antipaucity

This evening I moseyed to Apex NC with a coworker for dinner. We parked on N Salem St, and perused the available options, settling on Peak City Grille & Bar.

Peak City is a former general store converted to a restaurant just a few years ago. 126 N Salem St is an unassuming store front, but after walking inside, the open expanse, down to the original tin ceiling panels, greets you with a subdued, classy grandeur.

When we finally made our decision on dinner, our food was prepared very quickly. I ordered their prime rib special, a 10oz portion with a “colossal” baked potato and side salad. Mark requested their shrimp and grits, and both were out to us very quickly. While we waited, our salads and drinks came out, and my only complaint was on the Peak City ‘house’ brew – it’s supposed to be similar to a Bass, but it tasted bruised.

Their beer selection was somewhat lacking this evening, as they were out of several of their normal draughts, but their cocktail list and availability was quite extensive.

I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve had prime rib since I went to the Van Ness House of Prime Rib in San Francisco. I’ve held-off because of how good the prime rib was in California.

Tonight’s offering, though, was a very close second. The black pepper crust really helped to bring out the flavor of the beef. The baked potato came home because of its size – it was easily 7 inches long and 3.5 inches in diameter. And it was stuffed with cheese, chives, bacon, and butter. I’m looking forward to finishing dinner in the next couple days!

In recent years I’ve become a big fan of local restaurants, especially in small town centers like N Salem St is in Apex. Peak City has definitely made my list for favorite local spots.

After our mixed experience at Brown’s Monday evening, my buddy Chris and I headed over to Holmes and Watson a few blocks away on Broadway in Troy.

I wasn’t very hungry, but after walking inside, I could tell that the folks running Holmes and Watson were at least going to *act* more friendly than our waitress at Brown’s.

H&W has 20+ beers on tap from all over the country and world, in a great mix of styles. From this array of choices, I added two to my list of beers I’ve tried with the Rogue Mogul and Hophound.

Eventually we did decide to get some snack food, and their clam chowder was awesome – exceptionally thick and creamy. The hot wings looked good, but I’m not a fan of them because they have bones (yes, I’m that lazy).

Holmes and Watson is also setup on two levels, and their menu items are all named for characters/places/events in the Sherlock Holmes world. Since we were just having a couple drinks and some light fare, we stayed at the bar, but they can easily accomodate scores of customers. This spot has definitely been added to my list of regular stops when I’m home visiting.

Monday night I went to Brown’s Brewing on River St in Troy. Their menu is wide-ranging, and many of the beers they serve they brew in-house.

Seating is available on two levels, along with a sizable bar, and they were really busy for a Monday evening, so we sat upstairs.

For dinner, I had the portobello fries and a bowl of french onion soup, while my friend Chris had one of their burgers.

We also tried several of their house brews, including a pilsner and ESB. The pilsner wasn’t to the standard of Pilsner Urquell, but was still pretty good. The ESB was a decent example of the style, too.

The only drawback to our evening was that our waitress became very rude after we’d been there for a while. We’d been there for over an hour when I ordered dessert (a fantastic porter chocolate cake slice). When she brought dessert out she also dropped-off our check – and not with a “if you’d like anything else, let me know”-type statement but more along the lines of “I don’t want to bring you anything else, pay me now”.

So we did, and then headed over to Holmes and Watson a few blocks away to finish enjoying the evening.

I do plan to go back because the food was god, and so was the beer, but I’ll be avoiding that waitress in the future.

My friend Chris has been bragging-up Man of Kent in Hoosick Falls for months. So on this foray to the Great White North (aka ‘home’), we decided to go out for the evening.

They’re located at 4452 Route 7 in Hoosick Falls, on the south side of the road, about 20ish minutes outside of Troy.

Their menu has top-notch pub food, with most ingredients sourced locally. They don’t have a huge on-tap selection – maybe 10ish – but they have scores of bottled beers to pick from if the draught ones aren’t good enough.

Chris had a portobello panini and hot wings, while I enjoyed their chicken soup and mac & cheese. We met the owner, one of the waitresses (Chelsea), and two pub regulars. The owner, waitress, and pub regulars were all pleasant to talk to, and all bragged-up the establishment. It’s not ultra close to my parents’ place, but worth the ride out for atmosphere, food, and good drinks.

I shop at various grocery stores, and the cashiers generally look at my purchases a little askance: clementines, milk, ice cream, pot pies, beer, Ensure – they seem to get confused when I checkout with my selections.

I was raised with a thrifty mindset, but am not afraid to spend money for better quality.

For years I’ve preferred store brand cereals – corn flakes, raisin bran, cocoa puffs, cocoa crispies, rice crispies, and chex are all indistinguishable to me when comparing store brand and name brand. Some I can distinguish and just like the store brand more. Cheerios is the only notable difference – fake cheerios are NOT the same as the ones from General Mills.

Trader Joe’s raisin bran, for example, is cheaper than the name brand, has fewer calories, and (I think) tastes better than those from Post or Kellogg.

I don’t go out of my way to buy organic foods to make a statement. Many times I think they taste worse, or the relative percentage change in quality does not match the price percentage shift. Trader Joe’s raisin bran happens to be organic – but the fact that it tastes good and is inexpensive is more important.

