A cultured life

 

Today, as I was enjoying the sack lunch I usually bring with me to work, I pondered the expansion of one of my long time hobbies - puttering in the kitchen.  I have always enjoyed the whole process of preparing the food I eat, and for some of it, that involves the harnessing of beneficial microbes.  Most longstanding of these is the sourdough bread culture I have maintained for more than 20 years.  Most weekends, I bake two loaves of sourdough bread for use throughout the week in everything from sandwiches to croutons for soup and salads.  The venerable sourdough culture I have carried for decades contains a mix of bacteria and yeast whose metabolic activities produce the leavened bread that I have exclusively consumed for many years.  Home fermentation activities have not been restricted to bread: on a sporadic basis, I have fermented cabbage to make sauerkraut, and though I haven't brewed in some time, one of my earliest hobbies was making my own beer.  Beneficial microbes have always been welcomed in my kitchen!

More recently, I have expanded these cultural pursuits.  I revived a yogurt maker that I'd purchased several years ago, and I've turned out a few batches of very tasty homemade yogurt.  I've stepped up my sauerkraut production.  And just this week, I sampled my first batch of fermented dill pickles.  These are classic full-sour dill pickles in the best NYC deli tradition.  So with my home baked sourdough sandwich, I had a fermented pickle which was delicious.  I expect to expand fermentations even further after reading a book that I received yesterday, containing info and recipes to produce all manner of fermented produce and beverages.  About the only area of microbe-driven food production that I have not yet tried is making cheese.  Something to look forward to!

Stamp Out Hunger 2026

 Each year on the second Saturday in May, the US Postal Service, along with the National Association of Letter Carriers and local agencies, collect non-perishable food as part of their campaign to Stamp Out Hunger.  In my part of the world, this noble effort is joined by the United Way.  To do your part to help feed those in need, you can simply leave a container of non perishable food items at your mailbox on Saturday, May 9th.  Your donated items will be collected by your mail carrier and brought to local food banks for distribution.  The need for basic food items never goes away, and at this time of year when holiday donations have been depleted, any help is very welcome.  Collection day is one week away, so it's not too soon to gather some items to have ready for collection next Saturday.  Join me in this effort to make the world a little better place.

Bippity boppity bacon!

 I love bacon.  That is certainly not unique, but during the bacon craze of a few years ago, I really leaned into it.  It became a standing joke among family and friends that my bacon affliction was incurable.  References were often made to memes, novelty bacon themed products, and an endless stream of bacon-heavy recipes.  I can even recite from memory the entirety of Jim Gaffigan's bacon monolog.  In more recent times, my bacon ardor has cooled but not fully receded.  Alongside of all that goes my interest in history, and my attraction to author autographed books.  There is just something remarkable about a published book which has been physically touched by its author as they leave a personal inscription as a souvenir.  Try doing that with an audio book or a Kindle.  So when I recently learned that my local independent bookstore - which deals only in autographed books - was holding a book signing for a book devoted to the history and cultural significance of bacon, there was no way I could pass that up.

Yesterday afternoon, then, I was able to meet and briefly talk with Mark A. Johnson, a history professor who has recently published his latest book, American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon.  Initially a little surprised that there was a whole book in bacon, I recalled other similar books that explore society's complex relationships with individual food items, like cod, coffee, and salt.  Johnson's book was a multiyear effort involving scholarly research and disciplined formal writing.  In talking with him, I found similarities in our authorships:  his book was peer-reviewed, just as my papers are in scientific journals.  I suspect his research involved more delicious investigation than mine, however.  This was an early stop on a book publication tour that is just beginning as Johnson continues with appearances at academic and culinary institutions around the country.  I look forward to reading his new book and wish his every success.

