Date Night - A Blog by Mari: Peace & Riot

Today, I went from shop to shop along Main Street, Ventura, and handed out bright-red lettered fliers with the words Peace and Riot on the front, with pictures of Jake Busey and Ben Savage squeezed between the words.

I politely pushed these fliers into the hands of shop owners and said, “My friend is making a movie, it’s his first movie ever. Long time writer, first time director and we need Extras on Monday, November 8th, 11AM for this bar scene. Could you help out?”

I gave a flier to Mallory at Beehive Hair Salon (a tattooed red head whose served up a pretty stiff cocktail while I got my hair did), the cute girls at Blenders in the Grass, a young employee sifting through bags of clothes at Buffalo Exchange, chicks making chocolate at Truffle Hounds, a gal cutting hair at a salon next to Sportsman’s bar, and many others. I expected to get elevator eyes (that look people give you when you don’t belong–like the look Pretty Woman got when she went shopping on Rodeo Drive), but I was happy to get bright smiles.

You see, my friend Damion has been a struggling writer for 10 years and this is his dream. They call films like these passion projects (films on a tight budget) which is as simple as the name implies: movies made for the passion of film rather than for the passion of $$.

And I’m a writer too–as much as I may have fooled you into believing I’m only this thirty-something hunting for Dongs and Love. Yo no solo un “man hunter” yo tambien una que believes en passion!

I love writing + I love seeing dreams come true = door to door fliers

Most of the movie is shot on location up in Malibu Lakes. A few scenes are filmed in Ojai, and the bar scene is filmed at a popular Downtown Ventura night spot.

I’m hoping there will be a slew of different Ventura locals on set that day because I want to make friends… and maybe I’m still on a man hunt. I figure it’s a great way to meet all sorts of different locals from around downtown.

Therefore, I propose that If you haven’t got anything to do, you should join us!

Published by permission. Visit Mari's blog at http://www.mari-go-round.com/

Hop Head Said - A Blog by Curtis: Anacapa Brewing Company

This week I had the opportunity to do my first official review of Anacapa Brewing Company’s beer. First of all it would be hard for the ambience to be any better. Anacapa Brewing Co. is located in a long and narrow 115 year old building in downtown Ventura. Right behind the bar, almost in reach, is enough brewing equipment to make any beer geek go “Ah, I’m home”. Mash tuns, and boil kettles and fermentors, oh my! The visit started off with a warm welcome and prompt beer service. It is so nice to walk into a place, sit down and have your beer in minutes.

There were three Anacapa beers (Seward Blonde Ale, Santa Rosa Red Ale, Benny Hanna Espresso Stout) on tap when I visited. I started with the Benny Hanna Espresso Stout brewed with locally roasted Beacon Coffee (5777 Olivas Park Drive, Suite R, Ventura). The beer poured so opaque black that when I held it up to the light and I didn’t even get a garnet glow through it. Now that is a dark beer. It had a thick, compact, tan head but was poured to the top of the pint glass so it didn’t last too long. The aroma was a mouth watering roasty bitter chocolate. My initial taste was filled with the smoky flavor of dark roasted malts that gave way to a tart flavor in the back of my palate which really helped to balance the smoky flavors. It took me awhile to place that tart flavor then I realized my favorite coffees often have the same flavor. Mmmm, combining two of my favorite liquids and it works for me!

The second taste found a bitter chocolate flavor that stuck around for the remainder of the pint and helped to balance this beer’s sweetness. The balancing bitterness in this beer comes from two sources: the hops and the dark roasted malts. The dark roasted malts work together with the hops and add a pleasant complexity to the bitterness. So instead of being just plain bitter (like an English pale ale) the unfermentable sugars left behind in the dark roasted malts help to round off any bitter edges. For me this beer had a near perfect mix of smoke, bitter chocolate and a refreshing tartness.

