Sallie Ford, Finally!

Earlier this month Mike and I went to Eugene for the weekend to catch a duck's basketball game. The team has been iffy this season, but they managed to eek out a win at the last minute. We left with about a minute left on the clock and high-tailed it over to the Lane County Fairgrounds to finally catch Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside, playing at the Eugene Microbrew Festival.

  

We've been trying to catch the Portland band for the last year, but they seem to rarely play in Portland. We almost saw them in Seattle last spring, but were overcome with exhaustion at the thought of a start time of 11 pm. Sara and Bobby even saw them in Ohio before us! They must cater to the young, hipster crowd, because there is no way that I'm staying up to catch a concert that starts that late. This time she was scheduled at 8:30 pm - much more my style.

We had to pay to get into the beer festival to see her, which was not a bad deal ($21), but their organization of getting people into the festival was horrid! They've been doing this for 14 years or so, and they had only one computer for credit card purchases and the ATM was broken. We waited in line for 30 minutes, and there were only a dozen people in front of us. I was pretty irritated by the time we got inside (patience is not my virtue), but at least there was beer when we arrived.

We had a little time before Sallie took the stage to sample some excellent beers:
Georgetown's Lucille IPA
Firestone Walker's Union Jack IPA 
Crazy Mountain Amber Ale

My favorite was the Union Jack and Mike preferred the Lucille.












The concert was great, but the best part was watching the UO students get drunk and dance. It was fabulous entertainment, and wonderful reassurance that being in one's thirties isn't so bad after all.

Everybody's Brewing

Mike and I have been spending a lot of time driving out along the gorge on weekend evenings in search of good views and good beer. We went to our favorite restaurant in Hood River a few weeks ago and the bartender recommended that we check out Everybody's Brewing in White Salmon, WA.

So the next weekend we headed back out along the gorge, crossed over the river at Hood River, drove through Bingen and up the hill to Whilte Salmon.

 

The brewery is in an old brick building with "Goodwill Lodge" on the canopy in low-contrast letters. Needless to say we drove by it the first couple of times. If you look closely, their logo is on the door and an authoritative neon sign in the window tells one to "GET IN HERE".

  

They have about 10 beers on tap, and my favorite was the Daily Bread Common Ale. Mike tried the Goodwill IPA. I was pleased to see that they have 3 IPAs, so there will be plenty more to try on our next visit. While it was a bit chilly, we ventured out to the patio to take in the wonderful views of Mt. Hood and some glorious green hill that reminded me of Heidi.

To keep in the spirit of the Gorge and Beer, this last weekend we headed to Stevenson, WA to check out the Walking Man Brewery. While their beer is good, the overall experience was decidedly less pleasant and no photos were taken. In the future I will enjoy Walking Man beer from the comfort of my favorite restaurants. There was an excellent ice cream joint in Stevenson, however...

Out of town & On the town

Last week I jetted down to sunny (but cold) San Diego for work with my colleague Elizabeth and architect Renee. We were down to look at the School of Medicine, but managed to see a fair amount of the campus and a bit of "downtown" La Jolla.


And last weekend Mike and I spent time in Eugene watching a UO Men's Basketball game in the new Knight Arena. It was a great, close game against the Univ. of Washington, and I loved our seats in Row K of section 107 (noted for future reference - should we go again). The stadium is quite nice, with some pluses and minuses. A major plus is that it is walking distance from the hotel we like to stay at, and tickets to basketball are much cheaper than football! We were also able to get into three more favorites: Keystone Cafe (for breakfast), Eugene City Brewery (go for the Kurobuta Ham Sandwich - also available at the Green Dragon in Portland), Ninkasi Tasting Room (home of the lovely, lovely soft pretzels). We also checked out the Picadilly Flea Market, at the recommendation of AAA magazine, as we're in search of a new coffee table. I was expecting a flea market like they often show on HGTV or TLC (lots of antiques and furniture). The Picadilly in Eugene is more like 75 mini garage sales. We didn't find anything there that we couldn't pick up at the local Goodwill. For something to do, it's worth the $1.50 entry fee - just keep your expectations low.

39.5: a wonderful age to celebrate

For Mike's birthday (6 months ago) I gave him a winter weekend at the McMenamins Old St. Francis School in Bend, OR. I presented his gift in the form of flash cards, which he was quite tickled with, and which have sat on my desk for the last six months until it was finally "winter" enough to go. While the East Coast suffers under many feet of snow, those of us in the Pacific NW have had a very mild winter. We decided that this last weekend was the perfect time to head east of the mountains and remind ourselves what it looks like.



It proved to be more elusive than we thought, as we had to drive high up the mountain before we saw any. Our plan was to snowboard, ski and snowshoe, but we didn't actually do any of that. At $140, the snow on the slopes wasn't worth the money, and while we did trek through the snow, we didn't actually need our snowshoes as the snow was so hardpacked that our trail shoes were more than adequate. At first we were mildly disappointed, but then realized that sunny days, blue sky and gorgeous views were easily just as enjoyable as snow.





Bend is home to 7 breweries, and on this trip we checked out the Bend Brewing Co., Cascade Lakes Brewing and the brewery at the Old St. Francis School.



