Been to Belgium or Amsterdam?

I'm heading to Brussels and Amsterdam in less than two weeks, and I could use some suggestions. My travel-mates and I already have a wiki that's bursting with pubs, breweries, restaurants, bars, museums, and so forth. What we don't have is a lot of first-hand advice about what to see.

We have four days in Brussels and five in Amsterdam. The former is already somewhat scheduled, what with certain breweries we want to tour only being open certain days of the week. Our time in Amsterdam is wholly unscheduled, and that's where I could use more help.

I hope to blog a fair bit of the vacation, both beer-related and otherwise. Cheers!

Beer in the Bay Area

A couple years ago, I started getting splitting headaches when I drank the sort of full-bodied red wine that I'd come to enjoy. A lesser man might have despaired, but I found solace in the wide and wonderful world of beer. Since then, I've become something of a beer connoisseur, to the point that I'm taking a trip to Belgium later this month almost solely for beer tourism.

The Bay Area is a pretty good place for beer, and getting better. Here's what I've discovered since moving here in mid-2007:

Beer Shops

The City Beer Store is located a bit out of the way in SOMA, the City Beer Store manages to stock an impressive selection of bottles given their meager space. They also have a few things on tap, and you can purchase a tasting glass and hang out at their petite bar or the couple of spare tables they've set up. It's not a particularly inviting place, and seems to attract a khaki-slacks after-work crowd who pack the bar; expect guys in blue Oxfords talking their girlfriends into trying raspberry lambics. I've spent upwards of $40 every time I've been here and haven't yet been offered any help or suggestions, and have had to stand around awkwardly until someone rings me up. So, even though this place is maybe a ten minute walk from my apartment, I almost never bother.

Healthy Spirits is nestled between the Lower Haight and the Castro, and this inconspicuous neighborhood bodega happens to have probably the best selection of Belgian beer in San Francisco proper. Always friendly, the staff here keeps the place open late and always has great suggestions. A hidden gem. Apparently they're hiring a "resident beer guru", so I'm hopeful that their business continues to grow.

Whole Foods SOMA, well, I live here, literally; my apartment is directly above the place. An entire aisle is nothing but refrigerated beer on one side. The case is organized by nationality: American beers on the left, then Belgian and various European countries, then German, then English, and finally a mix of Asian, Australian, and Mexican/South American beers. More or less, the two far ends of the case are crap. Almost all the American beer is local Californian microbrews, and almost all of them suck with the notable exception of North Coast. The Belgian and German selections are where it's at, and they get new stuff in often enough to find intriguing new bottles a couple of times per week. They also keep some hard-to-find stuff in regular stock, like the Witkap Pater Single and several brews from the Japanese Hitachino Nest label.

Beer Bars

Toronado is San Francisco's biggest disappointment for beer lovers. A casual pub in the Haight with scads of taps in frequent rotation sounds unfuckupable in theory, but Toronado manages to take this simple formula and botch it. How? It's dark, it's dirty, it's cramped, and they insist on keeping their taps stocked with shitty West Coast beers for most of the year, save month-long Barleywine and Belgian festivals. There's a list of mostly Belgian bottles, but it's kept behind the bar. Toronado's final deal-breaker, though, is the bartender. She'll take a five-minute phone call while fifteen people are waiting to order drinks. She'll let you order a round for five people one night and demand everyone's identification and physical presence at the bar the next, insulting you for expecting otherwise. She's the worst bartender I've suffered, and she's always there, fuck-you glare fixed in place. I don't bother with Toronado anymore, but their clientele of apathetic regulars will probably keep the place open until doomsday.

The Alembic is primarily for cocktails and hard liquor, but they keep some tasty beers stocked from time to time. Not much of interest on draft, but good bottles. They manage to select better West Coast brews than most. Get there early, though, because they fill up.

