Just in time for “Carmageddon,” which we’re pretty sure is karma smacking upside the collective head of L.A.’s westside, we bring the deserving some relief. We can’t sympathize with most of the idiots who live on the west side of L.A. (who think jogging near the beach on weekends is worth hating the rest of life sitting in traffic). No, we side with the only people we’re comfortable siding with — the booze fiends.

Now, here’s our adapted version of the classic Southern sweet Bourbon Balls (made vegan) for those of you who are stuck in traffic this week, trying to get home to swig your nip of after-work bourbon. Pack this vegan bourbon snacks in your lunch and nosh on your way home to ensure your happy hour buzz isn’t delayed by pesky freeway detours. If you’re pulled over, we did not suggest this.

“Southern Comfort” Pecans
(Never makes enough)

4 cups whole pecans (raw)
1/2 cup vegan margarine
2 tablespoons smoked paprika
2 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon mace (nutmeg works)
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon smoked salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1. Crank your oven to 325 degrees.

2. In a sauce pot on the stove, gently heat the margarine until melted (but not spitting). Add all spices and stir until distributed, turning margarine a reddish-brown.

3. In a large mixing bowl, toss the pecans with the spiced margarine until evenly coated. Slide the whole mess onto a baking sheet and bake for about 30 minutes, shaking every ten or so to keep from burning.

4. Remove once roasted and let cool for at least ten minutes before using. There’s no actual Southern Comfort in these nuts, they just taste the way it feels to be swinging on a porch seat swigging a bottle of sweet booze. The bourbon comes next…)

Vegan Bourbon Holes
(Makes about thirty)

About 20 vanilla wafers (we use a vegan cookies)
1 cup “Southern Comfort” pecans (above)
1 1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 tablespoons molasses
1/4 cup bourbon, plus one shot
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1. In a mixing bowl, combine cocoa powder with one cup of sifted confectioner’s sugar (don’t buy a fucking sifter, duh, just slowly pour the sugar over a fine mesh strainer and shake it over your bowl till it’s all pillowy).

2. Dump your nuts on a cutting board and go to town, roughly chopping them into bits. Add this to the mixing bowl.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk the molasses and 1/4 cup of bourbon until evenly married. Take the extra shot for good measure! Now add this goo to the bowl of sugary nuts.

4. Put the vanilla wafers in a food processor and pulse them to shit. (You want a fine dust of cookie crumbs). Add the wafer crumbs to the mixture and use a spatula to mix it all together.

5. Place the leftover confectioner’s sugar on a plate and begin pinching the mixed dough into ball shapes, about the diameter of a silver dollar. Press thing together with enough pressure to make the dough stick, then roll into a ball using both palms. Form one at a time and roll them in extra sugar. Repeat until the bowl is empty, refrigerate for thirty minutes before eating.

Beverage: Cafecito Organico’s Ethiopia
Soundtrack: Modest Mouse’s “This is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About”

Admitted and unabashed proponents of West Coast beer, we will be the first to admit there’s one state in the upper forty-eight that has contributed as much, if not more, than California to America’s total domination of the beer-drinking world: the upper-mid-western block we call “the silver bullet state.”

Higher than any other, Colorado famously harbors lots of wheat, livestock, and conspiracy theorists. It also produces a massive amount of good and weird brew. Add to that, it’s easy to traverse by bike in the summer and makes for easy four-wheel road trips. So it seemed only natural that having already bar-crawled through Northern California on various bicycle tours and having ripped through Escondido (So-Cal’s sudsy answer to Napa) on past mancations, Hot Knives owed it to our education to experience first-hand the state often credited for the resurgence of American craft beer. Anybody buying tickets this week to the upcoming Great American Beer Festival, take note.

With more than 120 registered craft breweries, Colorado has the fifth highest breweries-per resident ratios. Among those, it counts a brewery widely credited for kickstarting the micro-brewery movement in the 90s (O’Dell Brewing) as well as one of the fastest growing craft beer powerhouses (New Belgium). On our recent burn through the state, four pit-stops rose to the top.

We started with the hippies.

Avery Brewing Company (Boulder, Co.)
5763 Arapahoe Ave.

