Poland – come for the culture, stay for the food. My wife and I recently took a week-long trip to Poland, partially because we’ve been intrigued by Poland for some time, partially because we really needed a vacation, and partially because the Unsound festival, one of the leading experimental music festivals in the world, was taking place in Krakow right around the time we were hoping to take a trip. Match made in heaven? Undeniably yes. Amazing food, fascinating history, beautiful architecture, rustic countryside, and a damn good festival acting as soundtrack. What’s not to love?
Edible and Audible
Let’s try this again …
October 29th, 2010 | Published in Site News
Crazy story – started up a blog in January, added posts with semi-regularity, only to suddenly stop for no reason other than life and a healthy dose of laziness. Ok, so not really a crazy story, but nonetheless the reason nothing has been posted here in eons. Time to rectify – starting next week I will start posting musical, culinary, and spirit-ual recaps of my recent trip to Poland, a fascinating place underscored with some delicious food and thought-provoking music courtesy of the Unsound Festival.
And by the way, the strawberry tequila was most excellent.
Strawberry season
June 22nd, 2010 | Published in tequila
It’s strawberry season in these here parts, and that means four words – Tequila por mi Amante. Sure, I love eating strawberries in every conceivable way – jams, pies, on top of cereal, and so on and so on. But in recent times I added drinking strawberries to my early summer repertoire and I must say it’s a habit I plan on keeping. Last summer I made my first batch of Tequila por mi Amante, a strawberry-infused reposado tequila and the results were stunning – good in a cocktail, but really hard not to pour over ice and finish off the entire bottle in one sitting. It’s sweet without being overly sugary – the alcohol brings out the natural essence of the strawberry, which pairs really nicely with the spicy reposado. The only problem last year was I started the infusion in early July, which meant that local strawberries were already out of season and I was forced to used Driscoll’s. Based on the description above this obviously wasn’t a bad thing, but this year I’m excited to have some genuine local Jersey strawberries in there this year in hopes the flavors are even more insanely good. I started my batch a few days ago, I’ll report back in three weeks when the infusion is done, assuming I’m not too drunk on strawberry tequila to write a blog post. That’s a big assumption my friend.
Irreplaceable
May 20th, 2010 | Published in Music
Stumbled upon this little piece about WFMU, far and away my favorite radio station, and their vinyl collection. I especially appreciated the part near the end where station manager Ken talks about the irreplaceable nature of their collection – as someone who recently lost almost my entire music collection this part struck a chord more than it normally would. My collection was mostly CDs and for the most part replaceable from the standpoint of pure musical content, but of course nothing can ever replace any sentiment felt for a particular copy of an album. Hope to write more about this soon, but for now this is a nice look into the ridiculously large WFMU library.
My life and times with homemade pasta
April 12th, 2010 | Published in Food, Pasta
Homemade pasta – some flour, some eggs, a little oil – how fucking hard could it be? If you’ve spent any time in my kitchen the last few years you would know the answer to that is “apparently very”. I’ve tried all sorts of recipes with small victories along the way, but at the end I’m always left with that feeling of dread, knowing that I would have be better off lighting the pasta dough on fire than adding insult by ingesting some inedible rubbery crap only for purposes of justifying the effort that I put into making it. The other night I had a breakthrough, a pasta dough that came together and produced a lovely pasta meal, one I was proud (or at least less ashamed) to serve and eat. At this point I’ve tried several recipes/techniques and figured I’d tell the world (and by world I mean the two people reading this site. And by two people I mean myself.) what finally worked for me. Keep in mind I’m not slagging these recipes that didn’t happen to work for me, it’s much more a symptom of my own pasta incompetence than any sort of failure on the recipe’s part.
Previously
Mar 22, 2010
Last Night’s Drink
As a cocktail hobbyist I am extremely fortunate to live near New York City – there is almost no limit on the obscure bottles you can find there, and lately some of the more anticipated bottlings, like Creme Yvette, are launched in NYC first before the rest of the country can access them. Due to arcane (inane?) liquor delivery laws, you’re generally completely screwed if you’re a cocktail enthusiast living in Nebraska, or Idaho, or even Pennsylvania or New Jersey. I happen to live in NJ but the PATH train is my transport to the land of milk, honey, and mezcal. But sometimes even I hit a wall, that occasional bottle that some distributor has the gall to not sell in NY (please note the sarcasm) and suddenly I feel the pain for my fellow enthusiasts who are left waiting for that trip to NY or San Francisco to pick up these elusive products.
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Mar 5, 2010
0 out of 3 ain’t bad …
Wasn’t planning on doing two posts today but stumbled on this and had to react. If you’re learning to make drinks at home and wondering about the order in which to put things in your shaker, watch this video and then do the exact opposite.
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Mar 5, 2010
Out in the ether
A few links for today:
Life and sounds of a pig
Electronic music artist Matthew Herbert is trying to make an album based on sounds from the life of an industrially-raised pig to raise awareness of where our food comes from. PETA over-reacts.
Illegal Infusions
Bars in California are beginning to be penalized for house infusions, let’s hope this doesn’t spread.
Drinking in the future
Alex Day, formerly of Death and Company, gives interesting insight on why suspenders and handlebar mustaches may no longer be “necessary” in finer drinking establishments.
About Edible and Audible
Three people who really like eating, drinking, and good music.