Beer of the Week

Boont Amber Ale
ND Kilmer
Boont Amber Ale, created by Anderson Valley Brewing Company is very unknown to these two young gents. It is brewed in Boonville California in Mendocino County. No one knows where that is. Maybe it's the origin of calling the middle of no where "the boonies"? No one knows that either. Also no one knows where this came from, it just appeared in our fridge after a weekend with both Dan and myself missing from the house. All I can say at this point is that the bottle has a very ideal looking scenes of snowy mountains behind rolling green hills with a crystal blue river complete with what looks like a bearmoose hybrid sipping the water in the foreground. So many unknowns, so with no expectations lets dive into our glass of malt and hops.

A
Dan: If Professor Oak were a beer he would be this color.
Ben: I'll pass, oh well why not. It looks like beer. It is a pleasant color.
Noah: It looks like the fake wood siding on a car.

S
Dan: That smells good. Hops.
Ben: That smells hoppy.
Noah: Smells stronger than normal beer.

T
Dan: It tastes really watered down. Like an IPA that's been mixed with water.
Ben: Almost a honey taste, but it is so watery. It feels like it should be thicker than it is, but it's not.
Noah: Leaves much to be desired in taste. Leaves no flavor in the back of my throat.

O
Dan: Weak like the Ukraine. 6, good party beer, high shotgunability.
Ben: 8 divided by 2 so 4, I felt like it was half the beer it could have been.
Noah: Taste is all I really care about and it wasn't great. Probably 45 degrees and cloudy.

Krunkability: 5.8% ABV/$10.99 Per 6 pack=.5277525502 another very low beer. Maybe Dan is wrong about the partyability of this brew.* At least we answered one of our questions this evening: the boonies is short for the boondocks!








*Dan's note: I meant that it was easy to drink.

Experiments in Food Justice, Vol. 2: Sun-dried Tomatoes

Hello, friends of the movement!

Today's story begins with a really great thing turning horribly wrong.

Fay has a pretty nifty internship at WORKS (Women Organizing Resources, Knowledge & Services). Sometimes, they send her home with big bushels of vegetables, which is really great, because then we get to eat them without ever paying a cent.

One week, Fay came home with a gigantic flat of cherry tomatoes. And at first, it was good. We were very excited to have all these tomatoes, and we were thinking of all the amazing things we could do with them. But then we realized how many tomatoes we really had on our hands, and, well, we were a bit overwhelmed. There were, like, five pounds of tomatoes. Ten pounds of tomatoes. Maybe even fifteen pounds of tomatoes, but probably not.

We tried to use them in a lot of delicious dishes, such as salads, and a pretty fantastic fresh tomato sauce made by yours truly. But there were just too many. Due to lack of space in our little kitchen, we had the flat on top of the fridge, and every time we pulled it out, a swarm of fruit flies went zooming around. Tomatoes were going bad, turning to mush. Things were getting really ugly.

Then, a miracle. Noah "Got-Arrested-In-A-Bank-Protest-Maybe-You-Recognize-Him-From-The-Cover-Of-The-Oxy-Weekly-Or-CNN" Donnell-Kilmer came up with the clearly genius plan of SUN-DRYING the tomatoes.

While he never actually explained the mechanics of it to me, my impression is that the process was pretty simple. He halved the tomatoes, laying them out on baking trays, open side up. He threw some oregano and salt on those things, to make them extra tangy and tasty. The recipe apparently called for cheese-cloth to keep the bugs off, but Noah, the inventive madman that he is, made do with coffee filters. Then he set them outside in the sun, to dry. You know, sun-drying.



After a few days of diligently moving those trays to follow the sun over the course of the day, Noah had himself a batch of certified, grade A sun-dried tomatoes! We still haven't quite wrapped our minds around the possibilities of what we can make with them, but needless to say, we're excited.