FoodBuzz 24, 24, 24: 3-Course Beer-Paired Winter Meal, 100% Local, Sustainable and Grass-Fed

As part of their monthly 24, 24, 24 series, FoodBuzz took me up on my challenge to create a 3-course beer-paired meal entirely composed of ingredients from the state of Illinois or within 180 miles of Carbondale. This last week has been a whirlwind of people, farms, gardens and preparation as I tried to work within my parameters as closely as possible: no food of any kind unless

Emptying plates and full glasses--the sign of a successful meal

it was local, including staples like flour, salt, pepper, oils, milk, and sugar. I would either have to look for alternatives or go without. In the end that meant doing a balancing act between the two.

I could never have done it, though, without a lot of help, and without the generosity of locals who volunteered food from their backyards, and farmers who graciously let me into their farms; and not without suggestions from people who have been here longer than I have who could point me toward resources I didn’t even know existed. Below you can follow me along the trail I took to find all of my food, and below that are recipes for each dish, and where I got every single ingredient that went in it.

Where I went and what I found

My first stop was the Neighborhood Co-Op, which is a treasure trove of local foods. I picked up garlic, honey, Lick Creek beef, and eggs. The eggs were from Family Friendly Farm, and the discovery that the eggs were just an hour south of me in Cape Girardeau, MO, led me to the farm itself on Tuesday. There I met the farmer, and took a tour through the property, seeing where the chickens roamed, and where the cow pastures led out to long fields where they walk back and forth each day. I got a gallon of milk at the farm, and found two other things that would be an integral part of my meal: loaves of bread. One was from Green’s Garden. It was a loaf of “True Wheat Bread” made with freshly ground, chemical-free wheat. Although the wheat wasn’t grown on the farm, it was crushed there in nearby Patton, MO. The other was a bag of buns made from wheat grown in the backyard of Juan and Tammy, locals who also operate a Puerto Rican Carry Out business out of their kitchen in Cape Girardeau.

I had also just come back from a trip to the Ozarks and passed briefly through Ste. Genevieve on my way home. Ste. Gen is only about an hour to an hour and a half from Carbondale, and is nestled in a great farming region of Missouri. Besides the vineyards which are just south of city center, you can find Oberle Meats (from which I carried back bacon and sausage) and the wonderful Show Me Shop downtown, which has a variety of local foods and beers, and was where I found Charleville’s and Crown Valley Brewery’s beers, and a few other ingredients which are now stocking my cupboard.

In the meantime, I had a number of locals on a hunt for winter onions and canned or preserved tomatoes for my chili, and other local produce that might still be growing this deeply into the winter. One local, who also came to the dinner with his wife, was Shawn Connelly, my friend and the Beer Philosopher. Shawn put the word out via his social networking reaches to see if we could find local salt. I’m pretty sure that given a bit more time we could harvest some from the Saline River, but, unfortunately, given my constraints, I wasn’t able to try my hand at it. The salt search came up empty, but Shawn donated some of his homegrown magnum hops, which became part of dessert, and a surprise bottle of his home brewed apple cider, which paved the way from savory to sweet at the end of the meal.

Another local, Phil Habel, our other guest with his wife, still had beets growing in the garden, but, unfortunately, due to recent weather, the beets weren’t edible when they came out of the ground. So we had to forgo it.

However, Phil pointed me to many resources in St. Louis, one of which was J. Viviano & Sons, an Italian import store. Of course, I couldn’t use any of the vast and impressive selection of imports, but I could use their homemade ricotta. Here was one place where I was a bit loose with my working parameters. Although I wanted to be as local as possible, I’m not entirely sure where Viviano’s gets their milk, or other ingredients for the ricotta. However, they made the cheese in house, so I allowed it into the meal. With a bit more buttermilk from the homemade butter I made from Family Friendly’s milk, I could have made ricotta on my own, which I had been hoping to do. Without that buttermilk, however, I used Viviano’s.

On my trip to St. Louis I also went to a place that Phil recommended, as did Kimberly Henricks, co-leader of Slow Food St. Louis and voice of the Adventures in Eating Locally blog: Local Harvest Grocery. There I picked up hot sauce and local seasoning from the Ozarks, which ended up being a crucial ingredient in flavoring my first and second courses.

Jack's garlic beds

One of the main reasons for visiting St. Louis, however, was to meet Jack Petrovic, the gardening brains behind Schlafly’s Gardenworks. Jack offered me the last few things growing in his winter garden: salsify, sunchokes, and horseradish root. I was grateful to get all three, as they were the very few fresh vegetables in my meal. Jack took took me for a tour around the garden, showing me where the garlic was growing for the upcoming season, as well as parsley and the extensive trellises he built for the variety of tomatoes that he will grow. He also took me around the Bottleworks, and up to the roof where he keeps two hives of bees for honey. Chef Matt Bessler also came out to chat with me and give me suggestions about how what to do with salsify and sunchokes, neither of which I’d cooked before. At the Bottleworks, Matt has served sunchokes in roasted garlic soup. I may have attempted such a soup if I’d found salt, but instead they went into my main course with the braised pork. Jack and Matt are the heart and soul of the food at the Bottleworks, so for everyone who stops through the kitchen there, it is clear that they are in good hands. I had already gotten a bottle of Schlafly’s Biere de Garde at Kinding in southern Illinois, but while I was at the brewery I picked up some other bottles, one of which turned out to be a pair for my chili: Schlafly’s Irish-Style Extra Stout.

Salsify, sunchokes and horseradish, just out of the oven

While I’m on the subject of beer, let me mention my beer choices for the evening. It’s too much to ask to get beers here that are completely locally-produced (ingredients and yeast included), so I settled on just getting good beers that were brewed locally. I had been to Charleville in October this year, and really enjoyed the people there and the beer. When I decided to do this dinner, I knew that I would use one of their beers. Due to the flavors in my dishes and what I was limited to making food-wise, it turned out that two Schlafly beers, Charleville’s Half Wit, and my own recently brewed Belgian dubbel were the best options. Next time I think I’d like to get more homebrewers involved, and perhaps we can try revolving a dinner around one or two experimental beers made entirely of local ingredients (open fermented?).

Finally, on a hectic morning as I was beginning to prepare all of my dishes, I made my last trip out to pick up pork shoulder from Happy Hog Farm in Tamms–about half an hour south of Makanda, where I live. (You can conveniently get Happy Hog pork at the Co-Op.) Southern Illinois has an incredible wealth of meats, and the pork is just one of many, including bison and beef. Kevin Webb is the farmer who takes care of our pork at Happy Hog,  and it is obvious as soon as you set foot on the farm that his hogs are happy and healthy. Unlike some commercial hog farms, which inject junk into their hogs to fatten them over the course of about 5 and a half months, Kevin feeds his hogs patiently and naturally to grow them to the same size as commercially-produced ones–about 250 pounds–which takes almost three months longer. Kevin showed me all the hogs, including the babies, and told me a lot about the land where his family has had their farm since his grandparents owned it, even showing me artifacts left by native Americans who lived there years ago. When I visited Family Friendly Farm there was a constant din from the clucking of the chickens, but here at the hog farm there was a certain quietness over the deep pastures where the hogs eat and roam. You physically hold meat differently, more thoughtfully, more reflectively, when it is connected in your mind to a place like that.

