EarthBox Update — May 18, 2013

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

The tomatillos and tomatoes are planted.

The varieties — back to front, starting with the leftmost box. Descriptions from the Seattle Tilth plant sale:

Two Mexican Strain tomatillos. 65 day maturity.

Glacier. 56 day determinate. Grows to 2-1/2 feet high by 3-1/2 feet wide. “Great for containers”.

Siletz. 70-75 day determinate. “One of the most reliable slicing tomatoes you can grow.”

Stupice. 60 day indeterminate. Red, 2″ fruit on 6′ vines.

Sungold. 65 day indeterminate. Apricot-orange 1-1/4″ cherry-tomato fruit on grape like trusses.

Brandywine. 85 day indeterminate. Fruits up 1 pound and 7″ in diameter. (The Brandywines are near the house to try to get some reflected sun off of the house.)

Roma. 75 day determinate.

The tomatoes were selected as a combination of low-risk (Glacier, Sungold) and more speculative (all the longer-timed maturities). I figure we’ll get something, but no idea how much.

Foreground is the cucumbers and zucchini. The brussels sprouts and bok choi are in the back right box. — Foreground is the cucumbers and zucchini. The brussels sprouts and bok choi are in the back center box.

Parsley, dill, and two cilantro. Hiding under the 2nd-story deck.

The tomato cages were purchased as “squares”, and they didn’t fit the earthboxes well. Note the two bars running over the center of the earthboxes — I had to prop them up on blocks to get them that high.

Note the “before” (left), and “after” (right). The blocks could go away now. We’ll see how enthused I get about moving them around again.

Removing the “center bars” also made enough leftover frame to cage the tomatillo. Win win win. I feel clever. Of course, I’d feel way more clever had I purchased stuff that fit easily in the first place..

Beer of the Week: Stone Collaboration TBA

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Another Stone collaboration beer, this time with Bear Republic and Fat Head’s Brewing to produce a beer style known as a Texas Brown Ale. What is a Texas Brown Ale you might ask? Well I have never heard of the style, so I will let Stone’s press release talk about it:

This particular beer pays homage to a relatively little–known beer style called Texas Brown Ale, which, strangely enough, has its roots in California. It originated as a hopped up version of a brown ale recipe, and it got pretty popular with a group of NorCal homebrewers in the early 1980s.

“These California guys were tweaking an English-style brown,” explains Matt Cole, Head Brewer of Fat Head’s Brewery. “They added some Crystal and Chocolate malts, and supercharged it with a bunch of Cascade hops to get a bigger version with more hop forward aromas and flavors.”

While delicious, these beers failed to fare well in homebrew competitions, since there was no recognized category they could be entered in. They were far too hoppy and bitter to be considered a traditional brown ale. But when a competition in Houston, TX, accepted entries for what they named the “California Dark” category, the American Homebrewers Association followed suit soon after, though they perplexingly changed the name to Texas Brown Ale.

The beer was sampled out of a 12 oz. bottle and this review is for the 2012 version of the beer – Stone is getting together with the same breweries to brew this beer again in 2013. The skinny on the beer:

Stats: 7.1% abv, 81 IBUs
Malts: Pale 2–Row, Crystal 60, Toasted Wheat, Victory, and Chocolate Malt
Hops: Bravo, Brewer’s Gold, Cascade, and Columbus

This beer is reddish amber in color with a tan head, not the brown you might expect from brown ale. The nose is a pleasant conglomeration of hops, malt, sugar and molasses. A smattering of light hops appear on the first sip, but fade quickly into a pleasant nut brown profile. The sugar and molasses are there but don’t dominate and subtly compliment the nut brown characteristics of the beer without overpowering it. The finish is like drinking a liquid pecan pie with hints of hops; which makes for a fun and very interesting beer. Considering the hop levels on this beer, I thought the use of them was restrained and very balanced, so much so that occasionally I found myself wanting a slightly bolder hop flavor profile.

I really like TBA and wish there were more breweries doing a style like this.

Stone Collaboration TBA saunters in with an excellent 4 Lone Stars out of 5.