In the diaper years of our beer snobbery, Avery was a beacon. Maharaja was a major contender in the triple IPA taste test we hosted in 2005 for one of our first posts as beer bloggers; their annual anniversary ales were some of the first seasonal releases we started paying attention to thanks to ingredients like mission figs and white pepper; and we can thank their 15% ABV beers like Mephistopheles and The Beast for putting hair on our chests. So visiting the birthplace of these self-described “eccentric ales” was a pilgrimage of sorts.

Just three miles outside of Boulder’s granola-and-birkenstock-ey university center, Avery Brewing occupies a long strip of an industrial office park over several buildings. Massive tanks sit outside the warehouse that houses their grain room and the mash tun (due to double insulation, the contents do not freeze in winter.) There’s no free tastes on the tour, but they do encourage drinking and walking. We brought along a snifter of 2011 Samael’s — a serious port wine imitator that envelops your tongue in cognac-like sweet sap.

Inside the main room, brewers in cargo shorts bolt around, unafraid of barking at tour groups to move. Unlike some, Avery has both a day and night shift to keep pace with demand given their small size (and to give brewers weekends off). After peeping their Italian-manufactured bottling machine, we hit the aging room: a cool high-ceilinged vault behind the taproom where they keep oak barrels stacked to the rafters. Inside these suckers sit sour ales and boozey barrel-aged porters and stouts. Some are in unmarked rum casks but we got super giddy at how many barrels had the Stranahan’s logo burned into their asses, telltale sign of how many whiskey-flavored beers are coming our way from Avery. The taproom squirts all sorts of weirdy beers on tap, and specials we can’t get in California.

— DRUNK TASTING NOTE HIGHLIGHTS —

18th Anniversary Ale
What: dry-hopped rye saison with 5 yeast strains
Tastes like: lemon, grain, wood, baked bacteria

Fumator
What: strong ale aged in Stranahan barrels for 3 months
Tastes like: barbecued whisky with a beer-back

Eremita
What: Avery’s first sour beer topping 9% ABV
Tastes like: limonchiello with cherry blossoms

Oskar Blues (Longmont, CO)
1555 S Hover Rd

Pull the fuck over to the highway exit as soon as you see the beer tanks that look like Dale’s Pale Ale cans. It’s a fitting compass, since our love affair with Oskar Blues (like yours, we assume) was kindled by the fact they jumpstarted the beer can resurgence. The day we first picked up a six-pack of their imperial red ale (then called Gordon’s, now called G’Night cuz of its 8% alcohol) and biked over to a school swimming pool drinking the sixer of what looked like ginger ale while floating buzzed out of our mind on a kiddie float toy was the day we learned to love aluminum.

The OB brewery taproom is an old school road house grill nestled between the tanks. It’s all wood and rusted metal with big windows, deep wooden booths and a long manly bar. When we sidled up, we sat between scraggly cowboys drinking cans of stout and a Denverite punk-glam girl in a gold sequened mini-skirt who said she was “celebrating” and ordered champagne (on a Monday at 2pm).

We too were celebrating, but we opted for a flight of beers.

Priscilla Wheat
What: unfiltered wheat
Tastes like: orange juice on grape nuts

One Nut Brown
What: brown ale
Tastes like: hazelnut oil seltzer with a lemon twist

Mutilator Doppelbock
What: a 7% ABV bock
Tastes like: America’s version of Optimator!

Left Hand Brewing Company (Longmont, Co)
1265 Boston Ave.

The most local-yokel of the breweries we hit by far, Lefthand Brewing holds a so-so reputation by some in the Mid- and Southwest for pumping out standard ale sixers to convenience store aisles. Either something has changed in recent years or Left Hand’s more interesting beers have always stuck closer to their Longmont address than we’ve ever ventured, because we found this smaller operation a total joy.

After cruising the mile or so from Oskar Blues to Left Hand, we pulled into the driveway right at 3pm when they opened. Though the sign still said “closed” on the front door, by 3:01 the place was filling up fast with middle-aged beer geeks grasping their growlers. A low-ceiling bar zone gives way to a gorgeous back room set up with candles, done up in white linen and tasting glasses for their monthly ‘Ales for Females’ ladies night. Looked a little like they were preparing for a Sapphic seance.

