southdenverhoo

this is beginning to sound remarkably Yogi-ish, as in "Nobody goes there anymore, it's always too crowded." I've lived in Denver so long I prefer my tex-mex (gringo-mex we call it out here, acknowledging that real Mexican cuisine is more in line with something turned out by Skip Bayless' only slightly less annoying brother, and other purist types, than the stuff we're talking about here) made by Mexicans (or the children and grandchildren of Mexicans), as opposed to the Honduran or Salvadoran or the whatever-it-is influence that makes "Mexican" food in the District taste, I don't know, a little off. But when I'm there I have other foodie things to look for rather than the stuff that is so well-done and so plentiful out here. (I do agree with the post above re El Tamarindo being a much more economical choice for not-quite-mexican mexican food.) But there are many less pleasant ways to spend a sunny spring or fall afternoon or evening, than slurping margaritas and eating Salvadoran- or Honduran- or Nicaraguan-style, whatever, tex-mex on the Lauriol patio, to which, by the way, I've always walked....on the two occasions I've been there that is. Actually, it was enough of a change of pace from Denver Mexican food that I sort of enjoyed it. (Though slightly less so, when the bill came.) I can imagine folks from Dallas, or El Paso, or Albuquerque, or LA, having similar feelings--it's not quite "right" but it isn't offensive.

is it just sausage, diced yams, and red onions? "just" not being a pejorative, more like marvelling...I want some, now-ish. Could you be arm-twisted into a recipe? Since I'm 1600 miles away that means subbing something local for the sausage, what's noticeable, do you think, besides the sage?

Friday night: Hank's. Briny Atlantic Oysters! Also, Barbecued Oysters. Halibut!!! Muscadet. Sancerre. Both eminently reasonably priced. Bites of soft shell crab (stepdaughter's entree) and wife's entree, memory escapes, I only recall that it was excellent. Gave up more halibut than I would have preferred, in return. This joint is everything it's cracked up to be. Then multiple beers @ St-Ex w/ the little one's mates (I fear for our future) Saturday AM: Florida Avenue Grill. Grits with a big-ass knob of butter. Half-Smoke. Two over easy, yolks running all over those grits. Biscuits!! Saturday Lunch: Warrenton KFC. Beers at Grandpa Groovey's. No, just...no. Saturday Supper: the grill room, Fauquier Springs Country Club. NY Strip. Not the best. Better than the "crab stuffed trout" foisted upon the stepdaughter, though, for damn sure. Wife's filet mignon very nice though. Wonder who was the manufacturer (I use the term advisedly) of the house cab? Server didn't know, as she indicated by ignoring the question, just the two times. Sunday....waffles chez pere et mere.....getaway accomplished noonish, for wine tasting, Lagrange of Haymarket. Humming of ZZ Top song discouraged, though to be fair, only reprimanded on third (public) attempt (not counting the two in the car), and by wife, not by good-natured staff. Back in good graces (everyone's) with purchase of mixed case, thence back to town for long liquid late lunch/dinner at Stoneys, in the derelict company of an entirely different cross-section of the young one's running buddies (did I mention I fear for our future?) the "lunch/dinner" portion of which comprised the blue bacon burger, cooked to requested temp, and fries... Monday breakfast/snack: Passable blueberry muffin, Windows Cafe & Market, 101 Rhode Island Avenue NW (Bloomingdale) This store and what one can buy there (Victory Hop Devil! & Prima Pils! Troegs! not to mention a veritable Yuppies' Whole Earth Catalogue of foodstuffs) says gastronomic gentrification, in a good way, has reached the hell out of Bloomingdale, ditto the ads for Farmers Market in front of Big Bear coffee shop just a couple more blocks down 1st St NW (at R, I believe). But you all knew that...just a bit of a surprise to out-of-towners with roots in Warrenton, whose memory goes back to, say, the early 60's. Monday lunch: Belga Cafe. Croque Monsieur, frites and half my wife's Mussels Rodenbach(!!) Leffe draft! Nice--excellent actually--but having made the tourist's mistake of not knowing that Eastern Market (where we anticipated grazing on many good things, chief among them half smokes from Mengers of Baltimore) is closed Mondays, we were for a brief instant a little disappointed. Walked out happy and satisfied, though, and what more can one ask? Then off to National Airport, and a 24 oz Backdraft Brown from the fellas at Hook and Ladder (oh yeah, also available at said Windows Market in Bloomingdale and on tap at Stoneys--you guys tell me, is this Washington's new go-to local, sort of, beer?) Once again, unavoidably, given others' needs, and a tight schedule, had to put off RTS or RTC. Next time, I swear, next time...