The food

So began my morning of preparation. I had made a few things ahead of time: the pumpkin puree, the butter, and the custard, so all that was left was the chili, the braised pork and the ricotta toasts. It took about 6 comfortable hours. I did not use a pinch of salt, sugar, flour or a drop of cooking oil for this entire meal. I used rendered bacon fat as a cooking oil, which also added the umami flavor which I lacked from the salt. Honey doubled for sugar, and I picked recipes that didn’t require flour. Slow cooking the chili and pork made for concentrated and complex flavors. Here are my recipes for all 3 courses, and the welcome cordial, including where all of the ingredients are from, where I bought them, and notes about the beer pairing. Hope you enjoy drooling over it as much as I did making it and all 6 of us did eating it! Note that each dish serves exactly 6 people.

Welcome Cordial

Ricotta Toasts with Wildflower Honey served with Schlafly Biere de Garde

• 3 whole wheat buns (from Juan & Tammy’s Puerto Rican Carry Outs, purchased at Family Friendly Farm, Cape Girardeau, MO)
• 2 heads garlic (from Green Ridge Farm, purchased at the Neighborhood Co-Op, Carbondale, IL)
• 2 cups ricotta (from J. Viviano & Sons in St. Louis, MO)
• Bacon (from Oberle Meats, Ste. Genevieve, MO)
• Natural Herb Shaker (from Darn Hot Peppers, purchased from the Makanda Country Store in Makanda, IL)
• Freshly ground pepper (peppercorns from Darn Hot Peppers)
• Wildflower honey (from Master’s Touch, purchased at the Neighborhood Co-Op)

Fry a 1-inch slice of bacon fat in a pan until the juices emerge. Cut the tops off of both heads of garlic and drizzle the rendered bacon fat over the top (less than a quarter tsp each). Powder with chili seasoning, cover with foil, and bake in the oven at 400 degrees for 50 minutes. Take the garlic out and let cool for a few minutes.

Cut the buns in half and toast in the oven. Spread the garlic over the top (about two heads per toast), add a healthy dollop of ricotta, sprinkle with fresh ground pepper, and drizzle honey over the top. Serve warm.

The Schlafly Biere de Garde is a light but complex farmhouse ale. It is effervescent, fruity, has a bit of yeasty funk, and is a great beer for appetizers. I served a 750 mL bottle, in flutes when people arrived–perfect for 6. The flute helped concentrate aromas to the nose and was lovely against both the creaminess of the ricotta, the sweetness of the honey and the little bit of spice from the garlic and pepper.

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First Course

5-Hour Chili

• 2 lbs beef (from Lick Creek Beef, purchased at the Neighborhood Co-Op)
• 1/2 lb bacon (from Oberle Meats, Ste. Genevieve, MO)
• 1/4 tsp ground cayenne pepper (from Darn Hot Peppers)
• 2 tbsp Ozark seasoning (from Three Willows Farm, purchased at Local Harvest Grocery, St. Louis, MO)
• 3 tbsp seasoning from Darn Hot Peppers’ Natural Herb Shaker (from Darn Hot Peppers)
• 1/4 tsp of Arne’s Hot Pepper Sauce (from Arne’s Hot Peppers, Dogtown, MO, purchased at Local Harvest Grocery)
• 1 bottle Crown Valley Porter (purchased at the Show Me Shop, Ste. Genevieve, MO)
• 3/4 bottle Schlafly Coffee Stout (from Schlafly Bottleworks, St. Louis, MO)
• 1/2 cup water (tap)
• 6-inch horseradish root (from Schlafly Gardenworks, St. Louis, MO)
• 5 cloves minced garlic (from Green Ridge Farm)
• Grated cheddar cheese (from Ropp Jersey Cheese in Normal, IL, purchased from Kindling in Carterville)

Combine chili seasoning, cayenne pepper and Ozark seasoning in a bowl. Toast in a pan on medium heat, stirring so it doesn’t burn, for about 3-5 minutes. Set aside.

Cut bacon into chunks and fry in a large frying pan, until cooked and just starting to turn golden. Remove from pan and set aside. Brown beef in bacon juices until cooked through. Transfer to stockpot.

Add spices to beef in stockpot and cook for about 2-3 minutes, until spices are well distributed.

In the meantime, add garlic to pan and fry on medium for two minutes. Add 1 cup of Crown Valley Porter to deglaze the pan. Let boil for about two minutes, then transfer contents of pan to stockpot. Add 1 cup of Schlafly Coffee Stout, 1/2 cup of water, and hot pepper sauce, and bring to a boil. Once boiling, turn the heat to low, cover and let simmer for 2 hours.

While simmering, cut the fat from the bacon. Save the fat for another use. The remaining meat will be added to the chili after it has been simmering for one hour. At the same time, cut the horseradish root in half and add to simmering chili. At the two hour mark, remove the horseradish root, add another 1/2 cup of the Coffee Stout, mix, and allow to simmer uncovered for two more hours. At the four hour mark, cover again and let simmer for one more hour.

Serve with cheddar cheese.

I had hoped to get a smoked porter for this dish, so the Schlafly was a propitious last minute pairing. I considered pairing the coffee stout or Crown Valley Porter, but the coffee stout tasted too much of coffee and I only had one bottle left of the Crown Valley Porter, which went into my dish. The Extra Stout, however, was the perfect pair; it is a dry beer, but next to what ended up being quite a spicy chili, it was solid, toasty and malty, and even a bit smoky.  Because of the unavailability of tomatoes and onions this time of year, this chili has no tomatoes, onions (or beans, for that matter). It is thus a rather dark chili, especially since it cooks in dark beers, however it is extremely flavorful. I would recommend the Extra Stout with other chilis of this kind, although it might not be the right pair for a chili that relies more on acidic tomatoes.

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Second Course

Braised Pork with Salsify, Sunchokes and Pumpkin Puree served with Charleville Half Wit Wheat

• 4-5 lbs. pork shoulder (from Happy Hog Farm, Tamms, IL)
• Bacon fat (bacon from Oberle Meats)
• 6-8 whole sunchokes (from Schlafly Gardenworks)
• 4 whole salsify roots (from Schlafly Gardenworks)
• 12 inches horseradish root (from Schlafly Gardenworks)
• 12 oz. Charleville Half Wit Wheat (purchased from Show Me Shop)
• 2 tsp Ozark seasoning (from Three Willows Farm)
• 3 tsp natural herb shaker seasoning (from Darn Hot Peppers)
• 2 cups pumpkin (frozen from Lipe Orchards, Makanda, IL)
• 1 head roasted garlic (from Green Ridge Farm)
• 1/4 cup apple cider (from Schwartz cider, North Dix, IL, purchased from Neighborhood Co-Op)
• 2 tbsp wildflower honey (from Master’s Touch)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Trim excess fat off pork shoulder and set aside. Make a rub with Ozark seasoning and natural herb seasoning from Darn Hot Peppers. Pat the pork dry and rub seasoning onto meat. Let refrigerate anywhere from 2 to 24 hours.