Standing at the bar, unsure of what to fill our newly purchased growler with, we sipped on several high-ball glass samplers. True to our recollections, the lighter beers were “meh” to “mundane,” including the much-hyped Good Juju, a seasonal summer beer brewed with ginger, which tasted to us a little like a light lager mixed with Canada Dry ginger ale. But the stouts here are right on. We filled a $6 growler with $8 worth of the Milk Stout. For the next two mornings on our road trip, this growler got pulled out first thing out of bed and we drank it for breakfast with fresh goat yogurt.

Milk Stout
What: “sweet” stout
Tastes like: cocoa nib cola tap with corn syrup running low

TNT Weizen Doppelbock
What: doppelbock
Tastes like: yerba matte malted shake

Wake Up Dead Stout
What: Russian imperial stout
Tastes like: date shake with Guinness

New Belgium Brewing (Fort Collins, Co)
500 Linden Street

Sometimes lurking on the fringe and worshipping the underdog, as we are wont to do, means selling short the obvious industry leaders. So even though we weren’t expecting to love our stop at this regional behemoth that manufactures the ubiquitous and boring Fat Tire, we gotta say it was the most fun of all the pit-stops. Think Willy Wonka meets Stone Brewing, or — if you’re familiar with Vermont at all — imagine the beer version of the Ben & Jerry’s factory.

Nestled at the end of a dirt road across from a nature reserve, New Belgium is a massive complex unto itself. We poked inside their wacky taproom to put our name on the tour list (their tours fill up days ahead but you can easily get in on the waiting list) and then peeked our head in the Fire Tire Airstream trailer out front and took a photo booth photo that enters you automatically in their contest where they give away hundreds of bicycles every year.

Know what else is fun about New Belgium? Free beer. For whatever reason, their taproom isn’t licensed to sell beer for consuming on-site so they give it away, no fewer than six beers during the tour. Up in the immaculate brewhouse, our docent had each of us pour the beer of our choice (Abbey Grand Cru) and nibble on New Belgium orange-chocolates to warp the flavors. In the bottling warehouse, we tasted the seasonal Hoptober, just 30 minutes after it was bottled for the first time this year (making our group the first 50 people to drink the 2011 version). As we sipped from a second-story observation deck, we watched thousands of brown glass bottles with the brick-red caps stretch out before us on the endlessly long conveyor belt, pondering the impressive expansion of a company that now employs 300 people!

Ending back in the taproom we bought a growler of Sommersault for the drive back to Denver.

Blue Paddle
what: pilsner lager
tastes like: fresh bitters, Urquell on crack

Abbey Grand Cru
what: their original beer strengthened
tastes like: candi sugar and bicycle chain grease

Vrienden
what: American wild ale brewed with hibiscus, Allagash-collab
tastes like: lactobacillus lemonade

In past lives we flung burgers, T-bones and other animal parts onto hot griddles. (Alex became a man while prepping in an Albequerque diner on Route 66 so it was unavoidable, and Evan was the grill station cook one summer at a Philadelphia bistro serving filet mignon to bankers despite the dubious qualification of never tasting what he cooked.)

Disgusting to most non-meat-eaters though this may be, we see this ‘time served’ as a rite of passage because a) we can tell you when a piece of meat is medium rare and b) we can tell you in detail why you don’t want to eat a piece of meat from a diner. But there’s something even more helpful: we are now armed with proper sandwich insight that you don’t get at most vegetarian spots — re-heating processed fake meats or schmearing two slices of bread with a store-bought spread. Sadly, most veggie sammiches involve both of these un-inventive applications.

Not a recent Hot Knives foray into tuna melts! This sucker feels much more like the rye bread tuna-salad melts we used to haphazardly cradle-then-fling with our greasy spatulas. Thanks to brine, it’s fishy; due to soaked nuts, it’s gummy and fatty; and because of some sweated jackfruit it’s even stringy. Not that any of these adjectives sound all that desirable –but trust us — for this type of classic diner staple they are!

Here, we used an onion rye from a kosher bakery. We slather the ‘cream’ on both slices of bread, then grill the ‘tuna salad’ before adding it to the middle of the sandwich and pressing. Though the two components may seem redundant (nuts AND peas) it works best. That, said either of these is a ripping sandwich schmear.

Cashew Cream Cheese
(Makes 2 1/4 cups)

2 cups raw cashews
1 1/2 cups filtered water
1 tsp. white miso
1 tsp. Marmite
1/4 tsp. nutmeg (a dash)
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup grapeseed oil

1. The day before you need the cream cheese, put the cashews in a container with a lid, cover with water and sit for 6-10 hours at room temp.

