Blogden Utah

Cocktail: Ogden Donkey

2013-04-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

My friend Aimee proposed one evening that we make something called a "Moscow Mule" which is a gingery vodka drink. We made some, and they were pretty good, but we agreed that they were a little sweet and needed more bite.

I set to work. To make the Moscow Mule I had to make ginger syrup which you make by boiling 2 cups of water, one cup of sugar, and about a half cup sliced fresh ginger root. Cook until the liquid reduces by half.

When I decided to increase the bite, I added a few lemon slices to the above.

I strained out the chunks and set aside the ginger-lemon syrup. I put the ginger slices and lemon chunks into a one pint mason jar and filled it with vodka, letting it sit until the next evening.

To make the Ogden Donkey (Aimee's coinage) mix like this:

2 oz gingery lemony vodka from the jar
1/2 oz (1 tbsp) ginger-lemon syrup
2 oz sparkling water
Lemon twist
Serve over one giant ice cube

You can re-infuse more vodka with the chunks in the jar at least 5 times; likewise, I suppose you could do one larger batch all at once. However, since the lemon and ginger slices were also soaked in sugar from the syrup- making, you may want to add additional sugar if you infuse a couple quarts of vodka at once. When I re-infused in the one pint jar, I added about 1/4 cup of sugar to ech batch after the first batch. After you add the sugar, shake it really well. Shake again before use.

You can also add the ginger slices to the cocktails as garnish. The hardiest among you may eat the slices after draining the cocktail.

Mason Jar Coffee Roasters

2013-02-07T05:57:00.002-07:00

If you've read my earliest posts on this blog, you'll know that one of our goals/challenges was finding some replacements for great bread, great granola, and great coffee so that our mornings could continue to achieve the apex of taste, refinement, and profound gustatory satisfaction we had enjoyed in the Adirondacks thanks to the Dogwood Bread Company of Wadhams!, NY.

The solution: we found a way to bake crusty, no-knead artisan bread in a 7-quart dutch oven; make our own delicious granola; and I started roasting my own coffee beans. There is some great artisan bread available regionally - coffee and granola, too - but it largely emanates from Logan at the Crumb Brothers bakery. Logan is far away by my standards, and though amazing, I wouldn't consider the Crumb Brothers an Ogden local.

Also, roasting coffee in a variety of semi-failing popcorn poppers at 5AM in 10-degree weather twice a week all winter long (I do it in the garage to contain the massive amount of smoke it produces) wears a little thin after awhile. Fortunately for me, I have discovered Mason Jar Coffee Roasters right in here in Ogden (well, Washington Terrace, really).

Tom, the owner/roaster is a great guy. He's got a great staff. The place was established in August 2012, and at the time of writing, they're still developing some ambiance - but way in the plus column, the place is spacious, friendly, plenty of seating, sofas, a scrabble game, and my 3-year-old feels pretty at home cruising around in there.

They have a drive-up window, and they sell jars of amazing, freshly roasted coffee. Mason Jar also features loose-leaf tea (another very hard to find item in Ogden - Union Station Fermentation has some, too). Mason Jar usually has a nice plate of donuts and fritters on the counter if you need a snack. But the main feature for me is the shiny coffee roaster in the back of the main room, surrounded by all the lovely sacks of coffee...

I'm a black coffee drinker, but if you like a latte, make sure to ask for the Cinnamon Honey Soy Latte - using real honey and real cinnamon. Somehow, it magically almost tastes like chocolate. And if you want to skip the magic and go straight for the real thing, the house hot-chocolate is soul-satisfying and worth the trip. They're not open Sundays, but they're open daily from 5:30AM-7:00PM (double-check for current hours).

Smogden, Utah

2013-01-09T07:03:00.001-07:00

What's up with this, Utah?

The air has been worsening for a week straight. The ground-level visibility is probably a mile or two in the middle of the day. You can taste the air.

I grew up in Missoula, MT, which had a geographically-imposed inversion, just like the Wasatch Front. The difference is, in Missoula, they got sick of it 25 years ago and took aggressive steps to improve the air, so they could have a healthy community.

