Monthly Archives: June 2013
Raw Food Surprises and a Journey to Bliss
Every year, Bonnaroo has a tent called The Academy, where you can learn vital skills like hula hoop making and spoken word poetry. Though I searched in vain this year for my favorite primitive skills guru, I did stumble upon a mother-daughter team giving a workshop about raw food called “Living Cuisine.” Okay, I know what you’re thinking, especially given what I just said about hula hoops, but I found Laura Button and Journey Button-Hale of Journey to Bliss Raw Foods really down-to-earth and engaging, and there were some surprises in the presentation that I thought were worth sharing.
Ditch the Labels—Laura still bristles at the idea of labeling someone according to their eating habits. “I’ll be a raw foodist when people stop brewing delicious beer,” she said. She made the point that you can have a vegan who eats a lot of processed crap every day or you can have an omnivore who eats mostly fresh vegetables and, occasionally, a grass-fed hamburger at a party; which one is healthier and eating more mindfully? Her point was that labels like raw foodist or vegetarian aren’t as meaningful as the day-to-day choices that lead people to eat food that makes them feel good. That (to a longtime vegetarian who occasionally and somewhat guiltily eats seafood) sounded refreshingly logical.
Laura on the Whole Foods blog
Rethink that Multigrain Chip on Your Shoulder—Whole Foods is a big, big corporation, which, to some folks, earns them an automatic Darth Vader rating on the Scale of Villainy. While I can’t speak to all of WF’s business practices, Laura did point out a pretty grand one, which is that they regionally stock small, local producers, giving them far greater reach. So if you’re at a Whole Foods in Tennessee or Georgia, you might see the Intentional Foods line that Laura and Journey produce. It definitely made me want to hunt around in my own Whole Foods for some small suppliers doing their best in my neck of the woods.
It Might Be a Good Idea to Eat like a Toddler—Little kids are weird, and they’ll do things like decide they’re not eating anything but watermelon for an entire day. While those “mono-meals” might be frustrating to parents, Laura pointed out that they’re probably much more in line with the way our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate, who found a food resource and exhausted it. Continue reading
Batten Down the Hatches, Eatbox: Shannon’s Brief Return to Food Service
Jonathan, posing with his food truck empire
When Jonathan Coffman took over command of the Eatbox food truck and moved it to Jackson, Tennessee, nothing could have fully prepared him for the Sisyphean effort it would take to feed twenty thousand hungry Bonnaroovians at the Food Truck Oasis. First of all, festival organizers threw him a bit of a curve ball by asking him to fill the gourmet meatball niche at the festival, when he was more used to serving kebabs and burritos at much smaller events around Jackson. Undaunted, Coffman built a trailer filled with chest freezers. He rallied a small army of friends and family to staff the truck. He rolled thousands upon thousands of meatballs. And then he allowed me, a food truck novice, to wander into the middle of all of it, just because I asked.
My previous experiences in food service are dark-night-of-the-soul kind of material; I was truly one of the worst waitresses to ever spill a drink or drop a dessert at the Big Boy and TGIFridays of Mansfield, Ohio, and my tips usually reflected it. But Bonnaroo is all about new experiences, and I thought that working behind the scenes of one of the food trucks, preparing the food itself, might help to erase the memories of those old disasters.
Elbow room in a food truck is limited, but even so, there are a number of people working behind the scene at any given moment to get your food to you. I by-passed the grill and assembly positions (though, bless their sweet Southern hospitality, I think the Eatbox workers were prepared to let me do whatever I wanted in there) and apprenticed myself to Maria (non-Bonnaroo job: fourth grade teacher; favorite summer hobby: teasing Zeke, who was working next to her) at the topping station, where I figured I would do the least damage. Continue reading
Jim and Nick and The Fatback Collective: Fresh Pig at the Food Truck Oasis
This is probably not the kind of image that comes to mind when you think about Bonnaroo.
This woman, who was as nice as could be, is named Banjo. That's not her christened name, but it's the one Bonnaroo folks gave her when she brought the heaviest Southern accent to Jim and Nick's. She seemed proud to carry it.
But it’s an image I saw my first night there. I snapped it just after I watched a couple of people saw the head off a hog with something that sounded and looked a lot like the circa-1980 Sears hedge clipper we had growing up. Off the body, the head looked almost rubber, almost like a cartoon. Except for the eyes. The eyes were tiny and wet.
“Ya’ll are sick, taking pictures of pig torture,” somebody next to me said, snapping a picture of his own. Two guys stuck the end of the hedge clipper into the hog’s neck and started going to town on the ribs. A man walking by trotted up and licked the head’s cheek. Thursday night at the Food Truck Oasis.
