That’s the sound the fermentation lock makes every three minutes or so as all those little carbon dioxide molecules scramble to escape. Day five and it’s bubbling along nicely. Though, man, we could’ve really used a sieve or something last Saturday. The stuff is really murky. Or, shall we say, “rustic.”

Yesterday my friend JR and I trekked down to N.’s Little Village estate to avail ourselves of her cider press. Five hours and three bushels and change later, we had just under seven gallons of fresh squeezed apple nectar that, hopefully, will in the not-too-distant-future mutate into even more delicious hard cider. If it doesn’t, I guess everyone gets apple cider vinegar for Christmas.

Most of the apples on hand were Mutsu, a crisp, semisweet Japanese varietal (also known as Crispin) that yields a whole lotta juice. But we spiced things up a bit with a couple pounds each of tart, tender McIntoshes, pale, aromatic Fameuses, and nutty, leathery Roxbury Russets as well. All have the acidity and tannins necessary to give good cider a full, round body and structure. 

Right now the juice in my three-gallon carboy is just sitting there, dark and still, with nary a bubble in the fermentation lock. But I can wait. I’m wild fermenting this batch and last time I tried it all I got were several loud, middle-of-the-night explosions, as the corks blew on every last bottle and sprayed my kitchen with a fine, appley mist.

Apparently I bottled it a little too soon. Will try not to get too eager this time around.

In the meantime, here are some pix:

The press.

Bucket o’mutsus. We soon discovered that they needed to be cut even smaller.

JR grinds away.

The pomace.

The juice.

A whole lotta cider.

All y’all who’ve been asking that question  in re: the Creative Loafing bankruptcy filing should read this great, thorough, and at times chilling article on the past, present, and future of the CL business plan, by a former CL staffer now at Atlanta Magazine. (h/t Whet)

The nuts and bolts of it:

“In July of 2007, after I’d been gone from Creative Loafing for almost two years, Eason announced he was buying the Chicago Reader and the Washington City Paper, two of the most reputable alt weeklies in the country. To finance the deal, he borrowed $40 million from investors, putting up his controlling stock in the company as collateral. If it seemed a reckless move in a time when newsprint costs are skyrocketing and readers are abandoning traditional newspapers in droves, Eason evidently didn’t think so. Instead, he saw the acquisitions as giving Creative Loafing Inc. a “pivotal gateway of connectivity with the young adult audience,” according to a press release at the time.

“If you’re not sure what that means, join the club. I talked to Ben Eason late Tuesday, a day after his company had declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company had been unable to make its loan payments to the two investors—Atalaya and BIA Digital Partners—that had provided the cash necessary for the purchase.”

And, in terms of what a rejiggered, webcentric Reader publishing model might look like:

“In Eason’s mind, writers would post all week, while “somebody in a back room,” as he put it, would be thinking about what from the website would go into the print edition. By this definition, the print product would become nothing more than a distillation of highlights from the website, a rather stale news digest. At least that was my impression in hearing Eason talk. A current CL staffer agreed. ‘Things are written differently for print than they are for the web. It’s not a matter of cut and paste. It isn’t just that we’ve blogged for five days and then on deadline day we can cut and paste things in. It doesn’t work that way.’

“Eason, though, appears to want it to work that way. Already, his editor at the WashingtonCity Paper has said there will be no more regular cover stories in the paper. For alt weeklies, which made their reputations on long-form narratives, it’s a radical change. And not, in my estimation anyway, a sensible one.”

I wrote something for Time Out Chicago. Here it is.

Please save the “dark side” jokes. It feels weird enough as it is, especially given this crazy week.

But, seriously, you should go to Thai Aree. Just don’t order the som tum unless you’re feeling particularly butch.

Sources inside the Reader tell me that the staff found out about the Chapter 11 filing in time-honored fashion: they read about it on the internet, 15 minutes before the staff meeting scheduled to announce it was convened. For those with short memories, this is a nice echo of the day last year when the production department found out it was being laid off en masse by  . . . reading about it on Crain’s Chicago Business. And the Loafers wonder why no one likes them. You can’t say they’re not consistent.

I just finished watching Season Five of The Wire, and while I still think it’s [totally-awesome/the-best-show-on-TV-ever/your-own-superlative-here], the newsroom story line bugged me. David Simon’s made no secret of his scorn for his former profession, in particular his employers at the Baltimore Sun, but the screetching of the whetstone, as he ground his ax to a razor’s edge, almost drowned out the nuanced attention to detail that is the magic of the whole series.

I’ve sat through meetings where 60 people jam into a room around a publisher standing on a chair as he details declining revenues. I’ve heard managers repeat the excruciating mantra, “We have to do more with less”–and I’ve tried my best to follow through, with predictably compromised results. But I thought Simon’s sanctimonious publisher executive editor was a cartoon, his Pulitzer-lust and narcissistic old-boy networking spelled out in such screaming type that it seemed Simon had forgotten that whole “show don’t tell” thing. Ditto, the gutless managing editor, who throughout the season displays nothing but respect for the judgement of his experienced, scrupulous, and apparently infallible city editor — except when it comes to said city editor’s documented evidence of one young reporter’s credulity-straining lies.

