Beer Tour for One

October 16, 2020 by hillarystarbright

The San Diego Brewer’s Guild refers to our beautiful seaside town as the Craft Beer Capital of the World. It’s not much of an exaggeration: in the last decade, especially, laws nationwide have been relaxed to allow more home brewing and distilling; and it wasn’t long before everyone had their own brewing company.

As with many other aspects of life, San Diego spoils you for living other places after you leave. You start to travel after living in San Diego for a couple of decades, and you erroneously expect great sunsets and superb Mexican food and fancy craft IPAs everywhere you go.

It’s a wake-up call.

But hey, part of traveling and seeing the country is trying new things, right? What’s the point of seeing the rest of the country if I am looking for San Diego beer everywhere? So when I got to my mom’s house in Tennessee, I had to take myself on a tasting tour.

Of course, if I was still in San Diego, beer tasting would be totally different: I would buy myself a day pass on the bus, take the bus from my house in Ocean Beach to Old Town, where I would hit a nice brewpub for a starter beer. I’d take the trolley, maybe to downtown San Diego or to the barrio to hit a few tasting rooms, having a small beer or taster in each one, maybe a snack or a taco at one or more of the stops, and make a day out of it.

It’s a fun, spontaneous day, just as easily accomplished with one person or 20. The bus pass means you don’t have to worry about drunk driving or parking.

Well, parking sure isn’t an issue at my mom’s farm in Limestone, Tennessee. They don’t even have a stoplight, much less a bus and trolley system to take me to all of the beer tasting spots. There is a tasting room about 25 miles away, but I’m not drinking and driving. Plus, you know … Covid.

So, I compromised. I went to the local grocery store, where I purchased a mix-n-match 6-pack of beers, and filled my sixer with all local brews. It would be a week-long tasting, at home, but it would be safe and I would get to taste all the good beers in the tri-state area.

I know that I love IPAs, so I figured that was the best place to start. It wasn’t hard to find six beers that seemed to be decent IPAs. Also, I generally prefer beers in a bottle, but in these cases, the cans didn’t take anything away from the hoppy flavor.

First up were two IPAs from Sweetwater Brewing out of Atlanta.

I tried their regular IPA and their 420 Strain IPA.

This one, the G13, is one of several “420 Strain” beers from Sweetwater incorporating a hemp flavor. I like hemp as much as the next guy (hello, cancer patient!) but I personally didn’t care for the hemp flavor in this IPA. Their regular IPA (in the yellow can) is much tastier.

Next, I tried the Long Leaf IPA from Appalachian Mountain Brewery. My mom’s house in east Tennessee is very close to the border of North Carolina, so they get an interesting mix of beers from all over the south and eastern seaboard.

(Adorable rural background courtesy of my mom’s back porch.)

I really enjoyed this beer; very crisp and citrusy but with a great balance of hops flavors. For packing a 7.1% punch, it’s very smooth. Better watch out for that one.

Next up … by the way, I was not drinking all of these beers at once! … was one of my favorites, Yee Haw Brewing. Yee Haw has a really cute tasting room in Johnson City, with outdoor seating, a taco shop — it looked just like a beer tasting room you’d find in San Diego.

They clearly didn’t spend a lot of time and money on their can and logo designs (haha) but their beer was excellent.

Lots of hoppy flavor, hints of citrus, and a smooth finish. I totally bought another 6-pack just of these.

Highland Brewing came highly recommended to me by some beer-loving friends, so I tried two of their unfiltered IPAs. Highland Brewing Company is in Asheville, North Carolina, just a little over an hour’s drive (over the Smoky Mountains) from my mom’s place; you may recall some photos I took of their artsy college district when we visited in August from a previous post. Asheville has an up-and-coming craft beer scene and Highland is the leader of the pack.

Normally unfiltered IPAs aren’t my thing, even if I like the filtered version (example, Ballast Point Sculpins are the best IPAs I’ve ever had, but their unfiltered one is whoooooo very unfiltered, and for me, way too full of all of those hoppy floaty bits you get in some beers).

Both of the Highland IPAs were very crisp and not at all full of floaty bits (perhaps that also was due to it being canned and not, say, from a draft pull). But regardless I enjoyed both of these very much.

Maggie the farm dog completes the composition in the background 🙂

As you may have noticed, that was my six pack. A very successful week of tasting, if you ask me.

I later went to buy another mixer pack, with a couple moreYee Haw beers, a couple more Highland IPAs (I really really like the Mandarina… fruity, but not too citrusy that it ruins the hop flavor) …

… and these two North Carolina brews.

