Trail of Crumbs

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?

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

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

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

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

Meat Seeking Minivan

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

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

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?)