The Monk's Kettle recently opened up in the Mission, and they're clearly going for the upscale beer market. While their name implies Belgians, their draft and bottle list covers a little bit of everything, although nothing you won't find at Whole Foods or the City Beer Store. It's a pretty setting, and they actually have a decent food menu. I would've fallen in love with this place if weren't for one thing: the prices. The Monk's Kettle is overcharging outrageously for both glasses and bottles alike. Expect to pay double what Whole Foods charges for run-of-the-mill Belgian bottles, $11-12 for meager 8 oz. pours of nice stuff on draft, and even a couple extra bucks for pours of over-hopped local brews. My biggest concern is that newbies to the beer world are going to think that these prices are commonplace for good beer, and that the cost will turn them off. Until the Monk's Kettle decides to charge a fair price for their suds, I'm not going to be a frequent customer.

The Trappist, which opened just a month ago in Oakland, is the Bay Area's beer salvation as far as I'm concerned. This beautiful bar is a quick four block walk from the Oakland City Center/12th Street BART station, and it's practically easier to get to from SOMA than the above establishments. Their beer list is almost exclusively Belgian, and they pour every label-paired glass with care. The proprietors have apparently done their share of beer tourism in Belgium and wanted to bring back the feeling from the pubs there. If they've met that goal, I'm all the more excited for my upcoming trip, as it's a warm, friendly, and completely relaxing place to enjoy great beer at a reasonable price. The only nitpicks are the small size of the bar and the lack of table service, which makes for a huddled mass around the bar as the evening wears on. Still, I'd recommend The Trappist above any other beer establishment in the Bay Area, heads and shoulders.

Summary

The Bay won't do you wrong if you're into beer. I haven't even begun to explore the breweries in surrounding towns, and I'm sure there are spots I don't know about. Still, I miss the DC area beer scene, which boasted larger, more comfortable establishments with broader selections and far more friendly personalities. Hopefully some of the smaller places above, like Healthy Spirits and The Trappist, will be able to grow into larger spaces as time goes by and encourage fairer prices and better service in their competition.

Things I Like Lately

There are some things that I like. Software and other things. Roundup:

Yep

Yep is iTunes for PDFs. If you don't collect PDFs like you collect music, this won't be appealing to you. Personally, I'm grabbing presentations, papers, tutorials, and books every day, all the time. This wouldn't be half as much fun without Yep's tagging and browsing. I also make heavy use of the "YepShot" bookmarklet that takes the web page you're looking at and pops it in your PDF library. Yep doesn't try to be an outboard brain like DevonThink. It just stores and organizes collections of PDFs like nobody's business.

Whisky

I went to Whiskey Fest SF with several of my coworkers. Favorites included Jura's Superstition blended Scotch, Old Pogue bourbon, and Macallen's Amber maple Scotch whisky liqueur. I also recommend having a quality Manhattan if you haven't ordered one in a while. You'll be happy you did.

Gmail IMAP

I can now use Gmail on my iPhone. It works awesome.



I can't say the same for the Mail.app in Leopard, though I give it a try every couple days. I've been using Mailplane on my MacBook Pro with great success. Just enough value added to the in-browser Gmail interface without getting in the way.

Music

DJ A-Trak's Kanye's Soul Mix Show has got so much soul. The newest Jens Lekman record, Night Falls on Kortedala has also been in heavy rotation. I'm seeing him tonight at Bimbo's, the best live music venue in San Francisco.

My Etymotics headphones died and I replaced them with a pair of Vibe Duos. While the Vibe's certainly aren't as accurate, their bouncy bass and handy iPhone-compatible mic makes them a pretty solid choice. Plus, they're exactly the price of an iPhone rebate, if you have one on hand.

Twitter Things

Spaz and Snitter are impressive examples of what Adobe AIR can do. Both are desktop Twitter clients that make extensive use of the API I maintain, and both authors have been excellent contributors to the Twitter development community. Also a big nod to Twitteriffic 3, definitely worth the asking price for all the work that Craig has put into it.



Foamee just launched. It's a way to keep track of people you owe beers to. It's one of the best-designed Twitter projects I've seen.

Beer Blogging

I'm providing a very minor contribution to my friend Craig's relatively new beer blog, dubbed Beers Beers Beers. Craig is blogging up a veritable storm in a stein. I don't expect to match him in either frequency or knowledge of brewing, but hopefully I can at least contribute in quality of prose and Left Coast beer selections. Subscribe, if you will.

