What to do when you come to a fork

It was a lovely Monday morning in Bloomer and my vacation was coming to a close. Although it was to be a rather warm day, it was still cool when I awoke and clouds streaked the dawn sky as I stepped out of the hotel and moseyed over to Kwik Trip for coffee.

My plan was to take a leisurely drive home with a stop in Eau Claire at The Coffee Grounds for some local flavors to bring back with me.

There I got a cup of coffee, coffee beans, and some brews from Eau Claire's finest. Not being in a hurry I took Highway 93 south where I'd catch Highway 10 in Eleva. The drive showcased just how much the south of Eau Claire has been built up since I lived up there. What had been a sleepy area of town that led to the hustle & bustle of Oakwood and London Square Malls was now home to a senior living complex, stores, various businesses, dentists, and just all manner of things. It was no longer simply gas stations and fast food for those passing through on the interstate.

The drive between Eau Claire and Eleva brought back many memories as I had driven it countless times. Zipping past the road that led to my old man's former home I felt surprisingly unmoved. A little nostalgic but I mainly enjoyed the scenery. Once I got to the top of the ridge just north of Eleva, I looked around at just what a magnificent view it affords. Farms tucked into the rolling hills, fields bordered by woods, and the sun illuminating it all with its warming refulgence.

Heading east on 10 I looked to the north at one point and saw a lovely grassy hill beneath the blue sky and it looked just like that Windows XP wallpaper.

I refueled in Osseo and then hopped onto I94. The drive home went by quickly and traffic wasn't too bad outside of the usual convoys of trucks. After getting home I unpacked and got a load of laundry in the wash. I hadn't really bought much in the way of souvenirs this trip and everything I did buy was edible. Like this chocolate bar.

It's an Abu Dhabi Bar from Mayana Chocolate up in Spooner. I presume it is their take on the trendy Dubai bar, a chocolate confection with pistachio filling that is all the rage in confectionery circles these days, I take it.

Very tasty!

Plus I brought beer back to Madison that is otherwise unavailable here. First we have some Czech-style lagers from Eau Claire's Lazy Monk Brewing.

The Standard 10º brew has proven to be my favorite of the two. Light and crisp and full of Bohemian(-style) brewing goodness.

At Moonridge I picked up a can of their blonde ale as well as a pickle Gose from Half Fast Brewing Company.

I'd never heard of Half Fast. The can says the company is in Spring Valley, WI which is a bit west of Menomonie but that the beer had been brewed in Osseo, presumably by the now-shuttered Northwoods Brewing. I suspect the can was to be found at Moonridge as Half Fast appears to be veteran-owned just like Moonridge. Tasting soon, I hope.

I sat down to check my email and saw that the tree outside the window had come fully into bloom while I was away.

Beltane had truly come to fruition.

Settling down, I thought a bit about Piper as well as the end of my marriage which was likely to transpire the following week. My mind felt a bit weary after all of the contemplation it did over the weekend. It was very nice to not feel the anger that I had felt earlier in the week. At least nowhere near as intensely.

I realized that I had come to terms with most of the changes in my life regarding family the past several months. There don't seem to be any more depths of my marriage to plumb. I think I've examined it thoroughly and discovered the lessons it has to teach, found all the assignations of guilt to be had, and learned the myriad ways that it has affected me. My eldest stepson simply wants my money and so our relationship is on hold, if not over. My youngest stepson is beset by so many problems that I can do little to nothing about so I am resigned to take things as they come and do what I can, nudging him in what I think of as a more salutary direction occasionally.

While the fact that I married my wife remains a source of shame and embarrassment for me, I am content with that. I am content with knowing my mistakes and at peace with my regrets.

No doubt my thoughts on all this will change as time goes on. For now, though, I am trying to heed Henry David Thoreau's advice, "Never look back unless you are planning to go that way." I'm looking forward to my marriage ending soon, to getting a new cat, and treading new paths in life. I am anxious to see where they take me.

Taste of Albuquerque: Eldora Chocolate

Some Eldora chocolate from Albuquerque.

It was found in a little shop somewhere in Old Town.

This is tasty stuff. Perhaps a little less sweet than most chocolates that are 70%, um, chocolate. I intend to try more if/when I return to Albuquerque. Give me that 85% bar!

Katzen everywhere

A friend gave me a Japanese chocolate bar with a label that was bursting with cuteness.

Upon opening the wrapper, I found that a kitten trading card was included! 

With a kitten on each side!

If kitten overload wasn't enough, the chocolate itself was tasty. It had bits of something in but I dunno what they were. Puffed rice, maybe?

 

 

My second and third housewarming gifts were these:

 

 

And here is Piper taking a nap. She helps make this place feel something like home.

 

Chocolate pierogi!

I bought these at Deli 4 You in Schaumburg a couple months back and finally pulled them out of the freezer and lovingly bathed them in boiling water. Served with plain yoghurt.