well, in his (half-hearted) defense, it seems from my perhaps not-too-careful reading that this is stuff he told a "Florida socialite" [gad!] whilst trying to get into her purse, a la "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" or something, rather than stuff he told The Food Netork, not that THEY don't deserve it, too, for (among other things) the crimes you've pointed out.

may I ask which "above linked recipe?" MCHoroscopes? or Anna Blume's? I have Chef Gillian Clark's book which includes a meatloaf recipe featuring prunes; I see Anna Blume's linked recipe does too. I have to admit this had never occurred to me before....

if a little distance can be tolerated in furtherance of a Real Urban Experience they'll carry back to Tallahassee, how about getting the group onto the 14th St bus and trekking up to Colorado Kitchen? Twenty bucks goes pretty far there though I think the place only seats 48, don't know what their policy is re groups, only have been as a deuce and a 4 top. Maybe call first. If boss finds the bus a little funky just print out any of the gazillion great reviews, or maybe get him an autographed copy of Chef's book.

"The Aristocrats"? Haven't heard of them. Could you tell us a little about their act?

it occurs to me that the promised explanation a) has now been given should suffice c) is fucking brilliant, even if one doesn't agree with it, which I do, and d) is certainly within the prerogative of the "Improprietor". Sorry, Mr. Rocks, if this is tangential; delete away if so.

well I tried to provide that but was afraid later thatI'd missed the point. I think I neglected to emphasize that the Crisco-heavy diet my grandmother cooked was GOOD and (though I think I mentioned it) she lived to be 96. Her daughter, my mother, is now 84 and in EXCELLENT health... In thinking about it, you know, she got her meat and poultry and dairy from the Piggly Wiggly, by the time I knew her (though certainly when my mom was a little girl they lived at a place I swear they still call "the old home place" where they did have a pair of milk cows and chickens and pigs, though no beef cattle to my knowledge)...it was just the veggies and fruits and berries she accessed from her own property or the woods, and baked goods she made from scratch, by the time I was cognizant, say 1958 or so... Also I talked about stuff she canned herself but left out all the pickled things. Another canning discipline well represented in Mama Hurst's pantry and dinner table...for some reason peaches and beets predominate in my memory of this... yesterday this thread had me thinking fried pies all day, today it's green beans cooked a LONG time with bacon and a little sugar & a lot of salt and black pepper, I can taste that pot liquor as I type...just imagining my Mama Hurst confronted with the standard al dente green bean of today, LOL (she would've whispered into my ear, "honey I think she forgot to turn the gas on under these string beans, don't say anything")

have to admit I had just scrolled through the biscuit thread (Heather's biscuit porn in particular) when I read Anna Blume's thread-starter here....those biscuits set me off like Proust's madeleine, I suppose, sorry for my failure to edit.... but it's the damn fried pies I haven't gotten out of my head all day....Got to get some Crisco on the way home I guess...biscuits need to be baked, and pies fried, and soon... those Alabama grandmothers are good to have, huh?

My grandmother (and since I'm 54 my grandmother's generation would be the great grandparents' generation for many-most?- of Pollan's audience) made an awful lot of fried food in her kitchen in Talladega, Alabama.....and I don't remember much in the way of pasta except elbow macaroni, in various casseroles and of course macaroni and cheese....there wasn't much money so there weren't any steaks, mostly fried chicken and pork chops and fried fish and "Salisbury steak"...ham of course....fried pies for dessert was one of my favorite things she made... I just googled "fried pies" and came up with this: http://www.texascooking.com/features/feb2000friedpies.htm which isn't much different from my grandmother's except my grandmother would have used fresh, or canned-herself fruit, cooked down with a mountain of white sugar... This can't be good for you especially when served after a meal featuring her fried chicken and biscuits full of crisco and butter.....but there were always green beans and english peas and squash and cukes and corn and fresh or canned-herself tomatoes, all of the veg coming from her garden or canned herself from her garden and stacked in rows in her pantry....in any event she lived to be 96. Watermelon and canteloupe in season, which is long in Alabama....peaches of course and apples, both from trees in the yard. Blackberries we'd pick when we went out into the country. Or people would bring them to her. Pecans from a tree or two in the yard.... I think maybe the fruits and vegetables fresh from her own garden, or canned in her kitchen (she would have thought buying vegetables that she could grow, from the grocery store, to verge on the immoral or at least to indicate some character flaw, sloth or extravagance in particular) also from her own garden, somehow cancelled out all the Crisco, and white sugar.... beats me. Maybe it was just genes and she lived to be 96 in spite of this diet. She never worked "outside the house" as they say today--- but gathering, preserving, and cooking all that stuff was a full time job. Time equals money, and land to grow all that equals capital, such that none but the most dedicated or, maybe, wealthy (5% of the population? 2%?) today could (or FEEL they could, perhaps the point) afford to do it her way. Which is funny because she couldn't have afforded to do it any OTHER way.