This was not pig torture. It was Alabama-based Jim and Nick’s Bar-B-Q taking the lead in the Fatback’s Collective Bonnaroo debut. The Collective is a community of politically progressive chefs, restaurateurs, and gourmands who really dig their pork. They share with Bonnaroo, according to Melany Mullens, one of a multiple publicists pushing Bonnaroo’s world of food, “a dedication to sustainability and pork.”
I like this coupling. It sounds silly, but typed out it reads as simultaneously down-home and high-minded, which I figure is pretty much the point. Bonnaroo is carbon neutral; it gets 20% of its electricity from solar panels; I could go on. Bonnaroo is also a champion of the Southern culture of food and hospitality. Welcome to Bonnaroo’s Tennessee, a land of new kinds of partnerships. Continue reading
Yazoo Brewery: Teaching Us to Embrace that Tennessee Funk
Our regular beer columnist, the incomparable Big Lla, is rambling the country in newly-wedded bliss at the moment, and though I am a poor substitute, I was pleased at the chance to write about Yazoo Brewery, a happy discovery that I made at Bonnaroo last weekend. Yazoo first caught my eye because it was the only Tennessee brewer slated to be in the Brooer’s Fest (Bonnaroo’s collection of yummy microbrew booths), and I always like tasting the local nectar. But my interest was further piqued when my brother-in-law Andrew called Yazoo’s Dos Perros “the most awesomest tastingest beer in Nashville.” Sold.
While sampling the Hefeweizen and Gerst Amber that were on tap at the festival, we caught up with Adam Jones, who, in addition to marketing the fine brews at Yazoo, has eyes so kind that he reminded me of a koala. Here’s more from Adam on hoppy experiments and Yazoo’s efforts to put the sour back into beer:
What’s your favorite Yazoo brew?
Honestly, the first one that I really fell in love with was the hefeweizen. It has such strong banana notes that it really grabbed me, and then when I started to work with them, I realized there’s no banana in it; it’s all the yeast. That really intrigued me and made me want to learn more.
I’m a big fan on the Hop Project IPA, too. The recipe of the hops changes with each batch. They use a little different combination, a little different hops each time, which gives it a different character and keeps you guessing—something new and fun each time.
Anything new coming up for Yazoo this summer?
We’ve actually just started a sour and wild ale program. It’s a series of beer called “Embrace the Funk.” Sour ales are brewed with a different strand of yeast that you usually want to keep out of your beer. But combined with other things—one of ours has cherries and currants—you get the sour initial taste and end with a malty finish, and it’s a big spectrum of flavor. We’ve got two on tap in the taproom now, and we’re bottling it soon. They’re pretty awesome.
Bonnaroo 2013: She-Said/He-Said
A kind stranger named Jake took this picture of us during the Wilco set. His wife (lower left) kind of dogged his photography skills beforehand, but I think it turned out quite well.
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Shannon says… |
Jason says… |
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| The kale, feta and parmesan mac and cheese from Dan’s Gourmet was incredibly flavorful, and it gave me the energy to walk back to the campsite late at night. |
Best thing I ate all weekend |
The Amish donut. Duh. But, yeah, that mac and cheese was sick. |
| The David Lynch coffee that I got for free at the screening of his meditation documentary was really good: very nutty tasting with dried fruit at the end. Perfect cup for a misty Tennessee morning. |
Best coffee to be found |
We switched from regular coffee to the iced version. I suppose this sullies the purity of the comparison, but it was something like 90 degrees. So I will just have to accept the sullying. Nashville’s Frothy Monkey sold us black iced coffee that was delicious: dark, thick-tasting, and spicy on a level usually reserved for coffees with a sharp bite, which this coffee did not have. Excellent festival coffee for those people who are into coffee like other people are into homebrewed beer. |
| The dancing of the man in the Taco Supply booth was so earnest and passionate that I ordered a veggie taco even though I wasn’t hungry. |
Most endearing food vendor |
The ladies out in Tent City blasting “Misty Mountain Hop.” I didn’t eat their food, don’t even recall what they were selling, but by Saturday it was about time I heard some cranked Zeppelin. |
| I loved those hefeweizens in the summer heat, especially the banana-y one from Yazoo and the orange-y Razor Wit from Highland. |
Tastiest beer on tap |
Terrapin Maggie’s Peach Farmhouse Ale out of Athens. Super peachy without being sweet, super smooth without being light, super refreshing, even for this IPA man. Continue reading |
Bonnaroo 2013: Anticipation for Fat Factories and Roadkill Balls
Bonnaroo!
