Does that translate?

Spring is here and you can see for sure in this video I took this morning.

It is technically spring break, although these things don't register with me much this year, given that my fellowship makes allows me to write everyday. I did take a week off though and we retreated to a much colder clime where we overloaded on seafood, walked on frozen lakes, and surveyed the local beer scene. I'm supremely grateful to have been able to take the time out and skip this coast for the other. And only slightly perturbed to come home to similar if not less humid temperatures.

Sunset over the frozen lake

twin lobsters

from the 'freeport' area

On our way out through 'Bahstan'

It's been awhile since I spent any length of time on the east coast and it took me some time to adjust again to the New England accent. In fact, more than once I was consumed by laughter. I managed to stifle such outbursts when servers explained what we could expect from hoppy beers...I told them we hailed from the pacific northwest...

bring it on.

Gendering drinks

I was going to ask, "when did drinks become gendered?" but then I remembered every superbowl commercial with scantily clad women selling sex beer.

But this is less *subtle* (if you had to choose a word).
I drove by a billboard yesterday proclaiming this new flavor of soda only allowed the "10 manliest calories" to remain in the can. I can't find an image of it yet, but stumbled upon other, similar marketing which is equally obnoxious:

How can calories have a gendered identity? Oh, right, if we socially construct one.

Not only do our calories now take on gender roles (does this soda make me look fat?), apparently so do our beers:

The new ad line-up for this beer, features a "him" that is 'cold and sweaty,' 'likes to party' and if in can form, wants you to 'crush him.' Our beers now have a persona too. It's not just the beerholder, soda drinker or juicebox that defines you--you now give life to another persona through your purchase.

And I must then too ask, what image are we trying to portray? Manly calories, not for women. Oversexed, bitter; less shrinkage, lager. Machismo comes to mind. Being macho, sexist and lewd is apparently in fashion.

I suppose stupid was at one time too.


Later generations, or possibly alien scientists are going to see some serious signs of psychosis.

Who controls the bubbles?

I use these Infographics in my classes every quarter, but I am always thrilled when a new one has been researched and added:

Click and scroll to zoom in and see who owns your suds.

...nothin' wrong with this...

...and it goes on and on

Hellshire

The line flowing out of the brewery for the first Hellshire release on Saturday at 8am.
People started lining up at 7am.
I am so proud.

...wanderings

I gave a paper at a symposium in Berkeley this week (using a prezi...it went very well); I feel as though I'm starting to figure out how to properly negotiate this whole academic thing...and I might get a publication out of it too!

Joe joined me the day following the symposium and we took in the city from a beer and food angle (surprise, surprise). We both took the train down on separate evenings..which gave us a topsy turvy feel to what day it was...

Taking in the pizza of the day.

We plotted out some of our trip, making reservations for a B&B up the hill from the UC campus.
We also made the requisite month early seating reservations for dinner at the famed restaurant pictured in the post below (p.s. it was just okay).

Taking the recommendation of a bay area native we made sure check out this place, where we had a slice of gourmet pizza (which was effing amazing) and listened to live jazz music during the lunch rush...glad we didn't try to get dinner, walking past later in the evening the line wrapped around the block. In fact, the seating was full for lunch too, so we ate our fare in the middle of the street seated in an obliging grassy median.

the famous circle of anarchy, UC campus.

 Otherwise our trip was mostly unplanned, a complete delight given our normal agenda setting days. I took to the books there and back and fielded some questions from students via email about their upcoming exam, but otherwise we checked out from our day-to-day.


We wandered about the city and UC campus taking it in and enjoying beers, kombucha, gelato and other delights as we went. It was a nice business turned pleasure trip. I think we walked about 20 miles over two days.

Humongous hen and chicks!

Just cause we happened to be in the neighborhood....literally.

Joe plays with the house-made chips.

that's the bay, behind our big heads

Golden Gate from our B&B room

City and Bay Bridge from our room

Bouldering fool : )

Taking in some sun in the gourmet ghetto. I'm not kidding, that is the actual name of the neighborhood in Berkeley. This was at the gardens adjacent to the imperial tea room. Despite the royal nuptials having been that day, we declined a pot of tea in the sun and 70 degree weather.

