On my last trip, I decided to road trip out West to visit a few of the microbreweries in Fort Collins and Boulder, Colorado. I also decided to camp instead of taking residence up in a hotel. In early October, the weather is still mild enough for camping and the trees are at the peak of their fall foliage – and with a mountainous back drop it made the local area beautiful which is why I chose to go during that time of year. However, as always when camping, the issue of food came up.

I wanted to have quick and easy foods to prepare for meals, but I also needed to have good nutritious snacks to tote along. I didn’t want to have to drive into town every time I needed something to eat or have to build a full-blown fire each time I wanted food. So using some prior know how and some newly found products online, I compiled a list of great foods to take on my trip:

Trail Mix
Trail mix is an easy snack to whip up that can be a great energy packed treat. Before you head out, simply mix together some of your favorite nuts and dried fruits, toss in some M&Ms if you are like me and need your chocolate fix, and divide the mix up into several Ziploc bags. This way you’ll be able to grab the right portion whenever you need it.

Freeze Dried Meals
When most of us think of freeze dried meals, we think of unpalatable freeze dried food that vaguely resemble chicken Parmesan or macaroni and cheese. However, nowadays there are several brands, such as Prepare Wise, that actually make great tasting meals and snacks such as spicy corn chowder to rice pilaf. An additional perk to freeze dried meals, is that they are lightweight and produce no smell, making them easy to tote around and keep safe from animals.

Protein Bars
Protein bars are always something that I try to keep in my pack or purse. You never know when you aren’t going to have access to a good meal as sometimes rain makes starting a fire impossible or you just start feeling weak while hiking about. By keeping a protein bar on me, I am able to keep my body nourished when I need it to be. Some of my personal favorite are Cliff and Luna bars. They come in great flavors and are generally low in sugar and made with natural ingredients.

Dried fruits and dark chocolate bars with almonds in them also make great take along snacks that can give you an extra boost when you need it. Not only were these items great for camping, but they also gave me something to munch on while I made the drive out there, which was good because drive-thru items generally leave me feeling bogged down and tired. Don’t be afraid to prepare food to take with you on the open road. They will leave you feeling better, and satiate your hunger without leaving you feeling like you are missing out on something. They will also save you money so that you have a little something leftover to spend on your next adventure.

Consideration has been given for this post, brought to you by Amanda Green.

This update spans two separate stints in Lima – one pre-Machu with the family and one post-Machu with food poisoning. I even have the picture of the place that gave me the food poisoning. It was fried chicken livers and a salad, but it couldn’t have been the chicken livers. You know they always tell you to make sure your food is cooked down here… that is a rule I have not abided by thus far. Even after the issues, I just like salad too much to stop eating it.

To the right is somewhere in downtown Lima. We had a half day tour of Lima that brought us through some expensive parts of the city, drove by some unimpressive ruins (the size of a few football fields right in the middle of a residential area), the Plaza de Armas, and two churches. All of the squares down here are a lot prettier at night – they really highlight the architecture with lighting well. Do I have a picture of that in this blog post?  Uhh, no.

These guys are ready for la revolucion. My tour guide told me I shouls ask to take their picture, and I am guessing they get this request a lot. They were all over the Plaza De Armas – the capital area of Lima. Dissimilar to the equipment carried around by Americans in D.C. only by technological function.

I used to have a dream that I could get a unimog camper and go off road and make some kind of web series about it.  If I could get my hands on one of these cheap, I think retrofitting it would be half the fun.

The updraft coming off the Pacific up the cliffs in Miraflores makes it so these  guys can fly all day if they want.

Then we took a nap at the hotel and got some food (the food post is coming up) and then we went out and sang some Karaoke.  I think my dad did My Way.

My brother did Careless Whispers, I was going to do Faith, but was waffling a little bit on it, and when my brother took this classic, I had to do something different.  I completely forget what I sang, but I didn’t have the range for it.   Tim is awesome at karaoke – he completely rocked it.

I didn’t do so well on the song, but I think I won them over with the dancing.

