We made some beer!

Matt has brewed beer with friends before, but our place in San Diego was way too small to do it ourselves. Pretty much as soon as we found out we were moving to Kentucky Matt started getting excited about home brewing. So he ordered a starter kit complete with ingredients for a West Coast Pale Ale recipe from Home Brew Mart in San Diego (where the Ballast Point tasting room is in Linda Vista) and we brewed some beer! I'm still fuzzy on the process so I honestly couldn't explain much of what we did but here are some photos.

Supplies

We basically used the simplest recipe possible by using dried malt extract. This provides sugar that the yeast will eat and turn into alcohol. In the future, we'll probably purchase some steeping grains from the local home brew supply store, My Old Kentucky Homebrew, but this was a good way to start.

Adding the malt extract.

After a lot of bubbling and stirring, we added hops. Because Matt is making beer with me we made something minimally hop-y, but all beer uses some bittering hops. I'm sure he'll want to dry hop something eventually.

Adding the hops.

Matt ordered a pot meant for an army or something, so it was too big to fit in our sink and we had to cool it in the bathtub. It made it a little tricky but it worked out. As a consequence of having a giant pot around the house I now want to make a huge batch of phở.

Cooling the wort

Once the beer had cooled to the right temperature, we moved it into our primary fermentor. At this point we used a hydrometer to measure the specific gravity or whatever, but unfortunately the recipe from Home Brew Mart didn't include the finishing gravity so really I still don't understand that part or why we did it. I guess it somehow measures the density of the liquid and that reflects how much alcohol is present? I don't really know. Anyway, we added the yeast, which is what turns sugar into alcohol. Yeast does some awesome things for us humans, if you think about it.

Adding the yeast.

Then the waiting game began. We kept an eye on the air lock (which is what allows the gas produced by the yeast to escape without letting naughty, undesirable organisms and contaminants in) to make sure the yeast was doing its work.

All sealed up!

After a week or so, it technically had alcohol, but again, because I don't understand the specific gravity thing I couldn't say how much.

Beer! Sort of.

Then we were ready to put it into a secondary fermentor to . . . ferment some more? Moving it is called "racking." I really don't understand the importance of moving it before it continues to ferment. I'll have to read up on the process before we try this again so I actually understand what's going on.

Racking.

So then it hung out in this glass carboy, covered with a blanket to keep the light out, for a little more than a week before we were ready to bottle. This is when we added bottling sugar, which is what gives the yeast enough to eat to make carbonation. It doesn't carbonate before that because the air lock lets out those bubbles.

Dissolving the bottling sugar. This will give it bubbles!

Then we put it back into our primary fermentor because that bucket had a handy spigot for bottling, and then we bottled it and put lids on it. The bottling was actually kind of fun, but that may be because Matt did all the sanitizing because he is nice to me.

Bottled!

I should mention that the suckiest thing about home brewing beer is sanitizing everything. It's tedious and feels kind of uncertain. It is super important though because you only want yeast growing in there, not other nasty things. The beer is not quite ready yet as it has only been bottled for nine days, but we decided to try a bit and I dare say it tastes like beer! We're excited and look forward to starting another batch soon.

Angkor

The famed Angkor Wat

Our time in Siem Reap, Cambodia was pretty much exclusively dedicated to the temples of Angkor. We only had part of two days there, as we arrived on February 22 and left on February 23. Consequently, our time there was jam packed with sight seeing and I'm actually really glad we didn't spend much time looking around town because the ancient monuments were worth it.

Since I was too busy moving to blog about this sooner, I have unfortunately forgot much in the last month. I do remember seeing Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm, and Angkor Thom. As my memory is poor, I resort to sharing some photos. Really, words and photos cannot accurately describe what it's like to see these wonders anyway.

Kem: Ice Cream in Vietnam

At Công Trường

So I haven't posted about it much, but the fact is I am an ice cream monster. Matt likes to joke about my "ice cream stomach," which is how I find room for ice cream even though I am otherwise full (the best part of being a grown up is that I don't have to finish my dinner to get dessert!). Naturally, before going to Vietnam I did a little research on ice cream and sweets. Most of what I read suggested that the Vietnamese don't really do dessert the way we do here, or that they usually have fruit for dessert. That may be true, but it was not hard to find sweets there. I learned to spot kem, the Vietnamese word for ice cream, very quickly.