This Triple C Brewing IPA was really refreshing, it’s a light, not-too-hoppy IPA. It’s another one that is so smooth and crisp and almost light, you forget you’re drinking a pretty high-alcohol brew.

The last tri-state area IPA I tried was the Boojum Brewing IPA, which was probably the strongest-tasting of them all.

The “Hop Fiend” name is no joke… it was definitely a blend of all the hoppiest-tasting hops, but it was still very delicious.

If you’ve been following my adventures, you’ll have seen that on my way out of Tennessee, I stopped in Nashville to attempt to find some good food like I used to get when I was in college. I struck out.

Of course, in college, I also drank Boone’s Farm, so I didn’t know where to buy good beer there, either. I stopped at a beer and wine market/tasting room and, without sampling, took the word of the lady behind the counter about the quality of Jackalope Brewing Company IPAs and bought a 6-pack of them.

The Fennario IPA was very light-tasting, especially for being as hop-heavy and high-alcohol as it is. I took them with me as I travelled through Louisiana and Texas, and I they were a big hit. My friend in Louisiana doesn’t care for IPAs normally but loved these.

As I made my way back to Texas on the second leg of my adventure, my brother and I stopped in Utah and Colorado, then Dodge City, before we took a right and headed south to Houston, so I got myself a few cans to see what Texas brews I liked best.

The first IPA I tried there was pretty mild:

The “2 Hopper” from Texas Leaguer was really light and smooth, a good daytime (or baseball game) beer.

The Hop Tongue from Karb ach Brewing definitely talked a good game, and was very refreshing. But it might be overselling it’s extreme hoppy-ness.

Saint Arnold beers are very popular in Texas, and I enjoyed this Art Car IPA. Again, I wanted more hops, but I’d definitely drink this one again.

Now, the people at Spindletap know how to squeeze some hops. This Hop Gusher IPA was finally the hop-hop-hoppiness I needed! This was one of the best IPAs I’ve had outside of San Diego.

I also sampled the “Single Hop” IPA from the Martin House Brewing Company.

I did not like this beer. I think there might have been an error in production on this one. Ugh.

Thanks for coming along with me on my beer tour.

Please continue to follow my adventures through the USA — hopefully my RV will be ready and I will be on the road in the next week or so.

I have a pass for all of the national parks, so I think I will be maiking an effort — in the next leg of my adventure especially — to see more of the national parks and the awesome treasures within. On the way back to California from east Tennessee, I can see the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I will pass close to Mammoth Caves in Kentucky, past Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas, the Sand Dunes and Mesa Verde in Colorado, the Arches and Bryce Canyon in Utah, and maybe even Yosemite when I get back to California.

I probably won’t see all or even most of the places on that list, but I m super excited to get back on the road – this time in a pretty nice RV – and see the rest of this amazing country.

Check back soon (and follow me on social media) to see what I am up to in east Tennessee, the progress I have made on the RV, and my next adventure! See you on the road!

If you are enjoying this content, please contribute to my bucket list GoFundMe page here.

Boysenberry Baby Back Ribs and Planning for the trip of your life

July 19, 2020 by hillarystarbright

I have just under 30 days before I vacate my apartment and hit the road in an RV — which I technically do not yet have.

I have given away most of my clothes, I have packed up half of my apartment, and I have organized an insane amount of schwag. I pick up some cool promotional things from just about every 5k, festival, fun run, concert and foodie event I attend, which leads to a truly astounding array of can koozies, cup coasters, hats, lighters, posters, ticket stubs, race medals, and other random accoutrements.

And don’t even get me started on my collection of cookbooks. This is maybe half of it.

I have, of course, had my mom here to help me. She was in my apartment before I was even discharged from the hospital (see previous post), and has been here since, helping me with cooking, cleaning, laundry, and all sorts of other things, while my broken back heals.

I have also had other family to come cheer me up and help out; my sister and her partner came from Texas, and my brother came from Ventura county with his wife. It has been wonderful to spend some time with them all, especially since I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around.

Aren’t we all adorable?

To make a very long story very short, my brother and I, for reasons beyond our control as children, didn’t meet each other until we were adults. Since then we have developed a truly wonderful relationship, but it’s kind of a bummer that we weren’t given the chance to know each other for our whole lives.

Regardless, we are making up for lost time, in the best way ever: with BBQ.

Big brother writes a blog, too, check out his theme park blog at Park Journey. Because he goes on so many trips to theme parks, I get the benefit when he shows up with things like a big bottle of boysenberry concentrate from Knott’s Berry Farm.