Note: Often the smoky and bitter chocolate flavors found in a beer only come from the dark roasted grains used in the recipe. Malt is always kilned to stop germination and to ensure that it is dry enough so it doesn’t mold while it is packed and stored. Malts are also kilned to produce different flavor and color profiles. The longer the malt is kilned the darker and more intense the flavors become. Flavor profiles can range from toasted grain to bitter chocolate to burnt coffee.

http://anacapabrewing.com

Published by permission. Visit Curtis' blog at http://hopheadsaid.wordpress.com/

Food in Life - A Blog by Jen: Ignoring Instructions

As I might have mentioned before, my Dad is the best dad ever. For multiple reasons, but specifically this week for growing a pumpkin patch solely so he could have a pumpkin carving party.

Bear in mind, I have no kids and am an only child so all the kids must come from other areas of our lives....my friends kids, grand kids of friends and friends of the grand kids. We managed to round up a very respectable crowd of families to go hunt in the pumpkin patch for their preferred pumpkin.

Including the "oldest" 5 year old in the group, Pam, who had to have her wine while picking out her pumpkin.

The kids drew, cut and scooped out their pumpkins and made a very wide variety of scary, cute and gross pumpkins to display for us. The adults, of course, supervised as we do so well.

Some favorites are:

Vomiting pumpkin by Trevor

Carnivorous pumpkin by yours truly....The kids liked it so much that not only did I make two of them I also sent them home with the kiddos.

And then of course we had to have dinner, right? So mom vacillated between things like BBQ chicken and a few other easy and crowd friendly menus and finally settled on pulled pork sandwiches and Cole slaw with sloppy Joe's for the kids. Perfect dinner...easy to make ahead and keep in a crock pot!

When I left work on Sunday and was getting ready to head up to the house I called as I almost always do to make sure she doesn't need anything last minute. On a random impulse I asked if she had arranged for dessert.

As mentioned a week or so ago, my mom does not bake. Nor does she crave dessert like so many people do. So when I asked her if she had anything planned, she said no, she had bought some Halloween candy and put it in a bucket. "It should be enough for the kids and the big kids" she stated. Yeah right.

I ignored her. As did two of our other friends who not only have sweet tooth's, but are also great cooks. Terry made graveyard cupcakes with gummy worms coming out of them and Telva did up her chocolate chip cookies. Me? I got home and in 20 minutes I whipped up a batch of Raspberry Blondie's. And at the end of the night there was barely a crumb of all three desserts left.

Picture brown sugar and butter with a little flour wrapped around fresh raspberries and you might come close. But not quite until you get the crunchy crust and the gooey inside will you get the full scope of this dessert.

So damn simple, but at the end of the night when all that was left was one sorry little corner piece I was feeling pretty darn good about my dessert and about the fact that I had ignored my mom's instructions! Especially when people started asking for the recipe....

Raspberry Blondies

2/3 Cup Butter, softened
1 Cup Brown Sugar
1 Cup White Sugar
2 Eggs
2 tsp Vanilla
2 Cups Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Salt
1/2 Pint Fresh Raspberries

Cream the butter & sugar together until well blended. Add eggs & vanilla and beat well. Add all dry ingredients in and mix thoroughly. Grease a 9x13 pan and spread the batter in the pan, it will be a bit thick. Dot the top with the raspberries, no need to push them in, the batter will "swallow" them during cooking.

Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Cool before cutting & serving.

Printed by permission. Visit Jen's blog @ http://foodinlife.blogspot.com/

Food in Life - A Blog by Jen: Are you ready for random?

Some things mom and I have learned in the last few days.....

Duck fat makes a very good toe moisturizer.

Frying clams inside makes for a very slippery kitchen floor. (flip flop removal recommended)

A bushel of cherry tomatoes can be converted in to only a couple pint jars with time, heat and patience.

Peeling apples goes much faster with two people.

My Grandma Kenton has peeled well over 24,000 apples in her lifetime for apple pie.

An extra glass of wine helps dull the pain of having to clean up after a cooking extravaganza.

After two days of chopping dicing, peeling, slicing, browning, frying, mixing, blending, seasoning, baking, rendering and packaging we have made multiple meals for ourselves and others. And damn it we had fun doing it. :)

Between the two (three when Grandma helped me peel the apples) of us we made Duck Confit (to share for the future), Chicken & Dumpling Soup (for my Bapa), Fried Razor Clams from Washington (for dinner), Oven Dried Tomatoes (to can, for the future), Mustard Braised Rabbit (for dinner-don't judge, it is freaking fantastic) and two Apple Cranberry Crisps (one for us, one for our friends).