In Hanoi, we went to Kem Tràng Tiền, which we read described as a "motorbike drive-in." I can honestly think of no better way to describe it.

Teenagers dig this joint, based on what we saw. Many of them seemed to be on dates. It was really quite cute. They apparently do sell cones, but they were out. We tried their popsicles instead, and honestly, I found the flavor to be just okay and the texture to be grainy and completely disappointing. At least the atmosphere was good.

Kem NZ was a place I read about quite a bit before our trip. As near as I can tell, it's a New Zealand chain, so I wasn't planning on trying it because it wasn't actually Vietnamese. However, our hotel in Hue had a Kem NZ at the hotel, so we had some. I tried the sticky rice flavor, which was interesting. I don't remember what Matt had, but I remember his dad had the durian flavor so I tried a bite and learned that WOW, durian is not for me (his dad loved it though; durian is nothing if not polarizing). Overall though, the ice cream was pretty good, with an atmosphere more like what I would expect to see in the States (bright colors, trendy design).

Note the sign is even in English

On our second night in Hue we had some really good sorbet at the restaurant where we had dinner. Unfortunately I don't remember the name of the place but the "lemon" sorbet was wonderfully refreshing with an intense flavor. Notably, everywhere we went in Vietnam limes were referred to as lemons. I don't remember if we ever saw what I would call a lemon there. So it was really lime sorbet. I need to try to make lime sorbet sometime, because I do love it.

In Ho Chi Minh City, it was hot so Matt and I shared a scoop from a street vendor selling cones from the back of his bicycle. As with many of our street food experiences, we just held up a finger (as we were just getting one) and took whatever they guy gave us. It appeared to be chocolate, which I tried to stay away from, because I'm sorry but Vietnam just doesn't seem to have quality chocolate. When I tasted it, I was glad we only ordered one cone because it was chocolate with durian swirl. Fortunately, Matt likes durian.

Moments before discovering the flavor.

The best ice cream we had though, and my favorite eating experience in all of Vietnam, was at Công Trường. In researching places to eat, I discovered the Gastronomer, who has a food blog that was incredibly useful for our trip. Based on her reviews of San Diego restaurants, I felt pretty confident she was a reliable source so we took her advice on a few dishes and places. One such place was Công Trường. I found nothing about it anywhere else, but after reading her review I made Matt hunt it down with me. It was not near our hotel but we walked to find it. We ordered the kem dua, which was recommended by the Gastronomer. It's coconut ice cream, served in a coconut, with the juice on the side, and with bits of fruit and nuts on top. It is amazing.

The consistency of the ice cream itself was wonderfully smooth; the addition of the nuts and dried fruit and the fresh coconut from the bowl adds a textural element that complements the ice cream perfectly. The flavor was intense and sweet. The whole experience was made better by the hot weather, which made the ice cream doubly refreshing. I recommend checking out the Gastronomer's post for a better description, as she puts the experience into words very well.

Flushed from walking in the heat but happy.

City Snapshot: Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

Ho Chi Minh City was our final stop in Vietnam. We were told in advance it would be the most Western, and I can definitely see where it gets that reputation. The French style of architecture is more prevalent here, a lot of the streets seem very modern. You can sort of see that in the photo, which was from the roof of the Rex Hotel. War buffs will recall that the hotel was the host of many a press conference during the American-Vietnam war.

By the time we reached this city we had been traveling incessantly, I was still dehydrated from a brief illness, and we were confronted with the hot and humid weather that we had expected but somehow had avoided in the northern and central regions. For these reasons, I wasn't as on top of pictures here as I was during the early part of our trip, which is a shame because this city is a fabulous place to observe the contrast of capitalism and communism. Walking down the street, we passed department stores and plenty of Western name-brand places (the kind I can't afford). We also continued to see the colorful, blocky propaganda posters that undoubtedly address about each person's important place as part of the whole, and also undoubtedly reference good ol' Uncle Ho.

