Whatever I've been fighting the past few days is taking a really good whack at me today. I may post more substantially later; right now, not so much.
Saturday, though, I had five hours of Bach, and it rocked, as much as a harpsichord, piano, and organ can rock.
Yesterday I ate a quantity of food that I think only Ribfest has ever surpassed, but it was spread out over six very sunny hours. Today I'm recovering. Probably more interesting blog entries and a photo or two tomorrow.
New York Times science correspondent Carl Zimmer explains how Penicillium molds have given us yummy cheeses:
By comparing the genomes of different species of molds, Dr. Rodríguez de la Vega and his colleagues have reconstructed their history. On Thursday in the journal Current Biology, the scientists reported that cheese makers unwittingly have thrown their molds into evolutionary overdrive.
They haven’t simply gained new genetic mutations to help them grow better in cheese. Over the past few centuries, these molds also have picked up large chunks of DNA from other species in order to thrive in their new culinary habitat.
The first cheese makers had no idea that they were collecting particular species of mold. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that scientists discovered the identities. Only then did it become possible for industrial cheese makers to select certain strains of mold grown in laboratories in order to produce cheese in factories.
The article has photos of blue and Camembert cheeses at the top, and I am now craving some. When's lunch?
Despite just complaining about everything I've got to do this morning, here's Crain's on why craft breweries are selling out:
At least 23 U.S. craft brewers and cider producers have sold all or part of their companies within the past 12 months, with buyers ranging from big brewers to private-equity firms to employee stock ownership plans. While the financial terms of the majority of those deals were not disclosed, industry insiders say more than $2 billion has changed hands, with valuations spiking in some cases to nearly 20 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
"Buyers are paying an absurd amount for craft breweries, and it's a great time to be a brewer who's potentially looking to sell in today's world,” says Chris Furnari, editor of Brewbound, a Watertown, Mass.-based trade publication. “When one deal is announced, and then another, and another, it causes others in the space to take a look at their business and ask, 'Well, what am I worth?'"
Sales in the U.S. craft beer market rose 22 percent to $19.6 billion in 2014, to 11 percent of all U.S. beer sales, according to the Brewers Association, a Boulder, Colo.-based craft beer trade group. Barrel volume was up 17.6 percent, far outperforming the U.S. beer industry as a whole, where volume rose 0.5 percent last year.
Ah, so, it's about money. Because no matter how much you like beer, if you're a brewer, you're in business first.
The problem the acquiring companies will have is this: People drink craft beers because they don't like the large producers, and what the large producers have to do to beer to produce large quantities. So the InBevs of the world will keep buying up craft breweries like Goose Island, and beer drinkers like me will simply stop drinking those acquired brands.
It's almost as if large companies can't understand why people like small ones. Oh, wait.
One of my more scientific friends has identified yesterday's spider as Araneus Diadematus, literally a garden-variety orb weaver, and named her Gladys Weaver.
Happy hunting, Gladys.
Saw this about two hours ago in my neighborhood. Can anyone identify the species?
She was about 70 mm across, with a 25 mm body. Not something I'd want to discover in my kitchen.
I lost my Kindle on the flight to London last week, and only just got its replacement yesterday afternoon. Good thing, too, because I'm loading it up with articles I can't read until later:
And now I have to draft a statement of work...
"I'm Goin' Alone," my trivia team, is 11-2 since we banded together in March. Can we go 12-2? Or are we goin' home alone?
Tonight's topics:
- Picture Round: Game Show Hosts
- General Trivia
- Audio Round: Songs From Musicians With 1 Name
- Current Events
- Random Trivia
- Speed Round: Crayola Crayons
The speed round requires us to list up to 30 things in that category for one point each. Last week we lost one point on the speed round and two other points overall that brought us in second place. Tonight, we plan to dominate.
Cerulean, FTW!
I am not a food writer, so I don't have the vocabulary to describe dinner the other night at 42 Grams. Let me just reproduce a few items from our meticulously-presented, precisely-timed courses:
- Carabinero: finger lime, phytoplankton, kelp, and lacto-fermented vegetables
- Sweet pea custard: bacon, whey, brown butter, herbs & lettuce
- Summer corn: corn silk, roasted corn broth, polenta
- Organic Irish salmon: tea smoked with fallen pine, muhroom dashi, spent grain toast, nastrurtium
- Lamb neck: smoked yogurt, tamarind, fennel
- Veal sweetbread: foie gras, ash-baked eggplant, golden berry
Plus five more courses. And we brought wine that we'd obtained in Como.
I said, "Even if I could afford it, I couldn't eat like this every day."
My dinner companion said, "Why not?"
She has a point.
Oh, look: they have a last-minute reservation available for 6pm tonight...
With Apollo Chorus auditions set for September 10th and 13th, it's great that Slate just ran an essay explaining the benefits of singing:
Music is awash with neurochemical rewards for working up the courage to sing. That rush, or “singer's high,” comes in part through a surge of endorphins, which at the same time alleviate pain. When the voices of the singers surrounding me hit my ear, I'm bathed in dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain that is associated with feelings of pleasure and alertness. Music lowers cortisol, a chemical that signals levels of stress. Studies have found that people who listened to music before surgery were more relaxed and needed less anesthesia, and afterward they got by with smaller amounts of pain medication. Music also releases serotonin, a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of euphoria and contentment. “Every week when I go to rehearsal,” a choral friend told me, “I'm dead tired and don't think I'll make it until 9:30. But then something magic happens and I revive ... it happens almost every time.”
Yep, every Monday in the fall and spring I drag myself in at 7pm, and by the time we go for beers at 9:30 I feel better. And, of course, concerts are a lot of fun, especially when we nail them.
Which reminds me, you should subscribe to Apollo. Our first (free!) concert is 3pm on November 8th at Second Presbyterian in Chicago.