The contrasting textures keep this dessert interesting bite after bite. Since I've been playing with making french style macarons lately, it seems that making the merangue layers should be just a variation on that theme, so an attempt to make my own may be in the works, thanks to Foodman's inspirational photos.

Might also be the milk. I've noticed that milk has a distinctive flavor that varies based on where it came from. Maybe you like Italian milk.

I've recently noticed that silicone bakeware has gotten downright affordable lately. Used to be rare and expensive... now it has gotten into the stocking stuffer price range.

Figure out if you like the flavor of black walnuts... some do, some don't. If you like it, then gather up a bag full of them, spread them out and let the husks dry out some (weeks to months), then crack them with a vice. Their internal structure is different from english walnuts, making it almost impossible to get a full nut meat out of the shell intact... you'll end up with bits and pieces... If you like 'em, they're worth the effort. They're great in chocolate chip cookies.

What gives you the impression that it is dead? Keystone Homebrew, my local shop, has just recently expanded into a second location, supplying both the Philly suburbs and now Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton as well... a sure sign that more people are interested in brewing recently in Eastern Pennsylvania. As to vibrant online communities, I can't think of a hobby that has more good active boards and lists devoted to it: homebrew digest and its discussion board (hbd.org), tastybrew.com, and the shop related boards such as brewboard.com, morebeer.com, forum.northernbrewer.com, and there are plenty out there that are not on my regular web surfing rounds too... but I can't rattle them off for you. The suppliers of homebrew stuff have been innovating and improving their ranges like crazy in the past few years, widening the range of possibilities. People are pushing hybrid techniques like the partial mash which let folks who haven't dedicated coolers and equipment to all grain brewing get the benefits of mashing specialty grains while still deriving lots of fermentables from easy extract rather than bulky grain. I'm curious about what signs of its death you're noticing... I'd say that the rumors of homebrewing's death are premature.

I've got no pictures to share, but will comment on the various pies we devoured: Delorenzo's of Hudson St: 1. Plain tomato pie: perfect thin yet airy crust, beautiful crispy crunch. The sauce was the famous chunky stripped down to the essentials tomato and not much else. Included in that not much else was the salt, which I missed. 2. Tomato and Sausage pie: crust- check, sauce- check, sausage- mmm! Don't know whether the big chunks of fennel-seedy sausage contributed the right salt balance, or if this batch of sauce got a heavier salting, but this pie was perfectly balanced. 3. White Clam: nothing like it anywhere else. Buttery, oceanic, garlic, herbs. This pie alone is worth a trip to Trenton from where ever you find yourself. Top Road: 1. Plain tomato pie: crust is a step away from Delorenzo's... same thickeness, but less air... a more solid crust, but with a more distinct flavor than Delorenzo's. Maybe that is a function of the salt in the sauce... while Delorenzo's sauce was a little shy of a perfect seasoning, Top Road's sauce was a little past the minimum required salt content. Not too salty, but you could taste the salt in addition to the flavors it brought out. 2. Veggie pie: pretty, but too vegetal for me. Great heapings of brocolli, mushrooms, onions, and lots of other stuff that katbert's pictures will show, on a slightly thicker crust to hold it all. The veg could have stood a bit of herbal dressing or something to perk it up a bit... 3. ? Don't recall the third, so it must not have made an impression either way. Conte's: 1. Mushroom and Onion: Conte's crust was the densest of the bunch. Very few bubbles in the dough here, so a much more solid feeling bite. The sauce was very well balanced, and the toppings fit right in. yum. 2. Sausage: more fennel flavor and more assertive spicing in the sausage. Some complained that it was less pory-k than the Delorenzo's sausage... but I found it more assertive. 3. The Special: lots of meat and vegetables crowded on top of a fine pie. Quite good.

Try this.

The wonderful set of pages that started out as hotwired.com/cocktail and evolved into cocktailtime.com and Paul Harrington and Laura Moorhead's Cocktail book appears to be suffering from some serious neglect. While the front pages for each drink still work, most links on every page are broken now, and have been for months. Sad sad sad. See it while it still works.

Wow! Just imagine if those guys got their hands on some snake oil!

I'm still playing with my Obstler and it still tastes like Fall. Last night I added maybe a half ounce to a Manhattan in place of the bitters and it changed the character of the drink in an apple pie sort of direction. Very nice. I think that the fall fruit eaux de vie are a great method of adding an autumnal edge to a drink. The applejack punch experiment was just the tip of the iceberg. And back then, I'd not known that the ordinary Laird's was apple brandy diluted with vodka...