6-10 Hours Later

2. Drain the cashews and toss out the water. In a food processor, combine the soaked cashews with the remaining ingredients, except the grapeseed oil. Pulse and slowly drizzle the oil. Let the mixture continue to blend several minutes, until it’s thoroughly creamy and warm from the motor. Taste and season with additional salt as you like it.

Jackfruit-and-Pea ‘Tuna’ Salad
(Makes about 2 cups)

12 oz. can jackfruit (in brine)
1/2 cup yellow peas
3 cups pickle brine (brand of choice)
1/2 cup olive oil
2 Tbs. whole grain mustard
3 stalks celery, chopped
3 green onions, chopped
half a white onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbs. capers
2 Tbs. yellow raisins (optional)

3. Start by draining the jackfruit over the sink, break the chunks apart with your hands and rinse. Then firmly squeeze the strands to remove excess brine or water. Pat dry. In a large saute pan on medium heat, saute the jackfruit with the minced white onion and garlic, tossing often. Cook this way for 10 minutes. Taste and make sure jackfruit moisture has cooked off before removing from heat.

4. Boil the yellow peas: Combine them in a small sauce pot with 2 cups of pickle brine and set on medium heat. (We used 2 cups salt water brine we sat Daikon radish for 24 hours to get a stanky, fishy vibe and then 1 cup kosher pickle brine — but regular pickle brine works if its not too sweet.) Bring it down to simmer once peas hit a boil. Cook like this for about 10-15 minutes or until peas are tender and cooked and the brine is gone.

5. Combine peas and mustard in a food processor and begin to pulse. Slowly add half the pickle juice, followed by half the olive oil, then repeat. Stop and taste, it should be slightly sweet but mostly salty and a little funky. Add salt as you like. The texture should be smooth but not loose. If too firm add equal parts brine, oil, and filtered water.

6. Remove to a mixing bowl and combine cooked jackfruit, pea mixture, capers, chopped green onions and raisins. Mixture will be gloopy and easy to spoon into clumps.

Beverage: Ladyface Amazon Red
Soundtrack: YACHT, “Holly Roller”

Alex’s birthday two years ago started the way they all do: we drove to the industrial armpit of north Pasadena that holds Craftsman Brewing. There we found an especially tasty treat awaiting us. The owner/head brewer (of our hearts) Mark Jilg handed over an icy 5-gallon canister of oyster stout. “That’s the laast of this stuff for a while,” Mark said. His oyster stout‘s a black velour concoction with a hint of bivalve seasoning from some oyster shells thrown into the mix during the brew.

You read right; we’re talking ‘bout drinking living critters on a vegan/vegetarian blog. We belong to the camp that believes sustainably harvested oysters are a delicious protein that thou shall not equate with fish, fowl or land mammal for the purposes of a righteous diet. Bivalves ‘till we die.

That birthday we broke out pint glasses and party lights and tapped the keg next to the empty swimming pool in the backyard. And we pushed the oyster stout hard. Not everyone warmed to it; some idiots had the balls to say it was a gimmick and probably oyster-less. By midnight we coaxed Ryan Sweeney to swill the stuff despite his shellfish allergy. And there was our proof: Ryan went home fine that night but spent the next day in the emergency room (Sorry, mang). No oysters our ass. Good oyster stout rules for the same reason good stout rules: its the color of a daunting black wave crashing on your face and has the slight sea-salt kiss of a fisherman’s candy. The actual oyster note is but a far-off whale mating call lost in the swells. It’s subtle. It’s not like you wanna slurp up an veiny globual on your last sip. (For the record: Alex likes this idea (immensely).)

It was with our palate set to the bivalve that we thought for sure we sensed that subliminal crustacean flavor in a recent four-pack of Green Flash Double Stout. We didn’t of course, don’t worry this one’s vegan and kosher, but it feels just as aquatic. The dusty cocao-foam head that subsides slowly like the fizz on a wave; that dry, salt bite of a hardtack biscuit and a mysterious lack of any semblance of malt sugars. Every detail of this beer is classic from running your digits over the engraved glass to the powerful alcohol drip of each sip, which works immediately like the comforting cloak of hard liquor against the elements. We might as well be sea captains or east coast hobos seeking out body heat and minerals in liquid form. Sweet sweet salt.