In a Dutch oven, fry bacon fat on medium-high. Once juices start flowing, add reserved fat from pork shoulder. Try to get some of the rendered fat onto the sides of the Dutch oven. Once it is well coated, remove all of the fat, and add the shoulder ot the Dutch oven. Sear on all sides.

While searing, it is important that you peel and cut the salsify, and do so quickly. Salsify changes color the minute it is skinless and exposed to the air. Vinegar will help keep it from discoloring, but, as I had no vinegar, simply putting it in cold water for a very brief period of time is sufficient. Quickly peel the salsify and immerse in cold water. Once all four have been peeled, cut them into chunks any way you please. At this point the pork should be close to finished. Remove and set aside, and add the salsify to the Dutch oven. Cook covered for about ten minutes. Add garlic and cook another two minutes. Deglaze with Half Wit, scraping as much from the bottom of the Dutch oven as possible. Add sunchokes, and clear a space to put the pork shoulder back in with vegetables.

Cover and cook in oven for 2-2 1/2 hours. After 1 hour the salsify and sunchokes should be well cooked. Remove the vegetables from Dutch oven (but leave the garlic), and set aside.

Once pork is tender, set aside and continue to cook down the juices in the Dutch oven on the stove, until you form a gravy. The gravy won’t totally thicken without flour, but a little butter helps some (mine was made by hand from the cream of the milk from Family Friendly Farm). Cook on low for about an 30 minutes to an hour.

For the pumpkin puree, I used some pumpkin I had frozen in the fall, so I defrosted 2 cups. I roasted the garlic the same way I did for the ricotta toasts, and blended with the pumpkin, honey and cider in a food processor. Add more or less honey or cider depending on how flavorful the pumpkin you are using is.

Cut the pork shoulder into 6 servings, set alongside salsify, sunchokes and pumpkin puree, and drizzle gravy juices from Dutch oven over the top.

Charleville’s Half Wit is brewed with oranges and coriander, and is a lightly sweet and refreshing beer. The oranges and coriander are particularly nice when paired with sweet sunchokes and salsify (which has a flavor somewhere between parsnips and carrots), and pumpkin puree. I had remembered this beer more as a tripel than a light wheat beer–probably because I’d had the Tripel Wit on tap at the brewery–and a tripel would have been perfect for this meal. The Half Wit is a bit too light to stand up to an entree of slow-roasted pork (although that doesn’t discount it as a pair for an entree; it would be great with fish), so the Tripel Wit would have been the perfect pair for this meal. The flavors of orange and coriander were just right, though. This incredible pork needs absolutely no salt and would be fun to try again with the Tripel.

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Unexpected Interlude! Home brewed apple cider from the Beer Philosopher

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Dessert

Hop-Infused Custard served with The Jolly Monk: Belgian Dubbel Homebrew

• 6 hop flowers (courtesy the Beer Philosopher’s backyard)
• 1/4 cup honey (from Master’s Touch)
• 2 cups milk (from Family Friendly Farm)
• 1/4 tsp dried orange peel (from Darn Hot Peppers)
• 5 egg yolks (from Family Friendly Farm)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Whip egg yolks with honey. Make a bouquet garni with hops and dried orange peel. Place into saucepan with milk, and warm gently on low until hot but not boiling, about 20 minutes. Slowly add the milk to the egg and honey mixture, mixing constantly.

Pour mixture into 6 ramekins, and place ramekins into a baking dish, filling the dish with water so that it comes halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake in the oven for about 30-40 minutes. It will be done when the top is still a bit jiggly and a knife comes out clean. Refrigerate. Serve garnished with steeped hop flowers (but don’t eat the flowers!).

There are a couple of ways to freeze the custard. You can put the ramekins directly into the freezer, stirring them individually every half hour for an hour and a half; or, you can scoop the custard out of all of the ramekins, transfer it to a freezable container, and freeze for an hour and a half, stirring every half hour. For 6 people, I found this to be the most efficient way to freeze the custard. You can then scoop everything back into the clean ramekins when done freezing. Alternatively, you can bake the custard in a bigger dish, chill in the refrigerator, then put into the freezer.

This is a difficult dish to pair as it is very sweet and there aren’t many beers brewed locally that can stand up to the honey. Charleville’s barleywine would have been a nice complement, but I wanted to offer a third beer besides Charleville and Schlafly. It suddenly occurred to me that my Belgian was pretty sweet, and might offer a nice contrast to the honey in the custard. I wish it had been just a tad sweeter, but it was a nice finish to the meal. One person observed that the caramel flavor of the dubbel against the custard made the pair taste like creme brulee. Given that I’d tried to think of a way of making creme brulee possible, I took this as success!

Thanks so much to everyone who helped me make this dinner a reality, and thanks to my guinea pig guests. This was a real community effort, and I wish I could have invited everyone who contributed to the dinner over to try it.

Next time!

Neighborhood Co-Op: Comprehensive Local and Natural Foods for Carbondale

The first place I went after I resolved to know where all of my food came from–especially my meats–was the Neighborhood Co-Op. In the winter when the farmer’s markets are closed in southern Illinois, the Co-Op is the most comprehensive place to find locally produced and natural or organic foods around Carbondale.

I also wanted to go as a refresher, and as an education. If I wanted to put on a 3-course meal using entirely local ingredients, how much could I get and what could I get in town, before expanding my search and going out to local farms.

The Co-Op puts a tag on all foods that are grown or produced locally. On previous visits I had eyed those foods casually, but on my first trip back with renewed eyes, I was taking copious mental notes about what resources I really had within about 180 miles. Surprisingly, even in the winter, there is a lot. A partial list of some of those things includes:

• Honey
• Garlic
• Apple Cider
• Bread mixes
• Cookies
• Beef
• Pork
• Bison
• Eggs
• Frozen pizza
• Faux crab and breakfast sausage
• Hot sauces and salsa

If you stretch the local designation to include neighboring states in the Midwest like Wisconsin and Michigan, you will also find products like those from Near East, producer of couscous and rice.

The Co-Op works like many co-ops around the country. You can buy in for a one-time investment and become an “owner.” Your money goes directly into the store–essentially,  into the food you want. Many people agree to work either to pay for their ownership, or as a way of getting a greater discount on food, although you don’t have to. Some of the perks of being an owner are being able to return any product with which you are unsatisfied, owner buy sales, coupons, special discounts, participating in the election of your Co-Op board of directors and voting on bylaws regarding the store. It is, in fact, a highly democratic store, as everyone buys in at the same price ($100) and everybody’s vote is weighed the same. The food decisions are thus owned by all the owners, rather than invisible corporate forces.