Picky Eaters vs. Food Allergies

By Iron Chef Leftovers

There is an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune about picky eaters/food allergies and restaurants. It is worth the read just for the chef comments on the situation, but there are a couple of interesting points in the article beyond that:

According to Bethany Thayer, a registered dietitian and director of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, frequent exposure to unfamiliar foods by parents often determines if a child stays finicky into adulthood.

Thayer says the more a child watches people they love and trust eat new and different foods, the more likely they are to have an adventurous palate as an adult.

More and more, she says, she sees parents inadvertently supporting a child’s pickiness by serving the same foods over and over again.

I was lucky – dinner in my house growing up rarely came from a box, bag or can and was almost always cooked by my parents. We ate a ton of different things (including fruits and vegetables) and their attitude was, “if you don’t want to eat it, fine, but you are not getting anything else.” I see my brother doing the opposite and letting his kids be picky and not telling them what they are eating. BFD – they are eating rabbit or deer; it is no different than chicken or cow. We ate this growing up and knew what it was. Hell, I usually went to the butcher with my dad to pick out the carcass we were going to buy. Heart, tail, cheek and neck are all just muscles, no different than the steak you are eating, so why the hell do people have a hang-up about them but no problem ordering a rib eye?

Fortunately Thayer offers a solution:

For those adult picky eaters, Thayer suggests changing the texture of the offending food through various cooking or preparation methods, adding a sauce or combining it with a favorite food. She also says, “Don’t give up trying.”

Trust me – if you don’t try something, you really can’t say you don’t like it. You need to go into it with an open mind though. I have seen what happens when people have a pre-conceived notion that the unfamiliar means they won’t like it. Ask them why they don’t like it and they struggle for an answer. If you don’t like something, you should be able to articulate that right away, like I did with durian. If you are not familiar with durian, here is some info.

The first time I tried it, it smelled like the feet of a rotting cadaver. Fine, I have smelled worse (I did grow up in New Jersey after all), but that wasn’t going to stop me. I have had things that smelled awful but were delicious (there are several cheeses that come to mind), so I tasted it. I took one small bite and I had a look of horror on my face. My friend asked me what was wrong. I responded that durian tasted like “a cross between an unwashed foot and rotting corpse (not that I would know what either of those tasted like) if you left it out in the sun; other than that it was fine.” It took me 2 seconds to give an accurate description of why I didn’t like it. I didn’t have to think about it. I’ve got lots of stories like those, but I won’t bore you. I will leave you with this – try something new once a month and do it with an open mind. If you don’t like it, come up with real reasons why you don’t like it. If you aren’t sure if you like it, try it again. Either way, you will be a better person for it.

EarthBox Update — May 12, 2013

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

Cucumbers and zucchini, May 5.

May 12.

May 5 — Left box: Parsley, scallions, and romaine. (and bolting spinach). Right box: Brussels sprouts, bok choi, and lemon cucumbers.

And May 12. The spinach was already bolting (above), but I didn’t realize it. In the photo below it’s gone. It’s time for a bok choi stir-fry.

The romaine pictured below is now two entree salads for tomorrow’s lunch. It all came from the romaine lettuce in the back corner of the photo above.

Don’t worry, there’s a spreadsheet keeping track of the total harvest.

Beer of the Week: Epic Brewing Galloway Porter

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Did you know that they brew beer in Salt Lake City? The better question is did you know they brew really good beer in Salt Lake City? Epic Brewing is the one responsible for that. Not only do they brew some pretty good conventional style beers, they brew some pretty good experimental ones also. In a recent beer tasting, I sampled the Galloway Porter from Epic. The beer was poured from a 22oz. bottle, but I am not sure what the price was.

From the Epic website:

A dark, full-bodied and drinkable beer, Galloway Porter highlights rich roasted chocolate and coffee-like malt flavors and aromas. It has a very mild hop addition so that the chocolate malt flavor can shine through, 5.4% alcohol by volume.

The beer is almost jet black with a slight sliver of brown near the top. Lots of toffee and chocolate on the nose; it reminds me more of a stout than a porter. The beer has tons of chocolate and roast malt hitting the palate and remaining for a significant amount of time, with a lingering roasted, almost slightly burnt finale. Toffee also joins the roast in the finish as the beer warms, giving it an almost confection like ending. Dark and heavy, with all of the complexity of a good stout, this beer is not for the faint of heart.

