Shooting Stars of Thought |

First, a quick note: I realized that when I signed up to participate in One Local Summer this year, I didn’t bother to pay attention to how many weeks the summer was supposed to last. Part of me thinks that since last week was an even week 10, the OLS exercise could easily be over, but another part of me thinks that since summer runs through the end of August, then OLS must too. Rather than bother to figure this out, I’m going to just assume the latter and keep up with this delicious local exercise.

Now, on to this week’s meal.

With summer on the mind, I spent the good part of this afternoon crafting a tasty tribute to the season. Today was a homebrew day, and the beer of choice was a summer saison. Saison beers have recently caught my attention (Green Flash has a particularly delicious version right now, and I just came across Coronado Brewing Company’s Saison while eating what turned out to be a coincidentally local meal at the Ritual Tavern Friday night–Carlsbad mussels cooked with the Coronado Saison. um, delicious). So when it came time to pick another beer for our next batch, we were lured by the subtle undertones of coriander and orange, and the slightly spicy, sometimes tart profile of the saison.

But I digress. My favorite thing about a homebrew session is the hours of leisure time it affords. The entire process takes about 4-5 hours, but only requires about 1-2 hours of active time, setup and cleanup included. The rest is spent letting water heat to certain temperatures, and letting the wort (the liquid that will eventually become the beer) boil for an hour or so. Since we have an outdoor burner for our kettle, a homebrew session essentially means a quality weekend afternoon spent outdoors.  A couple of snacks, a couple of drinks, and some sunscreen, and it’s a pretty perfect day.

Well, when you have all of that time set aside, it’s hard not to plan a dinner that takes advantage of it.  Grilling is often my go-to homebrew meal, as the meat can be set up to marinade before the brewing begins, and the firing up of the grill can pretty be timed to coincide with the 60 minutes that the beer has to boil (when it usually requires little attention from the brewer). But today I opted for a different method of preparing dinner–the slow cooker.

Before the beer making commenced, I gathered the ingredients for chili. I biked on over to the Hillcrest farmers’ market for some Brandt Beef, and used the tomatoes, onions, and amazing array of peppers I picked up at the City Heights farmers’ market on Saturday. In the photo, that’s green peppers, anaheim peppers, jalepenos, and a gorgeous heirloom pepper that is the color of eggplant on the outside but bright green inside. I also used the last of my bag of pinquito beans from Suncoast farms, and a bottle of homebrewed IPA (how could I not?).

A little bit of prep work, a couple of stirs, and dinner was pretty much made for me.

After cleaning up from the brewing session, the sun set and it was time to come inside for dinner. There’s nothing better than a warm, comforting meal than a warm, comforting meal that’s already prepared and ready when you are.

p.s. - this post  marks the 100th post on shootingstarsofthought.com. I was going to celebrate the occasion with a bit more fanfare, but what better celebration than a batch of homebrew and a comforting meal?

[update: oh good--looks like OLS officially goes until august's end. Looking forward to a few more weeks of reading about everyone else's meals!]