By researching some of the companies I found at the Co-Op, I was also able to learn about other things that some of the farms who sold products there produced. For example, the Co-Op sells Family Friendly Farm Eggs, and this led me to discover that Family Friendly Farm also sells milk, chicken, and other items at their farm in Cape Girardeau. Because the buyers at the Co-Op do their research, you can feel good about the items that are for sale there, knowing that the food has already been through a vetting process. It’s a good place to start if you’re starting all over again, like I am.

I will be using Green Ridge Farm garlic and Master’s Touch honey, both of which I got at the Co-Op in my meal on Saturday. If I don’t have time to make it to the farm at Lick Creek for beef, I will easily be able to get it at the Co-Op, as well.

A day and a half an counting…

This is where my milk and eggs are from

Family Friendly Farm, Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Maybe because, as my aunt likes to say, “I come from a long line of Norwegian homesteading stock.” Maybe because our family farm is still operational, even if only at a fraction of what it once was.

Is this at the heart of a certain creative impulse?

How else to explain the pull toward the earth. The satisfaction in the smell of fresh baked bread and freshly trampled manure and knowing where your food is from in a deeply organic way. To look into the eye of your farmer, and the eye of the cow who gives you milk, and the chickens who give you eggs.

I can understand the impulse to be vegan, or to commit not to eating anything that “has a face.” In the one case, you don’t want to feel like you’re “using” your animals; in the other, you feel a repulsion at the reflexive recognition that animals are somehow closely related to you–that they have feelings like you do.

I can also understand the impulse to say a prayer before a meal. (Michael Pollan described this brilliantly when he described his epic hunt to kill a wild boar.) You are giving thanks to whatever impossible, invisible forces keep allowing you to live, and to the animal that has given you the sustenance that allows you to do just that. To the power (or impotence) of your bare hands. When living in certain proximity to these life forces you realize how tentative existence is and what great miracles of cyclical life continue without you, and yet allow you to live.

Today I took a trip to Family Friendly Farm, the farm in Cape Girardeau, Missouri (about 55 miles from Carbondale), which provides natural eggs to us in southern Illinois, and also provides fresh, raw milk and whole chickens (and gizzards) for those willing to make the short trek down.

I wanted to pick up milk for my dinner on Saturday and I wanted to take a tour of the farm, which owner Rachel Fasnacht was happy to provide.

Like any farm worth its salt, the chickens were free to roam uninhibited, except for the fences keeping them on the property, and the big white dogs keeping them in check (and keeping them safe from the predatory hawks which otherwise scooped up the chickens at the rate of one a day).

The cows were free as well and watched us pass back and forth over the grounds as we toured almost every square inch from the pastures to the long meadows where the animals walk back and forth.

When you look at sustainably-farmed animals (how sad that we need that designation), you feel an overwhelming sense of beauty in them. Their coats, their feathers, their muscles. It is merely a judgment based on impulse for the uninitiated, clearly. For someone like me who hasn’t been to a vast number of farms, comparing animals in each one, it’s impossible for me, purely on the basis of empirical comparison, to know the difference between a happy, grass-fed cow and one that’s been fed hormone-pumped grains or corn.

But there’s something you recognize anyway, unconsciously, in some portion of your brain that is attuned to the sublime necessity of musculature. Is it possible in some moment that you are a rooster, seeing a hen for the very first time, silently remarking on the smoothness of its plumage? The reddish gold of its mane? Promoting the species?

I am proud to say that I know where my eggs are from; that I’ve seen where they are laid and the chickens that do it. More than that, though, I feel a deep satisfaction in knowing it. In knowing who tends my food, who cares for my animals when I myself can’t do it. I am grateful; and grateful to make this farm–whether it be through their eggs, milk, or the bread made by neighboring farmers and their homegrown wheat nearby–a part of my Saturday evening dinner.

Beer and Food Challenge: 3-Course Winter Beer-Paired Meal Using 100% Local Ingredients

This dinner is a challenge. And one of the most difficult challenges for the winter, no less. It is the challenge to make a 3-course meal, paired with 3 local beers, from ingredients produced entirely in the state of Illinois, or a within a 180-mile radius of Carbondale (about a day’s drive, roundtrip). It is the challenge to create a gourmet meal using only the freshest, local, and seasonal produce available to me. And to make it taste good.

That means no flour unless it’s local. No salt unless it’s local. No pepper unless it’s local. Hey—like I said, it’s a challenge! We’ll see what can be done.

However, with honey produced locally, couscous from Chicago, a chile farm just 15 minutes from home, and local beef, pork, and bison produced on organic and sustainable farms, I am sure that I will uncover a feast.  And with all the microbreweries in nearby St. Louis and southeastern Missouri, I may be overwhelmed with choices.

Or, I may not find a thing (but beer).

As you know, the aim of my blog since I moved to Carbondale was to drink good beer in a region where there is a glut of mass-produced “big beer” in bars and liquor stores. After having lived in other cities around the country, and having tried a great number of the world’s best beers, my hope when I moved here was to make people aware of all the great beers out there, which I myself had drunk in the other places I had lived. Recently, after watching Food, Inc., I also decided to apply that ethic to food, resolving to do my part to research where my produce and meat came from, to buy seasonally, and to eat locally. This dinner would be the culmination of those two aims.

Due to the space constraints (and the admittedly experimental nature of this dinner), I am inviting 2 local southern Illinois couples to join my partner and me to see what we can come up with in a week of research and cooking. Recently, FoodBuzz, the online network of food bloggers, agreed to sponsor my dinner, which will be held at my home on January 23rd. By the end of the day on January 24^th I will give you a portrait of our meal together, including recipes and notes on where I obtained all of my ingredients; and, along the way this week, I will give you a peek into my journey to discover local resources in the region, hopefully making locals more aware of the resources they themselves can make use of here in southern Illinois.

There is no more difficult a time to do this than the winter when produce doesn’t grow as abundantly as it does later in the year, but also no better time to prove to people that even in the middle of a snow storm you can eat food that has been produced locally.

Drink good beer. Eat good food.

Farewell, Keg Fridge, I hardly knew ye

Well, we had a good run, didn’t we? Me and my 80s fridge that was transformed into a refrigerator for my keg. I get a little misty eyed thinking about my trip to St. Louis to pick it up, the research I did to find it in the first place. That mysterious shelf that appeared to be for Pac Man.

Yes we had a lot of fun, my little keg fridge and me. Turns out, however, that the loose gasket was just too much to deal with. And the freezing temperature inside which would periodically cycle above freezing, so I’d get an ice build up on the bottom of the fridge, which would unfreeze, and then leak out the door because the gasket wasn’t tight enough. Oh, I could wipe up the liquid everyday before it leaked out the door, and this was okay for my first keg, but my God, wipe up after it EVERY day? That’s almost as much work as having a child… And I still need to finish my dissertation! So I decided only one needy problem child at a time.

Now it’s empty again underneath our counter. No more cheesy Super 8 Motel feel. Now I have to find a new fridge that’s not too big to house my keg. And in the meantime, I bottle.

At least the last bit in the keg didn’t go to waste. Philosopher #2 and I poured it into a gallon bowl and sucked the rest of it down. You know, they make glasses this big in Germany.