Portland

For previous travelogues on this site, I’ve broken up my experiences by day. That’s worked well for some trips, but I don’t think it would make for an interesting impression of Portland (besides, I was Twittering much of the trip from the chronological junkies). There was a fair deal of overlap in our activities from day to day, so instead I’m grouping our experiences by topic.

Climate

I’d never been to the Pacific Northwest before visiting Portland. It would’ve been nice if someone had told me that there’s a place that’s not too cold, not too hot, not too moist, not too dry, and with a reassuring alternation from grey skies to brilliant sun during the day. Portland in February was some of my ideal weather, brisk but not uncomfortably cold. We left our heavy winter coats back in DC and didn’t once wish for them. A squirt of rain on Saturday didn’t even warrant an umbrella.

Geography

Portland spans the gray-blue Willamette River and is set between sizable, almost mountainous hills. Our hotel was on the East side of the river, by the Convention Center. To get to the more happening Northwest and downtown areas, we crossed the two pedestrian-friendly Steel and Broadway bridges a fair number of times in our short stay. We found the city so walkable, in fact, that we never once used the ample public transit, and took a cab only to get to the far reaches of the Southeast quadrant. That cab trip showed us the expanse of the city, easily missed if one confined oneself to the urban attractions of the Northwest part of the city.

Architecture + Urban Planning

Portland is known for its thoughtful urban planning, from effective use of gridded one-way streets to encouraging mixed-use development. All that planning has paid off. The city is, to a newcomer, eminently attractive and easy to navigate. In Northwest alone there’s a nice mix of older brick warehouses and office buildings, towering glass and steel office buildings, low-slung storefronts, and shiny new condos. The suburbs have an interesting mix of architectural styles; some of the homes look very California, and some remind me of the East Coast.

Walking around, we joked that there’s a city-wide committee dedicated to telling building owners precisely what tasteful color of paint they should employ. There’s hardly a block we passed that wasn’t a perfect palette of shades and hues. The best example of this was in the Pearl District, Portland’s testimonial to “urban revitalization” (read: bringing in artists and people with enough disposable income to buy art to fill renovated warehouse space). The Pearl is, for all the “yuppification” accusations, a lovely neighborhood full of developments that stand together nicely.

Attractions

We decided to walk to the Japanese Garden, which is nestled atop a comically big hill. It’s worth every step, though, as it truly is one of the most beautiful gardens I’ve seen outside of Japan. I’m pretty sure I could’ve stared at the waterfall all afternoon. The whole experience was a mental massage, and we left clear-headed and relaxed. Down the hill we made a

The Portland Art Museum was outstanding. Coming from DC, my expectations of a museum are somewhat inflated. Portland may not be able to match the sheer scope of DC’s cultural offerings, but their museum collection makes up for its size in diverse and intelligent curation. Both the classic and modern wings had great pieces complimented by well-written and thorough information. Timoni even found pieces in the modern collection she actually enjoyed, and that’s saying something.

The Chinese Garden wasn’t nearly as impressive as its Japanese counterpart, offering architecture and objects over carefully manicured natural settings. Too short an attraction to warrant its asking price, but convenient to downtown.

Powell’s is really an attraction all its own. We spent easily two hours lost in the stacks of the main store, and another hour in the nearby technical store. Le sigh.

Food

Ah, the food. So. Many. Good. Meals.

Southpark does a lunch that’s both elegant and hearty. Try the dates as an appetizer. Close to the Portland Art Museum.

Voodoo Donut is actually kind of a creepy little hole in the wall and the donuts are smaller that you might expect but damn good. We tried some traditional styles and a highly unorthodox Tang donut, all of which worked out just fine. Crap coffee, but it’s cheap.

The Everett Street Bistro stops serving brunch at 11:30AM. We learned this the hard way. They redeem themselves handily with a delectable menu that includes three different kinds of quiches, each distinct in texture and flavor. Excellent carrot cake, too. Wish we had gone back to try the rabbit ragu.

