FAT Bites - Vegan Scrapple Fiasco and Mint Mojito Magic

>> Chris Lindstrom: And we are back. This is a food about town Bites episode, and we're gonna talk about a few of my travels recently and a little bit of cooking experiments. So, one, thanks for joining for this episode of food about town bites. And let's just start off with some of the recent cooking experiences I've had. So I tend to get into ruts when it comes to cooking at home. I tend to cook large amounts of one dish at a time. I think my friend Brian always called it, a utilitarian slop food, which, I mean, it's not 100% incorrect. usually I'll cook somewhere between, three and four weeks of one dish for lunches that I'll cook. but for whatever reason, something popped in my head recently that I really wanted to try. which I tried making vegan scrapple and failed, but also succeeded at the same time. So, for those that don't know, scrapple is kind of a Pennsylvania Dutch food that has, offal in it, liver, other, you know, assorted animal parts, bound together with cornmeal and other seasonings, usually like sage and things like that. then it's basically put into a loaf, baked and turned into this, loaf that you can sear off and use on, using lots of different ways. So I tried doing that with vegan ingredients. I tried doing that with impossible sausage, using tofu, using, Yeah, I just used anything else I had around. I had some dried mushrooms. I bought some dandelion greens, at the new market that that's happening, down at parcel five. That is, coordinated by the commissary. So, got some stuff there and tried to put it all together, added, some oats to try to build a little bit of different nutrition, add some more fiber to it. and I got to say, overall, tastes delicious. did it turn out to be scrapple? Absolutely not. So, the texture ended up just being polenta, which nothing wrong with that, polenta, obviously just being a corn meal seasoned with lots of different things. So just ended up being a really savory, delicious polenta that I've now been eating for the last week or so for dinner and for some lunches. turned out real good. I guess it's just kind of an example of when you try to make something and just focus on the flavors being good. If it doesn't quite turn out exactly the way you were hoping, doesn't mean it's going to be a bad experiment. It's still very successful experiment, just not exactly what I was trying to make. Which, you know what, I'm pretty okay with that. I don't cook that many dishes. I usually just cook flavors. so this was, you know, a bit of a. Outside of what I've been usually doing and kind of enjoyed the process.

I've been working on some cocktail ingredients recently. My mind will get locked in on different cocktail ingredients

the combination of those in a: 2313

So uh, for that price, it was hard to turn down. Uh, I had to throw away about half of them

So for that price, it was hard to turn down. I had to throw away about half of them due to, you know, there's a reason they were cheap. So a little bit of manual effort, clean them all up, cooked it into a syrup with some hibiscus to bring some brightness and some darker color. And also cooked it into syrup, blended that and strained it out and again ended up with a really delicious ah, syrup that's ah, really fruity, has a bit of acid to it. and it's been really tasty in coffee done, that a few times. Very enjoyable. And also works really well in a rum cocktail, or a whiskey cocktail. Be great with great with rye too.

Jay: American malt whiskey is a wildly fast growing category

k, was during the pandemic in: 2020

Power was out around a whole bunch of the Adirondacks after tornadoes

so let's finish off with a little adirondacks and, Vermont talk. So, went up a few weeks ago to the Adirondacks. Just a long weekend. Stayed in airbnb on a dirt road. So, tornadoes had just gone through the area, so power was out around a whole bunch of the Adirondacks, in the area where we were, which is around Lake George, north of there. So this is, near screen lake. So basically a 40 miles range, ah, vertically on the north way, was basically out of power. And when we got up there, where my sister was saying the powers out, the other place, the, place we were staying, was fully solar powered. So we climb up into the, you know, like, apartment style thing above the garage. And the air conditioner was on, the satellite tv, was on satellite, Internet was on, which is awesome. So great place. I really enjoyed staying there, but, I know this area so well, but it's changing so fast. So, in that same area in north Hudson, there's frontier town, which is a. When I was a kid, was kind of like an old west. Not amusement park, but like, you know, like an old west village with all that kind of stuff. And now there's a campground, but there's also a little food, court in there that has pizza, ah, and burgers and also pakistani food. So, end up going there with my parents and eating. Eating outside one of those days. And that was awesome to get to have that in a small town in, you know, in the Adirondacks area, which was. It's great to see that, you know, see those kind of places starting to flourish and see how popular it was and how many people were there eating. It was, really gratifying to see because I love that kind of food. And it was really nice to be able to, you know, grab some, you know, grab some chickpeas and, grab some samosas and sit and enjoy that on a beautiful day. we also ended up, the first day while power was out. we went up to Lake placid because that's where we could find some power, outside of our area. Lake, placid is always a bit challenging for me. I, really don't like being in the super touristy areas. I don't mind being around people. But in a lot of the tourist areas, there's a lack of depth, there's a lack of soul, lack, of intentionality. It's a lot of. A lot of fluff and a lot of things that don't really, don't really ring true to me. So a lot of gift shops that don't really provide anything of interest. a lot of low quality shops that just survive because they're the only game in town. Ah, we went into a coffee shop that was also part of a bakery, and it was one of the truly worst coffee experiences I've had in years. like, I know my coffee taste isn't everybody's coffee taste, but this was exceptional. This was exceptionally bad. It was so bitter and, like, poorly. I really, truly disliked it. in a way that almost put me in a bad mood. Like, I really want everything I taste to be so good. I don't. I don't want things to be bad. I don't want to celebrate the bad. I want to celebrate great. It's so much more fun and enjoyable to talk about what's great and get excited about things. And this was the complete opposite of that. so from there, we ended up actually going to, buy some stuff at a store, which weirdly enough, the person, who was working there had actually retired and left Rochester. And lives now in that area. And when I mentioned what I do is like, oh, yeah, I've heard you on connections before. I knew I recognized your voice somewhere. It's, you know, it's a, it's a small world sometimes when you're out doing things and talk about what you're doing sometimes. it was, it was a fun little coincidence there.