Channeling Tommy...mmm Gelato

 The train, while long and full of strange and mysterious folks, was a nice and affordable way to get to and fro and I was able to get a ton of work done both ways. Although they lie about 'free wifi'...it's free if you're a premium customer...in the parlour. bastards. Thank goodness for the almighty iphone and for sour beers (not from the train...the train only has $5 AB and liquor, we had these prior to the train). These menus are from here, which we hit after walking to this place, which had a nice selection, but only half the ambiance.

Through the Cascades

While recovering from running a conference....

I learned a bit more about social media. Meaning, I hung out on our twitter feed and facebook pages looking into what other people said about the content of the conference.
We had a dedicated team of folks doing social media, including twitter, facebook and 30 second video spots with our attendees: "what does food justice mean to you?"
The delightful and amazing food advocate, Naomi Starkman of Civil Eats has already posted 'twitvids' (look at me with my lingo) for folks to peruse.

er...you can read more tidbits by using this 'hashtag:' #foodjustice

Although I tend to be critical of a soundbite approach...my weekend was bound up in soundbites as I moved from session to session making sure everything was running smoothly. I did see the entirety of all of our keynote panels, plenaries and dialogues and for that I am grateful. I also took the time to sit in on many of Sunday's sessions, which were in the easily navigable Law Center. Due to the spatial configuration of the Monday program in the student union (and having three concurrent sessions), I saw less of the program and spent more time running between rooms. But it all worked out brilliantly for me. Being behind the scenes allowed me to engage with our attendees on a much deeper level.

That said, for me, the most critical soundbites of the conference are these (and they come from a variety of speakers)...telegram style:

We must redefine deliciousness. stop. Fair Trade can be thought of as a food sovereignty strategy that cooperatives use to defend rights to land. stop. activist research is essential. stop. migrant farm workers are among the most food insecure. stop. farming for sustenance versus farming for subsistence. stop. must understand the first green revolution before beginning a second one. stop. biotech is a ponzi scheme. stop. there exist wheat anarchists in France. stop. re-decentralization of wheat. stop. Gates supports biotech, he's building a new empire. stop. NAFTA is killing Mexican farmers. stop. climate change. stop. structural racism. stop. there cannot be shame-based culinary education. stop. we must have a biodiversity of movements. stop. to have sustainable cities, must have sustainable agriculture. stop. anti-food. stop. industrial agriculture is a food desert. stop. at brink of seed famine. stop. 

I have come away from this conference blissfully exhausted; bowing under the weight of many thanks and congratulations; (which I am still not quite sure I deserve) and with a keen eye to the future.

In a beautiful synchronicity, I was able to share food at breakfast, lunch and dinners with our attendees, literally breaking bread with world renown food activists and local farmers, students and educators. I was able to share my own work, research interests and activism while asking questions.I shared food and thought. Deliciousness and hope.
As soon as I get my voice and energy back, I'll be a force to reckon with.


p.s. Oakshire got a bunch of good press for their delicious sponsorship via "liquid justice" - a special thanks to John for making this beautiful logo for us:

Almost home

And enjoying my first taste of beer with discernable hop notes...

'Beer stimulus bill:' Joe in the news...

'Beer stimulus bill' would cut taxes on small breweries | KVAL CBS 13 - News, Weather and Sports - Eugene, OR - Eugene, Oregon | Local & Regional News

...click through to watch Joe at work

Hale's

Cream ale on nitro...eat your heart out ;)

...while not working on my paper for school

I saw this post by a friend in Portland that made me happy. Women are quite underrepresented in the beer industry...
Also, when we were in Bend last Spring we had opportunity to visit Bend Brewing, which not only has spectacular beers, but a great menu and a nice pub (something that I think a lot of breweries have had a hard time combining-er, to my taste that is).

Next step.

If you called....

and you got the voice mail, this is why...

Symptoms:
- mosquito bites
- sand in shoes
- warm beer
- berries
- itchy kitties
- dinner outside
- farmers market
- sandals
- sunscreen
- water...lots of water

...it's properly Summer.
Spring made no appearance, but summer is definitely here. And where there is summer, there is busy.

We spent last weekend at the beach for the Brewers Games and a small charity beer festival put on by Pelican Brewery in Pacific City.


Joe participated with a hodgepodge of other Portland Brewers- competing against 12 other breweries/distributors in some whacked out beer olympics.
















