M & W Gourmet Foods of Oxnard, CA was begun in 2006 at 3 Farmers Markets with the desire to create “a healthy snack alternative.” Over the last 16 years these snack makers have grown into a really good thing keeping many people happily snacked up.
photos: P. Pearce
The Dude of Food discovered these tasty snack treats while being on set and finding his way to the craft service table. These roasted almond filled snack bags are a great replacement to donuts and potato chips. Over time more and more flavors became available with 11 roasted almond flavors currently available at their web page (https://www.mwgourmetfoods.com) including many creative tasty flavors. Some of the Dude of Foods favorites include Coconut Macaroon, Honey Cinnamon and Cappuccino.
Above you see pictured a variety of a few of Mexico’s famous lager beers. Not pictured are Estrelle Jalisco, Corona Familiar, Montejo and Victoria.
It’s interesting because my German friends who visit the states choose Mexican lagers when they are here as they resemble Munich Helles beer a little bit.
Another similarity about Mexican lagers when compared to Munich Helles is the ABV content. Both share a roughly 5% count, German beer a touch over and Mexican beer a touch under. Following are the ABV levels of Mexico’s most popular lagers.
Bohemia Lt 5.3 %
Carte Blanca 4 %
Corona Extra 4.6 %
Corona Familiar 4.8%
Dos Equis Green 4.2 %
Estrelle Jalisco 4.5 %
Modelo Especial 4.5 %
Modelo Negro 5.4 %
Montejo 4.5 %
Pacifico 4.5 %
Sol 4.5 %
Tecate 3.9 %
Victoria 4 %
Now you see why folks can drink so many beers while trying to hit the pinata.
In Munich three major breweries are Augustiner, Hacker – Schorr and Lowenbrau. There are many more.
Augustiner Helles 5.2 %
Hacker-Schorr 5.5 %
Lowenbrau 5.2 %
Germans don’t put anything in their beers and have a law dating back to 1516 called Reinheitsgebot. In Mexico they make an awesome drink called a Michelada which is like a bloody Mary except with beer instead of vodka. Now the Dude of Food enjoys making micheladas.
2 great michelada mixes. Both on Instagram
Next Sunday try making some of these delicious day starters while planning what to BBQ.
If you love fish then you will certainly love adding these mixes into your favorite ceviches. I add the spicier, LA Pinche Mezcla, to mine and it is the best! Guaranteed satisfaction. It’ll make you wanna say Odele!
Remember the good old days, like 2 years ago, when beer was served in bottles and you could get a 12 pack for $9.99? Now beer is trendy and manufacturers have taken to following the coffee business model.
Starbucks has ruined coffee. Sadly, the Dude of Food has noticed the same detrimental thing is happening in the beer business.
Some craft beer makers decided to charge a bunch of extra dough for some aged beer and now even the cheap lagers are expensive. This same trickle down for profit theory has gone into packaging too.
In the 1970’s folks claimed aluminum cans caused Alzheimer’s disease. These days it’s cheaper to can beer than it is to bottle beer so we are told and sold that cans are OK now. I still prefer bottles.
Next, let’s look at packaging.
As you can see from the image comparison above, the buyer is paying the same or more for a package containing 8 less ounces per purchase and are put in a potentially health riskier but cheaper to produce package. The only bonus about cans is they don’t break when dropped and are lighter to recycle, but then again in California we pay for CRV to recycle but there is nowhere to take your recycling except to the trash so the state gets it back anyways but subsidizes itself by charging a pre-paid recycling fee. The fee was established by the California Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act of 1986 and since 2010 the program has been administered by the Cal/EPACalifornia Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) (previously administered by California Department of Conservation – Recycling Division)
In February 2016 RePlanet, the largest recycling center in California, closed 191 recycling centers and terminated nearly 300 employees in small communities across the state due to increases in operational costs. By August 2019 RePlanet announced the closing of its remaining 284 centers and termination of it’s last 750 employees. It began the process of liquidating assets to pay creditors which had backed up due to continued reduction in state fees, the depressed pricing of recycled aluminum, plastic and cardboard, the minimum wage increases and the rise in operating costs.
Write to your elected California senators, local newspapers and media services to ask more questions as to why nothing logical is getting done in California.
Ever wonder what’s in that delicious looking sausage. Well the Dude of Food has been wondering and finally took the time to tear one down and see what’s in there. Above is your typical average sized sausage found in any US market. This is not a small breakfast sausage but a regular sausage. This one weighed in at 46 grams as shown.
The first thing I don’t like eating is the intestinal lining that sausage is held together with. There just doesn’t seem like any nutritional value to this stuff. The next thing I noticed was the amount of white fat speckles mixed in the meat so I cut the skin wrap from around the sausage and began to pick the specs out with the tip of a corn holder.
You can see in the photo below that there was a good amount of those white fat particles in there. The other things that were hidden in there are what look like small gristle beads. They are rounded and look like little white nuggets. I am pretty sure these things are about as healthy for you as plastic but who knows. Anyhow, I weighed the pile of garbage that had accumulated on the tin foil and it weighed in at 10.6 grams including the intestinal wrapping but not the weight of the foil. That works out to be roughly 22% useless unhealthy waste in every sausage.
