aaron c beals

perhaps due to my 4-year bout of vegetarianism, i don’t consume massive quantities of red meat (which, it turns out, is a good thing). when i do, it’s usually confined to beef (steak tips, burgers). very rarely do i eat pork… with one notable exception.

now everyone likes their bacon different ways. me? i like it almost-burnt crispy, and the BLT is one of my favorite delivery mechanisms. but regardless of how you like your bacon, you’ve got to love the current state of bacon on the, uh, Internets:

bacon chocolate
the bacon show: one bacon recipe per day, every day, forever
Baconnaise (as seen on The Daily Show)
bacon vodka
vegetarian* shirt
bacon in desserts
bacon salt

and the current reigning king of all things bacon…

the bacon explosion.

Timmy: What are you doing?
George: What?
Timmy: Did, did you just double-dip that chip?
George: Excuse me?
Timmy: You double-dipped a chip!
George: Double-dipped? What, what, what are you talking about?
Timmy: You dipped a chip. You took a bite. And you dipped again.
George: So?
Timmy: That’s like putting your whole mouth right in the dip. From now on, when you take a chip, just take one dip and end it.
George: Well, I’m sorry, Timmy, but I don’t dip that way.
Timmy: Oh, you don’t, huh?
George: You dip the way you want to dip. I’ll dip the way I want to dip.

well, Costanza, it looks like Timmy was right — your way of dipping is just plain gross. dipping your chip back into the bowl transfers thousands of bacterial cells from your mouth into the bowl. tomorrow’s the Super Bowl, people. practice safe dipping.

came across this handy site the other day. it has a pretty small catalog of foods and spices (and given the limited catalog, the choice of “Litchi” as an axis point is a little odd), but the principle is pretty cool. the idea is that given any axis point, you should be able to find pairings to other foods, drinks, or spices.

the good: the site is very simple yet elegant in design. if you have a decent understanding of cooking and pairing of food, it’s a good tool to help you explore alternatives you may not have considered otherwise.

the bad: the diagrams are images — rather than an interactive Flash animation, as has been done at other sites — and seem to be pre-created rather than dynamically generated. also, the diagrams don’t label the edges, so it’s hard to tell what the nature of a certain pairing is (though you can guess from the food items on the far end of the edge.

Last night, we hopped a cab out to haight & ashbury. If you don’t know why this area is significant, google it.

It was all I thought it would be and more… The hippie vibe is still strong, and I finally found out where all the Phishheads went once the band broke up.

There were a bunch of music shops, including Amoeba Records (good store, but high prices) and a guitar store (very cool, good selection). And there were a handful of smoke shops selling equipment “for tobacco use only”. Shocking.

I had a moment of reminiscence as I looked around at the dreadheaded 20- and 30-somethings, and I got to thinking. What I liked about the scene was the laid-back atmosphere, the general love for your fellow man, and a willingness to share. Violence was low, if not non-existent. But over time, I started to realize that the laid-back tendencies were tied to general apathy, or in cases where people did feel passionately about something, a general unwillingness to “think big” about getting the message out there.

I also noticed that the selfishness inherent in mankind was starting to show through — in the end, people were out for themselves. This ugly side shined through most clearly in the (unfortunately sizable) drug culture within the scene. Increasingly, people weren’t there for the music, art, or community … They were there to make themselves feel good. It was a shift from focus on others to focus on self.

Anyhow, back to the Haight. We saw the house (710 Ashbury) where the Grateful Dead lived and played, and then walked down to the Magnolia brewpub.

Honestly, from the food to the beer to the atmosphere to the eloquently-written menus, this was hands-down one of the best brewpubs I have ever been to. I had a sampler of flights and then a pint of cask-conditioned Dark Star Mild. Outstanding. Laura had a homemade root beer. For food: buffalo wings as an appetizer, steak and moules frites for dinner, and a cheese plate for dessert. This place was it… the dream… my goal. They even use organic and local ingredients — sustainability!! Some day more people will start caring about sustainability. They’ll have to.