Eat Good Food (This is not a New Year’s Resolution)

The Loing family farm, North Dakota. In my family for four generations. Photo: Carl Josephson

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. If you need a date to resolve to make yourself do something, you’re probably not going to permanently or successfully get yourself to do it. Resolutions–here’s a bit of philosophy for you (only a bit)–in Heidegger’s conception of them, happen spontaneously. Something about the way you interact with the world or other people in it is revealed to you in a moment (otherwise unscheduled) and you decide in that moment whether or not to take action on whatever has been revealed to you. If you do, that is resolution. If you don’t, well, you simply fall back into the kind of everyday complacency that marks all of our lives (even the best of us).

I think of myself as a conscientious eater. I shop at farmer’s markets, buy locally, choose organic, grass-fed, free-range meats. But, of course, as even the most conscientious people do, I only do this “as much as possible.” Which means that if I’m having a particularly tight month and I can’t afford the organic eggs, or if I want to make a dish that calls for avocados, or if it’s the middle of the winter and the farmer’s markets are closed, I will still buy outside of my ecosystem, so to speak.

Just before Christmas, Philosopher #2 and I watched Food, Inc. (We don’t, by the way, suggest doing this while eating a meal.) Even though I think of myself as conscientious, and even though I stay up to date about what’s happening in the world of food, and in the food industry (read this latest article from the New York Times about ammonia in mass-produced beef), the collective exposé on so many industries–corn, chicken, beef, pigs, etc.–made the movie particularly resonant. As I began telling people what an impact it had on me, I would hear similar stories from others. One person told me about a friend who was crying at the end of the movie because she’d just bought broccoli at a grocery store earlier that day. The movie makes you reconsider that much the extent to which you know where your food comes from.

And, if you’re like most people, you probably don’t know where your broccoli comes from.

Philosopher #2 and I both had a revelatory moment while watching Food, Inc. I felt like so many people must have felt upon reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle for the first time. It’s a piece of art so powerful it ripples through your vision of the world and makes you reconsider your place in it. You may be persuaded by Food, Inc., or you may not.  All I can say is that Philosopher #2 and I both resolved after it was over to radically change our eating habits.

What does it mean to radically change your eating habits?  After a week or two of serious consideration, for us it means starting slowly. It means discovering what our resources are, researching what the healthiest, most sustainable producers of meat and produce are locally, and re-investigating a lot of the companies that, once upon a time, we thought we could trust. It means remembering what foods are in season and when, and deciding not to buy avocados, or to buy them less frequently, and, at that, only to buy the ones grown in the United States. It means pausing over every single item we put in the shopping cart.

We decided to start with meat because it was one of the industries most exposed in the movie and we buy so little processed food in the first place (neither one of us eat at fast food restaurants or drink soda) that we didn’t have to cut out corn syrup or other junk with corn. We resolved to buy meat and produce only if we knew where it came from and only if the practices of the farmers raising it was ethical and sustainable, which for now in southern Illinois means eating Lick Creek beef, bison from Bison Bluff Farm, pork from Happy Hog farm, organic eggs from Family Friendly Farm in Cape Girardeau, and Amish poultry from northern Indiana which is apparently the only natural chicken available in Carbondale proper. (Although I recently discovered that you can order pasture-raised poultry from Family Friendly Farm, as long as you do so in advance.) These items are all available at our local natural/organic store, the Neighborhood Co-Op and some are also available at the Town Square Market.

Mark Bittman, the New York Times’s food writer, has suggested that he is an eat-less-meat-atarian. Some of his suggestions about how to eat less meat include simply scaling back to a healthy balance; putting meat back in its place on the food pyramid. I would add that meat hasn’t always been as accessible as it is today, and we’ve become used to the idea of getting it ubiquitously and inexpensively, i.e., unnaturally. If we were closer to the face-to-face culture of living-with and raising animals, of hunting and fishing and gathering and cultivating we probably wouldn’t take our meat for granted. What do you save when you pay for meat? You save the dirty work of producing it. That’s okay with me. What do you save when you pay less for meat? Only a few dollars; on the other hand, when you pay more for grass-fed, free-range, organic meats raised using ethical practices, you pay for natural and sustainable living. When you pay for the store-bought, mass-produced meat, your savings support the entire system you see at work in Food, Inc. (that is, cows that are moved by forklifts). What eating less meat means is that when you go to the store and you’re feeling your budget (I live below the poverty line so this is a regular occurrence for me) you don’t decide to get the cheaper chicken this time, you decide not to get chicken at all. And that’s okay. There are plenty of other, cheaper, healthier, more flavorful, and more sustainable choices–and they will likely even save you a buck or two.

I’m willing to do a lot to drink good beer, so I think it’s only natural that I do just as much to eat good food.

The hardest part won’t actually be the changes I make in produce or meat buying, but in cutting down on food miles. I am an inveterate traveler who has picked up the cuisines of so many other cultures over the years–buying imported ingredients will be the biggest addiction to break. On the other hand, the flavors from travel will be so much more piquant if they are no longer so easily accessible in my everyday life. And, of course, if one cuts down on food imports, one must also cut down on beer and liquor imports. I’m not totally sure I’m ready for that. But brewing at home is just about the greenest thing you can do, so I figure I must pick up a few food-mile points for that.

I don’t want to put grocery stores out of business. My aunts manage grocery stores and they are not malicious or unethical people. In fact, they are people who like food quite a bit–who go out of their way for good food. But theirs isn’t the power to change consumers’ buying habits, consumers have to affect that change themselves. When the demand is there the grocery powers that be will follow suit. It was revealing to see Wal-Mart change its buying practices in Food, Inc., purchasing organic yogurt for their shelves because their customers wanted it. Perhaps even more powerful than our vote is the power we wield when we decide where our money goes. It moves politics and food, and change happens a lot more quickly than a proposition can be written, signed, voted, passed, and enacted.

It just so happens that I’m writing this after the new year, but this is not a new year’s resolution. It’s simply a resolution I made for myself after a call of conscience that was revealed to me in a powerful movie. For those who haven’t seen it, you can rent Food, Inc., and stream it online through NetFlix, and visit the Food, Inc. website and blog.

Drink good beer. Eat good food.

Bottling the Belgian

When we left off last, I had just brewed my second batch of home brew, a Belgian dubbel, and it had been fermenting for three weeks. I was somewhat nervous about it, as the yeast had been sitting on my floor in a box for about 10 days (instead of in the refrigerator where it was supposed to be) before I pitched it into my brew.

All of that nervousness, however, seems to have come to naught as the beer fermented (albeit slowly) all the way to its final gravity at 6.0%.  That meant it was time to bottle.

My first brew was kegged. With difficulty. And not without spraying my house once (just once, everybody needs one good story) floor to ceiling with beer. But this time around I wanted to try to bottle; first, to see how it was done, and second to see how the Belgian would age.