Here, the plan seems to be to wait for the wind to pick up.

Here's a more detailed and informative look at Daily Kos.

These ladies are also sick of it.

In the Neighborhood

2012-03-31T11:28:00.000-07:00

I live in South Ogden City. Used to be called Burch Creek. The general area (confirmed by Craigslist) is called "Ogden-Clearfield" which is a Metropolitan Statistical Area. Since 80% of the people in Utah live in a 100-mile stretch along Interstate 15, it's pretty much a bunch cities squashed together cheek-by-jowl. If you live north of Ogden, you might live in Harrisville, or North Ogden. If you live south of Ogden, you might live in Roy or Layton.

If you live in Ogden, you might (like me) live in South Ogden City. My mail says Ogden. South Ogden City is like a municipal peninsula (say that three times fast) wedged into the southerly portion of Ogden. You might also live in Washington Terrace. As a result of the jigsaw city effect, no one seems to mention actual neighborhoods in Ogden. I've heard of two: Jefferson Historical District and East Bench. (I recently heard one home owner in East Bench refer to it as "Harrison Heights." East Bench makes more sense.) East Bench is a bench on the mountains at the eastern extreme of Ogden. It's entirely east of Harrison Avenue north of Weber State University.

But that's it. People ask where I live, and I can only give prosaic street coordinates. So I made up some more neighborhoods. Maybe they'll catch on. I'm designating the area just west of Weber State University that comprises parts of Ogden and South Ogden City in the neighborhood behind and to the north of McKay Dee Medical Center "West Bench." If you go downhill on Bel Mar, you'll notice that it is a distinct neighborhood.

Below that, continuing downhill along the south side of 36th Street, you'll find yourself in the more blue-collar neighborhood, which I will call the Lower West Bench. There's a weird sort of middling OK neighborhood just north of there along either side of Jefferson that I'm going to call NoLoWeBe - North of Lower West Bench (in honor of the best neighborhood acronym ever "DUMBO" - Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) and in the tradition of NoLa, NoHo, and Nolita.

Of course, the area on the west side of Harrison down 25th Street can be the Lower East Bench. I'll look for historical corrections and other suggestions in the comments. Let's carve up this town into desirable neighborhoods and call them our own!

UPDATE: I started a collaborative interactive google map of the neighborhoods in Ogden.

I sketched in some of the neighborhoods. Add your own!!

UPDATE #2: Even better! Open Street Map has all of the old neighborhood addition names right on it - many of which are pretty fun: Nelson Park, Prospect Heights, Lakeview, etc.; though I must say, that my little corner of Ogden remains somewhat ambiguous, so I will still refer to it as "Jefferson Meadows."

Mornings and Fridays

2012-02-21T06:47:00.000-07:00

I don't have much interest in the middle spectrum of life. The nature of the soul interests me and so does what's for breakfast. Everything else is a distraction.

Not meaning to beat the dead horse, but I've mentioned before that we were really spoiled for food in the Adirondacks, so finding suitable substitutes for our provender has been paramount. Dogwood Bakery provided me with coffee and granola every morning, as well as pizza every Friday. We found a replacement for the pizza at Sitara India, where we now order our Friday treat (the Adirondacks does not spoil one with a surfeit of ethnic cuisine...)

Sitara is very affordable and very delicious. The staff is friendly and the take-out service takes awhile. Give yourself 45 minutes. Sometimes, they say 25 or 35 minutes. Call ahead. Give yourself 45 minutes. No matter what, it's worth it. For about twenty bucks, you can feed two adults dinner and lunch the next day.

The other thing I've been trying to track down is my morning bowl of granola. Mass-produced granola invariably has two problems - it tastes funny and it costs too much. It's often very sweet, flavored like fake vanilla, it comes in crusty conglomerates of semi-chewed oats and rice puffs and tastes pumpkin-y or contains any of a number of weird combination of blobs and spices. Granola is what I eat most of the time because I don't feel like cooking oatmeal. When I cook oatmeal it contains: oats, raisins, salt, water. I like my granola about the same - though with less water and maybe some nuts and seeds.