I went to what I think is one of the best coffee shops in Burlington

and also ended up at, prison city, brewing. they have an outpost in lake placid now. So they're in, Auburn, New York, which I'm going to be visiting more recent, in the near future story for another time. But they have a they have a satellite outpost now in lake Placid. So they have some roots there. And now you can go into lake placid and go to their to their little satellite pub, right in the heart of the village. So you can get some really tremendous beer. And you know what? That really helped turn my day around. And it wasn't the beer, you know, because the beer is excellent, but it was like, ah, this is a place that's actually good, that cares about what they're doing. it was a nice experience. I got to talk to somebody sitting next to me, and that was so much more enjoyable. we also got a chance to do, some mini golf up there at a really cool spot. Enjoyed that. Had a lunch at the, good bite kitchen, which was kind of like a meal prep place, but they also had some noodles and things like that. Very, very enjoyable. and then, one of the days when we went up to Vermont, where I grabbed, this delightful beverage, we have kind of a routine when we drive up from that area to Vermont. You're crossing over the bridge near, crown Point. We'll go up to Vergennes, to Vergennes laundry, which is bakery. It's got it's got some really interesting, you know, dry goods. So I bought this, fancy french mustard, which I really enjoying. it's like in a clay pot. Like it's, it's way over the top, but it is also truly delicious and so simple. Like, this isn't like a mustard with tons of additives. This is like mustard, water, vinegar, salt, that's it. But it's done in such a classic way that it's complex and really deep and very enjoyable. but what we ended up doing is, you know, grabbed some breakfast there, drove up to. Towards Burlington, ran into the farmers market where, we bought some other stuff, bought this, you know, tried a few samples. There's something about just stopping into a random farmers market and figuring out what's going on in that area right now, which obviously very enjoyable for me. And, I'm driving up into Burlington, you know, grabbed a couple other things. Ended up having a picnic in the park for lunch, which was fantastic. Like, it was really enjoyable. Well, we grabbed some blueberries on the way up from a blueberry farm. you know, grabbed some other, you know, got some goat cheese for Carrie, got, some other stuff. And, you know, ended up sitting in a park looking over Lake Champlain, right in Burlington, which was, which was great. It was really relaxing. Got a chance to really just sit and enjoy that for a little bit. Went, to what is, I, think truly one of the best coffee shops I have ever been to, in Burlington. I'm, going to look it up while we're talking right now. But it's kind of a multi roaster. so this is a what I call a very high end multi roaster. So they're bringing in very well curated beans, for, all the Rochester people. it's kind of like ugly duck. It's a tighter. And I'd say the coffees are pushing the boundaries. It's a little higher end. not in a bad way. Like, again, I love what ugly duck does. It's my regular, coffee shop. But basically every time they have, you could have, like, three, four different things on espresso. everything's available for, you know, you could do pour overs of many different things. a lot of the stuff's very highly, you know, the more modern process, the super modern processes a, ah, lot of anaerobic stuff. A lot of, stuff like that. So really enjoyable. It's onyx tonics. So it's o n y x tonics, specialty coffee. every time we go to Burlington, this is a must go for us. Had, some fascinating coffees there. Really enjoyed it. and then kind of, you know, charged up the car and zipped back. Zip, back there. So it's always great to get these little side trips, into different areas. and I definitely. I think what I want to leave you with is if you're traveling somewhere, don't just get locked into being exactly where you are. Do the little side trip. Go to, you know, drive outside of town, go to the botanical garden, go to find a mini golf. Find something that gets you outside of your day to day comfort zone while you're traveling, you end up finding something, you won't expect.

so I think that's where we're going to leave. This episode of Foodabouttown Bites come up on like 25 minutes, which good enough for now. So, what I will ask everybody is if you are interested in being a guest on food about town or one of the other shows on the lunch at or podcast network, you can reach out to me, stromymail.com or, lunch at our podcastmail.com. we're also looking for, so we're looking for guests for food about town. We're looking for live recording opportunities out in public. So if you know somebody who'd be a great guest on food about town, reach out to me, tag them on, tag them on a comment, let them know to come, on the show. And, I guess that's going to wrap it up. I got to get to sleep. Driving to Philadelphia tomorrow. Maybe I'll have a little bit of update for everybody on that after, but hope everybody enjoys the last of summer coming up. We're going to have more food about town bites coming up. I'm trying to really do a little bit more of this. I know I've said that before, but really trying to ramp up the content for this. We have some crossover episodes that are going to be reposting. First episode of just can't knots coming out. So that's going to come out on the food about town feed as well. So thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next time with more food about town. Enjoy the summer and be good to yourself. Be good to others. See you later.