Cocktail: Ogden Donkey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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