Sin Ju seems like, well, sushi for white people. Even most of the sushi chefs aren’t Japanese. Damned if all that matters, though, because they serve up great traditional offerings and nouvelle creations alike. Apparently it’s reservations all the way for a table at dinner, but we had a lovely meal and nice conversation with some locals at the bar.

Bluehour does an excellent Sunday brunch. I had smoked fish on a malt bagel and a chocolate chip pistachio scone that were both excellent. Our hostess and waiter were both charismatic and quirky, and nice balance to the restaurant’s hip-cum-swanky setting.

Drink

Portland has a reputation as a beer and as a coffee town. These are definitely deserved.

The Rogue pub is a friendly place, with a smallish bar area and a large dining room. Between the two of us we had their Oregon Golden Ale, Honey Orange Wheat, Morimoto Soba Ale, Chocolate Stout, Hazelnut Brown Nectar, and something I can’t remember (solid testimony). The Chocolate Stout was actually served in ice cream float form, an absurd decadence that I totally recommend.

The Horse Brass Pub came recommended by DC’s local beer wonderland, The Brickskeller. It certainly doesn’t compete with the Brick’s giant beer list, but what it lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality. An excellent selection of taps and solid British food.

Stumptown Coffee also came with a high recommendation, described as some of the best in the country by a friend who should know. Not only does their drip coffee rival high quality French press brews, it’s a single solitary buck for a mug. What’s more, they have a great selection of Belgian beer when you’ve had enough joe for one day. Essentially heaven.

We wanted to try Henry’s 12th Street Taproom for its one hundred beers on tap, but it was a hectic, disorganized mess when we showed up on an early Thursday evening. I don’t mind a wait, but having to hover over other diners in an attempt to snipe a table seems far too uncivilized for a self-styled beer place that serves sushi. A cab driver later confirmed our suspicions.

Sip and Kranz seems to be popular with moms in the Pearl. I don’t know which came first, the moms or the play room, but it’s actually kind of charming that such a sleek, modern cafe plays perpetual host to a horde of toddlers. We had tasty Stumptown coffee, pastries, and breakfast food at Sip and Kranz, but their French press is overpriced, meagerly sized, and incorrectly timed.

Comix!

Timoni and I are, as you might have guessed from the description of Powell’s, book people. More specifically, though, we are comic book people. While Powell’s does surprisingly well in the comic department, nothing beats an indie shop. Floating World Comics opened a mere three months ago, but has a superb selection and a funky atmosphere. Or if zines are your thing – they’re sure as shit not mine – there’s Reading Frenzy, which also stocks a few proper (non-whiny art school crap) comics. I’m trying to remember the name of a niceish shop that was half comics + alt-books and half smut but it escapes me.

People

Four days is hardly long enough to get a sense of the local culture, but Portlanders seem a friendly sort. I had a guy ask to shake my hand for ordering his favorite Belgian beer. Our cab drivers were chatty, helpful characters eager to muse on the virtues and villainies of various neighborhoods. Waiters and shop keepers were cheery and helpful. Portland people seem nicer than average.

Conclusion

For the first time in ages I found myself sorry to be home at the end of a vacation, a feeling that not even London could muster. Portland seems an eminently livable city, relaxing without sacrificing culture and character. It’s not a city of particular consequence, but that’s liberating and, in a way, inspiring. Portland has clearly been a playground for testing out ideas of what a city could be. I think it could be a great place to try out a more rewarding day-to-day life on a personal level. Regardless, it’s a fine long-weekend vacation.

A Gelato Recommendation

Ciao Bella brand gelato has become a fixture of our freezer over the last several months. I am here to recommend it whole-heartedly, unsponsored and unabashed.

We first tried their coconut, which has more of a sorbet texture than one would expect of gelato. It’s become our mainstay desert. Their green tea with white chocolate is also a good bet, though the green tea would stand alone just as well. Hazelnut is a bit gritty.

Just this evening, however, I tried their fresh mint with chocolate chips. Needless to say, it spurred me to write the first food-related entry on this blog in I don’t know how long. The mint flavor really is garden-fresh, so herbal it barely qualifies for dessert. Coupled with miniscule chocolate chips it’s just excellent, sweet and refreshing and unexpected on the palate.

