Giving Thanks After a Tough Running Year

When I was a was a twenty-something runner, I figured my knees would be totally shot by the time I reached age 40, and could no longer run. I was wrong on two counts. First, my knees weren't shot when I turned 40, and now at age 49, I've been running a lot since. But while my knees have been mostly fine in my 40's, it's my hips that have given me problems. The upshot from thinking long ago I'd be done by age 40 is that every race is now is a gift. That's still true, even though this year I've spent most of the time either battling hip injuries or recovering from them.

It was with this mindset that entered the Applied Materials Silicon Valley Turkey Trot this past Thanksgiving with a slightly bad wheel. My right hip which gave me problems in October's Healdsburg Wine Country Half-Marathon had recovered some, but was still sore. The goal was just to go out, find a good pace, hold on, stay competitive, and finish strong. I wore a watch to monitor pace, but went in with no time goal. A well run race, getting the most out of your fitness level, is it's own reward.

Even with a bad hip and reduced expectations, the morning reminded me about everything I still love about racing. The nervous anticipation building up to the start. Being a part of the surge of humanity released by the "Boom!" of the starting pistol. Running in the tightly packed herd, punctuated by foot strikes and heavy breathing, in the early miles. Finding ways to overcome the doubt as fatigue sets in around the halfway point. The battle towards the end and the fight all the way through to the finish line. The post-race comrade of strangers who all just experienced their own personal journeys through the course.  The feeling of accomplishment after giving just about everything I had. All of that happened one more time.

I figure I've run well over 350 races over 36 years in my life, and while a lot has changed over that time, a lot has also stayed the same. I've never grown tired of it. In fact, as I get older, I appreciate it even more. So this past Thanksgiving was time for giving thanks for a lot of things, and being able to race once again was a big part of that.

Calicraft Brewing in Edible East Bay

Calicraft's Blaine Landberg
(Calicraft photon)

Calicraft's Buzzerkeley made me rethink beer when I first tried it three years ago. And Calicraft's Blaine Landberg has a far greater agenda than selling beer with his new taproom, showcasing local food, artists and environmental sustainability. So I feel a little privileged I got the chance to sit down with Blaine and tell his story. You can read it here at Edible East Bay:

Calicraft Creativity Bubbles up in Walnut Creek

This is the last you'll hear from my until the holidays, so I wish you all the best for Thanksgiving and see you next week!

Remember those grilling posts I said you'll be seeing...

A third and perhaps final attempt at grilled guacamole

You may recall my enthusiastic announcement last August about adding a grilling dimension to this blog. And yes, a couple posts on grilling followed.  But since then, it's been rather quiet on the grilling front. No doubt, you've been spending sleepless nights, tossing and turning in bed wondering what happened. Well, let me try to ease your mind: This grilling thing, like most everything else, is a little more complicated than it initially looks.

Take for example, my attempt at grilled guacamole. The idea is pretty simple. Instead of chopping and mashing fresh vegetables, I put some grill char on them and caramelized the onions a bit, to give the guacamole some extra depth and smokiness. My first attempt at this was pretty promising, but needed some refinement. However, a couple subsequent efforts foisted on my friends on college football weekends were steps backwards. At least my friends were polite enough to say "Well, it's good". There's also the small matter of the darkening char on the vegetables giving the final product the look of....well, guacamole barf.

I smoked some salmon on the grill for dinner a week ago and it tasted awesome. I'd love to show you pictures, but problem is, all you'd see is a night time photo of a faint pink monolith perched on the grill, looming in the darkness. As the days get shorter, I'm finding myself doing more and more grilling at night, and my camera either doesn't have a flash, or I haven't figured out how to activate it. There wasn't much to the smoked salmon, I just sprinkled salt and pepper on top and used apple wood, then spent the evening playing around with the heat controls all night controls until I got it done. A post that goes like "I didn't do a lot to prepare it, I don't remember exactly how I made it, and I can't even show it to you, but that smoked salmon really tasted awesome" is rather pointless.

And then there's something else I learned about gas grills: They're not as predictable as you might think. When the propane tank is full, the heat level is noticeably lower, too low to get good grill marks on the food. When roughly half the tank is full, there's plenty of good heat which I can control using the grill knobs. When the tank is nearly empty, the heat level starts to decline again. None of this is rather surprising, but of course, it's something I need to get a better handle on with more experience. It's led to a couple grilling efforts being moved to the stove top in order to get dinner on the table before everyone starved.

It has been said "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly".  So I'll be keeping at it. The good news for you is that I won't bore you with my grilling failures. Unless they're funny, like creating "guacamole barf".  I'll deal with the failures, you'll just read the good stuff.

Rambling Reviews 11.14.2016:Long Root Ale, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ale, and El Camino (Un) Real

Well, we survived the election. Sort of.

I suspect you, like me, have had enough of Hillary's e-mails, building walls, groping accusations, Russian hackers and all the other nonsense of this year's election. There was plenty of twists, turns, salacious details and wild accusations but precious little actual policy discussion. I try to avoid getting political on this site and just stick to beer. But as one of those environmentalists alarmed at President Trump's plans to roll back environmental regulations, slash alternative energy funding, and opening up previously protected federal land for coal mining, oil drilling, and fracking, I decided this latest round of reviews would feature beers from breweries which support environmental sustainability as an integral part of their business.