Dairy Pairy: Von Trapp Farmstead’s Oma
Soundtrack: Wire, “I’m the Fly”

We don’t know how your city’s garden grows, but in Los Angeles our public and private spaces are littered with free food sprouting from hillsides, traffic medians, abandoned lots and neighbors’ fruit trees. This has in turn seeded radical programs that make use of this neighborhood produce that might otherwise die on the vine. Originators like Fallen Fruit map where to snag an up-for-grabs lemon; the growing FoodForward army puts grapefruits in the hands of hungry children; and Tree People teach people how to keep their peaches blossoming.

We salute these green-thumb eco-warriors … For being better people than us. We’re selfish when it comes to our urban “gardening” efforts. We just wanna rob you blind.

Last weekend we missed our usual farmers market. So when Evan went to make a salad he found beer and a three-week old science experiment in oxidation that was (once) an avocado. Them’s not salad fixin’s. Luckily there were big bunches of nasturtium flowers around neighbors’ yards. Nasturtiums are delicious – bright and peppery and vegetal without tasting too much like the weeds they are. So, rather than hit the store, we went robbin’ for lunch. After rinsing the lilly-pad shaped leaves and candy-corn colored flowers, we tossed ‘em with a light kumquat vinaigrette (recipe below, yo). Really yummy.

We’re making this a regular routine. Watch out homeowners. We will not ask permission. And we are not going to share. Its every muthafucka for themselves on the streets of L.A. We are coming for your flower buds. We’re gonna raid your pansies. And we’re gonna eat the living shit out of them.

Free Lunch Nasturtium Salad

2 cups nasturtium flowers
2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoons white wine vinegar
½ teaspoon sugar or agave
4 kumquats
Sea salt and fresh black pepper to taste

1. Steal about 2 cups nasturtium flowers from the nearest bounty.
2. Pluck off the stems about half of an inch from the flower bud. Separate the flowers from the green leaves. Very gently rinse both and pat dry with paper towels. Look for any bugs.
3. Press three of your kumquats in a press for their juice, just about a teaspoon. Slice the remaining one into thin rounds for garnish.
4. Whisk vinegar, sugar and kumquat juice together, slowly adding oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
5. Gently toss (by hand) leaves and flowers with the vinaigrette in a mixing bowl. Serve and eat immediately.

Beverage: New Belgium’s Le Terroir (Lips of Faith)
Soundtrack: Cypress Hill, “Insane in the Brain.”

So, we’re writing a cookbook (if you missed our recent post entitled “We’re writing a cookbook”) and like anything else on this blog, how could we possible undertake such an important, mind-fuck of an endeavor without getting some feedback from our online friends? We would never EVER. So we sent out some inter-office envelopes through the U.S. Postal Service, and an email to special dudes in other parts of the world, and the feedback is coming back! We’ve gotten long emails, video responses and even long phone calls. Everything from grammar corrections to reminders that not everyone can find Westvletteren 12 for their beer pairing (not that we’d ever change that). Check out below the first round of recipe testers for “Salad Daze.” Thanks dudes.

Portobello Poutine
Testers: Mike and Curt Merrill
Location: Atlanta, GA
Website: kMikeym.com
Beer pairing: Unibrou Maudite
Soundtrack: Leonard Cohen, “The Future”

Comments: “The recipe was broken into three parts and I was worried about it being complicated, but it turned out that the shopping was the hardest part. Also it helped that I mostly drank the leftover sherry and Curt did most of the cooking.”

Belgian Onion Soup
Tester: Molly Rodgveller
Location: Ghent, Belgium
Blog: I Know, Right?
Beer pairing: De Proef, Flemish Primitive Wild Ale
Soundtrack: Metal Urbaine, Hysterie Connective

Comments: “I had to add like 2 extra cups of water to the soup to make it into soup rather than sauce… I’d say you could serve 8 with it as a starter or 6 as a meal. Soup was ab fab. liquid gold. Out of curiosity, which De Proef did you drink with it? I am not far from Lochristi, where they make it, and I wouldn’t mind going and checking the place out. As an aside, I went to the brewery of the gueuze that I brought back for you guys the other day and picked up 9 750ml bottles for 22 bucks (3 gueuze, 3 kriek, 3 faro). I’m storing them in the cellar for summer. But the awesome thing is, they sell a 5 liter bag in a box of fresh lambic for 20 euros. I know, right?”

