Rock! Death! America!
Littering our noise on the Earth
Archive for June, 2008
June 28, 2008 at 2:38 pm · Filed under Beer
D took Friday off so we could hit this year’s North American Organic Beer Festival when it opened at 3 pm. We haven’t been since the first one in the parking lot of Port Halling Brewery in Gresham. The festival is now in the baseball diamond at Overlook Park, just off the MAX Yellow Line. As always, we spent a lot of time documenting our experience. We were there a little early, and they weren’t quite ready to open (the security staff showed up at 3, and one person told us later she had been asked to work it about 45 minutes before it started). Here we are waiting to go in (there was a crowd growing behind us).
We snagged two seats under the only shade tree and set up our camp for the evening.
Our view:
After getting settled, it was time for beer!
- Eel River Triple Exultation Strong Ale-sweet but not, thick, slightly bitter, delicious!
- Standing Stone Double IPA-Fabulous hop aroma, bright, hoppy, got better as it warmed up
- Pelican Heiferweizen-creamy, smooth, hints of coriander, banana & spice, really good
- Standing Stone Hefeweizen-side by side with the Pelican, this was a different hef entirely. Summed up in one word: bread
- Hair of the Dog Greg-vegetal and sweet
- Crannog Hell’s Kitchen Irish Red-despite being made with potato, this had the aroma & flavors of chocolate. Thin but tasty
- Hair of the Dog Blue Dot IPA-our hands down fave, smells divine, sooo hoppy yet well balanced, and we got big pours. Yeah!
- Caledonian Golden Promise-Yum! Tastes of grain, fruity aroma, went well with the tofurkey
- Hopworks Survival Stout-smelled & tasted like chocolate & coffee, good, better once it warmed up
- Backhand of God Stout-watery, sweet, not bad, not great. D said it “doesn’t have balls”
- Willamette Brewery IPA-hoppy nose, bitter washing over the tongue, really good
- Willamette Brewery Dunkelweizen-good, tastes of bananas, highly carbonated, clean, a hint of bitter
- Double Mt. IRA-aroma of green hops, pretty darn delicious
- At this point D had a second Hair of the Dog Blue Dot IPA
- Laurelwood Green Mammoth-my notes say “ooooooh, hoppy. oh yeah.”
- Ukiah Pils-light, crisp, very carbonated and refreshing
Here is a montage of all our beers, from left to right in the order listed above (the two together in the same picture are the two hefeweizens):
We made lots of friends under the big tree. Here is D helping the face paint lady set up her tent. It was very windy.
We also became friends with popsicle Bob, who set up shop right next to us. He works for a company called Sol Pops that makes delicious paleta, a mexican style frozen fruit bar. He was very nice. We watched his cart a couple of times while he walked around to drum up business, and when I bought some he gave us a little deal on them. We got no such deal from the face paint lady.
We got two different flavors: blueberry hopsicle, and cucumber, lime, and jalapeno. The hops were barely there in the blueberry one, but the pop was delicious. The cucumber one was amazing, such a pronounced cuke flavor, not too sweet, and you got a little heat that settled in the back of your throat.
We were very excited to see the Tofurkey people there, and had a very tasty veggie Polish Sausage dog with sauerkraut and caramelized onions.
So the fest was not only centered around organic beers, but sustainability in general. The location was near light rail and off street parking was pretty much non-existent. You got a $1 off your mug/ticket fee if you presented your light rail ticket or brought 3 cans of food for the Oregon Food Bank. The vendors were focused on sustainability or environmentally conscious practices.
Most beer fests give you a plastic commemorative mug for your trouble. The NAOBF had what basically amounted to plastic party cups. They were not plastic, but 100% compostable corn, which seems cool in theory, but not in practice. They cracked if you fiddled with them too much or squeezed too hard. I saw many in the trash bags and not the compost bags. I know that these will biodegrade in 45 days, which is much better than the never going to compost that the plastic cups pose on the environment. I think the problem is their fragility, and the fact that we paid $5 for a cup and don’t get to keep it. Perhaps they can sell these for a cheaper price and have glass commerative glasses as well. Or better yet, have a discount for people that bring one of their old plastic mugs from home and re-use it at the festival. If they are old and faded, they could simply mark the drink line with a sharpie or something.
They also used paper tickets, which are a one time use item. They should do what the OBF does, and use printed wooden tokens. The festival can use them year after year, and if you have any left over you can bring them next time. Easy peasy.
Overall, good fest, great beer, different beer than other festivals, fun selection of food and a nice location. Two (corn, 100% compostable) beer mugs cups up!
June 27, 2008 at 7:54 am · Filed under Better World, Funny
If you would like to participate in an interesting social experiment, I suggest you draw a hopscotch, er, board? Field? Line of Squares? Is it just called a hopscotch? Aha! According to streetplay.com it is a hopscotch court. That is really interesting.