This is definitely a beer that you don’t want to give to someone who does not like dark beers, but for those who do, the complexity and balance make it worth running out to try.

Epic’s Galloway Porter saunters in at 4 bovines out of 5.

EarthBox Update — May 6, 2013

by A.J. Coltrane

Link to previous post.

The spinach responded to the wonderful 80+ degree early-May weather by bolting immediately. Four plants. Zero harvest. The lettuces, cilantro, parsley, and dill are now cowering under the deck, away from the heat of the mid-day sun.

It’s now time to prioritize harvesting whatever hasn’t already mutinied.

The first salad. Only the romaine was home-grown, but it’s still good to have something to show for the work.

After the break, blossoms from around the back yard, most of which came with the house.

Continue reading “EarthBox Update — May 6, 2013” →

Keats He is Not…

By Iron Chef Leftovers

…but he speaks the truth…

EarthBox Update – May 5, 2013

by A.J. Coltrane

Link to previous Update, April 30.

The Seattle Tilth May Edible Plant Sale was yesterday (and today). That brought a lot of new inhabitants for the earthboxes.

To step back for a moment, I laid out potential locations for the EarthBoxes on Friday. The two boxes in the foreground have casters, the left box has leftover stuff from two years ago and needs to be emptied and restocked. It’s 18 spots, of which 12 would get used:

And the 12 winners. On the far right are the basil, tomotoes, tomatillos, lemongrass, epazote and probably something else I’m not thinking of right now. They still need to come inside at night. The empty hole on the left is the future home of the basil:

Closeup 1. The boxes with casters. These include most of the lettuces, the flat leaf parsley, dill ,and “calypso” cilantro — all the stuff that will bolt when it gets too hot. Eventually these will be moved somewhere a little shadier:

Closeup 2. On the left are the Marketmore 76 cucumbers. On the right are a cocozelle zucchini and a golden bush scallop (patty-pan) zucchini:

Closeup 3. Left box is parsley, scallions (or chives, going to have to check the label), spinach, and romaine. Most of this box will get replanted when it gets hot. The right box is brussels sprouts, bok choi, and an “extra” lemon cucumber from the plant sale:

Or was the Rabbit Correct?

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I am referring to this post.

I don’t normally order a pilsner, let alone when it is cold and raining in April. A recent trip to Elysian Fields caused me to make an exception to this rule when I saw that they had a new beer on tap – Discount Double Czech Imperial Pilsner. I will be honest, I ordered the beer solely because I loved the name – it does happen.

I tried to take a picture of the description from the beer menu, but I did not get a great exposure, so I know this beer has Czech Saaz and Mosaic hops and Pilsner, Munich and one other malt, clocking in at a whopping 7% ABV and 42 IBU. This is not your father’s pilsner. The beer is only available on tap.

The beer is golden straw in color with a creamy white head. It has a very subtle nose – light grain and malt with hints of hops interspersed. You are deceived into thinking that this big beer is anything but by the way it smells and its subtle nature. The first sip is lightly bitter with notes of yeast and malt giving way to a surprising grapefruit finish – very long and slightly sweet but not overpowering, with hints of orange peel. As the beer warms, the citrus flavors become more subtle and the beer becomes slightly more balanced between the malt and hops. This beer definitely has more hops than you would normally expect from a pilsner, but it felt just slightly out of balance between the hops and the grain if you are looking for a more traditional pilsner. If you like hops however, this beer is definitely right up your alley. There is enough balance to hide the 7% ABV on this beer and it has a hybrid pilsner/pale flavor profile – there is enough pilsner character in the beer to recognize the pilsner hops and malt, but enough hop complexity to know that this is something more than a pilsner.

I liked this beer – it was a nice change of pace from what I have recently been drinking and probably would order one without hesitation on a nice warm sunny day. The rabbit is incorrect, I would be happy if you ordered me this pilsner.

Discount Double Czech strolls in like a good neighbor with a respectable 3 Aaron Rodgers out of 5.

In case you don’t remember “Discount Double Check” because you were not paying attention/don’t care/hiding under a rock/abducted by aliens, here you go:

The Rabbit is Correct

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I bet you though this was another Pearls Before Swine post. I feel this way sometimes.