I found a couple of decent bulk-bin granolas around Ogden in one place or another - notably, Smith's has a microscopic-but-satisfying selection of bulk granola.

But last night, shopping at Macey's (because the power had gone out at the Smith's) I found this:

It was on the top shelf in the cereal aisle about 1/3 of the way down on the right if you're facing the front of Macey's. It was 8.99 for three pounds. Clinton's Fruit and Nut Granola contains "Rolled oats, Yellow D Brown Sugar, Soy Bean Oil, Raisins, Cashews, Wheat Bran, Wheat Germ, Unsweetened Coconut, Sesame Seeds, Sea Salt, Vanilla."

It's made down the road from here in Bountiful, UT, and it hits the spot. Get you some.

Grocery Champs

2012-02-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

Smith's it is! For general grocery-ness, plus stocking bison and nitrite-free bacon, Smith's wins the where-I-go-shopping-mostly prize. I've never been to a town that has such a wide range of regional and home-grown grocery stores - it's never really mattered much - but Ogden sports an especially healthy grocery ecology (with minor demerits for hard-to-find hippie food).

If you want an amazing bulk-bin experience, shop the Winco: it sports bulk quinoa in multiple colors! If you need 14 pounds of generic chocolate chips, malt flour, or a sock-full of pancake mix, Winco is the spot. Macey's does well in the family grocery category - especially for price, but they're closed on Sunday. I usually have no idea whether I will shop Saturday or Sunday for the week, so Macey's takes a hit from Heisenberg.

I recently learned of a sheep dairy in the area that also sends lambs to a butcher shop in Morgan. After I replace the timing belt in the suburban assault vehicle, I'll check that out.

Panorama of the Ogden Botanical Gardens

2012-02-11T17:29:00.001-07:00

A 360-degree panorama taken at Ogden Botanical Garden. Tried to cut out the jogger, which interrupts the flow. We were all deeply embarrassed.

Sorting it out: Garbage and Recycling

2012-02-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I live in South Ogden City. What its purpose is, I have no idea. My address says "Ogden." South Ogden City is like a notch cut into the bottom of Ogden, and Ogden surrounds it on three sides.

I've been trying to grasp the baroque minutiae of getting rid of my trash, etc. I have three of those flap-lid curbside containers in my driveway. I rent, and I think my landlord foots the bill for the trash. There is a blue container, a green one, and a brown one. The blue one is apparently for recycling, the green one (confusingly) for trash, and the brown one seems to be for yard waste and/or compost.

Here is a link to what Ogden (not South Ogden City) offers by way of explaining the system:

General info:

http://www.ogdencity.com/en/community/public_services/garbage_recycling_services.aspx

Detailed recycling info (note the playful Comic Sans font):

http://www.ogdencity.com/en/sitecore/content/Global/Content/DocumentLinks/Community/GarbageRecycling/RecyclingDosandDonts.aspx

Neither of those mentions that, in my neighborhood, Monday seems to be trash day. I learned that by watching the neighbors. Another hitch: the blue bin indicates that the lid should open toward the curb, but the other two bins indicate that the lid should face the street. I put all the bins facing the street. Everyone else seems to as well.

Recycling is only picked up every other week. Here is a link to that schedule:

http://www0.wm.com/documents/colorado/recyclecalendar2012_utah_openmarket.pdf

My best interpretation of the chart is that, if you have an even-numbered address, you use the green weeks to recycle, and if you are odd, you use the yellow weeks. I put my recycling out for the first time last week, and it wasn't picked up. Wrong week.

Having operated a relatively-well-ventilated tumbler composter for several years and fighting to keep it from getting slimy and stinky, I can't imagine what would happen if you actually put food waste into the 100 gallon brown container for awhile...there's no way to oxygenate it. Unless you make an effort to mix in yard waste and grass clippings regularly, that brown bin will become unbelievably gross. I shudder to imagine. Composting is easy to set up. If you're inclined, do that instead.