Let me start this again: draw a hopscotch court on your sidewalk with chalk and watch what happens. Not only do the kids that walk by hop on through, but we have witnessed two adult men jump along the court before continuing their walk down the street.So awesome!
June 15, 2008 at 6:47 pm · Filed under Better World, Food, Kids
Friendly faces and good service can be hard to come by in Portland, where much of the service community seems to be holding a competition to see who can show the most disdain towards their customers. Heck, McMenamins has made a killing off of it.
I’ve had three experiences that made me say ‘whoa’ recently.
XM and I recently lunched at Proper Eats Market and Cafe up in St. Johns. She is having some issues with gluten, so I have to watch what she eats. Fortunately Proper Eats serves strictly vegan and vegetarian foods, so that made it one step easier. A lot of the food had tempeh, which is generally made with just soybeans, but a lot of places seem to enjoy throwing in other grains as well, so I couldn’t be certain what kind of tempeh they used. I was hoping we could share the cornmeal tempeh plate (tempeh fried in cornmeal and served over sautéed greens, quinoa and pinto beans and topped with tofu-cilantro sour cream and pumpkin-corn-seed relish), so I asked what kind of tempeh it was. Our server didn’t know, so not only did he check out the stock he had, he called the tempeh company to double check! Turns out it was gluten-free, the food was insanely delicious, and he got a big tip.
Recently XM and I met an old co-worker of mine for lunch at the Lucky Lab. Same situation, different restaurant. Normally I find the service there to be half-hearted at best, but the guy that took our order overheard me telling my friend that XM couldn’t have gluten. When I ordered the bento, he asked if I was going to share it with her. I said I was, and he said that there is soy sauce (which has wheat) on the rice under the bento, so they could leave it off for me. I was surprised. The surprises didn’t end there, because he came out to my table and told me that the peanut sauce I had ordered also had soy sauce in it, but the sweet chili sauce did not. I thanked him profusely (I wasn’t going to give her sauce anyway, as it is a little spicy and she is generally anti-sauce) and switched my order. He didn’t have to care, but he did.
Today we went to Staccato Gelato. XM has recently proclaimed her favorite color to be pink, so she made this proclamation at the gelato shop (”Look! Pink! My favorite color!”) and ordered the raspberry gelato (”I want that one!”). She was excited to see that they had a pink cup, but the cup for the child’s size serving was yellow, so I told her sorry, she was going to get a yellow cup. The guy working there offered to put her scoop in the bigger pink cup, and gave her a pink spoon as well. One awesome worker, one very happy girl.
June 9, 2008 at 11:39 am · Filed under Kids, Music
Guess who starts guitar lessons in a couple of weeks? Face paint is optional…
June 1, 2008 at 7:56 pm · Filed under Food
We went out to dinner with D’s bro and our sister-in-law last night to Biwa. Biwa is a little Japanese place that is in part of the building that used to be the concert space La Luna, where D and I saw many intimate, awesome shows by BNL. The space for Biwa is below street level, so you get an interesting view of the passing foot traffic.
Their sake selection is really nice (unfortunately I haven’t the faintest idea what we had). D got a flight of 3, while I stuck to one. They were all quite smooth and mild, but with distinct characteristics. We went through the menu a section at a time, starting with the long section of little plates to share. Several of the options are vegetarian or vegan, or can be altered to become so.
Round One, (fight!):
Chijimi - korean griddle cake (-octopus) & vegetable
Curry Korokke - curried potato croquette
Tofu Hotpot
Tsukemono - japanese pickles
Grilled Rice Ball
Verdict: Wow. Super delicious. I’m determined to master the grilled rice ball (though theirs were more of a grilled rice triangle). It was so fun to get a bunch of little things and have enough for us all to try and enjoy.
Round two - Yakimono (grilled skewered foods):
Garlic
Asparagus
Tofu dengaku
Fava bean
The food was so simple and well seasoned and beautiful. The garlic, oh the garlic. Perfectly caramelized but still firm. So wonderful. After this set, we were full but not full, and we still wanted noodles. The bowl of ramen they accidentally delivered to our table was the size of a large stockpot, so we asked our waiter if we should order individual noodle dishes or share. He looked at us like he thought we were kind of crazy and said “at this point, you should probably share”.
Round Three, slurp!:
We ordered one bowl of the udon soup, and one plate of the chilled udon. The soup was nice, the broth was fairly plain (we ordered it veggie style) but the mile long noodles were tasty. The chilled salad, on the other hand, was perfection. Thick, long noodles tossed with green onions and sesame oil…our waiter was a liar, because we could have ordered many more plates of that and managed just fine. We opted to stop though, and save it for next time.
To re-cap: Biwa=nice atmosphere, decent service, amazing food, delicious beverages. O asked what we had for dinner, and after I told him everything he was dying to go. I think he really wants some grilled mushrooms, heaps of tofu, and his own plate of noodles.