Pizza Passport 2

 At long last, we recently made our second Pizza Passport visit.  This is the ongoing project to visit all the prominent pizzerias in the metro area and record our experiences in a handy little booklet that we received as a Christmas gift.  Our second stop on the pizza trail was a place we've been before: Pizza Grace.  Located on rustic (and cobblestone paved) Morris Avenue in central Birmingham, Pizza Grace has been attracting plaudits for several years.  The place changed owners last year, and since then things have changed slightly.  The menu is now a little more extensive.  In addition to the well-made Neapolitan pizza standards like the Margherita, they now offer a changing lineup of some interesting varieties.  Last summer I had a delicious pistachio and mortadella pizza.  But on this visit we shared the chorizo: romesco sauce, green olives, Manchego cheese, hot honey, and generous amounts of fresh oregano.  It was tremendous!  All pizzas are made with traditional sourdough fermented crust made in a process that takes many hours.  This sometimes forces an early closure of the restaurant when the day's allotment of ready dough is used up.  Be mindful of this, especially on popular Saturdays- late arrivals may miss out on the best Neapolitan pizza in the city.  A substantial menu of side dishes, desserts, and a healthy wine list finish out a memorable meal.  Service is friendly, efficient, and knowledgeable.  Decore is stylish in a mod/industrial sort of way.  The dessert offerings are wonderful, I'm sure, but one can do no better that walk next door to Cannella for authentic Italian gelato after your pizza.  We always do.

Passport score: 5 of 5.

Pizza Grace- chorizo pizza

Pizza Passport

 One interesting gift we received for Christmas was a Pizza Passport. (It was such a great idea, I bought one to give as a gift, and also received one from someone else.)  These are nifty little "passport" sized booklets made for a number of major US cities, listing the prominent independent pizzerias in the metro area.  For each restaurant, one can find basic information on location, history and specialty pizza, and after visiting, you can record and rate your experience.  So we have our project for the coming year!  Many of the places listed in the Birmingham passport are familiar to us.  A few are new to us.  One that is listed unfortunately closed permanently earlier last year.  And a couple we like are not listed; but the book has several blank pages to record those.

So we began the Great Pizza Journey of 2026 last night at Tortugas Homemade Pizza of Hoover, Alabama (there is a second location on southside Birmingham).  This is a venerable old shop we've visited before, but not for many years.  It is the area's only pizzeria devoted to Chicago-style deep dish pizza.  It was founded in 1999 by Carlos Vizcaino, an immigrant from Ecuador with ties to Chicagoland.  Inside the shop are many Chicago flavored wall decorations: newspaper clippings, photographs, sports jerseys, and the like.  Ambiance is bare-bones strip mall casual.  There is a generous amount of table seating in the two "wings" each side of the kitchen area, but on a Saturday night we saw the place fill quickly, with several waiting to be seated as we left.  When we arrived, we were quickly seated, but waited about 15 minutes to first be served.  Once our server finally arrived, things went smoothly.  We ordered drinks to enjoy during the advised 45 minute wait for our deep dish pizza to be baked. We ordered the passport's recommended pie, the Wrigleyville, with smoked sausage, Italian sausage, green bell peppers and onions. (Tortugas also does standard thin crust pizza which arrives much faster, based on what we could see of nearby patrons.)  Our pie was worth waiting for, as the server no doubt routinely assures impatient customers.  Light, crisp crunchy crust envelopes a generous amount of fillings, cheese, and sauce.  The sauce is tangy, with rich tomato flavor and a hint of herbs.  Knife and forks, and a sufficient amount of napkins are provided to enjoy this hearty pizza, a worthy example of the Chicago style.  It was indeed worth the wait.

Passport score: 4 of 5

Tortugas of Hoover, Alabama

Casual, with Chicagoland memorabilia everywhere

The Wrigleyville pizza

Potato Bread

 

Today begins the project I mentioned earlier, to bake every recipe in a cookbook entirely devoted to bread recipes.  I was up early this morning, and after setting my clocks back one hour, started baking Potato Bread instead of my customary weekly sourdough.  This was a fairly simple recipe to make basic white bread to which is added boiled potatoes.  The potatoes and starchy water from their cooking are used in the recipe to make an especially moist, tender bread.  Nice mild flavor and good body.  Not especially crusty, so it will make sandwiches any school child will eat.  I haven't decided on what I will bake next- I don't intend to follow any strict order as I sample each recipe in the book.  But perhaps something with a little more flavor.  A link to the recipe:

Potato Bread

Bread of Life

 I was rummaging through my very sizable collection of cookbooks the other day and came across one that has been in my library for decades.  I'm not sure how long, since it seems to pre-date my efforts in systematic book cataloging via nifty software that I began well over a decade ago.  I'm certain I've had this book for at least 20 years; its copyright date is 1995, so it may be even longer.  Anyway, I struck upon the idea of using this book as a sort of Julie and Julia project.  For those who may not have seen the 2009 film, a young food enthusiast documents her efforts to cook every dish in the cookbook of famous French food chef Julia Child.  It's a long and sometimes arduous journey, and the film based on it was quite entertaining.

