Photo Courtesy Lisa Fenderson

“Ask and you shall receive,” my dad used to say. I have to laugh now thinking about that phrase and what a great sense of humor my father had. My dad worked for the government most of his adult life in one capacity or another. Because of his keen intellect and grasp of irony, working in a large bureaucracy afforded him many opportunities to see the ridiculousness in a lot of situations. A recent interpretation of ORS 471.403 by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission comes into play now for homebrewers whose hands have been tied simply because a brewery asked a simple question that should have returned a simple (and logical) answer. Ask and you shall receive-but probably not what you wanted or were anticipating.

The question was simple enough. Deschutes Brewery asked if homebrewers could bring their beers to an event at their brewery. (Source: Keep handcrafter beer and wine at home, Oregon state officials say by Jessical Van Berkel, The Oregonian) Now, being a restaurant owner, I understand why they asked the question-the LAST thing any bar, restaurant, or brewery wants to do is get on the wrong side of any liquor regulatory agency. When we ask questions of these agencies, it’s because we are all acutely aware of the need to follow the letter of the law or risk our license and our livelihood. We do, however, expect a level of intelligence in interpretation of the intent of the laws in place. Unfortunately for the agents interpreting these laws and the people affected by them, the laws in place are not always intelligent. Many laws were put into place so long ago that their intent no longer represents the intent of the state. For homebrewers and winemakers in the state of Oregon, this was the case. The answer they got was that no, they couldn’t by law take their craft creations anywhere outside of their own homes. This puts a terrible crimp on many summer competitions where homebrewing and winemaking afficionados go show off their abilities. In Portland particularly, a city known worldwide as the birthplace of many world-class brews, that’s a BIG deal. The law, obviously, needs to be changed. But we all know that getting a law changed is easier said than done.

We have similarly silly liquor laws here in Washington, but I won’t bore you with the details here. Let it suffice to say that all states have silly laws in place that the legislature, with budget shortages and problems spilling out of their ears, aren’t about to deal with anytime soon. However, the Oregon legislature should deal with this one, as their very lucrative beer and wine industry was built by the very people whose hands they have now bound. I can hear my father laughing his ass off at this from wherever he is up in the great beyond.

The viewer’s question: I was looking at your videos on cleaning and curing pizza stones. I have an uncured pizza stone that I need to disinfect, but not sure how to do so. Can I spray it liberally with vinegar or soak it in vinegar to disinfect it, then season it well after it dries?

And my answer: I’m not sure why the stone needs to be disinfected…is there mold or some other contaminant? If it’s simply dirty, soak the stone in plain, warm water for about 10-15 minutes, then take a plastic spatula with a flat end and scrape the dirty surfaces with the flat end. (They make little, plastic wedges for this type of cleaning, but not many people have one laying around their home.) Once you have scraped all residue from the surfaces, towel dry and then allow the stone to dry on the counter. Once dry, oil the top of the stone thoroughly (but don’t leave a ton of residual oil…you want it oiled, but not drippy) and bake the stone in the oven with no food on it for 15 to 20 minutes at low-ish temperature (250-300 degrees fahrenheit). This will allow the oil to soak into the stone and start curing very slowly. You can repeat this process (just the oiling and baking steps) several times if you like.

The first time you use the stone for cooking, oil the top again lightly, and then bake something that has a fair amount of fat/butter in the recipe on the stone (cookies and croissants work well). Repeat this several times, and you will see your stone darken in color (which means the stone is curing). You will be able to tell when your stone is well-seasoned (cured) once you clean it with a little water and a plastic spatula or plastic wedge and it resists the water like a well-waxed car. Once it’s seasoned, cleaning is simply a matter of rinsing with a little water, scraping with a plastic spatula or stone-cleaning wedge, and drying. I know this sounds like a lot of work to condition a stone, but once it’s done, you’ll have a great baking tool to use in your cooking forever.

If instead the stone is truly “contaminated,” I’m not entirely sure I would try to condition it for food use. Although a good, hot oven will kill almost any contaminant, whatever has penetrated the stone might taint the flavor of any food cooked on it. Because stone is an absorbent material, it does soak up smells and substances. I wouldn’t use vinegar because that will be absorbed into the stone, and as you know, vinegar has a very strong aroma that will penetrate the stone and likely the food you cook on it. (That’s also why you’re not supposed to clean stones with dish soap, besides the fact that it will strip some of the nice curing you’ve worked so hard to develop on your baking stone.) If it’s contaminated with something truly foul, I wouldn’t risk ruining food that you spent time and money preparing. Stones are relatively inexpensive, and I might just invest in a new stone rather than spend a lot of time trying to fix a stone that may not render good results. (Just my personal two cents!)

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any other questions!
***********
Here’s a link to the videos to which the viewer was referring. Curing a Baking Stone and Cleaning a Baking Stone

Composting our restaurant waste is something we’ve been talking about for awhile now, and something we want to implement this spring/summer.  Help from the local waste company would be wonderful, but I don’t think we’re there yet.  Here’s an article in the Orange County Register that details a restaurant composting pilot program that’s happening there.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could get something similar started here?

We have always recycled, from day one, even though it’s not easy in our little town. There is no glass recycling for businesses here, and because we want to send as little as possible to the landfill, we haul all of our cardboard, paper, plastic, and glass recycling to the recycling center. Not a glamorous job, but we do it because we believe it’s the right thing to do. The eventual, and less wasteful, thing to do would be to get more keg coolers and have more beers on tap, but we are extremely limited on space in the back of the house, so at least for right now, that is not an option.

Over the last several weeks, we have been transitioning all of our to-go containers to compostables. This transition is now complete. Compostable containers used to be absolutely cost-prohibitive. That is the main reason we did not go this way from the beginning. We simply could not do it with the costly nature of start up and our limited budget at that time. Now, compostables have come down in price–they are still more expensive, but at least our food rep doesn’t choke when we talk about going green. Our rep is all about green, has helped us enormously in the transition, and is working to help us go even further than we thought we could.

Our next step is to do composting ourselves, once we consult with a Master Gardener to see if this is feasible on the scale we need. It’s probably the biggest and hardest step towards being green that we’ll make, but this is the way we had intended from the start, so we are glad to finally be able to talk about it and work towards it in a serious way.

If you have questions or suggestions (including suggested readings and the like), we would gratefully take them. We have been out of the educational loop for awhile, restaurateuring being an all-engrossing profession, so we have a lot to learn. But this is one of the things we believe in strongly and we want to make our carbon footprint as tiny as we possibly can.  We look forward to the process of learning better ways to deal with the waste created by the restaurant and in making Twilight truly green.

Boycott Monster, and tell them exactly what you think of them with the only thing they understand…the almighty dollar.

Is it just me, or is there a huge market niche that Camas could fill? My business classes always taught me to find the market niche and fill it and you will be successful. Give the big, beautiful girls of the world some beautiful clothes to buy and we will buy them. And please, make them affordable. Eileen Fisher has the absolute right idea and styling, but her clothes are out of budgetary reach for most of us.

I think if a Camas clothier did this right, they could make a small fortune. Anyone out there listening?  Just because we’re not a size 6 does not mean we’ve lost our taste. Any other curvy girls out there with me?