Weekend Evaluation: I'd Already Rather Be Bow Hunting

I've been working on prepping a lot of things for the freezer - this weekend was more sausages.  As is typical, I totally got depressed about all of the projects on Sunday night, and went into my typical bullshit routine of  'I'll never be good at anything if I can't do it that often...why do I spend 50 hours a week at work when I could be doing something I care about' - like I'm the only person to ever think that they don't care about their job.  I made my office-working bed, now I have to lie in it.  Besides everybody knows food service workers don't get paid anything.

At least the CSA is starting to pick up again in volume - and the farm gave some explanation about what happened this summer.  I guess they lost zucchini, eggplant, cucumbers, lettuce, and green bean crops to disease and drought.  Last year the rain ruined everything, now it was drought.

Weekend Evaluation: Summer's Greatest Hits

In my beer-centered calendar, once Oktoberfest starts, summer is officially over. We had Sauerbraten, choucroute garni, and speatzle for dinner, followed by beer and chocolates on Sunday night; safe to say summer is over.

It's ok - After this weekend I'm finally ready to move on - the corn is starting to look old, the eggplant are tasting a little bitter.

Weekend Evaluation: Do you know how much 15 pounds of ravoli costs?

Continued to get ready for winter - prepping tomatoes.  I gave up supermarket tomatoes after reading the article in gourmet about the near slave labor conditions in Florida; and this year I'm giving up on canned tomatoes (BPA); so I decided to freeze a bunch this year.

Weekend Wrap-Up (Sept 4-6 & Sept 11-12)

Lard Rendering and Tomatoes Dehydrating

Since it's still technically summer, we're still busy, so I'm combining two weekends into this one post.



Weekend Evaluation: This is the Largest Freezer I Could Afford

Depressing to think about, but I saw 4 brands of pumpkin beers show up at the supermarket this week.  First of all - the pumpkin beer thing is out of control, there are only like 3 that are any good and get the balance of squash and spice right - that's beside the point. 

It's too soon, I'm not ready for summer to end.

Now I have to make stock, render fat, can tomatoes...soon you won't be able to let the ingredients do all the work; you'll have to do something to make them better

At least it's not February, that's about as horrible as it gets; I'm fearing the winter, with all of the rutabega and potatoes that come with it.  It's nice when those are an option in the late fall and early winter - but it's not funny anymore after three months of root vegetables and winter squash.

I guess it's just time to get ready for winter, while cramming as much corn, zucchini, eggplant as possible in to my feed hole.  Soon we won't have the option until next July.

Airing of Greivences: Berkshire Brewing Company

We were in Cape Cod this past weekend; left after work on Friday, and came back on Sunday. 

So no new post; but as is the case when we go away we try to eat as many local foods and drink as many local beers as possible. 

So for Cape Cod we tried to eat all seafood and ice cream; and drank beer by Wachusett, Cape Cod, and Berkshire Brewing.  I think I had a Rock Art (VT) in there too....

At least we know now that New York isn't the only city with some mediocre (to bad) local craft beer - Berkshire was available at every package store; so I bought one, and then drank one on tap at a restaurant.

Both the Extra Pale (bottle conditioned) and the IPA (on tap) gave me a horrible headache and I couldn't finish them.  At least I can finish the Sixpoint beers, I just think they are all the same, and aren't close to the style they're supposed to be.