After myriad horror stories about how awful it was to bottle and how much the cleaning made you want to spray hot wort into your eyes, I found the process–dare I say–ever so relaxing?  I did at one point in my life spend two years in a mail room rotely packing boxes and making copies of 500-page manuscripts, and this didn’t bother me, so it seems that I might have just the personality that would naturally agree with bottling 5 gallons of beer. (And I did, after all, filter 6 gallons of water through my Brita before boiling. Twice.)

Certainly, sanitizing was easy on this one:

And, Hallelujia, Dishwasher! How nice to make your acquaintance again. I must tell Brooklynites that your kind still exists.

I siphoned the beer from my carboy into the bottling bucket.

And then, in a move that once again made me a bit nervous, I abandoned the siphoning tube for the bottling, and poured directly from the spigot on the bucket into the bottle.

At this point in the process you’re not supposed to shake the beer up or let it splash around too much as oxidation is bad for it. The siphoning tube, presumably, is to help so that you don’t pour straight down into the bottom of the bottle from up top and cause the beer to oxidize. I thought the tube would get messy though, so I just poured the beer at an angle and kept my fingers crossed. I figured if you can pour a beer from the bottle into your glass at an angle and not get it all riled up, you can pour it from the bucket to your bottle at the same angle and it’ll be fine. Only time will tell if that was an idiotic assumption.

My only disappointment is that I had to leave about a gallon of the beer in the carboy. Is this normal?  It makes you feel a little sick to your stomach to see all that beer go down the drain. Some of it has yeasty gunk that you don’t want to get into your beer anyway, so you have to part with at least a portion of it, but I was sure I still could have salvaged a little more.  The only problem is that the blow-in siphon I use to blow pressure into the carboy and push the beer into the bottling bucket is only as powerful as my (and Philosopher #2’s lungs), and it turns out our lungs aren’t powerful enough to move that last gallon of beer.  Next time I’m on a mission to find a better system.

But in the meantime they’re bottled!

The Philosophers’ Pizza

As you know, I recently brewed my first batch of home brew, a light ale from an extract kit from Morebeer.com.

It turned out unexpectedly well, and we’ve been enjoying it over the last couple of months straight from our very own tap. (Not a tap in a kegerator, mind you, but my jerry-rigged mini fridge from the 80s that houses my keg and co2 tank.)

We’re finally getting to the end of the keg–I think I squeezed the last few drops out last night–but those final two pints did not go to waste, they accompanied the perfect pizza.

Now, I lived in Italy for a year and return periodically to visit friends, eat good food, and drink good wine and beer. I learned how to make pizza from my Abruzzese friends, starting from the dough, up. (Abruzzo, it is said, is the origin of Italian pizza.) Philosopher #2 is part Italian and grew up in New York, eating the likes of Totonno’s, Lombardi’s, Di Fara and Grimaldi’s. Combined, our pizza acumen is higher than our collective IQ.

I am a die-hard traditionalist when it comes to Italian food. These days I hardly ever set foot in an Italian restaurant unless I know for certain that the food is authentic (why bother?). Philosopher #2, on the other hand, grew up with an Italian-American culinary heritage, which is often ironically at odds with traditional Italian cuisine. But we both love pizza. So, we combined our brains and over the course of two years, we set to work refining what would become the perfect marriage of classic Italian pizza and the best of American innovation.  We call it the Philosophers’ Pizza.

A traditional margherita napoletana is extraordinarily simple. After letting the dough rise, you break a handful of San Marzano tomatoes over the top, slice a few large rounds of fresh mozzarella (bufala, if you prefer), drizzle olive oil on top and sprinkle with salt. Put it in a blistering wood-fired oven, drop fresh basil leaves over the top, then serve. Simple.

It took me a long time to break from this culinary ethic. In fact, it took the insistent threat that the pizza would simply not be eaten by my other half if we did not make a sauce, rather than utilizing straight tomatoes. Thus was born our margherita, made with a sauce, rather than whole-peeled tomatoes.

But I can’t say that I dislike the flavor of this pizza any less.  In fact, I like it just as much if not more than the traditional margherita. The Philosophers’ Pizza still has a light, thin crust, and utilizes San Marzanos, fresh basil, and not too much mozzarella. It may not be exactly traditional, but it has the rest of Italy, anyway, ed è buonissima.

Here, so you can build it from the ground up, is our recipe for the Philosophers’ Pizza. Plato would have loved it, and so should you.

__________________

Ingredients

Dough (for 4 pizzas)

• 4 cups flour
• 1 1/3 cup warm water
• 2 tsp active dry yeast
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• A pinch of sugar
• 1 tsp sea salt

Topping (for 1 pizza)

• 4 whole-peeled San Marzanos (these are likely only available as a portion of the 28 oz can)
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 tbsp chopped onion
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp pepper
• 1/8 tsp oregano
• 5 oz mozzarella
• 4-5 leaves fresh basil

Preparation

To make the dough, put yeast in warm water with a pinch of sugar to prime. Let stand for 5 minutes until small bubbles form. Add flour, oil and salt, and mix until the dough starts to stick together.  You’ll get that warm, gooey feel from the dough.  That’s good; that means it’s working.

On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough. I find that 10 minutes is enough for a light, thin crust. Put the dough in a large bowl, cover, and let sit for about 20-30 minutes, until it has doubled in size. The best part about pizza dough is that it can be frozen and saved for later use. One pizza will feed two people, so you can freeze as many of the extra as you need. If you are making 1 pizza, divide the dough into 4 quarters.  Save 1 and wrap the other 3 in Saran Wrap, put them in a Ziplock container, and put immediately into the freezer. Allow the 1 remaining ball to rise in a bowl again until it has doubled in size, about 2 hours.

Once the dough has risen, it’s time to start making the pizza.  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.  If you have a pizza stone (we use one), put it in the oven now. Drop the ball on a lightly floured surface, and with your fingers, lightly press down until you get a flat disc (see picture above, left).  Now, to get a nice, even, thin crust, place your fingers at the center of the pizza and press out slowly and symmetrically along an imaginary line. Rotate the dough 15 degrees and press out again.  Basically, you’re pushing the dough out evenly and radially to form a thin circle. Next, make your hands into fists and hang the dough over them (see picture above, right). Rotate the dough in a circle on your fists, pulling out slowly as you do so to stretch into a wider disc.

In the meantime, sweat your onion and garlic in a tbsp of olive oil over medium-high heat. Break 4 whole San Marzano tomatoes apart, include the juice in the pan, and add about 1 tbsp more of juice from the can.

Let the tomatoes cook down for about 5-7 minutes on medium heat.  Add salt, pepper and oregano, stirring every so often.  In the end, you shouldn’t have a lot of sauce, but enough to lightly cover the dough.

If you’re using a pizza stone, you’re probably putting the pizza on it with a pizza peel.  The best way to prevent the pizza from sticking to the peel is to cover the peel with flour. Try to get the flour into the cracks of the wood.

Transfer the dough to the peel and add the tomatoes.

Cut mozzarella into 1/8 inch slices and place over the top of the pizza.