As an enthusiastic baker, what if I tried the same sort of project?  While I have been assiduously baking for 30 years, I am completely self-taught.  Therefore, I can't claim to be skillful, or even significantly knowledgeable about a domain of cooking to which professionals can devote a lifetime.  However, I can read and learn, and have a certain amount of experience that I've accumulated over the years.  So, I set as my goal the project of making every recipe in this book, The Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking, by the late Brother Rick Curry, S.J.  As a scientist and a hobbyist baker, what better endeavor?  Experiments that I can eat!  Brother Curry was perhaps slightly disadvantaged as a baker, since he had only one arm.  But he certainly had much baking knowledge to impart to me and my two arms.  I look forward to the adventure.  Stay tuned!

Knights and Dragons

 Today was the day that is the real focus of our trip: the football game between the Army Black Knights and the UAB Blazers.  The group of about 60 UAB fans made the journey from Birmingham to the US Military Academy at West Point NY to watch the game at Michie Stadium.  Our day began just after 7 am as we met in the lobby of the Knickerbocker Hotel for the bus ride to Pier 11 at the tip of Manhattan.  There, we boarded a Sea Streak ferry for the two hour ride up the Hudson River to West Point.  The ferry ride on the perfect cloudless day provided incredible views of the city of New York as well as the countryside upstate.  The fast catamaran vessel carried us swiftly up river with a comfortable but very breezy ride.

We arrived at West Point, and after a brief shuttle from the dock, sat in our seats in the stadium. A good hometown crowd turned out to watch their team, while we Blazer fans attempted to support the team in spite of our small numbers.  And the dismal play of the team.  UAB football had been on the upswing in recent years, with multiple postseason bowl appearances and a conference championship.  But after the sudden unexpected retirement of beloved head coach Bill Clark due to health problems, the team has been quickly dismantled.  Clark was replaced by Trent Dilfer, a Superbowl winning NFL quarterback with no previous college coaching experience.  The risky pick has not paid off as Dilfer has shown no coaching ability in the past two seasons as the Blazers have descended into ineptitude.  Most fans devoutly hope for a coaching change at the end of the season, if not before.  So it was no surprise that Army beat UAB 44-10.  Still, the experience was a memorable one, being my first visit to one of America's military academies.

After the game, our group returned to The Knick by bus.  A small group of us then set out walking across Times Square to Junior's, a well known restaurant.  Initially dubious about visiting what I assumed was just an overpriced tourist trap, I was pleasantly surprised by the whole visit.  We were able to get a table with only a very short wait, the food was impressively good, and the service was superb.  Junior's is most famous for their cheesecake, and it did not disappoint.  I recommend the reuben and French onion soup.  After dinner, we made our way through the raucous Times Square crowds one last time for our last night at The Knick.  Tomorrow, the journey home to Birmingham.

Our Town

 On the second day in NYC, we begin with a familiar routine.  Our first stop was The Strand Bookstore, near Union Square.  This place has long been a favorite shopping spot during all our NY trips.  A large part of our house is filled with books from The Strand.  So we paid another visit and were not disappointed.  The place has changed a little inside, and now includes a small coffee bar in the back.  We perused the stacks for over an hour, and came away with some new books and a stack of postcards I will be soon sending to Postcrossing members around the world.

We walked around the farmer's market set up in Union Square for a while, enjoying the beautiful day before then going to nearby Ribalta, a Neapolitan pizza joint we've come to love.  The wood fired oven pizza can't be beat, and we enjoyed an elegant and delicious lunch.  I strongly recommend the Brigante pizza with spicy oil and salami.  Superb!