The choco-filling was gooey goodness with a bit of grittiness from chocobits. Good stuff!

The Corona Diaries Vol. 88: The proof of the brownies is in the eating.

(Listen to the prelude.)

(mid-April 2023)

The third of April is a red letter day in our house as it’s our youngest cat, Piper's, birthday. And this year she turned the big 1-0.

Here she is as a wee kitten. I remember well going to the cat adoption lady's house and seeing her newest litter. Piper was so new and so small and zipping around the room like a madman. Or madcat, rather. She'd charge at me as I sat on the floor and then carom off my leg before launching an attack one of her siblings or maybe a defenseless pillow.

And here she is on her big day 2023 trying to relax in one of our plush cat houses and looking irritated that one of her humans is sticking some device in her face. "Go away, hoo-man!"

Of course I gave her plenty of extra treats to celebrate. I tried to get a photo but she nommed them down too quickly to get a decent picture with my very basic phone camera.

We hope to have her for many years to come and, with all of the money I pay the vet, I expect we shall.

********

Earlier this month I was poking around the websites of local bakeries to see what my rye bread options were when I discovered that one of them offered rye brownies. I pondered this miracle food and suspect that one of those cartoon clouds appeared above my head as I did some quick culinary ratiocination. I came up with:

rye flour + dark chocolate = manna from heaven

So I set out to conjure some of these magical treats in my kitchen. I began by assembling a double boiler and melting the chopped bittersweet chocolate cubes and extra dark chips.

As the chocolate melted, I mixed the eggs, butter, sugar, and whatnot.

Everything got thrown into the same bowl and mixed together. I poured the batter into a pan and it looked rather half-assed, truth be told. “But,” I reasoned, “appearance is no measure of taste. Never judge a book by its cover and whatnot.”

The old adage was right. The brownies may have come out of the oven looking like my cat's (not Piper) diarrhea, but they tasted incredibly delicious.

I sampled, of course, but took the rest to work. I am just not to be trusted with brownies.

The whole brownie thing threw me off of my original task which was to find rye bread. While rye is less common, it's certainly not impossible to find a loaf of it in these parts. I think it's more the case that you have to get to a bakery for a good variety as grocery stores don't stock a lot of quality Central/Eastern European breads. Can I go to my local supermarket and find a pukka loaf of rye bread that my German, Ruthenian, and Polish ancestors would recognize and be proud of?

Yes.

Is there more than 1 or 2 varieties that fit the bill?

Nope.

And so, in the end, I decided to just bake my own rather than running around town trying to find the perfect loaf. I began by retrieving the bread maker that a cousin had given us from the basement. I gave it a good cleaning and then set to work.

The recipe in the manual for rye bread is quite lame, in my opinion. It called for a mere ¾ cup of rye flour but a whopping 2¾ cups of wheat. How is anyone supposed to taste the rye with that ratio? So I tweaked it a little bit.

Things went well at first. The dough rose as expected.

It smelled great too. And then I took another peek some time later and saw that it had fallen. Soon the bake cycle kicked in and I ended up with this.

Not exactly Martha Stewart level aesthetics.

Besides needing to have the flour ratio adjusted further, it tasted fine. Hearty and a bit dense with a rich, nutty wheat sweetness. It simply needed more rye. No doubt there is some arcane wisdom out there on baking bread which describes the best rye to wheat ratio, which wheat varieties taste like what, the best yeast to use, how to get a certain texture, and so on and so forth. My bready experiments shall continue.

In addition to baked things, I found myself with an inexplicable craving for pozole earlier this month. Pozole is Mexican pork and hominy soup. While I do not recall how or when, I nonetheless acquired a taste for it and have tossed around the idea of hitting all of the Mexican restaurants in the area to find out who does the best pozole.

I bought some pork and hominy thinking that I had the rest of the ingredients already. The recipe calls for dried ancho chilies which are boiled and then pureed before being added to the soup. Now, I’ve made pozole before and would have sworn that I had some dried anchos in the cupboard. But, when I went and looked, I found that I instead had a lifetime’s supply of guajillo chilies and had no idea why.

I tried in vain to recall what motivated me to buy those but couldn’t. My best guess is that they were leftover from an attempt to make mole sauce at some point in the dim and distant past.

Another trip to the store and I was ready. I made my pork stock.

As that cooked, I boiled, rinsed, chopped, and pureed until everything was ready to be thrown into the pot.

No, that cup of coffee was for the chef, not the soup.

Once the pozole was cooking, I thought it looked nice and hearty with chunks of stuff everywhere. It smelled great too.

I cooked it long enough for the marriage of the flavors to be consummated and then served myself a bowl.

It turned out very well and I was happy that I hadn’t gotten lazy and simply bought a can at the store. That stuff isn’t bad but it doesn’t have all the onion and jalapeno in it. Plus, I think my version has a more piquant chili taste to it, if I do say so myself.