Drizzle olive oil over the top. Transfer to pizza stone. (If not using a pizza stone, do the above steps on a baking sheet, and transfer sheet to oven.)

Cook for about 12-15 minutes, until the sides become golden brown and the mozzarella begins to look like a roasted marshmallow.

We have a basil plant in the house, but it’s gone for the winter so you don’t see it in this picture, but we learned from pizza master Dom DeMarco at Di Fara to cut the basil over the top right when it comes out. Just take a pair of scissors and cut strips of about 4 medium to big leaves. Then cut the pizza into 4 or 6 portions (we like 6), grate a little parmesan over the top and eccociqua:

Light ale on draught from my own tap and the perfect pizza–life doesn’t get any better.

Like this recipe? Help me get it into the Foodista Best of Food Blogs Cookbook by voting for it at Foodista!

Life and Beer on the Mississippi, Part 2

So there I was in the Missouri wilderness, waiting for a AAA tow truck, last seen only 5 minutes down the road by the husband of one of my new best friends, Owner #3 (of Owners #1-4), at the Charleville Winery and Brewery. It had been a couple of hours and I was desperate to get the jalopy towed back to Carbondale.

As Owner #3 and I were slicing a frozen pizza, suddenly, we heard a deep rumbling sound, like a large truck passing down the main road.

We darted out to the porch.  The noise stopped.  In the distance were headlights idling, pointed in the wrong direction.

“Hello!” cried Owner #3, her voice echoing through the wide, empty landscape.

No answer.

“Hello!” she cried again.

Suddenly, from afar, “Hey!”

“We’re over here!” she yelled back.  Lights that had been turned east, now flipped around, almost cartoonishly, and headed back west, back down the dark, dirt road and over to us at the winery.

“That’s amazing,” I said, as I grabbed my bag, taking mental notes for when I would tell the story in the future. Communication in the country.

As we walked briskly to the car, I was starting to feel sorry that our evening was being cut short.

“Next time you come out, spend the night,” Owner #3 concluded, reading my mind.  I agreed.

Headlights blazed up the drive as the car came to a stop in front of us.  We shielded our eyes as we walked up to meet the driver.

Two doors opened on the driver’s and passenger’s side.  All of a sudden a new thought occurred to me: I might not be alone with the tow truck driver on my drive back to Carbondale. Now, that was fine if it meant that a friend of mine was in the vehicle. But I wasn’t so sure if it were a friend of his.

Two young men stepped out of car.

“Hello—are you our saviors?” asked Owner #3.

“We are if ya wan’us tuh be,” said the driver, his curly hair flopping out from underneath his camo hunting cap.

Perfect. As he and the passenger came around to the hood of their truck, however, the headlights reflected around them, and it became obvious that they were just a couple of young twenty-somethings, not particularly well acquainted with the world, perhaps, but probably not murderers. Of course, as the light streamed around their silhouettes it came upon to two aluminum cans of, yes, you guessed it, Keystone Light.

“Are you drinking?” asked Owner #3.

“Oh, uh—yes ma’am,” replied the driver, and put the beer down on the hood—as if a laying down of swords. By now I was thoroughly convinced that no matter what happened, I was not getting in the car with them.

“What’s goin’ on with y’alls car?” asked the driver.

Owner #3 began to explain the story, pointing toward my brakes and gesticulating grandly about the trouble I’d been having. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I glanced back at the truck.  Suddenly, I realized that this wasn’t a tow truck—there was no bed, no hook, and I didn’t see a AAA oval anywhere. In fact, as I looked closely, I realized that this was just a regular pick up truck.

Owner #3 let the boys look at the car and came back to stand next to me. She looked at the truck for a second and her thoughts seemed to parallel mine.

“I’m not sure these guys are from AAA,” I said.

“You, uh, you boys aren’t from AAA, are you?” she called over to them.

“Oh, no ma’am,” the driver replied, straightening up to attention. “No ma’am, I just live down the road. I heard y’all yellin’ and I wanted to see what was going on.”

Immediately, Owner #3 recognized that the driver was the grandson of so-and-so, from the farm up the road, and started chatting away about his grandparents. Stalling, I was certain, in the hopes that the real AAA might appear in the meantime. She then proceeded to ask about all of the rest of his extended family. I was beginning to think that perhaps I was living some forgotten chapter of Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi.

“Well fortunately,” the driver continued, finally, nodding back toward my car, “I’m a mechanic. I got my tools in the back.”

“Yeah, he’s a mechanic,” echoed the passenger—the only words I heard him speak all night—as he turned back around to the truck.

Right. The last thing I needed at that moment was a couple of half-buzzed twenty-somethings to start banging around the brake on my car.

“Oh, well, that’s nice of you,” said Owner #3, quickly, “but AAA is already on their way.”

“You sure? It ain’t no problem, I got my tools.”

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “AAA will be here soon, and I’m just going to get it taken back to Carbondale to have it looked at.”

Owner #3 made some more small talk, and then the boys politely gathered up their cans of Keystone, got back into the car and drove off.

AAA was still nowhere to be found.

I think the real miracle of the story is that AAA found us at all. Not too much longer after the local boys had gone there was another rumbling, and a tow truck came bounding up the drive.  Sure enough, their GPS didn’t work, their cell phones hadn’t gotten good reception, and AAA had never forwarded them the directions given by the owners of the brewery.

They arrived in a real tow truck; and they were sober as a hitching post—they being a lovely, if only a tad… rural, shall we say… couple, whose Sunday night steak dinner had been cut short by my call.

As they loaded the car up onto the bed of the truck, I gave Owner #3 my cell phone number and told her to call me half way through to make sure I was still alive. She agreed and we hugged. I promised I’d be back with Philosopher #2, and that we’d make pizza, and maybe even come back for the harvest to help them with their grapes next season.

The drive back was a tad exhausting; making conversation for an hour and a half is difficult when the only subject to distract from the awkwardness of being so close to two other people is the accident of your current circumstances. Like when you’re forced out onto the stoop with your neighbors in New York—most of whom you’ve never spoken to even though you hear their footsteps as if they live in the same apartment as you—and the only thing you can talk about in that moment is the fire department, or police department, or the exploded manhole cover that has temporarily brought all of you together. Fortunately, you never share the stoop for more than five minutes.  After that, everyone disperses separately to a neighborhood restaurant or bar, and you don’t talk to your neighbor again for another year.

In the tow truck the subject of conversation was the ride (mine being the longest they’d ever taken anyone), their most common call (hitting deer), their most outrageous call (an elderly couple who didn’t want to drive home after having a few glasses of wine so they called AAA to get their car towed), and whether or not they’d ever hit a deer themselves (never—“we almost hit a turkey, though; it was this close to the windshield, and I swear, if we was even this much closer, we’da hit that turkey”).

A mere hour and half and we were back in Carbondale, dropping the car at my mechanic so it would be waiting for him bright and early the next morning.

And the end of the story is a happy one.  The next day the mechanic acknowledged immediately that it was his fault that the caliper had come loose.  They had worked on our car when we moved out to Carbondale, and had worked on the brakes, so more than likely they hadn’t replaced the caliper properly.  He paid for the work to repair the car and for my tow truck.