My recommendation for Ogden, South Ogden City, and Waste Management is the following:

Centralize you information. Residents need a one-stop website that explains EVERYTHING. The information above comes from multiple locations on two different sites and leaves out a lot. South Ogden City is nearly mum on the subject. None of the sites explains that both Ogden and South Ogden City have Waste Management handling the trash in basically an identical way. I have no information on when the brown bin is emptied. One more reason to be afraid...

The garbage can should be gray. Garbage has a grayness about it. It's inert material headed for the dustbin of history. Black would also work. Brown works well for yard waste. Good call. All the bins should be labelled to face the same way at the curb.

This is very colorful:

http://www0.wm.com/documents/colorado/colorado_utah_service_calendar_2012.pdf

...but what does it mean?!

If I learn any more about disposing of waste in Ogden, Utah, dear reader, you'll be the first to know! If you have any information, please, please, add it to the comments.

Trail of Crumbs

2012-01-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

When we lived in the Adirondacks, we were terribly spoiled by living near one of the best bakeries in the country - Dogwood Bread Company. Located in Wadhams!, NY, the Dogwood was our last refuge, our source of nourishment, and a place for warm companionship. It had such a magical quality, sequestered in the holler-cum-crossroads of Wadhams!, I expect that if I ever try to go back, the place will have disappeared Brigadoon-wise into a Highland fog, only to reappear in 2107 - or maybe we'd come back to a weathered foundation and the locals would say "hasn't been a bakery here in 50 years - the old one burned down in 1955..." and we will have been sustained by the phantasmic bread of spectral bakers...

Probably neither of those things is true, but I miss the place.

For me, the real joys in life have become pretty simple, and largely gustatory. I need fresh vegetables, kindly-treated meat, good bread, and good beer. I don't want my food to have to travel too much farther than I do to meet me at the market. So I went on the trail of my leavened fix.

Ogden is a quirky place. It's a town that shows its roots, and home to a divergent population - which is one of its charms and strengths. It's a little shy on earthy undertones, though not totally devoid of them. If I were stirring a city cocktail, I would shake a few more hippies into the mix - you can almost discern the approach of a critical mass of crunchiness that verges on the spontaneous eruption of a co-op or good bakery. The microbews, brew pubs, coffee shops, and crafters have already secured the beachhead...(we even saw a yarn-bombed tree!)

Instead, our search for a good local bakery pointed us to Logan, Utah - home of Crumb Brothers bakery. It's got the look and feel of the kind of local bakery that makes a town truly civilized - but Logan is an hour away. Luckily for us, Crumb Brothers distributes to Ogden in the Harrison Ave Fresh Market. Get there early for your favorite artisan loaf: the bread is delivered fresh daily (except Sunday) but it gets picked over by early afternoon.

Maybe someday if Ogden can rope in a few more hair-farmers, Crumb Brothers can open up an Ogden store and soak up some of those Trustafarian dividends. In the meantime, spread the word to all your ski-bum friends: Ogden has some of the best (locals say THE best) powder in the Rockies right outside of town (think Bozeman : Bridger Bowl :: Missoula : Snowbowl :: Ogden : Snowbasin.)

Are we compensating for something?

2012-01-21T15:39:00.002-07:00

Uinta brews mighty beer.

Here's a brief primer on Utah beer. There are a bunch of laws about alcohol in public places: you can't have two glasses of beer in front of you at once...you can't order a pitcher for friends unless your friends are already there...there is something called a club for which you have to have a membership...there is something called a tavern where you can go to get drunk...you can get beer at the bar of a place that serves food but if you want wine you have to sit at a table and actually get food...and so on and so forth...