We’ve found Ciao Bella at our local Whole Foods. Enjoy.

Poetic License

This afternoon I made the trek from Arlington to the U Street neighborhood of the Discrict exclusively to go to Busboys and Poets. This was the third time I’ve been to the self-styled “progressive” cafe/bar/restaurant/bookstore/event space. The first time was superb. The second was marred by wonky wireless and poor service, but a positive report from some friends encouraged me to give it another go.

Busboys was buzzing at 2PM between talks by historian Howard Zinn. I slipped in to a seat at one of their couple of communal tables towards the front of the cafe/bar area. I’m reasonably convinced, from the books strewn about, that everyone at the table was a law student, though they were clearly not a study group. It took the waiter a couple trips to notice me, as he was accosted by frustrated patrons who’s orders he’d forgotten. “They’d sell me a latte every 30 minutes if the waiter would just come by” said an exasperated fellow table-dweller.

Having procured a menu, I ordered a cup of coffee and a peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich on challa off the brunch menu. It was tasty, a fine distraction from my wireless woes.

Busboys uses a dreadful registration system to access their wireless network. It’s free, but you have to supply them with your name and email address (well, a name and email address). The system then allows you to roam the net for 15 minutes, presumably long enough to check your email and click the validation link they’ve sent you. Once you’re validated, you’re then allowed a couple hours of access before the system forces you to login again.

As a protection for their customers, this system is about as useful as TSA banning nail clippers on planes: ignorants will think they’re secure, and everyone else is inconvenienced. After my second frustrating visit to Busboys I wrote to the management about their unreliable, insecure, and inconvenient wireless system. I received an arch, patronizing email from their tech guy explaining the fundamentals of wireless security, along with some blathering about their system preventing residents of the building above the place from abusing their network. I wrote back with some slightly more technical details about faults in their system and, shockingly, never heard back.

Needless to say, I was expecting the worst when I tried the wireless at Busboys today. Sure enough, their system didn’t like my password. I clicked the “I forgot my password” button and it reported that it had emailed me a new password. I tried to get to my mail. It asked for a login. I tried to create a new login. It said I couldn’t create another login, clearly having tied my laptop’s MAC address to my existing account.

Catch 22: I need to login in order to get the password I need to login, and I can’t create a new account because I already have one, but I can’t use it. It’s the sort of scenario most programmers learn to spec out in Application Architecture 101. I felt in sudden agreement with my latte-deprived tablemate: “if they’d just let me on the goddamn Internet I’d be ordering something every 30 minutes.“

So I paid my bill and went back to Murky in Clarendon, like always, where the wireless is free and unrestricted. I checked my email and sure enough, there was the new password the Busboys system had sent me.

Somehow, I don’t think I’ll need it anytime soon.

A Beverage Recommendation

It’s no longer the weather for iced beverages. The citizenry needs warm, even hot, drinks to fortify themselves for the coming winter days.

The beverage you want is a chai with a shot of espresso. The chai must be made with a milk base, and preferably from a liquid mix, not a powder. The end result is rich and creamy, sweet but not too sweet, and not utterly lacking in caffeine. My classmates and I started drinking them with great regularity in high school, and there was an informal and failed movement to have the beverage called “the Emerson” (after our school) at the cafes in proximity.

In the DC area you find this drink made acceptably at Tryst, where it is called a “chaipuccino”, or made exceptionally by several baristas at Murky in Arlington, where you must simply order a chai with a shot. I am honestly filled with deep, deep regret when I order most any other beverage at Murky. It’s a hidden gem. They even do little swirls of “latte art” in the foam they manage to coax from the concoction.

Icky Flesh

It was pure coincidence that I came back from San Francisco a vegetarian. No, really.

Several days before I left the Actual City of Brotherly Love I was reading Jeremy Rifkin’s European Dream, a multifaceted argument for the demise of the relevance of the American Dream and the promise of the EU mindset for the next century. He covers many topics, not least among them ecology, environmentalism, and animal rights.

Now, I’ve seen the PETA videos. I have close vegetarian friends who’ve explained their reasoning to me. My family tried vegetarianism for a time back in the day, for health and ethical reasons.

