Monthly Archives: October 2015

Five (Unexpected!) Chicago Places I Miss

Chicago is too massive for me to wrap my brain around. I lived here nearly eight years and I barely scratched the surface of it. Like many residents of any town, I settled into my routines and barely got out of them. I thought maybe I had a lifetime to figure this city out. And now I only have the occasional visit…

As excited as I am to choose my own PDX adventure (or do I want to take the Rose City path!?!?!), I can’t deny I miss Chicago deeply. And as I’m visiting for the first time, I’ve been replaying so many things I miss, and I realized there’s an important category I’d like to share.

Places I Regret Not Visiting More

MANA Food Bar

MANA has fabulous food.… Continue reading →

Almost Famous! (Sorta.)

GUYS! GUYS!!

So, I moved recently. As you all know very, very well. And thus, I kind of forgot I’d been on a tasting panel for All About Beer magazine back in August. (Please note, that link is kinda sad.)

ANYWAY! I was reminded of this when Lisa, whom I’d met and liked a lot while I was at BBC 2015, mentioned the most recent All About Beer magazine is something like a mini BBC reunion.

So, I went hunting. And it took me a bit more searching than expected but, of course, I found it at Powell’s.

And finding myself in the pages was as much fun as I’d hoped. Especially in the “Taste” section, which you can all guess is a word I love being associated with.… Continue reading →

Five Links to Start Your Week Off Thoughtfully

“Most farm technologies increase yields by a few percentage points. When you start talking about tripling yields over large expanses of land, then you are talking about a major improvement…” Triple. For small farms in Kenya. Triple the yields. All by planting a few plants to deal with some of your pests. Plants which, serendipitously, fix nitrogen as well.

Clean up your act, Chicago! This is actually a pretty upsetting reality in an industry a lot of us participate in, but is also a bit hidden from us. There’s a stark racial divide in who makes money in restaurants. There’s also a pretty impressive gender divide, though the racial divide is more dramatic. It definitely indicates white men make, by far, the bulk of the money in working in restaurants.… Continue reading →

How to Salvage a Quiche When Everything is Going to Hell

All I wanted was quiche for my Certified Cicerone exam day breakfast.

I love quiche, but like my good friend Marielle, I usually default to frittata. In fact, a draft post on this very blog that I haven’t been able to make come together is about frittata.

But, in truth, while I make frittata regularly, quiche is the “egg pie” I actually want to be eating. Why? Because it’s custardy! It’s delicious! It HAS CRUST! So, sometimes even when I’m not up to making pie crust (and, trust me, my skills are mediocre currently1), I make quiche. By buying pie crust.

The bad news is it’s been impossible (so far) for me to find in PDX the deep dish pie crusts I prefer for quiche.… Continue reading →

The Session 105: The Quick and the Lively

The Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, is an opportunity once a month for beer bloggers from around the world to get together and write from their own unique perspective on a single topic.

Has “The Sessions” run it’s course & is beer blogging over? Is it wanky?

I mean, let’s not lie. Beer blogging is often wanky. But it’s often not, and it doesn’t have to be.

As a group, we beer bloggers have a tendency to get fairly deep in our navel-gazing. We talk beer reviews, we talk brewing, and we talk rare beers. And there’s not a damn thing wrong with that, until it becomes the only thing we talk about.

But when we step out of our comfort zones of flavor and rarity and “here’s what I made” and into harder topics, it becomes more.… Continue reading →