cdh

So... time to ask for a progress report from everybody. I've got about 1.75 gallons of water with 3 pounds of honey dissolved in it fermenting now with a witbier yeast in my stainless steel brew kettle. Pulled out a spoonful yesterday to taste, and it is quite tasty already, though has long way to go fermentation wise... still quite sweet. How's everybody else doing?

Hmmm... following up on the Boston Globe article with a little google work, it appears that there are only four dairies in the world outside of the USA certified as Interstate Milk Shippers... which means that any and all Greek yogurt from Greece is an illegal alien in the USA. Here are the foreign certified dairies: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~ear/imssl-fr.html Now what is it I'm being protected from by this governmental regulation again? Also, anybody out there have a cite to the USC or CFR where one could peruse the actual language of the law that the FDA is trying to enforce?

Ah... I know a few people who might be called "break for steak" vegetarians... And people who insist only on eating "happy meat" from beasts who are known to have lived a cruelty free life... which necessitates a mostly vegetarian diet.

Went into my local TJ's the other day to pick up some stuff, amongst that stuff was intended to be some of the wonderful Total greek yogurt that I've become hooked on over the past couple of years. When I looked in the fridge there were no signs of any Total products, and no evidence that they'd ever been there... not even a price label on the shelf. The shelves were newly rearranged and stocked with lots of domestic yogurt and no Greek yogurt. Grrrrrr... Bewildered, I picked up the rest of the stuff I'd come after and checked out. I asked what the deal with the missing yogurt was, and the cashier told me that it had been pulled because it had been being imported illegally, and had been busted. He said it should be back in 3 or 4 months after it got its paperwork in order. I can find no corroboration to this tale with a few web searches, so was wondering if others have noted the absence of Total yogurts from their store shelves. I'm wondering if it is a USDA thing, or a Penna. Dept. of Ag. thing, or if the story was apocryphal. I can think of no reason for the store to voluntarily pull the product, since the cashier himself said that it was one of their top sellers... I certainly hope that it returns quickly... but I'd like to know just what I'm being protected from by its removal from the market.

Hmmmm... tripe sandwiches? Where can one find one that's worth the trip?

Carolyn- You work for a winery, right? Any chance of nabbing a jar full of the lees? That would do the yeasty job, I'd imagine, provided they'd not been killed off with sulfites or such before you grabbed them. Everybody seems to be advocating wine yeasts for fermenting mead, so you're likely to do quite well with what you've got readily to hand.

Now that I think of it, in my several years of membership at Beard, there has been no information at all about how one would get involved in the organization and running of the place. A non-profit that is not desperate for officers and staff is somewhat suspicious, now that I think of it. Paying somebody too much somewhere along the chain of command.

Another question: What is the opinion here on open vs. closed fermentation? This first batch I think I'm going to try an open ferment, i.e rubber banding a clean dish towel over the top of the vermentation vessel rather than putting on an airtight lid with an airlock. I know that the behavior of the 3499 yeast is extraordinarily vigorous and should do a good job of keeping a blanket of CO2 over top... We'll see how this experiment turns out.

I got the brewing started yesterday, but in a smaller quantity than planned, and with a different strategy... 1.5 gallon batches, with differences between them. First difference that seems worth exploring is the yeast. Anybody have any thoughts on using ale yeasts in making mead? I decided that since mead is so simple and easy in ingredients and procedures, that it would be a great medium to experiment with different yeasts to emphasize their inherent characters. I had some belgian wit yeast slurry sitting around in the fridge left over after my last brewing project, it seemed like as good a start as any since the Wyeast 3499 (from whence came the slurry's ancestors) description indicates that it is an alcohol tolerant strain, and it seems to produce some acidity on its own, and since mead recipes call for added acid, I figure that using a yeast that makes its own might be beneficial. So I got the jar of yeast slurry out, shook it a bit and tossed in a couple tablespoons of corn sugar and some more water and waited for it to show signs of life. Then I made up a 1.5 gallon batch of mead wort out of 3 pounds of honey and some water with a bit of tea added. Tossed my fizzing yeast in, and am awaiting activity.

Well... I thought that funky freezer odors got absorbed into oils quicker than other things... judging by some duck fat that spent a year hidden behind other frozen things, fats do certainly absorb freezer funk. And ziploc bags are not proof against freezer funk, I've found. So I'm looking to build as many barricades between my basil and what's out there as possible.

I went down to my garden yesterday with a pair of scissors and pruned my basil pretty aggressively. I brought the trimmings up to the kitchen, washed them, de-stemmed them, blanched them, and ran them through the food processor with a little bit of olive oil. I poured the chopped leaves and oil into an ice cube tray and froze it into a bunch of cubes. I popped the cubes out of the tray and put them into a ziploc freezer bag and squeezed as much air out as I could. Now I'd like any advice on how to make the cubes last longer and better in the freezer. My idea is that a layer of water ice surrounding the cubes would give them some protection from the ravages of a winter in the freezer... now the question is how to get it there? Anybody have any good suggestions for enrobing a frozen cube of basil with water ice? Any other ideas for protecting the cubes?

Or with one of the local breweries, for that matter. I'd love to see them team up with Yards or somebody like that. I was thinking more along the lines of the co-venturer selling the gelato on the dessert menu at their restaurant, not just supplying the brews... But maybe the beer gelatos would go over well enough to sell in Capogiro's display case too... I think it would be cool to be able to finish off a meal at Monks with a glass of beer and a dish of beer gelato...