And then here we are a week later, getting food poisoning.  The girls were really surprised to see me eat the chicken livers.  I doubt many gringos come here – about five blocks in the wrong direction from the bus station in Lima.  God, I was happy to be off that bus.  Little did I know that I was going to be doing a lot more sitting over the next few days.

Before I felt the effects of the insalata, I was pretty pumped about my accommodations.  The walk to bathroom was approximately half a kilometer, and I had to do a few times an hour.  Looking at my watch, I was pumped when 40 minutes had passed before my last trip.  It snuck up on me once overnight, and I ran to the window and inadvertently puked on a dog.  I had no strength to laugh at this.  I’m now laughing with a pouty face thinking of the moment; guilty but still aware of the comedic value.

I forget what this church is, but here’s the library inside in which they don’t allow pictures.

Two days later and I am back outdoors.  I learned that hotel I was staying at was hourly.  In the room sleeping and waiting for my next trip to the bathroom, it sounded like this:

Door closes
Flirty voices and laughing
Silence
Belt falling on the floor
Utter silence for 20 minutes
More flirty laughing
Shower turns on (flirty laughing continues in the shower)
Door opens

It happened three times that day.

More architecture.

And aside from food, that was my Lima experience.  Next post, Food in Lima, Peru.

That’s my dad to the right.  He’s 60.  He dyed his hair for the trip.  I think it looks great.  He doesn’t look 60, does he?  Ladies, you know guys have the mom rule – I don’t know if you have the dad rule, but if you do… Eh?  Eh?  My mom is quite attractive as well.  I have good genes.

We got an overnight flight from JFK to Lima and got our day started at about 7:45.  Lima is closed on Friday morning at 7:45.  The McDonald’s in Lima doesn’t open until 7Am.  Don’t worry, fans residing in Lima, McDonald’s breakfast in Peru absolutely sucks. I think there would be some kind of Arab-Spring-like uprising if the general populous knew how much better our McDonald’s breakfasts are in America.  Ignorance is bliss, I guess.

I like this colorful bus, and so does the driver.  They’re all much more colorful than this one down here – this was just my second photo.  I just saw a public bus today with a “No Fear” sticker on it today. My favorite bus sticker was one that advertised the fact that the bus had a bathroom with the word “BAÑOS” over one of those

I wonder if this is legal – having a casino named “Atlantic City.”  You would think that since things like Champagne have their copyright, AC would have theirs.  I was tempted to put this in my South American Copyright Infringement post, but this is certainly a grey area.

Gato.  John Kennedy square in Miraflores (he’s never been here, but yes, it’s that John Kennedy) is filled with cats.  There’s one gated area next to a church that has about 10 cats lazing about at any given time.  It has a statue of a lady who is the patron saint of sleeping 18 hours a day.

It’s overcast today in the Love Park in Miraflores.  Most of the days started overcast and then cleared off a bit near the end.  This lighthouse is only for decoration.

The cactus is trying to say something.

Mosaics in the Love Park.  It’s called the Love Park because of a statue of two people making out right in the middle of the park.  I’m guessing it’s also a good place to make out at night.

Back in JFK square, I missed this before, but there are Dinosaurs.  They got big ol’ dinosaur brains.

This is a VW armored truck.  The guys manning the armored trucks look way more badass here than they do in the states.  They have helmets and shotguns and it just looks like they are much more prepared for when shit goes down.

Architecture.  No idea where this was.

Oh, it was on a street in Barranco going toward this old church.  My dad says these are Vultures but they could be Cormorants. They were vultures.  Not a lot of birds around here, even aquatic birds, and this place is right on the ocean.

Kids playing with a very friendly cat.

This is the place in Barranco where they try to sell you some touristy shit.  Not buying.  I have purchased two bracelets, sunglasses, a sweater, and an Inca Cola T-shirt so far.  The sweater and the T-shirt both have holes in the armpits, but the sweater has gum on it.  I don’t know where the sweater is anymore.