Well, beer in mixed drinks is a rarity, and in cocktails probably doesn't exist. There are the Guinness drinks... Black Velvet and the Guinness and Port mixture whose name I don't recall. There are the drop-a-shot-into-a-pint drinks with names like the Dr. Pepper and the Irish Car Bomb... But it would be a rare beer that could stand up in cocktail proportions to 1.5 oz of gin or whisky and contribute any interesting flavor. I've been thinking that maybe some of the belgian sour ales and/or lambics might prove interesting in mixology because of their aggressive tartness and lack of hoppy biterness... sub a Geuze for Champagne in a French 75 and you might end up with something palateable that you could call a Belgian 75... or use a Berliner Weisse in place of fizzy water and citrus in making Collins drinks... In my thinking, the elements of a cocktail are strong sour and sweet. Most beers doesn't contribute any of them.

Jsolomon- Could you explain the position of behemoth corporations like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland? I've always been under the impression that they own a lot of productive farmland which is managed in a corporate manner leading to the references to them as "agribusiness". If my impression is right, aren't they a fine example of the sort of entities that don't deserve the subsidies they're getting?

Anybody have a link to the news story or better yet a link to the Judge's opinion? The state/federal thing isn't all that important, insofar as a judgment is a judgment, and they're all equally binding. If a state court told the state to stop prohibiting shipments, it would be no more or less binding than if a federal court told them the same thing. You find yourself in federal court if a citizen of another state is suing a state, or if the parties are all from different states, or the subject matter is inherently federal, etc... The Constitution and the Supreme Court's rulings are just as binding on state court judges as they are on federal court judges, so the commerce clause rationale has the same pursuasive effect on a state court as on a federal court.

I could see you calling my opinion wrong, as is your right, but I don't quite get the logical misstep/fallacy you're accusing me of. Please explain. To expound on my thought: The proposed web method is all about more efficient distribution to people who already knew what they wanted. I often don't. If none of the "good stuff" appears unordered in my store, then what am I going to browse and randomly decide to pick up? And no, browsing wine online is not the same thing as wandering around in a wine shop. The "wait and see" method is waiting and seeing for people like me who like the old fashioned B&M shopping experience every once in a while. And no, I'm not a luddite... I've been buying stuff online since 1996... but I just don't want to have to get into a race with everybody else in the state with a web browser when something interesting comes along. I'm less concerned about the Ticketmaster effect since the secondary market is much more illegal, and there is no physical nexus like a show venue to attract buyers and sellers. I'm worried about the wine cellar effect, however. Something interesting that gets snapped up by the case in a fit of speculative exuberance and sits in the wine cellars of a few people, rather than getting more widely distributed. The Chairmans Selection program has an educational and outreach goal that is clearly not served by that outcome. On the other hand, if you know damn well what you want, then it seems you're already able to speak with the manager of your local shop and arrange a transfer of bottles from elsewhere... at least that is the impression that discussions earlier on this topic left me with.

Hmm... my very rusty german associated Obstler with something like "fruity"... so it is a type rather than a brand... hmmm. The distiller of mine appears to be Stroh... and this stuff is not rocket fuel, and downright smooth when it is cold. Let me know what sort of mixological inspiration the stuff gives you.

this is a damn good idea. ← Seconded! ← I do wonder a bit about this... This strikes me as an invitation to folks to order up more than they'd ordinarily get. Under the present system you might have to be content with the 6 or 8 bottles your local shop had out when you walked in. I'm for the status quo because I can walk into a shop and pick up, say, two bottles of the 1993 Burgess or such. If everybody with a spare $120 could be guaranteed a case of it with a web order, what chance do I have of getting any anywhere?

On my most recent trip to the liquor store I ran across a very autumnal product that is just crying out to be mixed into drinks to add a fall flair... It is an Austrian eau de vie product called Obstler, a mix of unaged apple and pear brandies. It has very distinct apple and pear flavors when consumed alone, and adds a great background flavor in my mix experiments. At present the best of the experiments is a mix of equal parts gin, red vermouth and the obstler. If you run across it this fall, grab a bottle and report back with your own findings.

Wow! Cool! The tonic recipes I've seen are all quinine sugar and citrus... Finding the balance is the question... And there isn't a standardized unit of quinine, so the balancing thing is still an art.

The closest mushrooming group I've found reference to is based around Lancaster... which makes some sense, given how built up everything else East of there is ... http://www.epennmushroomers.org/ Might be worth checking out.