So for nearly every 5 sausages you eat 1 of them is all fat and nasty gristle waste. Granted this was the first one I broke down and the brand was recorded but not given here as I want to test a few more brands and see what the averages are before any brands are named.
I also bought a small, stainless steel kitchen grinder and have been experimenting with grinding various blends of meats and spices for my own sausage patties and meatballs in search of a healthier mix.
The Federal Aviation Administration has used its authority to shut down technology that helps people live better. The increased quality of life in small towns has been thwarted by ‘the system’ as the FAA grounds the Lakemaid Beer drone delivery program in Wisconsin. Does this move say that capitalism is not for everyone?
You can see the drone in action by going to see the following YouTube video.
You can read all about the perceived issues the FAA has but in reality it seems that Lakemaid Beer has a great idea and this program would be a good beta test for the Amazon delivery drone development plan. Or maybe Amazon has something to do with the demise of the Lakemaid program? Stuff to think about as the hands of the clock get closer to happy hour. Prost.
The famous beer author Pete Brown describes Lambic and Gueueze style beers, commonly called sour beers, in the following way – ‘Instead of adding laboratory-cultured yeasts to start the fermentation of sugar into alcohol, lambic brewers rely on the natural yeasts in the air around them.’ Pete would know. I love reading his books because he knows about beer.
Making beer this way was the way of fermenting your brew. Back in the early brewing day taste was partially dependent on what bacteria fell into your beer. That would start the fermentation process and affect the taste of your wort or alcohol stew. The luckiest brewers came up with something different and delicious.
Below are three brewers the Dude of Food recommends you should begin your sour beer journey by investigating first. Prost.
One of the latest things the Dude of Food has experienced is this food called Cauliflower Hot Wings. When my buddy said we were going to a vegan place to have a couple beers because they had a good selection, I felt my enthusiasm drop a bit. ‘I’m not a vegan’ I thought to myself. ‘This has the potential to really suck’ was the last thought that flowed through my head as we got out of the car.
Upon entering the room, Sage Plant Based Bistro in Echo Park, we saw the place was as full as any good happy hour spot should be and everyone seemed to be having a genuine good time. Not a bunch of folks looking around gauging how the cool people act, but real folks having real conversations. ‘This is starting out great’ my head whispered to itself.
My buddy and I found the last 2 seats at the bar and asked for a couple of IPA’s on tap. The beer choices were decent. Then we requested the Cauliflower Hot Wings. I wasn’t totally down with these by the way they sounded but after they arrived at the table and I tasted one, I was addicted. These things are delicious! The vinegar was strong and burned the senses just like they did in Buffalo at the old Garcia’s Bar or the original Anchor Bar (home of wings).
If you are trying to stick to your New Year’s resolution by eating better, than get yourself and some friends over to the Sage Plant Based Bistro in Silver Lake and enjoy something delicious.
Society needs to recognize that the creative craft brewing folks at Ninkasi Brewing in Eugene, Oregon have been doing a great job not only brewing fine IPA beers, but with their success, they are also giving back to the world in note worthy ways. Read on.
I’m not going into details here, but you can certainly read about how cool the folks at Ninkasi Brewing are at the above or below links. As a beer drinking, guitar/bass plucking, drum beating, bad singing song writer with bad hair that can make a quality music video, I personally wanted to take the time this holiday season to say ‘thank you’ for what you all do at Ninkasi. More folks should use this business model. Maximum respect Ninkasi.
While visiting good friends in Munich, Munchen or Minga, depending on whom you speak with, the Dude of Food can work up an appetite as there is much need for fuel to keep a body in motion while taking in all the culturally glorious things this beautiful Bavarian city has to offer.
There are quite a few good places to eat in the Sendling area of Munich and one lunch spot that stands out to me is calledDillinger Chicago Bar & Grill on Passauer Strasse. The Dude of Food has eaten many lunches here and is always satisfied at the meals presented. The staff is friendly and efficient. The prices are reasonable. The food is made fresh and always prepared with care. The soups are always really good and prompted me to request to meet the chef of Dillinger.
The chef is a nice, interesting and caring guy named Harjit Signh. He welcomed the Dude of Food into his extremely clean and organized kitchen. In his kitchen chef Harjit was very transparent about his passion for doing food preparation right. The Dude of Food loved Harjit’s drive for making his opportunity to create quality food work out right.
Feel free to visit Dillinger’s web page http://www.dillinger-bar.de/ or email them at dillingerobersendling (at) gmail and tell them hello for me and that you heard about them at the Dude of Food web page. Veiling danke Harjit und Dillinger.
It seems that oysters are a popular item on LA menus. The Dude of Food, a local LAist foodie, found himself working in downtown Los Angeles. Next door to us was a bar that had a pop up oyster bar out called Shucks Oyster Bar. The oyster bar tender was a nice guy and the Dude of Food tried a couple of each kind of oyster to check them out. The oysters were fresh and reminded the Dude of Food of a time when he was eating oysters in a back alley behind a fish shop in Fontainebleau, France or another time in San Sebastian/Donostia, Spain and how well beers go with oysters.
If you’re on Spring St. near 7th in DTLA look for Shucks Oyster Bar pop up.