This looked like the place to hang out at if we were going to be relaxing in Barranco (we eventually did).

Coke?  Weed?  What do you want, we got it.  In most of the cities here, I am propositioned for drugs.  Those people have the drugs.

Another shot of the Miraflores skyline.

Dad and a highway.

I tried Google translate on that one, but it doesn’t understand “PUNZOCORTANTES.”  I’m guessing something like PCBs.

Kids, perhaps planning to ignore the sign.

Skyline with the fisherman of Chorillos in the forefront.

Architecture in Chorillos.  For price to value, Chorillos is probably one of the better places to live in Lima.  There are some pretty terrible places in Chorillos, and you probably wouldn’t want to be out alone at night in most of it… On second thought, if you can afford Miraflores, go ahead and afford it.

On our way up to the Jesus.

Don’t know who this guy is, but he’s got a statue. I want a statue.

Dad.

The houses in Lima are mostly half-finished.  There’s always iron rods erupting from the concrete on the roofs of the homes, and there’s all sorts of trash on top.  Trash, people probably just throw up there, our tour guide says the iron rods are up there because the next generation living there is going to finish the home someday.

Another guy with a statue.

How many different scenic views do we need here?

Cops.

One of the streets where someone told me I would get my camera stolen.

I didn’t.  This is the Metropolitano – an electric bus that traverses the city.  It’s fast and useful and the dedicated bus lanes are actually dedicated bus lanes.

Dad and I figured it out – we walked 20 kilometers today.  I’m not usually a fan of walking tours because you don’t get to explore.  We might not have seen everything or found out about all the interesting stuff we walked by, but we sure learned a lot about the city.

So, what’d you miss?

Plain Tea

Some pretty full-bodied mustard.

Buffalo Tongue with Horseradish cream and braised onions.

Buffalo Burger.

Lotsa sausages.

Fresh greens.

Pork Belly slider.

Pulled pork slider with kimchi

Grilled cheese

Brown pork banh mi

I didn’t eat this one – was too full at the time. Traditional kielbasa

Roasted pork belly.

Buffalo Tartare

Shaved Ice with Fruity Pebbles

Kimchi and Slaw Dogs

Jimmy and I

Jimmy and the Mama O family.

I was approached by the guys at Kitchen Play to be the cocktail maker for the June dinner! Here’s how Kitchen Play works:

Each month Kitchen Play hosts a unique Progressive Party with six talented food bloggers assigned one of the following courses: cocktail, amuse bouche, salad, appetizer/soup, entrée (main course) and dessert. All six bloggers are challenged to incorporate the same product or kitchen tool into six wildly different courses.

Trust me, mine is wildly different. I’m absolutely positive that my recipe took longer to make than any of the other June recipes. How can I be so sure? Well, my recipe took more than a month to make; I made Kiwi Mead. I want to say it was kiwi beer, because I fermented it, and I also run a popular beer blog called I Taste Your Beer, so I was looking for a tie in. It’s not wine because the grapes ferment themselves, and it’s not beer because it has no malt or hops, so the closest thing that it’s kin to is mead (also known as honey wine).

So, here’s how I fermented the kiwis:

1) Peel and mash up the Kiwis
2) Thoroughly clean a 2 liter soda bottle with soap and hot water. It’s very important that the bottle is completely sanitized

3) Put the mashed up kiwis into the soda bottle

4) Add yeast and cap the bottle, refrigerate
5) Check on the bottle every two days to release the pressure in the bottle
6) If the pressure decreases or doesn’t reach the same pressure over the course of the two days, add a small amount of simple syrup to help reactivate the yeast.
7) After thirty days, remove from the bottle and strain with cheesecloth (I used a men’s shirt)

8) Bottle condition the kiwi mead for another week to let the rest of the yeast settle
9) Pour into a separate container and cap for safekeeping

It wasn’t that hard to do, but it did take up a lot of space. If you use any more kiwis for this in a smaller bottle, you’re going to have to check the pressure every few hours to make sure the bottle doesn’t explode in your fridge. There are valves that you can buy that automatically regulate the pressure of the fermenter, but I didn’t have one of those.