hmmm, we had the NV Brut Rose from H. Billiot Fils, was it old enough? (I think I read somewhere that the NV currently available was something like 40% 2004, 30% 2003, 20% 2002 etc but I don't know where I read that or if whoever wrote it had a clue)Because it was very very nice, to our uneducated palates anyhoo...I assumed non-vintage meant (among other things) meant to be drunk now....

noob in these waters BUT my son's new girlfriend brought us a non-vintage bottle of Brut Rose from "H. Billiot Fils" for Christmas which we enjoyed Wednesday PM, is this the same grower? If so--or , I guess, even if not-- it was unbelievably good.... She's a server at Frasca in Boulder so no surprise she knows her stuff.

Really, the big names do well in this style, I think--Weihenstephaner Original (NOT the ubiquitous hefe); Spaten Premium, Paulaner Original Munich (again, not THEIR ubiquitous hefe), Ayinger JahrhundertBier. Augustiner too, can't remember what theirs is called. I think that it's the Spaten Helles thats usually on tap wherever you see a Spaten tap handle. Except during Oktoberfest. Locally, in a sort of loose sense, i.e. Pennsylvania, Victory Lager--not the Prima Pils, just labeled Victory Lager-- is a really nice Helles I think. But I like that Hacker Pschorr too.

LOL, reminds me of my first dozen Kumamotos, I was (and am) just an ol redneck from the Virginia Piedmont so there was a distinct "Is that all there is?" vibe to the whole (pretty expensive even then) moment. I guess I was expecting a Chincoteague only more so, you know? As in, these are so world famous and all, they must be more intense/plumper/brinier than I'm used to, they must be like Chincoteague squared. Or even, to the nth power, was my sort of expectation level. The epitome of oysterhood. Not so much. My date suggested the fault was mine, a certain lack of delicacy to my palate, and of course it was my fault... I did have another dozen or two. Towards the end of the third dozen I began to appreciate their subtler and sweeter charms, though lord save me I think I still resented their puniness, a little. This did not impress her too much either, some girls think a guy who will slurp down 36 oysters across a 2-top from them on date #2 lacks the requisite savoir-faire, or something, to be granted a date #3...I'm married to a midwestern girl now, they don't mind a hearty appetite.

Was over on the Virginia Eastern Shore a few weeks back, spoke with a local guy in Onancock VA, whose story is not uncommon there, more at this link: http://www.delmarvanow.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a.../711050308/1002 When my interlocutor needed to get, I think he said, 12 bucks a pound for Chesapeake Bay blue crab, the local restaurants were instead buying Indonesian and, I think he said, Venezuelan crab meat for $8. Couldn't/wouldn't pay the difference for the superior product, didn't think their customers would pay. Sic transit gloria mundi. It's a shame, but as one of the guys in the link says only 2 joints on the Va. Eastern Shore were selling local crab when HE closed HIS doors for the last time. Obviously not so dire yet in Md, viz my party's lunch the day before..... PS, had forgotten which place various Rockwellians like the best--meant to check this site for a/this thread the day before the flight, didn't get around to it-- so it was absolutely dumb luck that we chose (out of, as you know, several other options closer to the turn-off, or more advertised on the signage one drives past) The Narrows Restaurant for our on-the-way-over lunch. It just had the vibe I guess. They had the goods.

Was in town last week! Probably not back until spring. Darn.... Did buy Chef's book last month and we've made her fried chicken recipe 3 times since then. Which might not sound impressive except that we're making 20 pieces of chicken every time. So, you know, 60 pieces of fried chicken in maybe 5 weeks, between the two of us....there's a Gahan Wilson cartoon I remember from Playboy back in the early 70's where two three hundred pounders sit on the front porch with buckets of chicken, and you can see the KFC logo, and Ma says to Pa, "Dang, sometimes I wish they'd never moved next door..." That's me and my wife and Chef's chicken recipe... Even if she held something back--and I'm not saying she did, but I certainly would have-- what's in the book is EXCELLENT in its simplicity...(we took out a little salt and added a little cayenne)

they must not only be cute, but have such wonderful manners! Seriously, even with a four year age gap I can only shudder to think what would have happened if I had ever proposed that my two territorial little ragamuffins "share a children's meal"....The bigger one had the size and strength advantage but the smaller one had a sort of relentlessness, plus he was fearless and impervious to pain (later he was a lacrosse goalie) that made each tussle ferocious until she vanquished him...the "airplane trip to Disneyworld" and "car trip to camp" passages in Larry McMurtry's Texasville are instructive as to how it usually went... Or if either of 'em were expected to make do with a lemonade while their mother and I ate, "because he/she had already eaten." Holy moley, you've got good kids, dgreen. I'd venture to say they'd do just fine at, say, Colorado Kitchen.

turkey and white bean chili is nice, if you've got some green chiles and your basic Flay-esque melange of SW spices around....