Magic Shroom Dust
Testers: the dudes at QuarryGirl
Location: West L.A.
Blog: quarrygirl.com
Beer pairing: Goose Island Bourbon County Stout
Soundtrack: Umberto, “Someone Chasing Someone Through a House”

Comments: “The whole dish was ridiculously easy to prepare, although through the entire process we failed to see how the thing could possible be bacon-esque. I mean, mushrooms and PUMPKIN SEEDS were the base? Half-way through the preparation we began to wonder if Evan and Alex had been doing a bit of real ‘shroom dust themselves… VOILA! A crunchy, bacony surprise waited for us right there in the pan. It was brown, crispy and perfectly tasty. In fact, we started to eat right away straight from the pan… there seems no end to the versatility of the Shroom Dust – it really is magic!”

We’re writing a cookbook, it’s coming soon. Get stoned on it.

About five years ago—on April 5, 2006—we told you how to make a psychotropic pizza then dictated it must be paired with a pint of Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter and Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow” album. Was that the first time a food web log suggested that one dish, a certain beer and a particular vinyl L.P. be consumed together? Maybe not…but maybe so.

Although it’s now a ubiquitous online pastime, pairing music with our culinary conquests seemed, at the time, a weird, funny, and a little show-offy, but nonetheless helpful service we could offer anyone hunting for ideas. Even if not the first, it’s certainly possible we were just one of a handful of bloggers that came up with this idea in our sous vide vacuum; a convergent evolution sorta thing. It’s a relatively obvious concept, after all, just a flighty fun twist on pairings, right?

Actually, no. The bottom line is that those other nerds are doing this all wrong. Wrong. Wrong . Hahahaha. Ahhhhhhhhh, so wrong. It’s not their taste in music or even that they’re “big cabs” and “oaky chardonnays” blow. It’s that they’re under the impression this is some sort of artistic expression.

This is science. This is not for amateurs. We take this very seriously. We have methods.

We’ve no beef with practitioners of the oldest profession — it’s the second oldest we worry about. Middlemen.

Middlemen lie to you. Exploit your weakness. They tax your tea, charge overhead, and tell you only they can talk to god. They — in a word — blow. Which is why we don’t buy cheese at Trader Joe’s, don’t ever get spices at the supermarket, avoid gourmet stores for anything we could get at a health food store’s bulk bins, and why we plan on telling our (future) offspring to never… ever… pay someone else to score them drugs.

You know who agrees with us? Sierra Nevada. The West Coast king of hops is leading by example with their new brew, Hoptimum, an imperial IPA brewed with a mouthful of whole cone hops grown by them and only them on their vast Chico estate. Given the ratcheting up of hop prices, this is a smart business move, a little like drilling for oil in your own borders, but we appreciate it as more for than just a dollar-and-cents move. Total. Control. DIY. Drink it yourself…

Can these guys grow? Granted, we’ve never sown our own whole cone hops to compare but from where we sit (on our asses, on the porch, watching the sunlight refract through this wispy redheaded wonder tonic while filming a blog video that involves Alex’s glasses upside down and burning sage) they grow just fine. It’s a satisfyingly fat, olive-green bottle on our laps and when we lasso the neck to pop its top with a chef’s knife it’s almost as if we shrank and we’re holding a normal-sized Sierra Nevada Pale Ale that feels bigger. Head is ‘whatever,’ colors just fine. But the smell is siiiick. Stinging sweet red swizzle stick lit on fire and doused in holy water. A well-groomed skunk, slicked with garden musk. We lick the skunk; it licks back. Whether it’s the extrajudicial knowledge that this is god damn grade A, homegrown brewery produce we’re drinking here, or just good hops, this floral juice is sweeter and spicier than we can ever remember any other Sierra Nevada, even other anniversary ales from Chico, tasting. Now, if only we can cut out this pesky middleman of a bottle in our way, and drink standing in their garden.

Dairy Pairy: Nettle Meadow Kunik, a goat and cow goo from upstate New York
Soundtrack: Robedoor, “Exploited”

Aztec party animals got dowwwn. And their parties usually meant one thing—a stew of corn kernels simmered with freshly plucked human flesh.