Really, I thought that fermenting stuff was going to be a lot easier than it was. There are a few things I would have done differently:

1) I have NO idea what the alcohol content of my kiwi mead was. I would run some calculations to determine this next time.
2) I’m sure the alcohol content couldn’t have been above 12%, because the yeast I used wasn’t professional brewer’s yeast. Brewer’s yeasts typically have a higher tolerance to thriving in alcohol. I would stay away from the bread yeast and use a Belgian yeast that you could get at your local brewshop.
3) I would get a self regulating valve to release the pressure automatically
4) I wouldn’t ferment in a 2 liter bottle

Without further ado, here’s the recipe (that I used):

To ferment the yeast:

6 Zespri Kiwis
1/2 packet of Fleischmann’s Yeast
Simple Syrup as needed.

Follow the steps above to ferment properly.

For the recipe

2 oz. Kiwi Mead
1 oz. St. Germain
6 oz. Sparkling water
Thai Basil and Lime to garnish

Pour all ingredients over ice into a tall glass. Stir. Garnish.

Enjoy!

Each month Kitchen Play also features a contest to involve as many additional bloggers as possible. Visit the Contest page at Kitchen PLAY for more details on how you could win $100 for trying this recipe and posting about it.

When you’re off on holidays in Mexico, you may not think of Mexico as a great beer destination.

You’d be right. It’s not.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t a few popular exports.

Tecate is one of the less-expensive offerings and one of the most popular beers in Mexico. It’s light, it’s easy-drinking, it’s cheap, and it’s macho. I know, because Rey Mysterio drinks it.

Negra Modelo is one of my favorite mass-produced beers.

I don’t remember my first Negra Modelo, but it was probably some time in college. I do remember buying a lot of it in Virginia for some reason. I lived in Gaithersburg, MD for a while, and there’s a pretty serious Latino population there. I don’t often buy beers twice (there’s so many out there!) and this is one of the few go-tos I have if there isn’t a serious selection from which to choose.

This was the first time I’d tried Bohemia.

Yeah, so three of these beers are made by the same company. Sue me! I also had the Modelo Especial and the Corona (obv), but was too drunk to photograph them after these four. I took a nap and it got dark out – I could probably do those now, but it’s 10AM, so you’re just going to have to deal with these four. I think it’s a pretty good representation of the selection down there. I wonder how many beers they make down there. Is there room for a dominant micro down there like Sam or Sierra Nevada? I think maybe…

I don’t always drink Dos Equis, but when I do, I prefer the Dos Equis Amber.

Far from the most interesting beer in the world, it is quite tasty. It’s a Vienna-style amber that tastes a bit bocky (like a La Rossa). When you think warmer climates, you don’t normally think dark beer, but it’s still very refreshing when it’s ice cold. If you don’t believe me, take a trip to Belize and have a Belikin Stout. They make Belikin lager, but the stout is better. After my trip to Belize, Cancun holidays were in store for me, and I missed that Belikin. I always think that someday, I’ll import that stuff and make a fortune. They don’t export to the US as of right now.

This post sponsored by LowCostHolidays.com

Just wanted to give you an insight on why these posts are showing up in rapid succession when I haven’t posted to this site in six months. The posts are sponsored by a site that has cheap deals on holidays in the caribbean. It’s actually a pretty well done site. Usually, the people who ask me to help out with SEO are gambling sites or something completely unrelated, but I feel like these guys really like my site to tie in with their business as far as culinary adventure goes.

So Barbados has about 300,000 residents and three restaurants in NYC. I wonder how many Bajan (that’s the name for something coming from Barbados) restaurants there are outside of the five boroughs in the US. I’m guessing it’s about the same amount. There’s another one that was closed and another in Harlem – this was the closest one to me, and it’s called Cock’s. If you think I’m not going to make a dick joke here, you’re mistaken. They’re coming.

Yes, that was the first. So what shall we have?

