Hot Dog, We Have a Wiener!

Apparently, I'm on a roll or something, as this is the second food-related award I've won in recent weeks. For those not in the know, what you see above is a can of "Drank," a "relaxed lifestyle beverage" marketed by Houston-based Innovative Beverage Group. Ironically, their beverage is anything but innovative, as it's based on "purple drank," aka as "sizzurp," "lean," or "purple jelly," a concoction which came to be in the dirty south hip-hop community. Purple drank is basically a mixture of prescription strength codeine cough syrup and Sprite. Jolly Ranchers are often thrown in as a garnish. Now I should stress, this is not something to be glorified. Purple drank, being based on opiates, is illegal and dangerous. People have actually overdosed and died drinking this stuff. But, American pop culture being what it is, it's become a phenomenon, and somebody was bound to commercialize it. To their credit, IBG's version doesn't contain any codeine, but rather is built around melatonin, rose hips and valerium. And, naturally, high fructose corn syrup...

So how did I come to win a can of this magical elixir, you ask? A few months back, Marjorie Skinner over at the Portland Mercury blogged about Drank (which is not yet distributed in the Pacific Northwest). Somebody at IBG caught wind of it and sent her a couple cans. So Marjorie decided to keep one for herself, and offer up the other can to whoever could write the best rap verse about tha Drank. Which, incredibly, turned out to be me. You can check out my winning entry, along with a link to the runner-ups, here. Mom will no doubt be glad that I took the Bill Cosby approach and avoided using gratuitious F-bombs, and also for my reference to Timmy O'Neill, Boulder's favorite boulderer. Mom has a bit of a crush on Timmy O'Neill...

So I can't yet report on how it actually tastes (or what its effects are), as I haven't opened it yet. I'm waiting for just the right special occasion for that.

Efterklang: The Arcade Fire of Denmark?

It's been said, by critics who've earned my respect, no less... I'm not sure I'd go that far, but they put on a good show, for sure, at the Doug Fir tonight. They're definitely worth a look...

The Proposed Oregon Beer Tax Will Kill Us All!!!

If you live in Oregon, like to drink good beer, and don't want to pay $6 a pint for said beer, you're going to want to listen up...

Chances are you've got your ear close enough to the ground to have already heard about OR HB 2461, which was recently introduced into the Oregon legislature. The bill, as written, would increase the excise tax on beer from $2.60 per barrel to $49.61 per barrel. That's an increase of 1900% and, according to Laurelwood's Mike De Kalb by way of KGW, would likely raise the average price of a pint of microbrew to $6.00. Now, if we had a nationalized single-payer health care system, well-funded schools, healthy labor unions, a reasonably well-regulated financial industry and an economy that wasn't burrowing its way toward the center of the Earth, that might be a fair price for a pint. But as it stands, not one of those scenarios is the case. In addition to placing an undue burden on consumers, this tax increase will have a very adverse effect on craft brewers, especially ironic in a state which has garnered a reputation for its small-scale, artisanal producers and independent local businesses. We are simply going to have to take action to stop this bill, which essentially amounts to a sales tax on beer (and as we all know, sales taxes are inherently regressive and impact most those who are least able to bear them). A couple of things that we all need to do:

The first is to sign this petition. Then, we need to contact our respective state senators and representatives and tell them, in tactful but not uncertain terms, how we feel about this. You can find yours here.

That is all. Happy Wednesday, and Cheers!

The Best Cat Box Set-up Ever!

My friend Jon the Architect had us all over for his innaugural paraskavedekatriaphobia party this evening, and among stimulating conversation, sampling of Greg's magnificent homebrews and other highlights, we got a glimpse of Jon's ingenious ventilated catbox system, which you see above. Many thanks to BikePortland.org's Eleanor Blue, who just happened to be there to snap the photo, for sending it along to me via her iPhone!

At Long, Long Last, Sweet Victory is Mine!

Such a good evening I had... I finally won Greg & Bonnie's chili cook-off! How, you ask? Rabbit Burgoo with red rice, fried okra and shots of bacon-infused bourbon (take that, Patrick Alan Coleman), that's how... Here's a shot of my mise-en-place. Or rather, the aftermath of it. Unfortunately, this is one of the last photos I got before the shutter on my camera started to stick. More shots to come, along with an elaboration on the night's events, once Hashi e-mails me the photos I took with his camera...

Romancing the Swine III: Pancetta

As kitchen projects go, curing pork products, while time-consuming, is easy and fun. This time around, I tried my hand at pancetta, a dry-cured preparation of pork belly which is basically an un-smoked Italian version of bacon. Sauteed pancetta makes for a great addition to salads and soups, and can be used as a substitiute for guanciale in Sugo All'amatriciana. Here's how it's done:

First, get your hands on a pork belly. I used a half belly, which worked out to a little over five pounds:


Next, prepare your dry-cure ingredients:


The dry cure is basically salt, pepper, sugar, herbs and spices. In this case, because the pancetta is dried at room temperature, pink salt is required as well, to ward off botulism. I'm not talking about the pink sea salt that comes from Hawaii here, by the way. This pink salt is sodium nitrite, and it's not naturally pink, but rather it's dyed to keep folks from mixing it up with regular salt. The reason for that is that sodium nitrite is not something you want to consume a lot of. It's been found to be carcinogenic in large amounts, and has been linked to lung disease as well. But for the occasional curing project, I'm willing to employ it, as botulism is really not to be messed around with. If you don't want to use the pink salt, you can always rig up a system for drying the belly in the fridge (see my guanciale post). If you do go with the pink salt, but can't find it in your immediate area, you can order it online from Butcher & Packer. I used the dry-cure recipe, pink salt and all, from Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn's book Charcuterie, which is an excellent reference. However, if the economy is doing you in and you can't afford bookstore purchases at the moment, the recipe can be found here.

Rub the belly with the dry cure on both sides and place it into a two gallon Ziploc bag (if you can find them, otherwise Glad oven bags work as well):


Put this into the refrigerator for one to two weeks, turning it over every other day to evenly distribute the cure. Once the belly is relatively firm to the touch, wash off the cure under cold water and dry it completely. Then coat the meat side with cracked pepper, roll it along its length fat side out and tie it up with butcher's twine:


Now you're ready to hang it at room temperature and let it dry. As I live in a funky old house with microbes and assorted vermin running about (even when we're doing our best to keep the place clean), I built a box out of 1X1s and masonite, covered it with hardware cloth and cheesecloth, hung the pancetta inside of that, and placed the whole thing in the pantry. I propped it up on bricks added a bowl of boiling water underneath it every couple of days to keep the humidity up. After three weeks, I ended up with what you see up at the top of the post. A small amount of white mold had begun to grow at the ends, which I trimmed away (white mold is all right, black mold is definitely bad). And that was pretty much that. Like I said, time-consuming but easy. Give it a shot if you're so inclined!

Goat on a Cow!

A couple friends of mine from way back in my Crystal Lake days just jogged my memory about a story I heard on Radio Lab the summer before last, which was absolutely mesmerizing. Check it out!