Night in Day

The night never wants to end, to give itself over
to light. So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows.
Even on summer solstice, the day of light’s great
triumph, where fields of sunflowers guzzle in the sun–
we break open the watermelon and spit out
black seeds, bits of night glistening on the grass.

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Super updates after.

Ever look at the ingredient list on a bottle of Western dressing? How about Heinz ketchup? You’ll see it lurking: HFCS.

The high fructose line-up

That’s right, I’m talking about high-fructose corn syrup. The kid picked last, but his dad was rich, so he never sat on the bench.

On November 6, 1984, Cocaine-Cola and Pepsi-Co announced a complete switch to the disgustingly cheap sweetener.

That year, Lucy Norton, a corn rep from Iowa, told the New York Times this decision would add 44 million bushels to domestic demand for corn (Daniels 6). The latest trading price for corn as of today – April 12, 2009 – is $3.99. So, at today’s prices, this decision by Coke and Pepsi would equal an approximately $176 million increase in sales.

By the way – those numbers are a horribly simplified, estimated example.

My point is that the pop makers switched, and the rest followed. Take a look at the food products in your house. Many of these, such as delicious Ritz crackers or Quaker chocolate chip granola bars, contain high-fructose corn syrup. Why?

Tariffs and subsidies. Big business + big government. More on that in the links at the bottom.

But I digress.

For on-the-go snacking!

I have a specific bone to pick with Ritz crackers. Now I confess, I did eat a FreshStacks snack pack today as I rode back to Brookings, S.D., already full of Easter treats and ham marbling, but how could you, Ritz crackers? You are my only chance of surviving a surprise chili banquet, my savior for late night poor munchies.

And you are infected with the dreaded HFCS. Even if a smaller, more easily manageable stack of Ritz is one of the best marketing decisions I’ve seen out of the cracker industry in over a year, this significantly affects our standing with one another.

I am not going to try and make a point about the health effects of the HFCS – hereby a recognizable acronym – mainly because I don’t know enough about human anatomy, nutrition, or diet to comment on the potential hazards of picnic popsicles in the park.

But having so much of it in my cupboards is a little creepy.

- Mitch LeClair

Source(s):
Daniels, Lee A. “Coke, Pepsi to use more corn syrup.” New York Times 7 Nov. 1984, Late ed., sec. D: 6. LexisNexis. 12 Apr. 2009. Keyword: “high-fructose corn syrup”

Links:
http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.php/2006/01/24/tariffs_and_subsidies_the_literal_cost_o#
http://www.lewrockwell.com/alston/alston13.html

Since moving in with Mr. Palette, my roommate and beer judge extraordinaire Roose, I have become more and more interested in microbrews; that is, beers that don’t suck. While I can still enjoyably take down a respectable amount of Bud Heavies in a night if need be, I tend to search out smaller, much more specialized varieties of bottled, fermented drinks.

About a month ago, in my quaint South Dakota residential palace of Brookings, SoDak, I met the owners/founders/managers/marketers of Brau Brothers beer.

I first sucked their golden brown liquids through my lips at a little get-together called Beer Fest here in Brookings, and since that weekend, I’ve bought four different six-packs of their beers. Disregarding my contempt for the sole spirits store in our town, and how it got to be that way due to self-righteous municipality licenses, I’d say that my weekly trips to Brookings Liquor have been more enjoyable because of the kin hailing from Lucan, Minnesota – a town of barely 200, mind you.

My first exposure to Brau Brothers introduced a sample of their Strawberry Wheat brew to my system. It was a fresh sample, and a later tasting of a store-purchased pack has yielded far inferior results. True, I was half drunk at a beer festival the first time around, but after buying and drinking a sixer of the fruity brew struck me as far less novel and quite a bit more cheesy. A good attempt, but too close to a cheerleader Mike’s Hard for me.