Don’t you just love the places with the new prices over the signs? How much does one of those plastic signs cost anyway? When you’re making the signs in the first place, don’t you ask yourself, “If prices change, you wanna just get all new signs or do you think this inflation thing is just a fad?”

So I ordered what I thought was two things: the Cou Cou and the Flyin’ Fish (you have to say it “flyin’”). Unfortunately, Cou Cou is a starchy accompaniment to the protein, and they decided to bring me two flyin’ fish platters that were exactly the same instead. They didn’t bother to explain to me that I had ordered two of the same thing when it was abundantly clear that I wanted two different things. They were confused about what I was ordering, and I was clear in telling them that I wanted two different platters, but since Cou Cou isn’t fish, they brought me a platter of Flyin’ fish with Cou Cou and a different platter of Cou Cou with Flyin’ Fish.

For all the problems in ordering it, it was pretty frickin’ wonderful. The fish was crispy, light… didn’t taste like your standard, salty, overbreaded fish fry. There was a sweetness in the breadfruit that complimented the seasonings of the fish.

After we were both finished with the fish, I persuaded them to give us a bit of Oxtail. You know I love the marrow, baby.

I had to teach Ken to suck the marrow. He was a marrow rookie, sucking the side of the bone. You’ll get no marrow that way. He figured it out and I think he was irritated that there wasn’t so much of it, but that’s what you get. A little marrow goes a long way, in my book.

For dessert, we had the Sugar Cakes… basically coconut and sugar. I was sure my dental sensitivity was going to act up while I was eating it, but nope. How could it taste and feel so sugary (it was a cross between the consistency of a marzipan and a fondant) but not hit my tooth nerves? It was a contradiction in my mouth.

We had to have something to drink. I knew it was either going to be Mauby or Sorrel. These are both very Carribbean drinks. If you haven’t had them, you should check them out. I described them in a post last year, and I think I did a pretty good job of it then, so I’ll just link you. I kind of like the Sorrel, but I am not a fan of the Mauby (too bitter), but on a hot day, I can see it being very refreshing. When I asked the guys which was more “Barbados,” they said Mauby.

Ken liked it. They make it at the store. You can get it a lot of places, but these guys do it homemade. Because it was a colder, more humid day, the ice hadn’t melted that much, and I felt the drink was a bit syrupy. If the ice melted a bit more, it would gave been perfect. I still wouldn’t have liked the taste, but that has nothing to do with the style of the drink.

These guys were great:

Thanks so much to Hugh and Calston for making our trip to Crown Heights like a string of Barbados holidays!

This post sponsored by LowCostHolidays.com

Cock’s Bajan Restaurant & Bakery
806 Nostrand Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11216
(718) 771-8933

I don’t really know if there’s any Floridian cuisine because I haven’t taken too many holidays in florida (other than Orlando), but I do know Cubans. The best Cubans are supposed to come from Miami, a place that I’ve never been. I decided to explore one of the best Cubans in NYC on Cinco De Mayo. I know I’m mixing cultures here, but they didn’t seem to care over at Margon; they were capitalizing on it with $5 for two lunchtime Coronas.

They all knew what I was doing when I took out the T2i. Everyone was happy to smile and pose for me, but the smiles didn’t stop when the camera was off. These guys were having fun.

They have an entire station dedicated to Cuban sandwiches only. This is the Cuban guy:

And these are the masterful Cubans:

They use three types of pork instead of two (which is awesome). Anytime you can put another iteration of pork on something, do it. It’s probably going to taste better. I should have asked for mine with bacon… next time. It was definitely one of the best Cubans I’ve had in the city. I just had another Cuban this week at Café Habana, and this was certainly on par. I think these two restaurants are always battling it out each year for Cuban supremacy.

This is what it looked like when it was on the plate:

Renée got a Chicken Cuban. I’m doing a bunch of personal branding stuff right now because I just made this cool infographic résumé, and she was interested in talking about a few business opportunities with me. She’s a total go-getter – I like to be associated with these kinds of people.