Word is, this combo came from their totally-high-on-blood belief that their god fashioned humans out of corn meal, and an early ‘snout-to-table’ attitude to not waste the still-beating heart of the lucky dudes they murdered on top of their temples (“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” style). Then, when their new Spanish god said to stop partying so hard, they just subbed pig meat (weak).

In keeping with the idea that ritual sacrifice makes you stronger, we just gave up four long hours of our life to make this pozole of spiced hominy, fire-roasted peppers, and cool tomatillo crema. While it’s a doozy of a laundry list, there’s no human, or pig, flesh. Instead we squeeze that blood-and-iron taste from some earthy dried chiles, toasted spices, coffee and citrus. After waiting several hours for the dried corn to plump, we started wondering if the stuff really is vegetal, cuz it was acting like dry bones. Humans made out of corn meal, now that’s a religious concept; our next project is to re-dehydrate these flavored kernels to fry up some human corn nuts.

(Serves 10-12)
Corn
3 cups corn kernels (dried hominy style)
3 chipotle peppers (in adobo)
10 cups vegetable stock
1 small bulb ginger, peeled
1 fresh lime

Broth
2 Tbs. grapeseed oil
1 celery stalk
1 white onion
1 carrot
a handful dried red chiles (New Mexico)
2 tsp. cumin seed
2 tsp. coriander
1 tsp. coffee
1 orange bell pepper
1 jalapeno pepper
1 Navel orange
3 cloves garlic
1 whole clove
2 tsp. smoked paprika

Garnish
4 tomatillos
1 avocado
2 Tbs. magic shroom dust
2 Tbs. fresh oregano leaves

1. Several hours before, start preparing the pozole corn. Fill a large pot with corn kernels and make a flavored stock to cook ‘em in: Combine 1 cup vegetable stock with the chipotle peppers and pulse together in a blender, then add 4 more cups stock so you have a chipotle broth. Cover the pozole with the broth and set on high heat. Add half the ginger bulb (whole) and a squeeze of lime.

2. Once you hit a boil, set this pot on simmer and cook for about two hours. The corn should swell and become chewy rather than brittle.

3. When the corn is soft and nearly done, start preparing the rest of the soup. First, place the dried red chiles in a tall bowl and cover with 2 cups hot water to soften. Chop the celery, onion, carrot and remaining ginger for mirepoix and set aside. Toast the cumin and coriander seed briefly in a pan and set aside. Char your bell pepper and jalapeno by sitting on direct heat on your stove, flipping every couple minutes until skin is blackened. Sit these in a tuperware or paper bag for several minutes, then peel charred skin off by hand, remove seeds and chop the bell, mince the jalapeno.

4. Before proceeding, zest the rest of your lime, and the entire navel orange, set the zest and fruit aside.

5. In a second pot, add 1 tablespoon of grapeseed oil followed by the mirepoix. Saute and stir this for several minutes. Then add bell pepper and keep stirring. Take the rehydrated red chiles and pulse in the blender with one whole clove to make a deep red broth (add only as much of the water as needed to move). To this, add the garlic, toasted spices, coffee, smoked paprika and remaining 5 cups of vegetable stock and stir. Add this broth to the soup pot and set on medium-high heat to reach a boil. Once boil is attained, add the juice of the orange. Stir and keep cooking.

6. Finally, strain the now-soft corn kernels and add to the soup pot. Cook together for another 30 minutes to an hour on low heat, stirring every 10 minutes.

7. In the meantime, roast tomatillos for the avocado-salsa garnish. Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees. Cover a tray or cassoulet with aluminum foil sprayed or greased with oil and add tomatillos (skin on), bending the foil to cover them. Roast in the oven for about 20 minutes or until skins start to blacken and the fruit becomes juicy or even pops. Remove from oven.

8. Puree the roasted tomatillos with one tablespoon of grapeseed oil and two-thirds of the avocado. Season to taste and remove. Toss in the minced jalapeno.

9. Serve pozole with fresh picked oregano leaves as garnish, a dollop of avocado cream and sliced avo as well as a healthy sprinkle of magic shroom dust for salty protein vibes.

Beverage: Russian River, Sanctification blonde
Soundtrack: Umberto, “Prophecy of the Black Widow”