Lastly on the food front, I’ll note that I recently discovered that the Wisconsin Brewing Company out in Verona, a Madison suburb, had brewed a Grodziskie once again and had it available in their taproom. I managed to convince a friend of mine to head to the brewery with me for a couple so I’d have some company.

Grodziskie is a Polish style of beer that dates back centuries. It’s traditionally brewed with 100% smoked wheat and “should” be light in body and color with a good dose of fizz and a nice hop bite. Usually it’s low in alcohol but that can vary according to the brewer’s taste.

It was delectable! Light, smoky, fizzy – I wish they’d brew it more often than once every couple of years. My only gripe, which really isn’t much of a gripe, is that I wish it were just a tad hoppier. A minor quibble. I wonder what would happen if some of that wheat were to be swapped out for rye...

********

Bonus photo. It was Easter not too long ago so here’s a rabbit I saw in a backyard. I am used to seeing what I think are Eastern Cottontails so I have to wonder if this was someone's pet that that was set free or if it escaped like a scene from Watership Down.

(Raise a glass and watch the postlude.)

Feed your head. With chocolate.

Confession time.

When I first got it in my mind to do this little San Francisco triptych, I sat down to consider what I'd write about. There had to be music and, since my former flame was a Deadhead, I knew I had to write about the Grateful Dead. She and I both loved good beer and Anchor Steam was the obvious choice. I then recalled her love for chocolate and that it was she who got me hooked on the good stuff.

Warm memories of being introduced to the joy of her favorite chocolate, Scharffen Berger, filled my brain. Those luscious squares of chocolate darker and richer than any Hershey product could hope to be just melting away in my mouth...great stuff.

So I went and found a bar of Scharffen Berger, tasted its delights, and sat down to write. I then discovered that the Scharffen Berger company was founded in 1996, after my San Francisco-loving girlfriend and I had parted ways.

Maybe I need to do crossword puzzles or some sudoku to whip my memory back into shape. I have this distinct feeling that someone I dated was a big fan of Scharffen Berger but I cannot recall who it was.

If it wasn't Scharffen Berger that opened a new world of chocolate for me, then who was it?

Ghirardelli!

Ghirardelli was founded in 1852 and so I'm in the clear with the whole timeline thing.

Perusing shelves of chocolate bars recently, I've noticed that San Francisco companies seem to dominate the artisanal baking chocolate market. In addition to Scharffen Berger and Ghirardelli you've got Guittard. How does San Francisco do this?

So, back to Ghirardelli. Founded in 1852, it is reputedly the oldest continuously run chocolate maker in the United States. These days it's owned by Lindt, the Swiss mega-chocolatier, and I have read that their chocolate isn't as good as it used to be.

Regardless, I took a stroll down memory lane.

I have a preference for dark chocolate - the darker, the betterer, generally speaking. This 72% cocoa bar was a bit on the low end as I normally buy chocolate in the 85-90% range. (The 88% Extreme Dark bar from Endangered Species Chocolate is my go-to chocolate indulgence.) Unsurprisingly, I do not recall what strength chocolate bars my girlfriend and I shared so I went with a darker bar but one a bit lighter than I normally indulge in simply for a change of pace.

With Ghirardelli, you get a bar that's 2 big squares across rather than 4 smaller ones. The aroma was great as it had a wonderful chocolate bitterness with something sweet behind it. I heard a distinct snap when breaking off a couple of squares. This stuff was rather firm. Indeed, I got a crunch when I bit into one. It had a smooth texture but not one that I'd call silky.

If you are asked to describe the flavor of chocolate to someone who's never tasted it, what would you say? This stuff had a modicum of bitterness, to my taste, but would probably be considered very bitter by a milk chocolate devotee. It had that lovely roasted, earthy, nutty flavor of chocolate. I also noted that the chocolate flavor seemed mellower than that of the 70% bar of Scharffen Berger that I had bought and sampled while laboring under my misremembered past. I just don't know enough about chocolate to describe why one bar that's theoretically more or less equivalent to another tastes rather differently.

I admit that eating this chocolate was really nice. Not only because the chocolate was so tasty, but I recalled sharing some Ghirardelli with my old flame. She was a bit like Mr. Miyagi to my Daniel LaRusso but, instead of "Wax on, wax off", it was "Don't chew it. Let it melt in your mouth."

********

This brings to a close my brief San Franciscan detour.

I cannot claim any expertise when it comes to San Francisco's problems. It seems like persistent remote work policies, opioid addiction, overly permissive laws, and lax law enforcement are some of the main culprits responsible for the problems the city faces today. Whatever the causes, I hope things turn around there soon.

The Most Accursed Chocolate. Ever.

Forget chocolate bunnies, get one these hideous chocolate Cthulhus!