However, my second time around paralleled a repeat encounter of the sexual kind: much more comfortable, much more pleasing. Maybe I had to get used to the hometown water Brau uses in their product, or maybe their Pale Ale was quite simply one heck of a good beer. I’m usually an easy target for pale ales, with their sweet, seductive first snap and lingering, begging-for-more aftertaste, but this beer tasted different. It struck me as a homebrew with balls – a year or two off from becoming a Midwest classic.

Their Scotch Ale is pretty good. That’s about all. It’s not great, but definitely worth the $6.99 I paid for a six-pack. I would say it’s worth $7.99 at the most. Of course, these are South Dakota prices, and the beer’s only traveled a few hours to be sold in our frosty coolers.

The other Brau Brothers beer I’ve tried is one from their single-batch series: Whirlybird Oatmeal Stout. I have two problems with this beer and one good thing to say about it. First, the bad. It tastes like an attempt, as in, “Let’s make a chocolaty, malty beer.” “Ok, but I don’t know if it will be that good…” Just do it Brothers; you seemed hesitant with this one. I’m not sure how else to describe the taste. It’s walking through the door, but the damn thing has it’s head down.

My other negative comment concerns the lack of specialized design work on the box. The entire single-batch series from Brau, which includes a pretty darn good Sheephead IPA I’ve been told, comes with the same package design and only unique stickers on the side. Basically the only reason this is a big deal is that it is boring, does nothing to attract customers (who should be attracted to this brewery, because their beers are excellent overall), and it can not be included in an attractive six-pack side beer wall in a domicile, as I have lived under for the past ten months.

My positive remark about the Whirlybird Oatmeal Stout: the whirlybird sucking the crow in for a logo – brilliant.

Brau Brothers still has a few stairs to go, but one look at their extremely impressive website, one taste of most of their beers, or one face-to-face meeting with their kind, welcoming staff proves that they they’re ascending the flight by twos and threes. I think they’ll be reaching the second floor soon enough.

- Mitch LeClair

links: Brau Brothers Brewing

[ originally published on Dinner Is Foreplay For City Folk ]

Chuck Braun – who, I admit, is my second cousin – recently introduced a barbecue sauce to the northeast South Dakota market. I discovered it in the place of my own origin, Rosholt, S.D., which also happens to be Chuck’s town of residence. Luckily it was Easter evening when I arrived back at my house at school with my new bottle; I had plenty of leftover ham, which became guinea pig meat. I quickly chose cheddar cheese and bread to be my companions on my local sauce, barbecue ham adventure. A few lighter options to avoid complicating any first impressions.

Some of the biggest names in sauce, such as Dorothy Lynch – my go-to – started small, like Chuck’s current operation. (I used to be a Western French dressing fanatic, but some listed ingredients have put me off a bit.) According to the company website, Ms. Lynch and her husband lived in St. Paul, Nebraska, and in the late ’40s they began mixing up what eventually grew to be the Dorothy Lynch Home Style Dressing enterprise. Thinking about it, the Braun family, which I am a part of through my mother, shares these Nebraskan roots. Maybe something in the soil down there has resulted in its residents’ ability to craft a phenomenal liquid meal additive. Maybe not, but Chuck’s is one heck of a sauce.

It hit my tongue easy and presented no huge initial surprises. But it was like a warm peanut butter bun or fresh toasted bagels topped with whipped berry sour cream – I wanted more and more. It didn’t have the overly strong bang of a common Thai sauce, nor did it have the boring one-liner approach of a typically watery steak sauce. Chuck’s was just right: Peppery, but not weak. Ketchupy, but not too tomatoey.

I am listening to the deep tracks station on satellite radio as I write this, and when I started, Eric Clapton’s “Slunky” came punching through my TV speakers. The song’s flavor shares many of the subdued yet strong qualities of Chuck’s Honey BBQ Sauce. I had never heard this selection from Slowhand, but my exposure to it paralleled my primary time with Chuck’s.

