*disclaimer - this post was purely conceived out of my newfound realization of how awesome Greek yogurt is & I have not been compensated in anyway, though I am totally open to it (I'm talking to you Stonyfield).

I recently competed in a 'Biggest Loser' competition at work and it has got me thinking a lot about food. I'm no Furgus M. Clydesdale, but I do enjoy me some food science.

How awesome is food? If you answered anything other than "Soooo awesome!' than, well, I don't know. Now I'm not talking about some mass produced version of something resembling food but I'm talking about real honest to goodness awesome food.

Because I focused on reducing my caloric intake in an attempt to win a share of the Biggest Loser pot I was forced to make some more intelligent choices when planning my meals. This required a lot of control & planning, two things I don't exactly enjoy or do particularly well. However, I committed to achieving my goal, had the full support of my wife & kind of enjoy suffering and denying myself of stuff I don't really need for some reason. Don't read too deep into that, just accept the fact that I pride myself on overcoming difficult physical challenges.

During the time I was competing in the biggest loser contest at work, which I successfully completed by the way, I discovered the awesomeness that is Greek yogurt. I've noticed that there has been more focus on Greek yogurt within the past year or so but I never really paid much attention to it. I knew that it was supposed to be thicker with a creamier mouthfeel, that it usually came in plain & honey flavors and that it contained a lot of protein.

While shopping at Costco I like to check out the yogurt section in hopes that they will carry regular Stonyfield yogurts but I hadn't seen them for a while and was really hoping to find something more interesting than the house brand yogurts. We picked up some Chobani Greek yogurt that day & shortly thereafter I was very happy with our decision. The Chobani had a great taste & texture & the company donates 10% of its annual profits to charity. Awesome! The 9-pack came with Peach, Blueberry & Strawberry flavors, all were very good.

So now I had a taste for Greek yogurt and wanted to find out how my favorite yogurt company compared to my new 2nd favorite yogurt company. Fortunately for me there was a special on Stonyfield Farms Oikos Organic Greek Yogurt at the supermarket, 10 for $10. I'm pretty sure I bought close to 30 while that sale was going on. I was pleased to learn that Oikos came in Blueberry, Strawberry and Vanilla as well as the Honey and Plain flavors. I have to admit that I would probably give Stonyfield a higher grade based on the fact that they are Stonyfield & I really dig what they got going on, but they earned the right to remain my #1 favorite yogurt brand.

I try to have a yogurt every day that I work and when I'm home I'll eat some if I am trying to beat the expiration date or make room in the fridge. Because of my nearly daily consumption and the local supermarket's rotating weekly specials I've had an opportunity to sample a lot of the various companies' offerings. My current favorites are Stonyfield's Oikos, Chobani's Greek, Stonyfield's regular yogurts, Trader Joe's yogurts, various store brand yogurts and than the Dannon & Yoplait offerings. In fact, it's Yoplait's poor attempt at making a Greek yogurt that made me appreciate what Stonyfield had to offer.

I like having a favorite of something that I can count on and its awesome when I'm able to confirm my favorite selections are still my favorites. It sure would be sad if I went my whole life thinking that I was enjoying the best there is when something better is just as accessible. I guess that's what drives me to explore new things every so often.

Craft Beer Pub Crawl

Sunday April 17th I went on a Craft beer pub crawl with some of my in-laws. We never really defined it as such but that's what I was interested in doing, so that's what I'm calling it. We visited five places and walked close to five miles passing many bars along the way but we had an agenda and wanted to experience some of the more noteworthy places in The City.

Living in NorCal makes it easy to enjoy locally crafted beers brewed in a whole range of styles and for the most part we each tried something new everywhere we went. It's awesome to find something new and experience each brewery's take on the different styles of beer.

Our first stop was the 21st Amendment Brewery for brunch. I ordered a burger off of the lunch menu because I wanted to peep some meat and secure the #1 V.I.Peeper position on www.peepmeat.com. This burger was worthy of being the one that put me on top and really set my day off on the right direction. I was also excited to try the Spring Tweet beer while I was there, after all that was the point of our adventure. I remember enjoying this light, wheat, floral scented beer but wishing it were a warmer day so that I would have appreciated it more, if that makes sense.

Peepage done right!

I really dug the layout and construction of the restaurant section of the brew pub, except for one creepy painting they had hanging on the wall, seriously, gave me the jibblies. I really liked the way they designed their menus and cans, whoever designs their stuff deserves a raise. Along with Lagunitas, 21st amendment makes me excited to design brewery related stuff. I like the all over the can styling & hope to come up with something just as cool someday.