Last week my Dad was up in the Lockwood Valley area quail hunting with a buddy and came across an apple tree with the apples falling off, littering the ground. Not being one to ever waste anything he promptly asked the owner of the property if he could liberate them. He then instructed me that I was to make something tasty with them. Once again, Dad brought me home something tasty....I do love that man!

As I am not much of a pie crust girl (more of a tart...hee hee), I went back to one of my favorite standbys for almost any fruit. The very American Crisp. Super easy to make and so perfect with less than 10 ingredients. You can tweak it any which way to suit your tastes with different spices or flavorings, different fruit, cornmeal or oatmeal instead of flour. To be really honest, they are kind of hard to mess up as long as you have the general proportions correct. The following recipe has a great autumn feel to it, the appples are still a little crisp and the cranberries add just the right amount of tart.

Apple & Dried Cranberry Crisp

From Gourmet Magazine, 1993

1 cup dried cranberries

1 cinnamon stick

1 cup water

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

2/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into bits

9 McIntosh apples (about 3 pounds)

In a small saucepan simmer the cranberries, the cinnamon stick, and the water for 10 minutes. Drain the cranberries and remove the cinnamon stick. In a small bowl blend the flour, the brown sugar, the salt, and the butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal and toss the mixture well. Peel, core, and slice the apples thin and in a buttered 9- by 13-inch glass dish toss them with the cranberries. Sprinkle the brown sugar mixture over the fruit and bake the crisp in a preheated 400°F. oven for 25 minutes, or until the apples are tender and the topping is golden.

Printed by permission. Visit Jen's blog @ http://foodinlife.blogspot.com/

Hop Head Said - A Blog by Curtis: Island Brewing: Starry Night

This week I (well my taste buds, anyway) took a little road trip to Carpinteria to sample some beers from the Island Brewing Company. They produce six regular beers and from time to time a seasonal or limited release. Watch their blog to discover when they release a new specialty beer or visit their website to find their “brew near you”.

Today, I will be reviewing Starry Night Stout which is a limited release from 2009. I found this beer at The Wineyard in Thousand Oaks where they carry Island Brewing Co.’s regular lineup as well as bottled special releases. In beer terms, limited or special release means that it is not one of the regular beers brewed and that it may not be brewed again for quite some. Sadly, sometimes limited release means that the beer will never be brewed again. Limited release brews are generally beers that can be kept around or aged for an extended period of time so if you find a limited release beer that you like it is always good to stock up.

Starry Night Stout was a pleasure from start to warm and fuzzy finish. This is the kind of beer I loved on a cold South Dakota winter day and one that I now enjoy on an “chilly” (the folks back home are laughing over this) overcast day in California. In my opinion, Starry Night Stout is everything a big stout should be. It is full bodied and roasty but without that unpleasant burnt malt bitterness found in some stouts. It is smooooooth and worth the nearly $8 I paid for the 22oz bottle. I was more than happy to refill my glass and finish that 22 in one sitting. Wanna try something different? Drink this beer for desert or use it in these brownies. You haven’t lived until you’ve had beer for desert!

Too, often I come across people who equate dark beers with bitter beer. That misconception comes from drinking Guinness from dirty tap lines or from a tap jockey who doesn’t know how or have the equipment to pour the perfect pint. Guinness is probably the best known stout and/or dark beer and if it isn’t served correctly it can be a very bitter beer. It is an unfortunate misconception because many Budmiloors drinkers are missing out on some very tasty dark beers like Starry Night Stout. You don’t have to worry about serving Starry Night correctly though because anyway you pour it into your glass you will enjoy it.

Enjoy your sensory vacation.