So I was alive, I wasn’t out a penny, and I had a good story at the end. And a case of good beer.

Life and Beer on the Mississippi, Part 1

The things we do for good food and drink.

You may have recently read about Charleville, the lovely winery and brewery out in the Saline Creek Valley of eastern Missouri.  I can never pass up a good recommendation, so when I heard about it, I had to go. Here is the story of my recent visit, in what ended up being a slice of life trip along the Mississippi.

The view to the valley from Charleville's tasting room.

‘Twas a gray and quiet Sunday…

I had heard good things about Charleville’s beer from a couple of people.  It is one of the few breweries within two hours of Carbondale, and, after locating it on the map, I thought it would make a perfect day trip: I’d go hiking at nearby Hawn State Park, take a picnic lunch, work up a little thirst, and quench it with a trip to the brewery. Philosopher #2 couldn’t come with me, so I left on my own at about 10:30 in the morning, off for a lovely Sunday drive through the country between Illinois and Missouri.

In no time, I had entered Hawn State Park; all of the directions from Google Maps had been perfectly clear.  I went on a couple of lovely hikes along Pickle Creek (the creek that runs through the valley of the park). I sat for awhile eating a snack on a secluded rock in the river, and watched a crawdad attempt the Syssiphean task of pushing itself up the rock against a tide of water rushing against it. Yes, I did say “crawdad”—and no I am not in New York, anymore.

He never made it

Leaving the park to get to the brewery, however, proved to be a more difficult task. For the life of me, I couldn’t find the road that Google Maps wanted me to leave on. I crossed in and out of the park, not finding the road anywhere. Finally, I just decided to back track in the hopes that I would find a cross street that matched one of those on the directions.

Just before I got to the highway (which would have crushed all hope), I stumbled on one of the roads which was supposed to lead me to the brewery! Excitedly, I turned south, and within a few miles I was right back on track, identifying where I was with respect to my Google directions.  A couple other wrong turns on some of the poorly marked backroads, and I finally arrived at the brewery—not too much worse for the wear.

The beers were great and the people were lovely.  I loaded up a box full of beer to bring back home and share with Philosopher #2 and the people at Kindling on the next Monday night tasting. I put everything into the car, looked at the directions again to see how to leave and I made my way down the rocky driveway back to the main road.

And then I heard a thump.  And then a drag.

I stopped the car and took a deep gulp. Maybe some piece of plastic had fallen off the frame. I got out to see what was wrong. Flattening onto my stomach, I looked under the front and back of the car.  I didn’t see anything. Maybe it had dislodged when I stopped moving, I thought.

I got back into the car and hit the gas again.  Thud, thump, thump, thump. Drag. Nope, it was still there.  I stopped the car again and got out. Nothing was dragging on the ground—maybe something had pushed up into the wheel well and was scraping against the tire. I got back into the car and drove again, hoping that maybe just driving a little farther would dislodge it.  I went about another 15 feet, down to the fork in the road at the bottom of the drive, where the road went off to a neighboring house, when all of a sudden one of my brakes seemed to give out completely.  I came to a stop.  I pushed on the accelerator.  Nothing happened.  I turned off the car.  Obviously something was very wrong.

I got out and looked at the front brake, but, well, I may have mentioned that I’m a philosopher who likes beer—not a mechanic? So, I jogged back up the hill to see if someone in the brewery could help. Generously, one of the owners, who had just finished pouring me a flight of beers came back down to look at the car.  He and another one of the owners, who I discovered owned the house whose driveway I was now parked in, looked at the car. Comparing it to the passenger-side wheel they could see that the caliper for the brake had come completely loose, and was now lodged into the wheel, preventing the wheel from turning. It seemed that a bolt that was holding it in place had popped out. I was going to need a mechanic.

Now, let me remind you, you who live in the bustling major cities of the world, how lucky you are to have 24-hour services. One of the truly amazing things about electricity and capitalism is that they combine to create job niches for people who don’t mind exploiting their natures as night owls. A tow truck and a mechanic are only ever a phone call away.

In the Mississippi River valley, however, deep in the country with neighboring farms miles apart from each other, trying to find a mechanic at 4:30 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon is a task as fruitless as the one I had witnessed earlier that afternoon in which a poor crawdad attempted to claw his way up against a gushing waterfall.

He failed.

Owner #1 was now calling his mechanic and all of the mechanics that he knew within a 25-mile radius. No one answered his calls. A local who was sampling wine at the end of the counter could not think of one auto place open on a Sunday. I had been pondering getting AAA for emergencies just like these, but I may have mentioned that I’m working on my dissertation? Yes, it devours most of the hours of my life and most of my significant brain power, but I don’t get paid one penny for it. So I can’t even afford $60 a year for AAA. And, as a consequence, I find myself stranded in the middle of nowhere with no tow truck or mechanic for miles.

However, Owner #3, wife of kind Owner #2, who had collaborated on the diagnosis of my car, did have AAA. What would happen, she wondered, if she used her AAA membership and I paid for the tow? This seemed to go over okay when she made the phone call.  So, we gave AAA the address, and they found a tow truck driver who could come out to the winery and pick me up.  It would take 45 minutes or so because, as it turns out, the only tow truck driver making calls at this hour lived 45 minutes away. But, he could drive me all the way back to Carbondale, for $3 an mile. Carbondale being a mere 80 miles away. (The tow truck driver would later tell me I was the longest drive he had ever made.)

$240 for a tow on Sunday? The lovely people at Charleville poured me a nice, long draught.

As I waited, they told me about their brewing roots, the many years they’d known each other, and their connection to a famed St. Louis brewer. Having just finished their shift for the day, they also pulled out a bag of chips, salsa, and some homemade sausage; I was grateful for food, as it occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten anything substantive at any point during the day. The homemade sausage was a real treat with a pint of their Hoptimistic IPA.

As half an hour passed and AAA was due to arrive soon, Owner #3 and I went down to her house to wait. In the meantime, we cracked open a bottle of Charleville Chambourcin—a dry red that grows locally in this part of Missouri and southern Illinois (hey, I wasn’t driving anywhere soon). She put a frozen pizza in the oven and we waited outside under the stars in the warm evening.

Broken down car? What broken down car? I was tempted to just move in with the folks at Charleville.

Now, the other problem in the country—and something you city dwellers should once again be grateful for—is GPS. What happens when you add satellites to the equation of electricity + capitalism? Simple: A false sense of security. And the de-evolution of skills such as listening and recording directions, and reading (and owning) maps. Apparently the AAA dispatcher never relayed the vital information that GPS didn’t work out at the winery, and neither did cell phones. An hour and a half passed, and our tow truck driver was nowhere to be found.

Beginning to lose hope, we received a phone call from the husband, Owner #2. He explained that he had run into the tow truck driver just down the road, and he had given him directions. We hung up the phone and took the pizza out of the oven; they would arrive soon.

Tomorrow: Or would they?