Rejected! [kinda NSFW]

I remember seeing those, what, eight or ten years ago at the Fantasy Filmfest as a supporting movie for some other movie whose name I forgot and was thrilled. The clips get more and more NSFW as they progress and actually the less violent ones are in my opinion much funnier than the others. The first two are my favorites, but they are all worth watching. Don Hertzfeld’s official page can be found here.

We are still on the West Coast, enjoying the weather, feasting on ripe figs in the backyard, and sampling tiny kiwis whose name I also forgot but which are the size of a gummy bear and have a taste like ten kiwis laced with lemon juice – absolutely delicious. I can’t wait for when we have our own backyard and live in a climate that makes gardening fun and not feel like toiling in the searing Connecticut sun…

Filed under: Bizarre-O-Rama, Feed Me Food, Travel , cartoon, Don Hertzfeld, fig, kiwi, NSFW, Rejected, West Coast

Nettle & Dandelion Beers [22.4.39. « THE ORWELL PRIZE]

[NEWSPAPER CUTTING]

IN THE KITCHEN
NETTLES HAVE THEIR USES
NETTLE, unwanted in the orchard or yard, can with great benefit be transferred to the kitchen, where they provide nature’s remedy for removing winter spots and blemishes from the skin.
AS A VEGETABLE
Choose only young nettles; these should be thoroughly washed, then boiled, strained and chopped like spinach. They are a good vegetable and excellent blood purifier.
NETTLE BEER
Thoroughly wash a peck of nettle tops and boil them with one ounce of bruised ginger in a gallon of water for half an hour. Cut up a lemon in slices and put in a big bowl with 1lb. Of brown sugar, and strain over them the gallon of water from the nettles. Stir well, and when the sugar is dissolved and the mixture of lukewarm add a cupful of barm and let it work for eight hours. Then skim and bottle.
DANDELION AND NETTLE BEER
Boil fresh nettle tops, 1oz. crushed ginger, 1oz. dandelion root, 2 sliced lemons and 1lb. of sugar in 1 gallon of water for 20 minutes. Strain into an earthenware bowl and when it is lukewarm add 1oz. of yeast on a square of toast and let it work for a few hours. Skim and bottle. It is ready to drink next day.

via orwelldiaries.wordpress.com

I have been subscribed to this blog for a while now and really like the idea. Essentially it posts each diary entry of George Orwell on the corresponding day. It’s kinda fun. Plus, he added a newspaper clipping on how to make nettle beer to this entry – this recipe *will* be tested!

Posted via web from Bearded Dave

Filed under: Feed Me Food, Vintage Stuff , beer, dandelion beer, George Orwell, recipe

American Beers

Okay, okay, I’m a beer snob. I’m German, so what do you expect? It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I thought American beers were crap and the best thing in the world were German beers brewed according to the Reinheitsgebot that was established 1516. I’d always believed that this related to quality, but, guess what: it had more to do with taxation than anything else. What opened my eyes? This article by Burkhard Bilger, published in the New Yorker around Thanksgiving this year, on the Dogfish Head Brewery in New England. Here’s a snip:

Calagione was used to odd suggestions from customers. On Monday mornings, his brewery’s answering machine is sometimes full of rambling meditations from fans, in the grips of beery enlightenment at their local bar. But Gasparine’s idea was different. It spoke to Calagione’s own contradictory ambitions for Dogfish: to make beers so potent and unique that they couldn’t be judged by ordinary standards, and to win for them the prestige and premium prices usually reserved for fine wine. And so, a year later, Calagione sent Gasparine back to Paraguay with an order for forty-four hundred board feet of palo santo. “I told him to get a shitload,” he remembers. “We were going to build the biggest wooden barrel since the days of Prohibition.

This is a great article. And now excuse me while I’m browsing American beers.

Filed under: Crafts and Modification, Feed Me Food, Grumpy German , History, beer, German beer, American beer

You know, I think this is dog food

This weekend I finally got around to visit the Farmer’s Market. Yep, took me more than a year, but here I am. And as far as Farmer’s Markets got, this one is quite good. It even makes me ogle that lamb recipe I have sitting in one of my cookbooks waiting to be tried out. However, there are also some fancy booths that sell what, at a first glance, looks like pastry. And cookies. I wasn’t really interested, but then a friend walked up to me holding a bag of beef jerky and said: “Hey, look at what I got!”

I love jerky, so I asked him where he got it and I bought a bag. Surprisingly cheap, too, cost me about $3. I was walking back to my friend, examining my purchase, when I saw that it was, well, beef jerky for dogs. No joke. But as I’d already started eating it I just went ahead. It was one of those gourmet pet food booths, so I don’t think it will do something weird to me, right? RIGHT?

Anyway, we also got a bunch of oysters and grilled them tonight and ate them with a lemon-butter-pepper sauce. Yummy. I’d never thought I’d get into oysters and I have to admit that I always have to force myself to eat them, but hell, they’re worth it. Plus, they’re local!

Filed under: Feed Me Food, Life , beef jerky, dogfood, farmer's market, oysters, pets

I’m not into the wine & cheese, dude, but could I have a beer?

I’m a beer man. There, I said it. No wine and cheese for me. And the funny thing is, that here in the US w&c seems to be a really big thing in terms of class distinction. The brutes can have the beer, we go for something that is 1) foreign (French, actually, a people who are also known to gobble froglegs and snails) and 2) an acquired taste that in the case of some cheeses includes a superhuman supression of the gag reflex. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against cheese and I’m also not against wine. They’re just not my cup of tea, although I really like the hard cheeses. Thing is, though, that on the continent these things are pretty affordable and nothing fancy. Also, we don’t pasteurize our cheese-milk, so I guess there isn’t the same mystique about it as it is in oh-God-everything-has-to-be-pasteurized US. So…

But yeah, I like beer. The beers in Germany are, ahem, pretty damn good, I’m afraid, and while I got used to the taste of American beer – guys, you still have a lot to learn, that’s all I’m saying on this subject. However, I discovered Root Beer – totally, extremely delicious. I’m talking cane sugar, baby! To give you an idea of the variety of different root beers, try Anthony’s Root Beer Barrel. It’s one of those acquired tastes, just like snails, but it’s definitely worth it. So, tonight, I had myself a root beer, tried to bake a cake, used the wrong kind of wax paper (don’t ask) and still kinda finished the cake and, despite one major mistake, am happy that the result is eatable.

Cheers!

Filed under: Feed Me Food, Grumpy German, Life , beer, cake, rant, rootbeer, snails