From there, a stop at the St. Regis Hotel, where the famed King Cole Bar has just re-opened after a long period of renovation.  At this bar, it is said the original Bloody Mary was invented, though they call it the Red Snapper.  We ordered one, and so this trip included a martini and Bloody Mary at the places where they originated.

Back to The Knickerbocker to freshen up before we headed out through Times Square to the Ethel Barrymore Theater to watch the revival of Thornton Wilder's classic play Our Town.  Opening night for the play was the previous evening, so we'd just read the glowing review of the familiar play.  Familiar, because in the 1970s, my father, a high school teacher, and my mother played Mr. and Mrs. Webb in the high school's student-faculty production of Our Town.  In this Broadway version, their parts were played by Richard Thomas (John-Boy, from The Waltons) and Katie Holmes (ex-wife of Tom Cruise).  The lead role of the play, the Stage Manager, was played by Jim Parsons (from Big Bang Theory).  The show was a triumph, and I enjoyed watching the examination of human mortality as presented via small town New Hampshire life.  A very memorable evening!  But then it was time to head back to our hotel, as tomorrow will be an early start.

#winasone

 The day eagerly anticipated in the Deep South is here at last: College Football Season is fully here.  Sure, there was a "Week 0" game last weekend in Dublin, Ireland.  But with the kickoff tonight of the UAB Blazers vs Alcorn State Braves at Protective Stadium, the season is officially underway.  Second year head coach Trent Dilfer expects an improved Blazer defense this year to support the impressive offense led by quarterback Jacob Zeno.  On a warm late summer evening, the Blazers will work towards getting the season off to a strong start.  While I certainly hope for a good result from the Blazers, I also am looking forward to one of life's guilty pleasures:  stadium food. 

Addendum: UAB won, 41-3. Go Blazers!

Happy Fries Day

 It's Friday, and it's also National French Fry Day.  Maybe.  There seems to be some dispute whether the important day is today or tomorrow.  Either way, it's an appropriate day to enjoy one of my favorite foods.  Commonly thought of as originating in Belgium, fried potato strips are now ubiquitous and found in some form world wide.  They are the most common accompaniment to fast food burgers, chicken and fish.  But they are a suitable match to a good steak.  Among fast food chains, McDonald's is generally acknowledged as virtually the best fry maker.  But when made at home with the appropriate double fry technique, these tasty morsels can't be equaled.  I prefer thin, straight cut fries.  But crinkle cut or even curly fries are tremendous.  Sometimes even waffle fries.  Who am I kidding?  I've rarely met a french fry I didn't like.  And save that ketchup for something else- all a good fry needs is a simple sprinkle of salt.  So however you enjoy your fries/frites/chips, don't let today (or tomorrow) go by without enjoying some fried spuds in your favorite form.

Eat local, drink local

Often, in the throes of despair over Alabama's well-deserved abysmal reputation, notably in her universally incompetent and corrupt politicians, I console myself in my home state's finer qualities.  Primarily as an unsurpassed destination for food and drink.  Perhaps unknown to the wider nation, The Heart of Dixie is a gustatory mecca worth writing home (or blog posts) about.  So on Friday after a long week of work in the laboratory, I stopped to pick up some local products to enjoy through the weekend.

What I brought home is a result of remarkable changes in the state over the last few years.  I first stopped at Beer Hog, a bar and package store offering over 60 beers on tap, and many more in packages.  The very presence of the store would have been unthinkable a few years ago.  But back in the mid 1990s, a grass roots group called Free the Hops sought to change Alabama's restrictive alcohol laws which limited the alcohol content (ABV) of beer to such low levels many quality beers were prohibited from sale statewide.  It was slow going at first, as the young activists climbed a steep learning curve while tackling the forces arrayed against them.  They fought not only sanctimonious Baptist state legislators, but big-business beer distributors who saw any change as a threat to their comfortable business monopolies.  In the end, after repeated attempts, Free the Hops succeeded in changing the laws to allow "high gravity" beers, and the beer landscape in Alabama was instantly changed for the better.  With growing momentum and legislative prowess, Free the Hops went on to change restrictive state laws to make it easier for small craft brewers to set up operations.  And then, that their products might be more easily distributed.  So when I came home from Beer Hog with two growlers, or fill-to-order containers, of locally produced craft beer, I was enjoying the efforts of years of activism by my fellow beer aficionados.  On Friday, I selected Chill Pils, from Straight To Ale, a craft brewer in Huntsville, and Snake Handler from Good People, one of the older brewers in Birmingham and the state.  That latter is a mind-blowingly potent double IPA, which I've long said is the best beer made in Alabama.  Too, earlier in the week I enjoyed beer at small local brew pubs very near my house:  Oversoul Brewing in Helena, and Siluria in nearby Alabaster.  Both offer superb products and it's awesome they are so close to home.  All this is only possible because of the activists with vision, and the small business owners with the determination to build their reputations with excellent products.