Our second stop was City Beer Store. This is a very unique location, its like a mini-mart that only sells beer and also has draught beer available. Everything you purchase can be consumed on the premises (for a fee) or taken home to enjoy.

This is a cool place to find something new and try some beers that you won't find anywhere else. Seating was only something like 3 or 4 tall tables, 3 or 4 chairs at the 'bar', two 8 x10's laid across some kegs or the stoop (which I choose). I am very ok with all of those options and could picture many scenarios in which I would like to enjoy them all. While at this stop I enjoyed a Duschutes Green Lake Organic Ale, for some reason this didn't surprise anyone. I like to support organic producers whenever I can & this was one of those rare cases where a high quality organic product cost as much as or in this case, less than the conventional offerings, double awesome! I did some research on this brewery and I'm happy to report that they are very awesome. Not that I enjoy salmon but the hops used in this beer are cultivated to preserve spawning streams, triple awesome!

Our third stop was Zeitgeist, which is billed as the premiere beer garden in The City. I can see why, it's got a great selection of craft beers on tap, a nice location, a really cool logo, lots of picnic tables outside, an outdoor grill that fills the air with the delicious scent of hamburgers and that 'x' factor that draws an interesting crowd. It's a great place to explore some new beers and people watch, as hipsters are always entertaining.

While we were there I got a pint of Midnight Brewing Company's Death and Taxes black lager. I mostly hate death and I mostly hate taxes but if you brew them together and put em in a pint glass I'll be all about it. Midnight Brewing Co's beers are only available on tap at a few locations, if you're ever lucky enough to be somewhere serving them do yourself a favor and give em a shot.

Our forth stop was Monk's Kettle which is another neat place to hang if your interested in exploring beers. Similar to City Beer Store in that it carries lots of hard to find beers, Monk's Kettle boasts The City's largest selection. They have a large selection available on tap and a larger selection available in bottles. Despite the fact that the word 'pretentious' got thrown around a lot afterward, I'd like to go back and chat with the bartender. The dude that served us was really knowledgeable and I'd like to learn more about some of the styles of beer they serve. The bar book was awesome, I enjoyed reading the basic descriptions they provided and think I could find a few new favorites.

I got a glass of Upright Four from Upright Brewing, which had an awesome aroma and a light, refreshing citrus/herbal flavor. For some reason it's easy for me to recall the taste & smell of this beer, maybe because it reminds me of something else, New Belgium's mothership Wit possibly. I did a little research into this company and I was happy to find that they use some organic ingredients and that the brewer is a total nerd who loves what he does. In one of his blog posts he describes the difficulties they've run into when using the French Saison strand of yeast which is used in the beer I ordered.

Also worth noting is the bottle of Hopf Helle Weisse that my brother in law ordered. The bartender served it up with all the flair that it deserves, slow steady pour into the correct shape glass, than a quick roll in between his palms, as if he were making a Play-Doh snake, to mix the yeast sediment, finished with the ever popular, but seldom successful, raising of the bottle as the remainder is poured into the glass. True to German Hefe Weizens this beer had a strong banana aroma. Oh, and apparently Russian River's Pliny The Elder IPA is marijuana flavored, who knew? A quick internet search disagrees with this opinion & so do we.

Our fifth and final stop was Pi Bar. I was syked for Sicilian Slice Sunday, but since I was dining with a group & I'm currently competing in a Biggest Loser competition at work, I had to pass. I really enjoyed the pizza here, great ingredients & flavor combinations. One thing that caught me by surprise was how sweet the pizza tasted. Maybe it was something in the sauce or the malted barley used in the dough (I think I remember reading that), but this pizza had less of a salty/acidic taste than I would have expected.

The sweeter than expected pizza was may be to blame but the beer I ordered, Alaskan Brewing Company's Summer Ale, tasted more bitter than I expected. It's probably because I don't really think bitter flavors when I think about summer beers, usually citrus or wheat flavors are what I expect. Apparently Alaskan Brewing Company's take on summer beer is based on the German Kolsch style

Another observation that I had while at Pi Bar was that I really miss East Coast pizza. Seriously, I didn't know how good I had it over there. I'm kinda bummed about the lack of East Coast style pizza & sub shops. I'm sure that there is some mom and pop type place that I haven't heard about yet but I'm not gonna hold my breath as I track it down. Pi Bar's pizza was amazing & I would like to have it more often, I'll gladly stop there again for a slice some day.