We went into a department store that had its own food court and bowling alley. We went to a restaurant so trendy that we had to dine in the lounge area because we didn't have reservations. Matt and I had drinks on the roof of the Rex Hotel and my mojito cost seven dollars. Sitting on the roof, surrounded by old white people and looking out at the view in the photo above, I almost forgot I was in Vietnam.

However, the city streets still share much with the country's northern capital. We found street food (we ate banh mi here) and a crowded, bustling market indistinguishable from those we saw earlier on our trip. Ribbons of incense smoke twisted out of temples and assaulted our noses. We saw a barbershop set up on a street, the entirety of the shop being a mirror hanging on a fence, a chair in front of it, and the barber with a bag of supplies.

If I ever have an opportunity to return to Vietnam, I hope to make Ho Chi Minh City the primary destination.

Missing Dairy and Learning to Like Fish

Breakfast pho

So, I enjoy the occasional bowl of phở, but my taste buds are wired for Western food. I love cereal with milk for breakfast, I'm used to corn as a major grain (I live in the US, after all), and I come from a very steak and potatoes kind of family. As a (soon to be former) San Diegan, Mexican food is pretty much just "food" to me. Growing up, the only fish I ate was tuna, and while I have expanded my seafood appreciation to include ceviche and the occasional sushi dinner, I am not a seafood person.


I knew going into our trip to Vietnam that it would be a long two weeks for my tongue and stomach, and used our breakfasts at the hotels as a reprieve from Vietnamese food. At the same time, we wanted to try as many legit places (the kind with Vietnamese patrons) as possible while also trying some famous dishes, because sometimes things make it into every guidebook for a reason, right? I could fill a lengthy tome describing our culinary experiences, but I'm going to limit it to a few of my favorite dishes.


In Hanoi, we decided that regardless of my feelings for fish, we had to try the famed cha ca. It's a dish of bite-size pieces of monkfish that has been marinaded in galangal, turmeric and some other stuff, and then it's cooked at your table with dill and other herbs and served with rice noodles. There are a number of restaurants that serve it; in fact, there's a whole street called Cha Ca that you can visit to get your fill. For our first dinner in Hanoi, we chose Cha Ca La Vong, a generations-old family business that claims to be the origin of the dish and where the only menu item is cha ca.

They are prepared for tourists.

It was a-mazing. For me, it was all about the dill. The turmeric marinade was delicious as well. I got seconds. OF FISH. That never happens. Probably the second favorite thing I ate in the country (the favorite will be divulged in another post).

Just before entering our bellies.

In Hội An, in addition to our fantastic and tasty cooking class, Matt and I ventured into the market for food and drink. During an afternoon walk we stopped for some extremely delicious fresh juice, which I later realized was an extremely big mistake on my part. I ordered lime juice, which was almost certainly watered down with tap water to make the tartness palatable. I am nearly positive that this is what lead to me getting "holiday tummy," which was the only tolerable euphemism I can find to describe it.

My cursed lime juice and Matt's smart choice of carrot juice.

We had better luck that day for dinner, when we decided to try Hội An's most famous dish, cao lầu. Our meal wasn't obtained without a little searching though, because while we had visited several local markets at that point, we still weren't what you'd call savvy so we didn't realize how early many of the vendors close shop. Fortunately, we could never take too many steps in Vietnam without being solicited to try food or buy wares, so a pair women welcomed us as their last customer's of the day.

I could never find it again in a million years.

The legend about this dish is that the noodles are made with water drawn from a secret Cham well. I'm not sure I buy it, but it's a nice story. We watched them plate our food (as we did nearly everywhere), starting with the noodles, then adding greens, marinated pork, and at last, the delicious crispy toppings (some sources tell me it's fried dough, some say pig skin). Were the noodles good? Yes. But I enjoyed the tender pork and delicious mystery crisps far more.

The noodles.