Cool. Well, you can "force carbonate" slowly, as I do, or you can do it fast, but unless you are adding priming material (sugar, malt extract, or krausen beer, or any sugar source) and letting the yeast do the work, it's "force carbonating". If you are priming, expect it to take 7-10 days. If you are force carbonating, slowly, i.e. by setting the regulator at a pound or two above your target pressure, that takes about a week or ten days too. This is what I do, only I might set it at 20-25 lbs just for the first 24 hours. I personally like to serve English styles at around 45-50 degrees and 10-11 PSI. More carbonated, perhaps, than a classic cask ale, but not by much. A good ten degrees cooler though, just my American palate. Warms up in the glass though. If you do the slow force carbonation, be sure to do it with the beer cold, colder the better for CO2 absorption. How does it taste? you did taste the hydrometer sample, right?

bubbling airlocks are only a moderately accurate way to determine whether fermentation is complete. Since you are mentioning gravity readings I take it you have a hydrometer. I would always measure sufficient samples to assure myself that the gravity hadn't changed for at least 3 successive days before concluding that it was finished. Sometimes when confronted with a fermentation that seems to have stalled out early, people try to "rouse" the yeast by raising the temperature (i.e. move the fermenter to a warmer spot in your house) or by gently (and carefully if we're talking glass carboys) swirling your fermenter to get the yeast back into suspension. Or you could indeed throw in a sachet of an attenuative dry yeast, say S-05 or Windsor or Nottingham It might help to know what yeast you used, and whether this is a kit using dried malt extract. Some brands of DME aren't as fermentable as expected, leaving you with a higher than expected FG. Or, if you're doing all-grain, high amounts of crystal and caramel malts can lead to a higher than expected FG, don't know how you calculated your anticipated final gravity; maybe you already took that into account. Some people suggest a week of primary fermentation followed by two weeks of "secondary" or conditioning followed by 3 weeks to carbonate naturally, the "1-2-3" method. For most English styles, like brown ale, depending on the yeast, I usually find that a 5 day primary followed by 10-14 in a secondary vessel, i.e. off the original yeast lees, is enough, and instead of the three weeks of natural carbonation i often merely force carbonate over a period of 2-3 days. Since you say you have it in a keg I assume you a) already racked it off the yeast; have force carbonation capacity...and, I guess, c) have decided not to bottle it? You could carbonate it and drink it a little green (hard to be patient with your first one) or give it a few more days, to mature, a chacun son gout. Personally I'd let it sit at least 10 days after transfer; even if it's not fermenting violently enough to be visually obvious, the little yeasties are still alive and working, finishing things off, cleaning up and rounding out the flavors. PS, you still are at 3.999% ABV, a little low but within style guidelines, I think, for a brown. Higher FG may just mean a little too sweet and a little more body than you expected.

this series wasn't much fun for us in Denver but even we got a kick out of Royce Clayton and Coco Crisp discussing the mechanics and logistics of the giveaway, preserved in this you-tube link: http://www.boston.com/sports/nesn/wilbur/s.../25/taco_mania/ "I ain't got my taco"

As I am the husband of a French Martini drinker, and the stepfather of an "appletini" drinker, despite a number of non-verbal cues of almost no subtlety, issued by both myself and our various and sundry servers....you can not imagine the glee with which this post has been linked to the two e-mails upon which I just clicked "send"

I was just going to suggest this, even though I've never been; people I know love it and Mr. Pearson's posts here make me think he's not the kind of guy to serve substandard anything, and I note his webpage http://www.flinthillpublichouse.com/lunch_menu.html indicates a Virginia Ham sandwich is a staple on the lunch menu. And there are a BUNCH of wineries around where he is.

when my stepdaughter was at Michigan, one of the places ms southdenverhoo and I liked was the restaurant attached to the Weber's Inn (is that right?), maybe a mile west of downtown on the Jackson Highway. Good midwestern hunks of red beef, and a wine list that to my eyes was especially good on the reds and only marked up maybe 2x retail (compared to what I was used to in Denver at the time, around 2.5-3X retail). Good local fish, too, and at least something from Bell's on tap. We always ate in the little room off from the bar... This is exactly the sort of hotel where the M Club or Wolverine Club or whatever it was called would meet on Mondays after the game, in the fall, and the coach would speak. Or you might have your child's wedding reception, or your parents' 50th. But I think they had a Wine Spectator award prominently posted....