I watched from the sidelines as this motley crew tossed, dragged and ran with kegs through obstacle courses and around the beach, threw active yeast in balloons to each other, moved mashed grain from barrel to barrel, and drank and obliterated macro-brews on a homemade iron-maiden.

It was quite a show and lasted pretty much all day. We retired to a small cabin across the way from the brewery and sat around the fire rehashing the best and worst moments of the games and planning for 364 days later when they could compete again.

It was a pleasant and pretty drive to Pacific City; we returned home and promptly recreated a beach environment by introducing half the beach onto the living room carpet.

This past weekend we took in the Organic Brewer's Festival which had many contrasts from our attendance the previous year. It was beautiful, sunny and packed with people. My only complaint is that I went in thinking I'd save my favorite brew of last year, Alameda's IPA, for last and as I approached the tent with my last ticket a pathway cleared in front of me showing the way...literally...people had gotten out of line because the keg was tapped. Lame.

Otherwise it was a pretty low-key weekend. Hung out at the Saturday farmers market at PSU. We stood-in for a friend, volunteering at a bike event doing helmet fitting-which I am very bad at and Joe is not. Biked to and from the bike event (seems only fitting eh?) in the 100 degree weather and spent the later evening walking around the garden and enjoying a beer. Sunday was a relaxing day, spent out at Sauvie Island picnicking and having a little bit of frisbee.

ah....summer.

Slugs Rejoice!

"I wouldn't even feed this to slugs..."


- Joe, on an old case of beer sitting in our 'cellar' that was made by the graduating class at UC Davis (Spring, '06)

Beervana

I now have two OBF's under my belt and the difference in my ability to maneuver though lines and to have a healthy buzz in between this year and last year was akin to being jumped ahead from Kindergarten to High School. We arrived via light rail and just about the time that the taps opened for business - claimed a couple of umbrella tables (sweet!) and had at least two samples under our belts before most others had even figured out what was going on.
I managed to taste everything I wanted to and to intersperse it with some local eats (I think the Horn of Africa will soon be a permanent fixture at OBF for me) the most notable beers being:

• Ninkasi's 'Believer' - double Red,
• 4+'s Wildfire - Organic Extra pale,
• Russian River's Pliny the Elder (again) - double IPA
• HUB's Organic IPA - I cannot wait for this Brewery to open for business
  

All in all it was good times with a good group-we had a pretty good show of people at our house pre and post festival and all beer drinking aside, is it okay that my proudest moment was this?:

On a side note, I think It's finally dawned on me that we are adults, really really. Something about getting together with people that you've known for about ten years has a tendency to trespass time. This past weekend though, our age and habits showed through as we were all up either by way of internal alarm clock, little critters or toddlers by 7am'ish.

A big thanks to everyone who came down to hang out with us :) Here's to next year!

It's like we're alcoholics or something

Beer on Saturday. Wine on Sunday. Follow the Yellow Brick Road...

Okay, so not only did we hang out at the 5th Quadrant on Saturday afternoon sampling seasonal beers, we got into the whole seasonal beer mindset. Unfortunately we were unable to really go for it that afternoon, so we, while taking advantage of subsidized CFL's at the local FM we went a bit beyond the season and grabbed some of the available winter ales: Fish Tales Winterfish, Deschutes Jubilale & Bridgeport's Ebeneezer. We got one bottle of each and went in that order, splitting them as we carved pumpkins, until I realized that I'm just not ready for winter ales yet. I'm pining for pumpkin beer. I did however enjoy the Winterfish as it was a tribute to other hoppy winter ales that I have enjoyed.

On Sunday, we took advantage of the beautiful fall weather to head out into the western wine area. We now realize that we will have to come to grips with Pinot Noir. I understood it was popular, but I had no idea. We visited two wineries before timing forced us back into town for a meeting. There were four Pinot Noir's between them, and we skipped a winery on the way that did only Pinot Noir.

The scenery was beautiful to take in, all the foliage turning...especially the vines. Plus it was 70 degrees, how could you not want to frolic in post season vineyards? Yes frolic. Plus pretty much all the wines we tasted were excellent.

We did make a pitstop in SW on the way home to check out a greater beer selection...it's amazing how even single bottle purchases add up :) We did find a little more variety in Pumpkin Ales, but it seems like everyone is ready for winter ales already. I suppose that's nothing to complain about.