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I made the most awesome Boysenberry Baby Back Ribs! (See the end of this post for the recipe.)

We also went out with another friend to check out some RV sales lots, so I can get an idea of what type of vehicle I want. I don’t have a truck (or even a car) so I don’t want something I have to haul, and I need something with a standard bed, i.e., not one I have to climb a ladder to get into, or unfold from a table or something. It’s too hard on my poor broken back!

Anyway, I think I narrowed it down to the type of Class C RV I need for this trip.

I will continue to update as I prepare to take off on this amazing trip of a lifetime. I do not yet have an itinerary; nor do I plan to have one. I have a lot of people I would like to see, and there are a lot of monuments and national parks and just beautiful areas of the country that I’ve never seen, and now that I am running out of time, I am very excited to see. I even splurged and bought myself the best travel gift ever: a brand new, spiral-bound, Adventure Edition road atlas!

This baby even has a full section on all of the national parks! I probably won’t be driving to Alaska (although you never know), but other than that, I really want to see all of the national parks. This will be so fun!

And, yes. I am excited. I have something truly life-changing and amazing to look forward to. I know it might seem weird, in fact I got a few comments and messages about how happy I seem to be about a bucket list road trip. All I can say to that is, I learned a lot from when I had breast cancer before; and I learned a lot about control.

When you have cancer, it’s easy to feel like you have no control over your life … you’re told what to eat, what medicines to take, what horrible treatments to do to your body. You feel like your own body is betraying you; like no matter what you do, this cancer is the one in control, not you. And to a certain extent, that is true.

But.

You always have control over your own reactions to things. Sure, you can be a jerk to the nurse treating you, and probably nobody would blame you, because you have cancer and you’re in pain or you’re sick. But being a jerk isn’t going to make you feel any better. It certainly won’t make your treatment any easier.

A positive attitude, sometimes, is all you have.

I’ve always been a happy person. Sure, I have problems like everyone else, but I am generally happy. I have (had) a great career, a house on the beach, a great boyfriend, a wonderful family, amazing friends .. I don’t have a lot to be angry at the world about. And I am sure not going to let cancer take anything else away from me.

Being sick; I can’t control that.

But I can control how I react to it.

I choose not to be afraid.

I choose not to be angry.

I choose to be happy despite the pain.

I choose to make every moment count.

I choose to live my life as I want to live it.

I choose to end it the way I want to end it.

I am going to ride out on the greatest bucket list trip ever. Hopefully I will see everything I want to see, live another five years, and write a great book about my adventures. Maybe I will have to cut my adventure short if I get too sick or am in too much pain. But I will ride as long as I can and see as much as I can for as long as I can.

It’s gonna be so rad!

≡

Boysenberry Baby Back Ribs

(Instant Pot Recipe)

Ingredients:

Two (2) baby back rib racks
about 1/2 of 1 bottle of Knott’s Berry Farm Boysenberry Punch Concentrate, separated (you can purchase online here)
1 cup water
8 oz. tomato paste
3 tbsp. brown sugar
about 1/2 diced onion
1-2 heads of crushed garlic
smoked salt* and fresh cracked pepper

To prepare:

Place a rack in your Instant Pot inner pot. Add approx. 1/4 of the bottle of boysenberry concentrate and the water to the pot.
Coat the ribs with salt and pepper, and arrange on the rack in the Instant Pot. Set on high pressure for between 15-25 minutes, depending on the thickness of the meat. (Don’t overcook, or the ribs will fall apart before you can eat them; more than 30 minutes will have all the meat falling off of the bone no matter how thick the ribs are.)
While the ribs are in the Instant Pot, sauté the diced onion and garlic with the olive oil in a small pot on the stove. Once the onion is translucent, add the tomato paste and the brown sugar, as well as smoked salt and pepper.
Whisk in about another 1/4 of the bottle of boysenberry concentrate VERY SLOWLY as the sauce simmers. Do not let the sauce get scorched.
Allow the Instant Pot to depressurize naturally, which should take about 15 minutes, at the same time that you allow the sauce to gently simmer.
Once the Instant Pot has depressurized, remove the ribs, coat them in the sauce, and place in your air fryer or under a broiler for about 5-7 minutes until the sauce gets caramelized. Serve and eat immediately.

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*Note: I do not believe in using Liquid Smoke, and smoked salt is an excellent substitute for actual smoked meats, etc. If you must (gulp) use Liquid Smoke, go easy on it.

Win Every Night with the 8×8 Cookbook

December 26, 2015 by hillarystarbright

I’ve been cooking my way through this new cookbook, and it’s fantastic!