I’ve been bitten several times by trying store brand macaroni and cheese. I picked-up a batch from Lowes Foods recently, and am hoping they’re not hideous like the ones from Winn Dixie were. But if they’re decent, then I have a source for less expensive than Kraft mac and cheese. My favorite is Prince brand, but those aren’t purchaseable in NC – and therefore I tend to stock-up periodically when I go home to NY.

Also, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the high quality of the canned strawberries I can get at my local dollar store. Yes. A dollar store. Most of the food they sell is high enough in sodium to make road ice quiver. But the canned strawberries at my local Dollar Tree near NC55 and NC54 are downright tasty – 90 calories per serving, with only three servings per can. That lines-up with my home-made applesauce for caloric value, and makes a nice shift.

They’re also not those supersized strawberries you find in most produce departments of grocery stores; the ones at Dollar Tree are about 1/2″ in diameter rather than 2″. The smaller size makes for what seems to be a more strawberryish strawberry than the giant ones from the supermarket.

Such experimenting has made me want to do more, and so now when I go shopping I try to compare not merely price or calories – but the taste quality. It leads to a lot of sampling, but being able to shave 10-50% off my grocery bill is a nice [eventual] payoff.

Not merely saving money, but it’s also healthier.

I’ve been eating dominantly at home – either mine or friends’ places – and have noticed that not only is each meal less expensive, but I can eat better food, too.

Don’t get me wrong, those McDonald’s breakfast burritos are awesome. They’re also 300 calories a pop – and two come in the value meal, along with a hashbrown (another awesome-tasting item) which packs another 150 calories.

750 calories to start the day wouldn’t be so bad – if I had a job which involved more movement than typing.

Compare that to 320 calories total for home-made applesauce comprising ~4 cooked-down apples. Or ~250 for a large bowl of raisin bran and skim milk.

For dinner, I could go to Outback and order the Alice Springs Chicken (my favorite!) and spend about $20. Or I could make mashed potatoes and have a filet mignon for about $12. And a six-ounce filet only has about 350 calories in it. A bunch are from fat, but nonetheless – cheaper, fewer calories, and a higher quality of meat.

I’m not paranoid about how much I intake, but certainly eating for less money, while getting better quality, and consuming fewer calories can’t be all bad.

Last year I went to the Beer and Bourbon Festival at Koka Booth in Cary. My buddy Jeremy and I had an absolute blast.

They’re bringing it back this year in August again, and I’m planning to go again. There are some other shows before and after in the southeast, but the one in Cary is the closest.

If you’re a fan of trying new whiskys, sampling different brews, and maybe grabbing some varied bbq styles, you should consider a trip out.

If you don’t drink (or prefer to have the cheaper ticket), they have a Designated Driver ticket that only grants admission – no beer or bourbon sampling.

The barbecue isn’t part of the all-you-can-enjoy, but it’s priced very reasonably.

I went to Guglhupf in Durham today for lunch. I’d never heard of them before today, and only went with the group I had joined because Foster’s was slammed.

Their soup selections change daily, and today I tried their scotch broth – which today was lamb-based. I also ordered a breakfast bread basket. My total today was about $7.50, and I had exactly as much as I needed for lunch.

Some of the folks I ate with thought it was upscale, but their prices aren’t as high as might be expected from the decor.

Seating is spread across two floors, with a very open floor plan. Service was very quick, and all of the staff went out of their way to be friendly to each of us.

For a relaxing lunch with an all-fresh menu, and rotating specials, Guglhupf is now ranked in my list of places to go in the Triangle.

This week I made a batch of applesauce from the macintoshes I had in my fridge before they went bad.

While it tasted pretty good (if I do say so myself), I much preferred the batch from over Christmas made with Northern Spies. The Northern Spy is my favorite apple – great in pies, sauce, fried apples, cobbler, and out-of-hand.

Basic applesauce recipe:

• apples
• <1/8th cup of sugar*
• ground cinnamon & ground nutmeg to taste

• quarter and core apples
• place in large pot with about 1″ of water
• simmer till skins come off, stirring to prevent sticking
• remove skins and discard
• continue simmering until texture is “saucy”

* I don’t always add sugar – for sweeter apples this is certainly not a requirement.

I had a Beck’s this evening with dinner.

The special Beck’s glass, like the Samuel Admas Perfect Pint Glass, has a small segment at the bottom that forces the dissolved CO2 to form bubbles, and yields a [near] constant head on the beer.

For those of you that saw the Mythbusters episode dealing with Mentos and Diet Coke, you’ll recall an extensive discussion on nucleation. According to the wikipedia article, “nucleation is the onset of a phase transition in a small region. The phase transition can be the formation of a bubble or of a crystal from a liquid.” Indeed, the SAPPG terms its laser-etched ring at the bottom a ‘nucleation site’. None of the other beer-specific glasses I have seen explicitly use this term.

Certainly, though, watching the bubbles constantly streaming upwards, at differing rates depending on local eddy conditions, is entertaining in itself. But the fact that it helps beers that otherwise appear quite flat to maintain their fizzy head.

I don’t know if it always makes a difference on taste, but it certainly does for Beck’s and Sam Adams.