Despite all that, my palate for gourmet food had given me a reputation as a voracious carnivore amongst my friends. I liked my steaks bloody rare, was no stranger to trying unusual game, and had even partaken in live shrimp just a couple weeks previous.

But the past tense in that last sentence is, obviously, telling. As I read Rifkin’s chapter on the aforementioned topics, the collection of economic arguments and grotesque accounts of animal rights abuses in a world evermore scientifically aware of animal cognition and emotion left me repulsed. I didn’t make a conscious decision at that moment, but I was utterly unable to eat meat that evening.

Or the next day. Or the next. Or any day until yesterday.

I tried a bowl of pho with flank steak and bo vien (meatballs), a pretty tame order for me. The meat was tasteless and its texture unpleasant. I ate the small bowl, but was not pleased. Later that day I tried a bite of a friend’s lamb kabob. The flavor agreed with me, but I couldn’t fathom eating a plate of the stuff. Flesh simply didn’t register as food.

I think my decision has become conscious. I have no intention of proselytizing my vegetarianism, but for now it feels like the right thing.

Cafe Logistics

Though it was planted somewhere in the back of my mind, I consciously ignored that Tryst has nixed wi-fi on the weekends when I drove into DC this morning. It took the guy at the table next to me, noticing my furious examination of the available networks, mentioning this fact to jolt my memory. “That’s a kick in the balls,” I said, and closed my laptop to settle in for lunch and some reading.

It’s not a bad decision, and I say that in defiance of every “free wireless everywhere all the time” techno-utopian bone in my body. When the wi-fi was blazing on the weekends I’d often find myself waiting twenty minutes or more for a table to free up. Today, I strolled in around noon and immediately sat right down; the place was still full, but tables were turning over at a reasonable rate. It’s clearly better for Tryst’s business and better for the majority of their patrons. The only people with laptops open were deep in what looked to be scholastic or professional writing. Tryst is now, in my mind, clearly designated for meals and coffee with friends, or as a place to go to focus on reading or “disconnected” work. That’s a good kind of place to have.

The fact remained, however, that I needed an Internet connection today for lack of a reliable open wireless signal in my new apartment. I drove back to Arlington and have just now sat down at Murky, which, like Tryst, is far less busy than I remember it being on Sundays. Their wireless is always on, but there’s a healthy mix of laptoppers, students, friends conversing, and individuals pouring through books or the weekend paper.

I largely eschew wide-eyed accounts of cafes full of “laptop zombies.” At least, as ever more establishments invoke “wi-fi hours,” the giddy rush of geeks and freelancers vying to spend every waking minute surfing in public is settling down. There’s still something novel and appealing about bringing to the coffee shop an activity once strictly tethered to the home, office, or library by phone lines.

Novel as wi-fi may be, everything is better in moderation.

So Unbitter

This morning I walked down our 17th Street to Valencia, in the Mission District, and tried to stay out of the sun in the shadows cast by storefront overhangs until I came upon Ritual Coffee Roasters.

Phil and I, either in tandem or individually, like to work from cafes. As a way to explore the city we pick a new cafe in a new neighborhood most every day and walk there, pretty much regardless of how far it is from Castro. Phil has become used to the sun and constant walking but the endurance I gained in my city-crawling years has melted away from an all-car suburban office existence. I’m quickly getting back in “city shape,” which isn’t necessarily good shape, but good enough not to be damp by the time I get to point B. I still haven’t quite figured out how to dress for a climate that’s indisputably warm during the day and quite brisk once the sun goes down (though not “cold” in the sense that locals complain of).

At any rate. Ritual. I found them via SFist, which I like about as much as DCist, which is to say not much at all. But this was a stellar recommendation. Never in my decade or so of drinking iced americanos (espresso and water) have I had one with an actual honest-to-god crema, and so utterly without bitterness. The interior of the shop is just as nice as SFist suggests, and while the music is at a tolerable volume they could do a little better than ubiquitous cafe plays like The Postal Service. It seems a like minor thing, a nice cafe, but DC was sorely lacking in any place one would want to both have a beverage and park for several hours.