Well, that wraps up our beer marathon, 5 bars, 5 beers, 5 miles. Awesome!

It's been a long time...

I gotta get back in the habit of blogging so I don't forget all the awesome I experience. I'm going to be more thorough in future posts, but for now, a quick recap of what has happened in the past year:

- Finished my Sustainable MBA classes, now I need to finish my capstone project (more about that later).
- Landed a job after 8ish months of unemployment.
- Received a PS3 for my 30th birthday & proceeded to play as often as possible.
- Got married!!!!!!!!!!
- Went to Kauai on our honeymoon.
- Decided to change my capstone project from something I no longer cared about researching to a business plan for a vertically integrated brewery that grows as many of its own ingredients as possible.
- Visited my family in Massachusetts.
- Caught a swarm of bees, built a top bar hive & started 'keeping' them with my brother-in-law.
- Peeped a lot of meat & became the #1 peeper at www.peepmeat.com

I've came up with a plan for how to use my idle time at work and update this blog without losing any productivity, hopefully I see it through and in the process, revolutionize the American workforce model, or something.

So far my transition to California has been pretty awesome. Besides the day to day awesomeness I'd have to say the highlight has been the Amgen Tour of California. I was fortunate enough to catch portions of two of the stages!

On Tuesday May 18th the tour started in San Francisco and ended in San Jose. Dan and I figured out a way to catch the riders atop King's Mountain and at the finish. The drive to King's Mountain had us worried about the overcast weather but after we got out of the valley things cleared up. Forgetting everything I know about mountains I didn't think twice about checking the conditions at our first viewing location. 2200 feet above sea level is drastically different than the beach weather we had been checking all week, oops!

We waited on top of the damp, gray & crowded peak for a little over two hours. There were a ton of cyclists lining both sides of the road, it was really cool to see that many supporters. The last stretch leading up to the official King of the Mountain location was only a 2% grade so the cyclists were flying by. The 5 man break had about a 2 minute gap on the peleton so everyone had a chance to practice taking pics before the main group arrived. We were muscled outta the prime location we scouted by some latecomers so this was the best I could manage:
As soon as the 'End of Caravan' truck drove through there was a mad dash to the next viewing location. Most of the people chased the cyclists down the mountain or tried to beat them to the next KOM location, a few of us also headed to San Jose for the finish.

I am still amazed that we were able drive from the mountain to the beach in less than an hour, California is so awesome! The ride there was awesome because many of the team support vans drove by us on the highway. I got to give the thumbs up to some of my favorite teams at 65+ miles per hour, awesome.

We made it to the finish line in time to scout out a location to stand and check out the lifestyle fair. We hit up many of our favorite team booths, entered raffles for cycling gear and were impressed by the high end bikes & equipment on display. There were also a few big screen TVs with live coverage throughout the fair and booths. I heard that there was a 3-5 man breakaway but didn't know who was involved. We made our way back to the finish line and I started checking Twitter for details. I almost jumped outta my shoes when I learned that Dave Zabriskie was in a break with Levi Leipheimer and Michael Rodgers (the eventual winner). All three of these riders were high on my 'favorites' list but DZ is my favorite rider and rides for my favorite team (Garmin-Transitions) so I was really pulling for a DZNUTS victory.

We were positioned after the finish line, close to where the cyclists would turn to get back to their team buses. Dan & I hung around long enough to catch the first group of finishers come through, we couldn't tell what the order was but we didn't care because we got to see many of our favorites, Lance Armstrong, Chris Horner, Jens Voigt, Rory Sutherland, Tony Martin, Ryder Hesjedal, Janez Brajkovic and many more. At this point we ran down to the end so we could get pictures of the individuals.
Jens Voigt is the man. Total class act, one of the hardest riders in the peleton & autographed a piece of paper for me.

This was the day's podium, DZ in gold, Cav in green. Awesome!


The following day my lovely pre-wife joined me in downtown Livermore. Because DZ was the GC leader Garmin-Transitions was leading the way. They looked awesome pulling everyone through town. It's amazing how fast they were moving. I haven't developed the pictures yet but I'm hoping to have caught the Garmin-Transitions train pulling the peleton through town. I'm also hoping to have caught Steve Cozza's mustache because he was on the front of the train looking strong that day.