"Tourist Pork," according to our cooking instructor,
is the lean pork that the Vietnamese don't want.

The masterpiece.

In Ho Chi Minh City (you may know it as Saigon), the standout dish was our first meal there. Our flight was late and so we arrived in the first sweltering hot city on our itinerary with an empty stomach. While our traveling companions headed off to find air conditioning, we found a street vendor selling banh mi (complete with dodgy mayonnaise).

Stumbling distance from our hotel.

This is probably the one Vietnamese dish I'd tried the most before my visit, and probably the single best thing to come out of French occupation of Vietnam. The French contributed the tasty, crusty bread, and the Vietnamese contributed the delicious fillings. In the US, I usually order BBQ pork, and it's served with cucumber, carrot, jicama, cilantro, jalapenos, and mayo. In HCMC, we took two of whatever they were making, which included like three different meats/meat products (including one pate) and all of the usual veggies except the jalapeno. Instead, it was smothered with hot sauce. We took our sandwiches to the park across the street and ate what turned out to be one of my favorite meals.

<3

Whew, okay, so despite my intentions this turned out to be quite lengthy. But honestly, the food was like, 50% of my experience there so it's hard not to gush about it!

City Snapshot: Hoi An

After Hue, we traveled through Đà Nẵng to Hội An by van. Hội An is an old town, and it is quaint and charming to the point of feeling contrived. It seems like the public face of small towns in Vietnam, where all the women wear áo dàis and everyone puts on a happy face for tourists, which are everywhere in town. I didn't like that it felt like an act.

But it's hard not to fall for the ivy covered buildings, the wooden boats, the glow of the paper lanterns in the evening. Contrived or not, it's a beautiful place. Much to my delight, pedestrians dominate the streets. There are motorbikes and even a few cars, but they are far fewer than in any other city we visited. It made our time in Hội An feel slower and more relaxed, and allowed us to drop our guard a bit while walking to better take in our surroundings. Hội An has a nearby beach, which Matt and I did not visit, but we did make use of one of the many cooking classes offered around town, which included a market tour and several incredible dishes that we got to make and eat.

We also found time to drink fresh beer, try the famed cao lầu noodles and enjoy a walk in a less touristed area with riverside homes, roaming chickens, and children that chirped hellos to us as we passed.

City Snapshot: Hue

Tomb of Tu Duc

The city of Hue has a very different feel than Hanoi. Much of that is due to small size and the lush foliage just outside the city limits. It also feels more touristed, in a resort sort of way. The town is pretty small, but it was the seat of the Nguyen Dynasty (of which the last ruler was Bao Dai) so it has much history. With its famed Citadel enclosing the Imperial City, and the numerous tombs in the surrounding area, there's no cause to wonder why Hue draws tourists.

While our first sightseeing destination, the tomb of Khai Dinh, was a spectacular display of beauty and opulence, my favorite experience in Hue was our visit to the tomb of Tu Duc. Here was a guy with an aesthetic I can appreciate. In contrast to Khai Dinh's tomb, which, while nestled on a hillside, is a massive structure of stone and concrete, nature has a distinct presence in Tu Duc's resting place.

The image above is not of his tomb, but of another structure he used during his retreats from the palace. During his day, the man-made lake was stocked with fish and he used the island on the right, also man-made, for hunting (this according to our guide).

I'm on a boat!

Vietnam has a lot of water: 3,444 km of coastline, over 30 rivers (two boasting fertile deltas), and there's no shortage of lakes either, particularly not in Hanoi. So it's only natural that part of our time in Vietnam should be spent on water-faring vessels.


Our first experience was an expedition from Hanoi to take a day cruise around the famed Ha Long Bay:

In Hue, we had the quintessential tourist experience with a short dragon boat ride on the Hue River:

Our last boat ride was by far my favorite: a leisurely mid-morning to afternoon glide around the Mekong Delta near Cái Bè. It was warmer in the south, but the gentle breeze on the water kept us comfortable. It is a contender for my favorite experience during the trip:

Video from Matt

City Snapshot: Hanoi

A street in Hanoi (Mã Mây, maybe?)