The pleasure of finding hip little establishments will, of course, wear off. But it’s nice to have my standards raised for a change.

Easter

Easter is when zombie Jesus rises from his grave to feed on the brains (and souls) of the living.

Every Easter we eat many Marshmallow Peeps and Cadbury Cream Eggs in a desperate attempt to keep our blood sugar levels high enough that we can stay awake until the Easter horror is gone after seemingly endless hours of guarding the reinforced doors to our homes with nary but a shotgun and the wish to live another day.

My religious education was exceedingly poor.

Happy Easter.

Ow. My Tract.

I have few regrets in my life (not true) but one thing I very much regret was taking sa7ori’s lead and getting a Medium Eggnog Milkshake at the McDonald’s and also a Double Quarter Pounder With Cheese and getting back to the office and consuming them both in I would say roughly maybe 4 minutes tops.

I regret this because now my body is on a failing search for some gland or duct or cavity in which to file UNDIGESTABLE INORGANIC MATTER as I haven’t had McDonald’s in over a year to the best of my recollection and when last I did I certainly wasn’t having any godforsaken Eggnog Milkshakes and either way no cell in my being knows what to do with this stuff.

In all seriousness, lately I find myself having a lot of post-meal regret, particularly when I either settle for a dining option when out with people, eat fast out of necessity, or eat on impulse (“hey, Taco Bell sounds really good! [...timelapse…] oh god what have I done?”). This is to remind myself that it’s better to just not eat in those situations.

Which is moot, because the Eggnog Milkshake just ruptured my stomach lining like something out of Alien, and I will never eat again much less live to see 2:47 PM EST.

Choke On It

My favorite drink of late is a Choker: Pernod, scotch, and bitters shaken and served over ice. The drink has a milky yellow color, the usual anise nose of Pernod, and it leaves the tongue pleasantly numb after a few sips. One Choker is enough to allow your companions to work through a couple beers, martinis, or coffees. Alternatively, if you’re drinking alone (as I increasingly am for lack of friends in the city) one Choker is enough to get through several chapters of a novel or a newspaper read front-to-back.

I order Chokers, albeit not by name, at Tryst, where they feature Pernod on their weekend cocktail menu and pour a generous glass for $7.00.

Food Blogging

Phil has been blogging photos of what he and I are cooking in our beautiful kitchen. I’ll probably be doing the same with stuff I cook for myself.

Tonight we made marinaded steaks under the broiler, herb salad with bleu cheese dressing, onion bread pudding with gruyere, and a fresh ginger and peach cobbler. Cooking rules.

Re-Low-Carb’ing

A few weeks back I gave up the Atkins ways I\’d adopted at the turn of the year. I had lost weight, to be sure, but I felt like crap for all the fat I was consuming; bacon gets gross fast, no question. I dropped the diet and tried just winging it, hoping I\’d eat generally healthy, but without a regimen of some sort I quickly found myself consuming junk food and sugar when convenient. I hadn\’t put back too much weight, but I felt even worse than when consuming lots of fat and hardly any carbs.

So, like many Atkins refugees, I jumped ship to South Beach. I\’ve been doing that for a week and absolutely love it: all the low-carb effectiveness of Atkins with a sensible attitude towards fat consumption. Having to avoid sugar is still tough, but the reminder of how lousy I feel when I consume it is generally enough to dissuade me from breaking regimen.

I\’ll have more to say after a few more weeks on South Beach. It seems to be a great diet for people who are either sick of Atkins, or those who don\’t need to drop a hefty about of heft quickly (ie, you\’re looking to lose the lovehandles, not the keg). I fall into both categories (sick of Atkins, just a little weight to loose and keep off), and my initial impressions are very positive

I will say one thing common to both diets, however: don\’t get suckered into the various synthetic, artificial low-carb products out there. The essence of South Beach and Atkins is eating fresh, unprocessed food; low-carb protein bars or bastardized “low-carb scones” from a mix are neither fresh nor unprocessed. So whichever diet you choose, skip most of the Atkins-branded products and their imitators and just eat quality, naturally low-carb food. You\’ll feel far better for it.