We also tried dinner (and breakfast) at the Old St. Francis (dinner was okay, breakfast was great). In addition to the on-site brewery and restaurant, the Old St. Francis also has a movie theater, with complimentary admission to hotel guests (we saw Due Date - which is a good movie if you don't have to pay for it).


We also tried the open air, saltwater soaking pool, which was incredibly relaxing. The only problem was that it's also open to the public, so we had to wait until 11 pm in order to enjoy it in peace. Not really a problem, as soaking in the pool was a wonderful thing to do before bed.

(photo courtesy of flickr, as 11 pm is not really a good time for taking photos)

Happy Birthday, Mike! Let's do it again in 6 months...

The Miracle of Yeast

Mike and I spent the last 3-day weekend up at Papa and Sharon's. We were looking for a chance to get away, relax and work on a few of our projects. While I sat in front of the woodstove working on some new hand-sewing projects, Mike hung out in the shop with part II of our mantle, and part I of our built-in shoe storage.



When it was time for our first carb-fix, Papa and Mike helped me make some soft pretzels. We made a double batch, with the second set made out of 4 cups spelt flour and .5 cup wheat flour. Both batches turned out very good, but I've learned that I need to be a little more heavy-handed with the salt.



On Saturday Papa baked many, many loaves of bread (sourdough white, sourdough spelt and sourdough with sundried tomatoes). We followed the bread up with some fresh pizza (carb fixes 2 & 3).

On Sunday we helped Papa bottle up his latest homebrew, a Widmer W-10 clone. He's got a great brewing system set up in the basement, and with Mike and I as assembly line workers we got the 5 gallons bottled up in no time.

Sterilizing apparatus

Gravity bottling system

Bottle capper

We left Sunday with a 6-pack of home brew and 3 loaves of fresh-baked bread... that ought to last us a week.

Ninkasi-inspired Soft Pretzels

In early October Mike and I went to Eugene for our annual football game, and while there we went to check out the Ninkasi Brewing Company's tasting room.


Ninkasi is one of my favorite breweries, but until recently they didn't have any sort of local retail component. They don't have a full pub, but their tasting room has many of their beers on tap and they do offer some great little snacks; including the best soft pretzel that I've ever had. It took close to 25 minutes to get it, but it was well worth the wait.

As a result of that great pretzel, I became determined to go home and make my own. Alton Brown's recipe on the Food Network was the first recipe I found so I went with it.

I've made the recipe twice so far and have found it to be super easy and yields some very tasty results.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups warm (110 to 115 degrees F) water
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 package active dry yeast
• 22 ounces all-purpose flour, approximately 4 1/2 cups
• 2 ounces unsalted butter, melted
• Vegetable oil, for pan
• 10 cups water
• 2/3 cup baking soda
• 1 large egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water
• Pretzel salt

Directions

Combine the water, sugar and kosher salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow to sit for 5 minutes or until the mixture begins to foam. Add the flour and butter and, using the dough hook attachment, mix on low speed until well combined. Change to medium speed and knead until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, approximately 4 to 5 minutes. Remove the dough from the bowl, clean the bowl and then oil it well with vegetable oil. Return the dough to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and sit in a warm place for approximately 50 to 55 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line 2 half-sheet pans with parchment paper and lightly brush with the vegetable oil. Set aside.


Bring the 10 cups of water and the baking soda to a rolling boil in an 8-quart saucepan or roasting pan.
In the meantime, turn the dough out onto a slightly oiled work surface and divide into 8 equal pieces. Roll out each piece of dough into a 24-inch rope. Make a U-shape with the rope, holding the ends of the rope, cross them over each other and press onto the bottom of the U in order to form the shape of a pretzel. Place onto the parchment-lined half sheet pan.

Place the pretzels into the boiling water, 1 by 1, for 30 seconds. Remove them from the water using a large flat spatula. Return to the half sheet pan, brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg yolk and water mixture and sprinkle with the pretzel salt (or asiago cheese, as shown below).


Bake until dark golden brown in color, approximately 12 to 14 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack for at least 5 minutes before serving.


Enjoy plain, or with a variety of mustard. Ninkasi served theirs with the Beaver Honey Mustard, which is now my soft pretzel mustard of choice.

Hop & Vine is a year old!

This month marked the 1-year anniversary of the Hop & Vine (originally "Yetti's"). I had a great time at the anniversary party on August 5th. Congratulations on a job well-done, Yetta!

Claire, Remi, Grace & Opie

Dory, Shy, Andrew & Mike

Andrew & Mike

Beer, beer and more beer

Following up to my recent Guest Blogger's post (my Pops): We did get an amazing tour of the Widmer Brewery on Saturday morning, covering the entire brewing process by our friend and neighbor, Alan, a brewer for Widmer (we're very lucky that he pulled weekend duty). We followed it up with the full beer taster over at the Gasthaus Pub. It was a great morning, which we followed by an evening at Yetti's, tasting Hopwork's Velvet ESB, Laurelwood's Arctic Apocolypse Black IPA and Beer Valley's Pigskin Pale.