Along with my cold brew, I've been enjoying some boiled peanuts from Alabama Peanut Company in downtown Birmingham.  This is another amazing small business success story.  Alabama Peanut has long been a fixture of the heart of the Birmingham business district.  But in the early lockdown days of the Covid pandemic when the surrounding office buildings went vacant, the business faced a dire future.  Fortunately, the owners turned to innovative means to keep the business afloat.  Among other things, they offered free direct deliveries of their products to different regions of the metro area on a rotating basis.  This is when I became a devoted fan of boiled peanuts, as containers of fresh, still-warm goobers would be dropped off at my front door - even though I lived in a distant suburb, many miles from the shop.  When normality eventually returned to life in the city, Alabama Peanut continued to innovate.  Today, the shop has been remodeled from its spare, industrial warehouse look into a warm and inviting snack bar... with a liquor license!  One can now stop in and order a cold beer to go along with one's flight of flavored peanuts.  Superb!  As far as boiled peanuts go, they may be a little off-putting to the uninitiated.  But I've grown to appreciate the vast, seemingly endless variety of flavors that they can be infused with.  Alabama Peanut offers a couple different flavors each day, and on Friday I came home with a tub of delicious sauerkraut and Conecuh boiled peanuts.  (Conecuh is a famous smoked sausage made in Alabama.)  On a warm sunny Sunday afternoon, hot peanuts and cold beer is an unbeatable combination!

So while my home state continues to reap national scorn and mocking from its clownish US senators, I can at least proudly enjoy delicious locally produced snacks!

Dark and stormy night

 An early morning thunderstorm has left much of central Alabama without power. But a gas stove and a moka pot (and a hand cranked coffee grinder) means life can go on. Here’s to Alabama Power crews as they work on a Memorial Day holiday to set things right. 

Lend a can

 Every second Saturday of May, the US Postal Service and the National Association of Letter Carriers cooperate to support the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, the largest food drive in the nation.  All postal customers can participate by leaving a few non-perishable food items out at their mailbox for their regular postal carrier to collect.  The day of the drive this year will be tomorrow - Saturday, May 11, 2024.  So make an effort to help the 1 in 10 Americans who struggle with hunger.  It's simple to leave a can of food, a box of pasta, or a package of crackers or cookies out for your postal carrier, who will collect it.  The gathered food is then sorted and distributed by local food banks, so you will be helping your neighbors in need.  I will be leaving a bag of food out at the mailbox tomorrow for Shannon, our hard-working carrier.  I hope you'll join me!

Taste of the Masters

 I'm not much of a golf fan, but when I was invited to a Masters Golf Tournament party this past Sunday, I couldn't pass up the chance.  You see, the party would feature a Taste of the Masters kit, which features all the traditional fare from the actual golf course food kiosks over at Augusta National Golf Club.  It is a famously quaint feature of these food vendors that their prices have not increased in decades.  So the tournament spectators this weekend (they are pointedly called "patrons" by the club) could nibble on a Southern classic pimento cheese sandwich for just $1.50.  Astonishingly inexpensive, as major sporting event venues go, these days.  So while I tackled my steep golf learning curve, I nibbled on delicious sandwiches, caramel corn, and potato chips, just as the patrons at Amen Corner were doing on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Cut the cheese