I think that I'll aim for a 3 gallon batch with 12 pounds of honey... not sure which honey I'll use yet... the Trader Joes stuff @ $2 a lb is tempting, but must check out the honey pricing and selection at my local homebrew shop.

Now that is a flavor of gelato Capogiro's not made yet... would be interesting to see a beer flavored gelato... so many beers to choose from, there could be a whole line of them. What a co-venture with Monk's or Brigid's this could be!

The gelato transportation mission worked out quite well this weekend... though not exactly as planned. On Saturday picked up a few pounds of dry ice from Bassett's, as well as a cup of their fine ice cream. Wandered down to Capogiro and picked up two pints of ambrosial gelato, put dry ice and gelato into cooler and drove the hour home. Even in my freezer, the dry ice had evaporated to nothing by the morning... what to do? So I picked up a bag of ice from a convenience store, threw a handful of driveway salt onto it, packed the gelato into ziploc freezer bags and submerged them into the briney slush. Worked like a champ. Managed to freeze solid the 6 liters of beer that were sharing space in the cooler, and the ice had largely maintained its solidity even after a two and a half hour drive to the far wilds of northwest NJ. Now I know that dry ice is just not necessary for long haul gelato delivery missions. Wonder if Capogiro can be convinced to stock ice and driveway salt... much easier to handle than dry ice.

yee hah! I think Bassett's is going to make a dry ice sale today. And Capogiro is going to sell a couple of pints of something interesting.

Has anybody else here thrown a cheese sandwich into a waffle iron? Makes a mighty fine rendition of grilled cheese in my book (not committed to paper, unlike Marlena's fine work). Love the added texture of the thin and crispy bits, as well as the cheese that oozes out from between the bread and gets crispy fried. mmmmm.

Hmmm... does Capogiro sell dry ice or other travel facilitation substances? I'd love to be able to buy some and bring it away from town... but living an hour's drive from center city makes that tough. I recall noting that Bassett's in the Reading Terminal has dry ice listed on their board... do they regularly keep it around, or is it a special order item?

Katie-- Mmmm.. that horseradish cheddar does make a mighty fine grilled cheese... even works with my open faced method. Whose horseradish cheddar did you use? I randomly ran across an English horseradish cheddar from Ilchester called Romany, which was great. Any other suggestions for quality cheese with zing? Spaghetttti-- I like to experiment w/ my cheese and bread (though more the cheese than the bread). So far I've found that the cheese needs to be somewhat hard, like some sharper cheddars, and aged gouda, and this crazy Norwegian cheese (that is full of spices like caraway and cloves) called Nokelost... all of those worked really well. A younger cheddar with a higher moisture content like Cabot's gets a little too oozy and doesn't adhere to the bread quite right once it melts... As to bread, I use supermarket loaf whole wheat or multi grain generally. Artisan breads have too much crust and aren't spongy enough to make a proper grilled cheese sandwich. The proper grilled cheese is about minimizing the bread and maximizing the cheese, as far as I'm concerned. Bread must be soft and spongy and capable of absorbing the cheesy oils that exude from the frying cheese. That is the only real requirement.

My favorite grilled cheese is done open faced... the best part of a grilled cheese sandwich is the crispy fried cheese that oozes out of sandwich while it is cooking... so to maximize that effect I make my sandwiches thusly: Take one slice of bread and cut up some cheese to fit its area closely. Heat a nonstick pan over medium high heat. lay cheese on pan. apply mustard or other favorite condiment to bread. lay bread on cheese condiment side down. allow cheese to brown and ooze its oils out. scrape up cheese and flip bread and allow it to absorb the cheesy oil and fry until golden. Enjoy.

So what is in a Homeskillet? Check in RecipeGullet, of course. Your questions will be answered.

Dammit. I liked his food.

Sad to hear. Where did Vernon Morales land after leaving there?

Just made a trip to Trenton for some Delorenzos the other night... when a friend wanted to eat the best pizza available in the PHL area, that was where I thought to take him. BUT-- does Trenton count as South Jersey? I'd say that it falls within Central Jersey, so the Philly Mag assessment could be technically right... no idea about where Haddonfield is, much less the qualities of its tomato pies... but if Rich gives them the thumbs up, then they gotta be tasty.

IS this stuff flavored at all, or just ethanol/oxygen vapor? i.e. does the flavor of the spirit they bubble the O2 through come along, or just the booze? Sounds like a fireball waiting to happen, actually. Ethanol burns. Oxygen really facilitates burning. The bottleneck that slows combustion is the rate the fuel gets vaporized and mixed with the ambient oxygen. This stuff sounds like premixed fuel just waiting for an errant spark. I can see stupid pub tricks already: inhale a mouthful of the stuff, blow it towards a candle and appear to breath fire. All fun and games until somebody scorches the inside of their lungs trying something like that. Would really take the pleasure factor of combining a drink and a smoke down to nothing... So, sounds dangerous, not particularly pleasurable, and more like a method of medicating somebody than a fun pub toy. Unless all you want is to medicate yourself with enough ethanol to get blotto really quickly. And since the stomach isn't involved, the age old defense mechanisms against alcohol poisioning (e.g. nausea and puking) won't do any good at preventing too much ethanol getting into the bloodstream and actually doing real damage. Maybe these things might survive in New Zealand where liability laws stick people with the consequences of their own stupidity... but in the US and probably the UK these things are a ruinous lawsuit just waiting to happen.