So if you\’re a reader who hangs out with me in meatspace (no pun intended), make sure I don\’t reach for anything sugary. Bread I can avoid, beer I can usually turn down, but sugar is my serious weakness. Having to keep to a diet still seems tacky to me, but it\’s apparently a tacky necessity I need to get used to. Thanks a load, lousy genes.

No Low-Carb Slippage!

I tried letting the Atkins slip a bit, indulging in an occasional tortilla or even (gasp!) sandwich, and it hasn\’t turned out well. I haven\’t put on any weight as a result, but any gradual “Phase 3” weight loss I had going has stopped. On days I ate more carbs I noticed a loss of focus and a significant drop in energy levels, and I generally just felt gross. A sandwich sure is more convenient than an Atkins lunch, but it\’s not worth it.

I\’ve been considering looking into the less-restrictive South Beach diet. One way or another I seem to need a low-carb regimen to stay slim and keep my blood sugar level, but I can\’t help but worry about the fat-centric aspects of Atkins. My impression is that South Beach is a “healthier” diet (in the low fat sense that we\’ve all been taught) that still kicks out bad carbs.

Jon has just set up a blog/community site for all things low-carb over at Carbwire, which is diet agnostic in favoring neither Atkins nor South Beach and generally nifty. Resources like that are helping me stick with the “low-carb lifestyle,” which I maintain as being worthwhile if you\’re one of us unfortunates with slug-speed metabolisms.

New Year’s Resolution

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I did a sort of half-assed Atkins this past Fall, giving up sugar and avoiding more than not your usual carbohydrate sources while steering my diet towards high protein intake. As something of a gourmand I tend to eat pretty well unless knowingly indulging in junk food, so the switch wasn’t to legitimize bacon cheese burgers or that sort of nonsense. Nor was the pseudo-Atkins aimed entirely at weight loss; I have lovehandles I could stand to loose but I’m not doing terribly in the weight department. Mostly I was intrigued by the claims of higher, more consistent energy levels and clearer thought resulting from breaking down the sugar and white flour dependencies cultivated by the modern American diet. Giving up sugar was tough, but it went well… at least until I got off the wagon for my mom’s pecan pie at Thanksgiving. Ever since I’ve been looking for a good time to go back on Atkins and do it right.



Induction, the first phase of the diet, starts for me today. The idea is to kick your sugar-burning metabolism over to a fat-burning mode, with the aim of burning off body fat before too long. You actually get to eat pretty well if you take Atkins’ advice and select quality organic food. The limited Induction diet of meat, fish, cheese, and select vegetables lasts for two weeks, at which point culinary horizons expand. By the time I’m back to school at the end of the month I should be able to eat more normally, with a few exceptions. Sugar I’m willing to give up, but caffeine I’ll probably reintroduce to take advantage of my new espresso machine.



For those of you readers who actually know and see me: your patience with my potential fussiness in restaurant selection is greatly appreciated. I hope to see this through for as long as it proves beneficial. Tips appreciated.

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The Wonders of Healthy, Well-Fed, Curvy Women

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Normally I could give a damn about celebrities and, much less, people blogging about celebrities. But Jay linked to a side-by-side comparison of Renee Zellweger with and without a little extra weight for a role and the results are staggering, at least to these eyes. She’s not normally one of the actresses I flip for, but with a good meal or two in her she looks positively luscious, radiant and glowing. I’d reconsider my tastes for yes-I’ll-have-the-cheesecake Renee. Which I know she’ll be glad to hear, international superstar playboy bachelor tastemaker that I am.



All joking aside, women out there: eat, please. There’s nothing more pleasing than a happy, curvy, well-fed woman (and in my experience those three traits go together!). Turn a zaftig other cheek to societal standards and men who insist on rail-thin females. Dessert’s on me if you do.

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Hack-kins: Beaten To The Analysis

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Salon has a fine article on why so many techies are doing Atkins and other low-carb diets. The observation that it has the thrill of “hacking your metabolism” is one I noted to myself some time ago. The article makes me think I should go whole hog (no pun intended) and try to shed the few extra pounds I’ve got sitting about the middle via full-on ketosis.