We’re ramping up our Bonnaroo output this year. Shannon’s won some behind-the-counter time at Eat Box, one of our favorite food trucks from last year, and we’re really hoping the wilderness survival guru who grew starry eyed when discussing the consumption of roadkill testicles returns. I have been thinking about my favorite summer fat factory—the Amish doughnuts and butter-dipped pretzels—at least a few times a week for the past two months, and we’re going to spend more time in Tent City this year seeking out far-flung late night delicacies and being propositioned by young men selling pot banana bread.
And, keeping in step with the growing national fetishizing (Spellcheck suggestion: “fetish zing”) of all things pig, the incomparable Rusty Odum of Knoxville’s Blank News is going to be chowing on one of the hogs being roasted in its entirety each day of the festival and give us the low down. Because we don’t eat them mammals. We’re also looking forward to drinking Yazoo the only Volunteer State brewer represented, and learning just what is to be learned from the Living Cuisine workshop at the Roo Academy.
Oh, and seeing if every living Wu-Tang member shows up.
We’ll check back in with ya’ll next week.
Lunch at the End of the Line: Cheese Making at the Edge of the Continent
The ladies of the Qualicum Cheeseworks on Vancouver Island are gushers. 
As the momma cows trudged out of the field into the barn, each udder, roughly the size of the plastic bladder inside a Costco box o’ wine, swung to and fro. I’d been petting the new calves just a minute before, and they were charming, all nuzzle’y with dewy black eyes. Their mommas were not. They were massive and slobbery and their black eyes were more dull than dewy.
The crammed against each other at the base of a ramp, knew their routine, were probably eager for the relief of the milking room beyond the door at the top of the slope. When the young man opened the door to that room—a 25’ X 25’ collection of gates and hoses and foot-tall glass containers shaped like medicine capsules—ten mommas at a time eagerly waddled in, took their standard places at their individual 
feed troughs, and proceeded to thoroughly destroy the mix of oats, molasses, barley, and wheat that poured out of from chutes above. Continue reading
Concrete Jungle: Jay’s Pop-up Tomato Shop, Instructions Included
The tomatoes I started from last year’s seeds took off. I fixed a three-bulb lamp about 20 
years older than I am with CFLs and kept it on the guys all day for about four weeks, and produced this.
So I was left with sixteen seedlings (Beefsteak, Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, and Hillbilly varieties) that I decided to give away to passers-by on a Sunday afternoon, re-potting instructions included. It was all so very Golden Age of Brooklyn, what with an ethnic and sexual-preference spectrum that would make a recruiter for a small liberal arts college weak in the knees, and folks ranging in age from about their 60s down to the seven. Pas
cal, Naomi, Erin, and Pepe were amongst the takers. I promised everybody I’d include care instructions. So….
Caring for tomatoes is pretty easy. You’ve got some gear you need, but you can DIY share of it, and once you own it, you can keep reusing it. Continue reading
Lunch at the End of the Line: Canadian Coconut Crush Edition
I have a problem with restaurant crushes. I’ll find someplace that I like, and then, just like crushes on boys in high school, I’ll be unable to think of little else for days and unwilling to consider any alternatives. Once I had (and—let’s face it—probably still have) a crush on my local Mexican favorite, Chavela’s, that was so intense that I feared I’d come down with some weird form of pica that involved tacos instead of rocks.
So it’s just as well, really, that Chau VeggiExpress exists on the other side of the continent, or I probably wouldn’t be able to resist eating there multiple times per week. On a recent trip to Vancouver, a city with a large Asian population, I developed a serious hankering for some pho, that delicious Vietnamese noodle soup. Pho, however, can be a little difficult to find in vegetarian form, so I poked around on Yelp and quickly came up with a review that claimed that the coconut shake at Chau was the best beverage the reviewer had ever tasted. She followed this assertion with the sentence, “Seriously,” which is one of the gravest statements a Yelper can make. So Jason and I decided to fortify ourselves there before embarking on the brutal bus/plane/train trip home.
Anh, a sweet woman in a “Canada Kicks Ass” t-shirt, explained the menu to us when we walked in, which included, among other things, three different kinds of noodle soup. Anh’s family has long owned restaurants in the Vancouver area, and they decided to make this one vegan to match their Buddhist lifestyle. They cook their own coconut cream for the storied coconut shake, which you can get virgin or with rum, and they also use it in their coconut curry. Continue reading