The rules governing the sale and use of alcohol and the reasons it is done this way in Utah are here: http://abc.utah.gov/index.html

The biggie is the strength of the beer, which, when for sale in the grocery store is limited to 3.2% alcohol by weight (and nobody measures alcohol that way). In the rest of the civilized world, alcohol is measured by volume. 3.2% by weight = 4% by volume. Most competent Utah microbrews seem to be pegged at 4% ABV. Here's a list of some known beers and their ABV.

If you want to get some beer with more legs than you can get at the grocery store, you can go to a state liquor store and get all kinds of great booze at more or less recognizable prices. There are two in the vicinity of Ogden - and I think all the state stores carry about the same inventory. Here's a map to the stores: http://abc.utah.gov/stores/index.html.

What blew me away was that it seems like the local brewers go into overdrive trying to make up for the lower ABV beer in the grocery by upping the octane in their other offerings. Most of the microbews I found have varieties in the grocery store, but they were all well-represented in the liquor store, too. Bottle after bottle I picked up in the liquor store had ABV of 6.9%, 7.3%, 8%, and the Uinta Anniversary Barley Wine Ale (which is a really fragrant hoppy ale) tops out at a whopping 10.4%. I had one last night and it took a little while to recover. I didn't have a second in the same sitting. I downshifted to the tasty and alcoholically pedestrian Wasatch Evolution Ale - a 4% ABV beer that I got in a local grocery store (it's in almost all of them).

There's a lot to be said for the rationale of the Utah State liquor control - which is not alone; 18 states control the sale of alcohol at the wholesale or retail level. My home state of Montana had state liquor stores, too (of course, in Montana, you could buy a bottle of booze from a bar at 1:45AM to take home and finish the job - a notion that always amazed my out-of-state friends; Montana offers wine in grocery stores - which I consider a sine qua non of a civilized world). I really enjoyed my sturdy barley wine ale, but I also like having a really tasty microbrew or two after work at home without ringing the bell too hard - giving the 4% beer a good place in the arsenal (other 4% -ish options are run-of-the-mill commercial brews).

And for anyone still not convinced: I once lived in an actual dry county in Arkansas. Utah beats that by a wide margin. 4% is a lot higher than 0%. And just for the record, you have to buy a case of beer at a time in Pennsylvania, you can't buy beer on election day in Pittsburgh, New York State doesn't sell wine in grocery stores. It weird everywhere - except in Louisiana, where they will sell you a daiquiri at a drive-up window (but they won't put the straw in it...)

Tea for Two

2012-01-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

We successfully hooked up with some looseleaf tea at the Fermentation Station. Rather than the usual bulk jars, they get their tea from a woman who used to run a tea shop around the corner until very recently, when it closed. The tea lady pre-packages the bulk loose leaf into smaller portions that sell for $6-$8. It comes in small plastic jars. The price is fair and the selection is good. There are little sample jars on top of the display for smelling.

The interior of the Fermentation Station in Ogden, Utah

The Fermentation Station itself is a gem. It's very well stocked with all manner of brewing equipment, supplies, and information. They have malt, whole grain, hops, yeast - including strains for cider and saki. They offer classes on various kinds of fermenting as well as cheese-making classes. The Fermentation Station is on the revitalized historic 25th Street in Ogden.

Kaffe Mercantile and a drive to the Upper Valley

2012-01-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

The view from Kaffe Mercantile on 26th and Harrison Blvd.

Inside Kaffe Mercantile

We got some great coffee here and took a drive to the Upper Valley on one of the few gray-ish days in Ogden. Awesome blueberry turnovers!!

The dried chilis at Macey's at 37th and Washington

2012-01-14T15:41:00.003-07:00

The dried chilis at Macey's at 37th and Washington

Meat Seeking Minivan

2012-01-14T15:41:00.001-07:00

We're still on the search for good meat.

We've been trying out different grocery stores. Right down the street from our house is Macey's, which is a sort of family-oriented, stack 'em high sell 'em cheap kind of place. Good selection. Awesome south-of-the-border aisle.