Mother's day is gonna be here quicker than we realize



Since so many of my friends are expecting or recently had babies I'm sharing that link. Even though I'm not a mom I found a lot of awesome things on there, sent a suggestion on to my siblings and even purchased something already. The purchase is for my pre-wife so maybe its not quite in the spirit but she'll be a mom someday so hopefully it counts.

And in the interest of full disclosure, by sharing that link I'm entered into a contest to win some method laundry detergent and a gift certificate to an online jeweler. Because I'm still trying to green my parents from across the country I'm excited about the laundry detergent and I'm sure my mom would really appreciate the jewelery so it's a win-win.


Getting back to what I love

"One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race."
- Wendell Berry

Last weekend I picked up some heirloom/hybrid varieties of tomatoes from a semi-local California farm. Wild Boar Farms is home to the most interesting tomatoes I've ever seen. I loved the Big Beef variety we grew & sold at Cider Hill but now that I'm planting my own garden I decided I wanted to have some fun with it. Hopefully I'm not getting in over my head.

Because the soil I'll be using has been untouched for years it took some conditioning to get it to a somewhat acceptable point. I dug a pit that was 9 feet long, 5 feet wide and about 1.5 feet deep. It was really difficult because the soil is so compacted and clumpy. After digging everything up I added some organic compost, fertilizer and vermiculite at 1.5 feet, 1 foot and 6 inches from ground level. I wanted to jump start the conditioning process so that the plants will have a fighting chance when the summer heat arrives. I really hope the work was worth it, especially since I'll be moving outta here soon.

I'll be planting 6 varieties of tomatoes, 2 varieties of peppers, basil, cilantro, and pickling cukes. I didn't want to do too much because I'll be moving out before everything is harvested, this is my first attempt at California gardening and I don't trust the dog that lives here to leave anything alone. He has already shown too much interest in my stuff so I'm reluctant to let him anywhere near a planted garden. Hopefully we come up with some sort of fence system soon cause these plants need to get into the ground soon.

I really can't wait to have a home of my own, when all my effort will be for me & my family. I love working in the yard, improving the landscape and seeing what I'm capable of. When its your own property the blisters and various other sores probably don't hurt as bad. Oh well, it will all be worth it when I'm finally able to enjoy some home grown produce!

When you support your local bike shop you support your local bike community

Attempting to actively blog and keep up with the demands of a sustainable MBA program is very difficult. I've been researching so many companies that are doing some really awesome things. I'll get inspired to blog about something I researched but then I realize that 'd be much better off directing my energy into either one of the 1,500 word papers due that week.

Despite all that, I wanted to write this post that was inspired by my recent visit to Livermore Cycles. I was there to pick up my three bikes that were finally shipped here from Massachusetts. I love bikes, they are so simple but so beautiful at the same time. I sometimes lose hours looking at bike catalogs or walking through bike shops.

While I was picking up my bikes I had a conversation with one of the employees about how the shop provides free tubes/tires and tune-ups for some of the unemployed/homeless/disabled residents of our town. Often these residents have no other mode of transportation because they can't afford a car and don't have a driver's license. This is not unique to our town though, this is a worldwide reality. What many people don't realize is that these bikers wouldn't be able to continue biking if it weren't for the charity of the local bike shops.

These bikers often have little or no money to spare and can't afford to pay for parts. Often, the local shops will repair the bikes for free because the problems are minor and can be fixed quickly. When Livermore Cycles repairs a bike for free they sometimes attach a sticker or placard that says some to the effect of 'If you'd like to contribute to the upkeep of this bike please stop by Livermore Cycles and donate to the ____ fund.' All of the regulars have a fund set up and there is also a general fund for the 'once in a blue moon' crowd. Even if no one ever contributes to the funds Livermore Cycles will continue to repair bikes for free.

I've heard similar stories from friends that work in other bike shops. I'm sure there are plenty of shops that turn people away or only repair items if the biker can cover the cost of the parts but it seems that many local bike shops just accept the fact that there will be certain people that can't afford repairs but also can't afford to be without their bikes. This kind of community service is awesome and also why I'm such a fan of supporting local businesses. I'm proud to support Livermore Cycles with my business because I know that they are supporting the local biking community.

This is a picture of one of Boston's most famous bikers, Tricycle Louie. His real name is Louie Evans but people know him by his tricycle and his distinctive warning that he cries out every few yards. He travels about 1,000 miles a month around Boston frequenting a few locations where he has unknowingly formed a fan club. When his tricycle was stolen a while back his fans got together and raised enough funds to purchase a new one and set up a fund for future repairs at his favorite shop, Back Bay Bicycles.