She ate some of the Chicken Cuban (we had a pretty big lunch) and I bagged the rest up and had it for breakfast the next morning. I would not typically order a Chicken Cuban, but this one wasn’t bad. It had everything the Cuban had except pork, and you know my feelings about pork. I think that trichinosis would have to be a certainty as a prerequisite for me ever ordering a Chicken Cuban.

They threw us these as a little sampler platter for free. The chicken was a bit overdone, but tasty and not too salty. I don’t know why I say “not too salty” other than to indicate that I’ve had a lot roasted chicken where its downfall was “too salty.” The pickled onions balanced the oils in the chicken well. The plantains weren’t hot inside, so I take points off. I want my fried plantains to come right out of the fryer and land on my

I’m usually more of a plantain chip fan, but for some reason, I liked the ones below better. They ‘re still fried, but what would you call them, exactly? Fried Sweet Plantains? They also gave us some black beans that I mixed with the orange rice (and what the heck is the orange rice called?) and that was probably my favorite thing that I had all day. I need to learn how to make legit black beans. I made them once with a Hatian guy who was dating a sister of an ex – they were certainly the best I’d ever had.

Then there was some ceviché. Renée had the Pulpo:

I had the Shrimp:

I finished mine and had a few bites of Renée’s. I am more of a grilled octopus fan, anyway (the Greeks really nail that dish).

When I was in Central America, I went on a Cigarettes and Ceviché diet for a week. I lost five pounds in three days before I left that town and couldn’t get the ceviche anymore. I did Cigarettes and Guacamole after that and lost another five pounds in a week or so. The end of that week on Friday night, I smoked a pack and a half and woke up at 3AM coughing up blood. I quit cold turkey. I still have the occasional fag when I’m drinking, but I went four months without having one that time.

It’s funny that I know Central American cuisine better than Floridian cuisine. I’ve been to Florida four times, and each time I’ve been there, they’ve been Orlando holidays. They’re practically synonymous with Disney World, but I’ve only been there once. Usually I don’t do this, but yesterday, I clicked “Yes” when Hulu asked me if this Walt Disney World ad was relevant.

I think we all need a little Disney every once in a while, even if the Cubans are better in Miami.

This post sponsored by LowCostHolidays.com

Margon
136 W 46th St
New York, 10036
(212) 354-5013

I recently launched a site called I Taste Your Beer, so if you are looking for Beer Marketing, Beer Advertising, or Advertising for my beer (U C wat I did there?) you should go there and check it out.

SEO aside, I’m very proud of the site. I would love for you to check it out and tell me what you think in the comments section. I need a blog (on my site) so I can talk about this stuff. I might just work that through Tumblr – we’ll see.

For now, I just wanted to share my excitement with you. I’ve received my first payment and my first shipment of beer already! Making money on the internet is easy! Actually, it’s not. I have a bunch of strategies to try to help brewers understand what I’m doing so they get why they should advertise with me. It’s slow going, and the people who are the most excited about the idea so far are the distributors of foreign brands.

The breweries that are most receptive are the bigger ones, which poses the chicken-and-egg question, “Do small breweries not advertise because they are small or are they small because they don’t advertise. Here’s a quote from Mariah Calgione of Dogfish Head Brewery:

We’ve been advertising since day one. We do a lot of advertising in beer publications and on beer sites. Recently, we’ve added some less beer-centric but still beer-focused publications. Most of our marketing dollars and investment goes online.

I am more interested in helping the little guys, but most of them have no clue about marketing. If you have any help for me as far as trying to show someone the reasons why they should start advertising when they previously haven’t, please help me out with this.

I know this is a departure from my usual post, but I can’t help but be excited about the new venture. Why am I excited? Because I’m getting beer and getting paid to drink it. Want proof? here it is.

But I can’t drink them until I go in to shoot the video – that’s the hard part.

I had an awesome egg nog post almost ready to go as well! Damn.

I’m getting a new venture started and dumping a lot of time into that right now. Be back after the holidays!

In the meantime, go check out Like Stickers!