TIP: Bring your chilled beer out of the refrigerator and let it warm up for about 15 minutes before you serve it. This releases the CO2 from solution which in turn releases the subtle or not-so-subtle aromas. Also warming your beer prevents the beer from numbing your tongue and hiding the subtle or not-so-subtle flavors. Now you know why Budmiloors wants you to drink beer ice cold

Published by permission. Visit Curtis' blog at http://hopheadsaid.wordpress.com/

Food in Life - A Blog by Jen: She Don't do Dough

My mom is a lot of things and talented in the kitchen is really close to the top of the list. She routinely makes awesome meals for my Dad, for me, for friends and for family. She tackles every ethnic background from Mexican to Italian, Thai, Moroccan and Americana and manages not to just make it edible, but most often incredible.

But everyone has an Achilles heel and my moms self admitted weakness is baking.

She has at least 3 recipes for "no fail pie dough", recipes for cookies, cakes and brownies and probably hasn't made any of them for 20+ years. She has a kind of fear of baking mainly because of the exact-ness of the process. If she can't adjust as she goes, tweak seasonings or salt, substitute accordingly based upon what she has on hand she is equivalent to a frustrated artist. In her very own words "She don't do dough".

After a trip to Santa Fe with girlfriends wrapped around cooking and killer restaurants my Mom came home with new cookbooks and recipes and enthusiasm for southwestern cooking.

I came over tonight to find her with beautiful stuffed chiles, guajillo chile & pumpkin seed sauce, a beautiful salad and enough blue corn gnocchi to feed a family of 20.

With flour smeared on her cheek and a touch of self righteousness to her tone, she told me the tale of making blue corn gnocchi that started a few hours prior to my arrival. She read the recipe a few times to make sure she had all the ingredients and understood the steps. Followed the instructions to a tee.....And still wound up with dough too wet to make gnocchi. She then consulted other cookbooks for advice and adjusted as needed until the dough "felt" right and finally found she had the right consistency. When she found the right consistency, she also found she had enough gnocchi dough for about 20 people instead of for just the three of us.

So while getting recipes from well known restaurant chef's is a fun thing, be forewarned, the recipes may not always turn out as well as what you get in the restaurant. Perhaps the potatoes weren't dry enough. The eggs a smidge to large. The fog in Ventura made the dough too wet....it could have been any number of things that made the dough not quite right the first go-round.

In the end we enjoyed the stuffed chiles, gnocchi and sauce immensely.Tomorrow, she will freeze the 4 pounds of leftover gnocchi for future use.

And I have a beautiful picture in my head of Mom with flour on her face and defiance in her eyes because, damn it, she conquered the dough.

Printed by permission. Visit Jen's blog @ http://foodinlife.blogspot.com/

Debbie Does Music: Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

The parody here is killing me! New album, The Suburbs. LA shows at The Shrine, sold out. Me, stuck, well…in the suburbs. Ya, that mostly sums up DDM much of the time. But I still enjoy good music, not always like my counterparts who don’t have kids, a house in the burbs, and a bunch of domesticated animals…but hey…

I wish they could have stopped here, in Thousand Oaks, as part of the tour, or maybe even at my house. I mean, I am THE EPITOMY of The Suburbs!!!! We could have had a house concert!! I would have invited enough people to make them happy. And I could have cooked, or ok, ordered in, for them.

Instead, I sat at home, and read tweet after tweet of peeps saying things like “Arcade Fire looks like a musical brigade up there! Amazing”@grimygoods and “My heart is so full right now. My mind is blown from how amazing this show is.” @Seraphina_L. And if you search twitter for #arcade fire you can see all the other comments from their adoring fans. It didn’t help. It was great for them, but darn it, sitting at home is harder when you know the good stuff is happening!

So, you should check them out, if you haven’t already. They are from Montreal, not a burb, but where music by this talented bunch of indie rockers is made. The album is one cool ‘burb tribute.

Try it. From one exurbanite to another, you’ll like it.

Check out their site/blog You can check out songs, video and merchandise here, as well as see what they did to help Haiti.

You can follow them on twitter @arcadefire, but if your smart (and lucky) you will go to a show and see them live, soon. And then you can make me jealous, too. You can tweet me @debbiedoesmusic and rub it in.

Printed by permission. Visit Debbie's blog @ http://www.exurbmagazine.com/