My only complaint? No background on the back of the container. A transformed, red racecar truck monster grill watches over Chuck’s lawn in the summertime. He has one of the most impressive outdoor cookers a person could ever see; contextual facts so bad-ass should get some mention, if not a visual reservation on the packaging.

Since my pioneering test run with the sauce, I have added Chuck’s to a buffalo burger, hamburger helper, and some minute steaks. It has yet to disappoint. Nice work, and keep it up Chuck. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) I intend to keep a stock around in my own cupboards, and I think all you out there in readerland should give it a try sometime, although you might have to travel to a town of 400 in South Dakota to buy a bottle.

- Mitch LeClair

Drippin' on the left-overs

Add some cheddar = magicwich.

[ orginally published on Dinner Is Foreplay For City Folk ]

Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act today.

Yes, Americans should volunteer more in their respective communities. Planting trees is a good thing, helping out with soup kitchens is always an honorable activity, and sacrificing one’s own free time in order to help others is an important part of a virtuous country/land/people/society/etc.

However, volunteering means volunteering. When an organization/company/state pays an individual for any task, “volunteering” goes out the window.

See here for an excellent example of what motivated people can do when they realize the importance and rewards of true volunteering.

Keep your eyes open for more abuse of language, newspeak style.

[from March 31 (never put it up)]:

vol·un·teer (vln-tîr)n.

1. A person who performs or offers to perform a service voluntarily: an information booth staffed by volunteers; hospital volunteers.

volun·tari·ly (-târ-l) adv.

volun·tari·ness n.

[ The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. ]

“The Veterans Engaged for Tomorrow Corps Act (VET Act) is incorporated into the GIVE Act. It will create a new organization, the Vet Corps, which will use veterans to serve other warriors.” [my emphasis]

See here and here.

High quality video available here, audio podcast here.

(Happy holiday.)

Judging from the abundant smiles in the Summit Room, I think everyone had fun. We ended up collecting bags and bags of donated clothing, a table full of donated food and bathroom items, and we even made a good chunk of change in monetary donations.

Nick Schmeichel and Stuart Ensz, two members of the local band Doppelgarten, started things off with a few covers. They played a couple Wood Brothers tracks, then did a excellent job of paying tribute to Bobby D himself with a cover of “Isis.” (I think. Please, someone correct me if I’m wrong.)

Patrons listened to poetry from Simeon Brown and Karl Keuser, and a few other performers – a guy named Dave, Mr. Hayes, and Rick Sutton – seranaded the crowd well into the evening. Sutton, who also played a Pearl Jam cover, performed an excellent rendition of “Play Crack The Sky” by Brand New. Well done, sir.

Mike Roe, drummer extraordinaire, returned to Brookings around ten o’clock. Roe and the rest of Doppelgarten – Casey Monger, Matt Sumner, and the aformentioned Nick and Stu – got the top floor grooving for a bit before everything wound down around 11 p.m.

Another guy played a few songs solo and a few with Stu and Nick, but I can’t remember his name. (Someone help me out, please.) One of the first selections he performed was a Woody Guthrie track, and it sounded terrific.

Peaceful Solutions vice prez Adrianna Stearns and I will be driving all the proceeds of the benefit out to Pine Ridge this Friday. We are donating everything to the Looks for Buffalo Foundation, and are still collecting items if anyone’s interested in donating something. Just shoot me an email: leclairmitch – at – gmail.com.

Here are some pictures from the night – my batteries died right away, and they’re pretty low quality overall, but you can at least get an idea:

Doppelgarten (minus Roe) heatin' things up

Rick Sutton

Packed House

Thanks again to everyone from Peaceful Solutions and The Ram who helped make this night such a success.

“O gold! I still prefer thee unto paper,
Which makes bank credit like a bark of vapour.”

– Byron’s Don Juan, Canto xii. 4.

Thanks to Vijay Boyapati for supplying the quotation.