Chowda

On Saturday Joe and I went to check out the New Old Lompoc (5th Quadrant) and the Chowda Challenge benefit. The season completely forgetting itself, gave sunshine and warmth enough take advantage of the ample outdoor seating and leave coats behind. For $5 each we received a tray of 12 tasters of different New England style, Portland produced Chowders...with the proceeds going to the leukemia & lymphoma society (pretty cool). They had live music, seasonal beers for $3 a pint (with the hoppiest lager I've ever tasted) and this crazy balloon hat guy running around dressing everyone in some pretty creative balloon hats.

Of the 12 chowders at least 4 were in the "if I ordered this at a restaraunt I'd go hungry" category, some were very creative...almost to the point where we looked up to verify..."did you taste nutmeg in #4?" But the one that caught my heart was chock full of salty goodness and had huge clams in it. Which is weird. Because I usually do not like clams. At all. I spent many a weekend in my youth on beaches in the Puget Sound digging for clams, which, when were cooked at home repulsed me and restaraunt clams did little to convince me otherwise. So I generally eat around clams when I get chowder, because I like the creamy chowder, but eating the clams usually reveals the gritty, sandy, rubbery, chewy underbelly of the soup. I know. I know. But yesterday I ate many a clam, and although they have not completely won me over, I now know that at least sometimes they taste good. In fact, they were rather filling and between a pint of beer and half of each taster I was set. The results are to be posted sometime soon...so we'll see what we ate, who made it and whether we have "good taste."

...and some side notes...
(1) for those of you not raised by New Englanders it's chowda.
There are some audio studies at the end that should help anyone wanting to improve on dropping their r's (cough, Freed, cough cough...and Matt who is probably inadvertently developing one as we speak :) )
(2) When performing a spell check, "Puget" is checked as "puked" which brings a little smile to my face.
(3) I know it seems odd to use the words "beach" and "Puget Sound" in the same sentence, but, should these words be used within the same sentence, beach should be read as "rocks" and "gravel"
(4) While my brother and I used garden shovels to capture unwitting clams my Dad sat on the beach shucking oysters. He generally used a knife etc etc. But I've seen him and my Uncle walking along the beach sampling the oysters as they go. Using whatever means necessary. I can show you an excellent technique using a 1987 Plymouth Voyager valet key. Mmmmm Oysters on the half shell.

Hop Madness

There is nothing like walking into a room that looks like this:Upon the recommendation of Andy, who could not himself attend, we spent the better part of yesterday at a hops and brewing event properly called Hop Madness. Oh my goodness.
It was a fair sized gathering of people who brought many different homebrews to share and different shapes and sizes of equipment to brew with on-site.
But before sampling too many beers, we were taken down the street to the hop farm that had provided the Willamette, Cascade, Magnum and Crystal hops to brew with. Ah, what a site to see:
...and then down the road to the processing area...

Where the vines are strung up and whisked away to be separated from the hops-

Fresh hops on their way to being dried out-

Drying out-

Big kid ball pen- (don't worry all of these hops are going to AB) -

Happy Hop head :)Joe did a front flip into the hops and emerged covered in yellow stickiness.

The baler (kind of looks like a drug operation might)

So I figured this was pretty much the highlight of my being there and prepared to settle down with a book and drink another beer or two while Joe brewed and hung out with the other brewers. People are too damn friendly. We were recruited to help pick the fresh hops off the vine for the brewers...I never knew just how sticky these suckers could be and they have little tiny pricklies on the vines so, it doesn't hurt (actually you can't even feel it) to touch the vine, but at the end of the day it looks like a miniature swordsman hacked up your arms and legs.
So I hung out with the die hard hops enthusiasts for awhile and then on the 20 foot walk back to our stuff, to get water and a snack and sit down with a book, I was delayed by about 2 hours as I was taken around the rest of the campsite to taste other peoples beers and be recruited by various homebrew clubs in the Pacific Northwest. Stringent competition let me tell you.Joe mostly stayed close to the brew as the afternoon went on. Andy was kind enough to lend us his mobile brewing apparatus so Joe could partake of the fresh hop brewing. We should have a fine pale soon. It was going so strong this morning I thought the bubble noises were the shower dripping. It was so loud I got up to turn it off.

Sunset on the brewers