 Despite a dismal reputation (well deserved, in certain respects), Alabama and Birmingham still can boast some admirable qualities.  The city, in fact, is a premiere foodie city.  Many great and award winning restaurants.  A vibrant and growing craft beer community.  And many purveyors of fine food provisions.  A relatively new member of the latter community is Son of a Butcher, a luxury meat, fish and cheese shop.  It was here that I bought a delicious beef tenderloin for a Beef Wellington for dinner last Christmas.  I often stop in to pick up treats from their small but excellently curated cheese selection.  With a dedicated cheese monger on site, one can usually find high quality cheese there that arrive from around the world.  In fact, it is one of the only places in town that I can get some of my favorite- authentic English Stilton.  So in this spirit, SOB last night held one of their regular Parmesan Reggiano cheese crackings.  They do this every couple of months with a new 90 pound wheel of the "King of Cheese".  The wheel opened last night was particularly rare- one of only 100 wheels made each year by the particular Italian cheese maker, and this wheel was one of only six that made it to the USA this year.  Attended with wine, bread, charcuterie and olive oil tastings, the cheese was opened, and generous tasting samples were provided.  A large crowd attended, and one had to be patient to finally obtain a wedge of the precious cheese to purchase.  But I ultimately did, and hurried home in the cold, rainy night with my small block of concentrated Italian goodness.  Thank you to SOB, and the cows of Italy for the tasty treat!

Bloom day

 This post has nothing to do with the writer James Joyce, but instead marks the first appearance of flowers on my cherry tomato plants, planted 44 days ago. The Aerogarden Bounty has been bubbling along, and now the Mega Cherry Tomatoes have set their first blooms.  I've already made a pass with my "Be the Bee" pollinator, which is a plastic wand with a vibrating bee-shaped brush on the end.  This shakes pollen free in the flowers and allows the tomato blooms to self-pollinate.  With a little more patience, I should be soon enjoying fresh, home-grown tomatoes.

National Pizza Month finale

 As October winds down and National Pizza Month draws to a close, I add one more entry to the previous pizza posts of the month.  I save the best for last: my own homemade-from-scratch pizza.  Using a recipe for beer crust that I've honed over the years, and toppings that I've selected from long experience, I made my own extra Supreme pizza.  With a traditional tomato sauce base and generous amounts of whole milk mozzarella on the hand-tossed crust, I added hot Italian sausage, bacon, pepperoni, bell peppers, ring peppers, and olives.  The result is a flavorful and robust pizza that rivals any of the store-bought pies I've sampled this month.  Happy National Pizza Month!

Homemade: Supreme pizza

Constant Gardener 2

 It was 24 days ago that I began the current crop in my Aerogarden Bounty grower.  As of today, the Mega Cherry Tomatoes are flourishing.  I've done the first pruning, so that they will grow dense and compact for maximum yield.  First harvest of tomatoes still a little more than two months away, meaning I should be enjoying fresh vegetables in January, the depths of winter.

Freezer archeology- pandemic edition

 It seems so long ago now, but when the worldwide Covid pandemic was just beginning, supply chains shut down and panic buying set in.  Remember fruitless searches for toilet paper?  In those early days, my favorite local grocery store got cleaned out pretty quickly and remained so for months.  Paper product, dairy items, and fresh meat and poultry were scarce, if not impossible to find.  About all one could purchase in the meat category was some pre-packaged items that had been overlooked by the rampaging masses.  That's how I came to buy a package of Gaspar's Linguica, a funky odd Portuguese smoked sausage that I had never noticed before.  Surely I could use it in some recipe while awaiting the return of fresh meat.  As things developed, the Linguica went into the freezer and was forgotten.  Until this weekend, when I made a concerted effort to organize the freezer chaos.  It was then that I found the neglected sausage that had an expiration date of 2020.  But as it was vacuum packed in heavy plastic, I took my chances and used it in one of my usual dishes- red beans and rice.

As an adopted son of the south, I may risk my membership card by mentioning that most of my best recipes come from that Yankee outfit, the New York Times. For example, I struggled for years to produce an acceptable buttermilk biscuit.  The famed Southern Living Magazine was no help, nor were other local sources.  Only when I tried this recipe from the Times did I reach buttermilk nirvana.  It's been my standard ever since.  Similarly, my recipe for red beans and rice comes not from New Orleans, but from New York.  This weekend's batch turned out delicious, even with pandemic-era sausage.

Red beans and rice