We don't eat much meat, and IMHO, meat should be a little scarcer and a lot better than it is. Good meat costs more. That's OK. We roast whole chickens and eat ground bison, and try to hook up with some happy-face-pig bacon, salted, but uncured (nitrites are something I'd generally prefer to do without). Right now, there is some kind of national bison craze, so what used to be $5 or $6 a pound for ground bison is now as high as $11. It's good, but not that good. I'd rather eat 5 pounds of tofu for that much. I'll sprinkle bison-flavor-flakes on it.

We've been to Winco, Fresh Market (which I think is Albertson's in Utah) and now Harmon's. Harmon's has bison, and if you ask the guys at the meat counter, they can go in the back and get you sliced pork side meat - which is uncured bacon. It is meat of uncertain origin, which is generally sad factory pigs. I bought it anyway.

Other than that, Harmon's is just overpriced for no particular reason, and doesn't really make up for it in selection or service. It is an indistinguishably decent grocery store - though they do have samples, which is good. The employees offering the samples either have a terrifying foreman (like that angry elf with the goatee in the Rudolph stop-action holiday show) or they get some awesome commission on jam and crab salad, because they will cheerfully and relentlessly chase you ten or twenty feet insisting on all the reasons you need to buy the thing you just nibbled RIGHT NOW.

We're going back to Macey's. I have a pound-and-a-half of side meat to last until I can locate a happy-pig farm. Then we can get a shoat for side meat.

We tried to locate some loose leaf tea today, also. We're off to the Fermentation Station to get some.

UPDATE: We found some commercially-available ground bison and nitrite-free bacon at Smith's on Harrison.

The Hippie Food Saga

2012-01-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

Before coming to Ogden, we lived in the Champlain Valley of New York State, where we were spoiled by CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture farms) and locally raised meat (shout out to DaCy Meadow and Ben Weaver!) The down side of the area was the general remoteness to everything else you might need in the way of healthy groceries, fresh produce in the off-season, bulk Earl Grey tea and whatnot.

We might travel to Middlebury, Vermont, which had its very posh co-op, which is sort of a member of the now-nationally-recognizable successful co-op trope, with the open HVAC ducts, the earth-tone accents on the architecture, and a penchant for gourmet items. It was an hour away, and the roads weren't the best, even in summer.

I just read that Utah is the most urban of all the western states, with 85% of its population living in urban areas. 80% of the total population lives along the Wasatch Front, stretching from the southern burbs of Salt Lake City to the northern reaches of Ogden and North Ogden and North North Ogden. Past that, there is a mysterious land called the Cache Valley which apparently has some great farms, but I haven't made it up there yet.

I figured with a million or so people living along the 100 mile stretch of Interstate 15 between Provo and Brigham City, one might find a decent co-op for the outdoorsy-hippie-collegey types, but so far efforts have only turned up this disappointment.

On the upside, Ogden has a store called Good Earth Natural Market on Riverdale that scratches some of those itches, and, of course, there is a Whole Foods in Salt Lake City (which probably muscles out the co-op opportunities). We also found Cali's Natural Food Warehouse - which has its own unique brand of awesomeness, but be prepared that it is not like a typical grocery-store experience. It's really pretty much a small warehouse. The woman at the register the day we went was wonderful and helpful, and they have some cool stuff in there.

Unfortunately, we were on the prowl for some grass-fed-living-large-well-loved-died-of-mild-surprise beef, poultry, or bison - which have proved elusive...though I got a hot tip from the Paradise Valley Orchard that the mythical Cache Valley has a farm which might satisfy our meaty desires...

About Blogden Utah

2012-01-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

For me, blogs have turned out to be quests: a quest for appropriate baby names, a quest for cheap, earthwise diapering, a quest for harmonious arts management.

Lately, I relocated to Ogden, UT with my family to take a job at Weber State University. I'm not sure what the big Quest is, but a few little ones have popped up: looking for local food, local culture, and good things to do with the family. If I find anything good, I'll write about it (or the search for it) here, at Blogden, UT, where the Cloud meets the sky...(oh, that is sooooo cheesy, but how could I pass it up?)