On February 10th Matt and I departed for our first visit to Vietnam, and my first trip outside of North America. En route, we met up with Matt's dad and his dad's wife, who you could call our hosts since they planned the trip. We all arrived late on the night of the 11th and were welcomed with the sight of an overburdened motorbike on the dark road into Hanoi, a perfect way to begin our two week adventure.

We stayed near the Old Quarter, a place with such hustle and bustle that it's impossible to really describe with words since everything is a flurry of color and sound and smell. The picture above is deceptively calm, but you can catch a glimpse of the uneven sidewalks crowded with motorbikes, the narrow buildings leaning up against each other, the wires in strange and hazardous clusters, mingling with the paper banners strung across the street (leftover from Tết, perhaps?), and the ever present fluttering flag of Vietnam.

What the photo doesn't show are the street vendors selling produce, meat, clothes, flowers, paper, shoes, food, and just about anything else you can think of on the sidewalks. Sometimes they are store fronts or restaurants that spill out onto the sidewalk with merchandise or, in the case of restaurants, with stools, tables, and usually the kitchen. Sometimes the sidewalk is the entirety of shop, with the shopkeeper squatting next to his or her merchandise, which has been laid out on the sidewalk, right next to the gutter. Sometimes the shops are mobile, carried on a bicycle or a bamboo pole over the shoulders of a woman in the quintessential conical farmer hat.

What the photo can't show is the ever-present cacophony of honking cars and motorbikes. It can't show the mouth-watering smell of noodle soups and grilled meat, or how that smell unfortunately mingles with the odor of sewage. It can't show the subtle taste of the clear broth of phở for breakfast or of the cold lagers (Bia Hơi--fresh beer) you can find at beer corner.


But until we get smell-o-vision and taste-tv, you'll have to settle with this photo and these words, which together serve as a snapshot of my impression of Hanoi.

Movin' to the country, gonna eat me a lot of . . . Hot Brown?

I love San Diego. But it is expensive. Matt and I have talked about eventually moving somewhere with a lower cost of living, but it has always seemed like a far off possibility. We'd never really even seriously discussed where we would go.

Then Matt's employer offered him a position in Louisville, KY and we decided it would be a good opportunity to move onward. While I think I was hoping for something north of the cultural Mason-Dixon line, I am looking forward to this forced change. I have never lived anywhere but Southern California, so this will be an education of sorts for me. Plus, while Kentucky may seem like the sticks, Louisville seems like it'll be a pretty neat city to explore.

So that's my news! I'm going to be pretty busy with packing and prepping for this new adventure, but I'm going to try to make time to write about another sort of adventure--our recent trip to Vietnam and Cambodia:

Hanoi (photo by Matt)

PS The Hot Brown is an open-faced sandwich with origins in Louisville.

Invaded!

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego currently has an exhibit called Viva La Revolucion, which features  the work of various street artists including such legends as the mysterious Banksy and the popular Shepard Fairey. In addition to the gallery space in the museum, MCASD also commissioned certain artists to create pieces on buildings around town. Matt and I have seen the exhibit, and we have now seen all of the commissioned pieces.

Shepard Fairey piece in Hillcrest.

Os Gemeos piece at Horton Plaza.

One of the artists involved, known as Invader because he creates tiled pieces inspired by the video game Space Invaders, was not content to merely complete his commissioned piece. Instead, he truly "invaded" San Diego with over twenty pieces around town. This is rather unsurprising given the nature of street art. Because they weren't commissioned, they were hard to find, but thanks to the internet and some persistence, Matt and I managed to find fifteen intact invaders.

Invasion in Chicano Park

A commissioned piece.

It was actually a fun adventure to look for them. A good excuse for a walk around downtown, if nothing else. Here is a map Matt created showing all of the invaders we found in San Diego and the ones we couldn't find or that were damaged before we got there. If you live in San Diego, be sure to keep a lookout for Invaders while you're around town. Or, if you live somewhere else, see if your city has been invaded by checking out Invader's website.

View Invaders in San Diego in a larger map