Kathy Strahs has taken the concept of simple baked dishes to another level with the 8×8 Cookbook – not just boring timesavers, but real tips for elevating simple dishes into impressive works of art. There are a million cookbooks out there about using baking dishes, but this one has real-life experience.

First, I tried out the caramelized banana pancake squares. These are really easy, and the “self-saucing” technique Kathy uses makes the fresh pancake squares really impressive and delicious. This is what I mean by a simple technique for elevating a simple dish — everyone loves a banana pancake, but caramelizing the bananas in some brown sugar and butter first adds another depth of flavor to the dish, and it’s just as easy as making a pancake.

These would be so much fun to make with kids as a fun weekend breakfast, and I will totally have to make the next time I have a brunch or go to a daytime potluck. Aren’t they cute?

Then I made the roasted cod with gremolata and lemony orzo. This is a really simple and classy dish you can make for your sweetheart or for your whole family. You only need a few simple ingredients, and again, a simple technique — in this case, adding lemon zest to the boiling water when you parboil the orzo — adds another level of flavor that makes it better than your average weeknight baked dish.

The Boursin baked mashed potatoes were next – not the most photogenic dish, but definitely one of the best – a simple cheesy mashed potato recipe, kicked up by creaming the potatoes, adding extra butter, and baking in a hot, hot oven.

I couldn’t get away with a cookbook review without trying at least one of the desserts! The chocolate craving cake (shown here without the accompanying frosting recipe) was really rich and chocolatey. I totally want to make this again and experiment with different frosting toppings — but the fancy technique in this recipe makes it so moist, you hardly need any!

I first encountered Kathy’s work in “The Ultimate Panini Press Cookbook,” and “The 8×8 Cookbook” is a perfect follow-up. I can’t wait to see what amazing tips she has in store for her next book.

Samples from “The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen”

December 19, 2015 by hillarystarbright

This summer, I was diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer, and I am still undergoing treatment. Before I started treatment, I got as healthy as I could, so I think I am handling chemotherapy better than most. At the same time, aggressive cancer treatments have changed my body – and my taste buds – in ways I never anticipated.

For example, many chemotherapy and radiation patients lose their sense of taste for certain flavors … for me, it was salt. I soon realized that the food I was eating was totally salty, I just couldn’t taste it. I can’t very well just pour more and more salt onto my food just because I can’t taste it, but I can make things that have tons of flavor packed into it, but minimal added salt.

I was lucky enough to be given a copy of “The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen” by Rebecca Katz, which is a really amazing cookbook with fantastic tips for staying nourished while going through cancer treatment. I can see why it’s won so many awards.

Image from rebeccakatz.com

All of the recipes are simple and healthy, but also offer a few extras for cancer patients, that others might not consider. For example, I have a friend who had to go through intense radiation treatments on her head and face, so her mouth, nose, eyes, sinuses, and throat were sore and raw. Eating anything that wasn’t pureed or freezing cold was too painful. This cookbook has great recipes for simple soups and broths, as well as smoothies and granitas, so that even if you can barely swallow, you can at least get some vitamins and nourishment.

So far, my favorite recipe from this book is the Bone Broth — which is extremely simple and very recommended for anyone, regardless of your health, to keep around — and Curried Hummus and Vegetable Pinwheels. These were a lot of fun to make.

The hummus recipe, like most hummus, is really simple, and shredding the veggies makes it easy on the cancer patient’s mouth and stomach, while still getting in the flavor, the nutrients, and some crunch. I used some really good, fresh, soft wheat tortillas, which made it perfect for me. I plan to experiment with this recipe again using other hummus flavors, and probably some other vegetable fillings as well. I think this would be great with some watercress, or maybe even some lightly-seared portabello mushrooms.

I noticed that in addition to making me unable to taste certain flavors, like salt, chemotherapy also made me really sensitive to spice — and of course, I didn’t notice this little glitch until I was deep into a bowl of Thai curry. It was painful! Since then, I’ve kept something soft and cool – pudding, ice cream, yogurt – on hand, just in case I accidentally eat something too spicy and need to put out the fire in my mouth.

Luckily, my friend who gifted me the book also made me the Cantaloupe Granita with Mint, which was amazing! I basically have a tub of this in my freezer, to shave off a bowl full of cool relief whenever I need it.

I can’t wait until my treatment is over, if for no other reason than to be able to eat spicy food again.

So far, the recipes from this book and the helpful advice it offers has been a great help to me. Stay tuned for more posts with recipes from this book in the next few months.