We'll start with Long Root Ale from Hopworks Urban Brewery in Portland. Long Root Ale is brewed using Kernza, a little known grain that was likely never used for human consumption until very recently. Kernza has long roots that grow deep into the ground, and unlike most grains, grows perennially rather than annually. That means it's a net sink of carbon from the atmosphere, as annually grown crop like barley or wheat create a net carbon increase due to the energy required for plowing the soil each year. As for the beer itself, it's comforting. The soft, light earthy character feels like an old jacket. It's a little light in the body, maybe from the 15% Kernza in the mix.  There's a light savory coriander spiciness to the brew, with grapefruit notes emerging at the finish. I just love beers that are effortlessly unique and complex like this.

Next, we come to Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ale, a collaboration between New Belgium Brewing and Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream. Now if you ask me, a chocolate chip cookie dough beer doesn't sound like such a good idea. But these guys pull it off. It's brewed with chocolate, vanilla and brown sugar with a Blonde Ale base. And yes, it does taste like a Blonde Ale with a barely noticeable cookie dough note, with the chocolate rather absent. Thankfully, there's not much sweetness, as I can imagine a beer like this could quickly deteriorate in a heavy syrupy monstrosity without the right balance. It's not a flavor explosion, but it does a good job of replicating cookie dough in liquid form in this light golden brown ale. New Belgium and Ben & Jerry's brewed it as part of a partnership with Protect our Winters, an outdoor sports organization devoted to raising awareness of climate change, which will receive a portion of the sales proceeds.

Finally, we'll end with El Camino (Un)Real, a collaboration release between 21st Amendment, Stone Brewing and Firestone Walker, three breweries that have long supported various environmental causes. It's a strong, dark ale brewed gobs of hops (75 ibu), dried mission figs, pink peppercorns, fennel, chia seeds and quite possibly the kitchen sink. I wasn't so sure about this one, there's always a risk with a long list of different ingredients that they don't play nice together. The idea behind this eclectic blend of ingredients is that they all grow along the El Camino Real, a historic mission trail that linked California's 21 Spanish Missions which became California's Highway 101.  But does it all work?  Mostly, yes.  It's a rich, dark complex beer, the figs complementing the dark malt nicely, with all those hops finding their voice under the heavy layers of malt to add their herbal earthiness, with peppery accent to the whole affair. Maybe they could've just stopped at the mission figs, but what's the fun of that?

The Session #117: That barley malt IPA with Pacific Northwest hops is so 21st Century.

It's another crystal ball gazing Session, this time Csasaba Babek at Beer Means Business asking us to predict the one thing we will see more of in beer's future.

I'm going to resist the temptation to write about industry consolidation coupled with the proliferation of very small, neighborhood breweries. I do expect to see more of that, but at this point in my not very humble opinion, that's not really a prediction but an observation. The economic wheels of beer are turning firmly turning in this direction for all to see.

But that more competitive landscape will be a driver for a lot more diversity of beer ingredients, where breweries strive for innovation and distinctiveness to separate themselves in a crowded industry.

I don't think I need to tell you that new hop varietals with unique and  unprecedented flavors are being cultivated each year.  But in my mind, a more interesting development are the nascent hop growing regions in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, California and Colorado taking root, establishing their own identities and quite possibly their own flavors and character. It's still an open question as to how successful these efforts will be, and if the average beer drinker will really tell the difference between Yakima Valley, Michigan, and New York Cascade hops. Will there be a day where bar patrons sip different IPAs from a series tiny glasses, comparing and contrasting the character of different regional hop varieties? This may be a dystopian future for certain people, but no longer seems far-fetched.

On the fermentables side, barley and wheat currently dominate in addition to corn and rice, which are viewed, rightly or wrongly, as cheap fillers. Rye and oats pop up here and there. Historically, it wasn't always that way. For centuries, beer has been brewed with fermentables like millet, sorghum, yams, buckwheat, grapes, apples, cranberries, molasses, honey and whatever else might be lying around. I've noticed breweries slowly re-discovering these other sources or starches and sugar, and the results have been unexpected pleasures. Brown rice added a light, nutty flavor to a light ale, while buckwheat imparted a rich heartiness to a brew roasted barley malt can't possibly replicate. Portland's Hopworks Urban Brewery is playing around with Kernza, a rare grain which most likely had never been cultivated for human consumption, which imparts a light spiciness to the brew. And is it just me, or are rye beers becoming more common, as brewers play around with the interplay of grain and hops. I'm just going more with my gut here, and say brewers moving forward are going to start throwing different stuff into their mash tuns.

Will our barley malt IPA's brewed with Pacific Northwest hops some day look as monochromatic as the industrial light lagers of the 20th Century?  Let's hope so!

Cubs Win!

I hope you allow this brief diversion from our usual content....I've been a Cubs fan for forty years since the days of Manny Trillo, Rick Reuschel and Ivan DeJesus in the late 70's.  That means I've seen plenty of bad  baseball over long periods, interspersed with fleeting success, ultimately led to disappointment in a losing playoff series. As a Cub fan, you either learn to embrace the frustration and failure, or take the easy way out and follow the White Sox. The times during this World Series run when the Cubs were badly flailing away at pitches way outside the strike zone, stranding base runners in scoring position seemed oddly comforting, as if the universe was reverting to its natural order. But yet, the Cubs persevered and won Game Seven of the World Series last night, in a game that will undeniably go down as one of the greatest games in baseball history.  I still can't quite believe the Cubs are World Series Champions.