Food Review
With all due respect to the potato, few roots, if any, have less flavor. Carrot, beet, turnip, radish, parsnip, celeriac, taro, and yam, to name a few, all check in with more fragrance, pungency, or sweetness. Mixing your roots also brings a diversity of nutrients to the table, adding the likes of beta-carotene, iron, calcium, potassium and folic acid, depending on the root.
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When I was growing up on a Nebraska corn farm, my dad occasionally hired himself out to roast whole hogs for local families’ celebrations. What could be more special, really, than a charred pig displayed with its head on and an apple in its mouth? Grotesque though it may sound, these home-raised hogs and my dad’s rotisserie method have set my standard for barbequed pork. When I am around, I get to be his quality control person—which means that I pick through his trimmings and separate the gristle from the meat—and I am scrupulous. So in addition to quality meat and good flavor, I expect a lot of lean. All of which means barbequed pork is something I usually just save for when I’m back on the farm; I’ve never found an acceptable substitute.
More of this storyEating local in summertime is easy. Anyone can go to the farmers market, or choose a salad made with local greens off a restaurant menu. It's what you eat in the winter that separates the talk-walkers from the wannabes.
More of this storyIt's getting difficult to name a food that hasn't recently caused a pathogen outbreak. Bagged salad, peppers, beef, and peanuts are just some dietary staples that have been caught spreading E. coli, salmonella, and other diseases. These outbreaks have inspired a legislative push to make America's food safer, which sounds like a good thing. Unfortunately, the effort has resulted in pending and proposed legislation that, as written, threatens to punish the people and businesses that produce the safest and healthiest food of all, while depriving consumers of the opportunity to eat it.
More of this storyBrew Review
Being a beer writer comes with fringe benefits. For one thing, I’m rather consistently given beer as a gift. Sure, you might think that the bulk of this comes from local distributors and breweries hopeful that I become so enamored that I feature it here or in one of my other writing venues, but that’s not it. I can’t deny the great joy in having the receptionist at my day job calling back over the company-wide intercom announcing the arrival of a package emblazoned with a far away brewery’s logo all over it. But, my greatest joy comes from a reader’s overflowing ebullience, having hand carried beer back from some recently visited locale and ferreting me out, just wanting me to share in the sheer joy of discovery. Some of these beers make it to press, but most of them don’t. But the beautiful thing is that these gift-givers aren’t interested in either their beer or themselves being featured; they just want to share the love. Damn, that makes me feel good.
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What is a truly great beer drinker?
More of this storyExpanding into a new brewery with three times the space is paying big dividends for Midnight Sun Brewing Company now that they’re all settled in and brewing at full capacity once again. A downstairs sales area, and upstairs loft with food, and of course the massive, ultra-modern brewery have greatly enhanced the brewery’s ability to produce more and more interesting beer and offer it to the public in a comfortable, expansive setting.
More of this storyThe guy in the row behind me was an incessant chatterbox, so any thought of catching some z’s was out of the question. Worse yet, his significant other was quiet as a church mouse, so I only caught one side of the conversation, making it even more meaningless and irksome. I wanted a beer despite it being a mere 7:00 in the morning. I don’t care what time of the day or night; I like good beer. But I don’t like the relatively mainstream beer served on Alaska Airlines flights enough to pay six bucks for a 12-ounce bottle of it, nor self-consciously consuming it under the disdainful eyes of fellow passengers sipping their Starbucks and reading the New York Times or picking through the Anchorage Daily News looking for something to bide their time.
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