It just didn’t add up. No professionals, I said to myself, could rise so far in the ranks of a huge organization without some degree of competence, and that competence wouldn’t suddenly be suspended for fear of wounding the bottom line. I thought David Simon had let his resentments get the better of him.

Now I think maybe I am just naive.

In non-food, non-Wisconsin related news, Creative Loafing Inc., the new owners of my former employer, the Chicago Reader, filed for Chapter 11 bankrupcy protection this morning, exactly one year and four days after its first wave of layoffs hit. So far only the Washington City Paper (formerly owned by Chicago Reader Inc., and now also under Creative Loafing’s leaky umbrella) has details. Note thoroughly mystifying final graf. Says B., “Does this mean we’re all hired back?”

UPDATE: Miner has it now too. My heart goes out to the few friends I still have on staff, who at this point are either losing their collective lunch or so flattened and demoralized by the rollercoaster ride of the last year that all they can do is shrug and IM their friends. In either case, I am glad I no longer have to deal with it for a living. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the evolution of journalism in the NEW NEW, HOT HOT iPhone-sized world (I find the impending launch of Eater Chicago, for example, strangely depressing) and am increasingly unconvinced that I want anything to do with it. 

Can you spot my zombie belly?

Yesterday’s Trib offers this travel feature on Washington Island, which is . . . a decent overview of island basics (ferry, lawyers, Iceland). But, based on the graf on the hotel, I wonder about the writer’s sources, as she repeats the weirdly ubiquitous misconception that the hotel staff are all “chefs in training” at the “culinary school.” I’m not sure where this meme comes from–take even a cursory look at the class schedule and it’s pretty clear that the classes and workshops are geared toward home cooks, not aspiring Iron Chefs. But everytime I put on an apron this summer someone would inevitably ask me if I was a student in the “school.” (No! I’m an unemployed journalist. Much more disreputable.)

Also, I’m not sure how anyone in their right mind could call the hotel “one of the least expensive lodging options on the island.” I guess it’s cheaper than renting a house?

Anyhow, I do kinda love that the comments manage to hit on three of this summer’s top talking points. To wit:

1) Burgers. I never did make it to burger night at Karly’s, but I’m pretty sure the beef comes from the same grass-fed island cattle that supply the hotel with the foundation for its own truly phenomenal burgers, touted by many as the best in town. Don’t believe me? Go ask Pastor Frank, who, heeding his calling, loudly spread the burger gospel all summer long.

2) Snakes. A recent communique from the island indicates they are getting bold. Leah found one IN HER BEDROOM.

3) FIBs. The joke of the summer, heard from multiple sources.  ”Why is it so hard to get a blow job in Chicago in July? Because all the cocksuckers are up here.”

. . . let the locavore backlash begin.

Or, really, continue.

David Tamarkin’s piece in this week’s Time Out Chicago is has raised hackles across the internet–much as I’m sure was intended. It’s a pretty solid piece of contrarian provocation: create a straw man representing an extremist fringe, dress it up with some facts, some sober and unassailable, others decontextualized and vague, and top it off with an incendiary headline. Bloggers, start your engines.

I don’t have a lot to add, though I would agree with those commenters pointing out that his basic premise is  kinda bunk–something like the Green City Market’s Localvore Challenge is obviously designed as a consciousness raising stunt, not some prescription for living, and few self-identified locavores would argue otherwise. He ascribes an absolutism to the “movement” that, frankly, I have rarely if ever seen. Even Barbara Kingsolver didn’t beat herself up about olive oil–the very open-mindedness that Tamarkin endorses in one paragraph and mocks as an inconsistent “exemption policy” in the other. (And to which I say, “policy?” Can I see the position paper on that?)

Also, speculation as to the inner life of your (nonexistent, not-real) subjects (”it’s easy to see why localvores wouldn’t want to think too much about their lifestyle”) is just icky journalism. Want to know if locavores think about their lifestyle? Why not ask? 

But I do think it’s interesting that amid all the discussion of food miles and Peter Singer and protectionism v. fair trade and the welfare of third world farmers, the question of the poor here at home doesn’t really come up. There’s a lot about the locavore agenda that I like–fresh-picked fruit and veges taste better, and learning how to grow, forage, can, or otherwise source your own food is a great gateway to a richer understanding of the community around you, be it human, geographic, botanic, whatever. But the question of how all this raised consciousness can effect change here at home, in the backyard, for people who can’t afford a backyard garden of their own, seems more and more the issue. Wall Street is tanking, jobs are vaporizing, mortgages are defaulting helter-skelter: the fact that the farmer’s market takes LINK cards is nice and all, but hunger and malnutrition are such explosive problems that, like I said, heirloom tomatoes are just a drop in the biodegradable shopping bag.

I don’t know what the answer is, but there’s got to be some bridge building between (to paraphrase Mike Gebert) the narcissistic lifestyle choices of yuppie consumers and those who have the most to gain from structural changes in the industrial food system. These folks, and these, are doing just that–and they’re looking for help. Maybe I will give them a call. After I’m done wrangling with 5,000 thirsty Neko Case fans.

I’d be remiss to not point out this piece from yesterday’s NYT, on the boom in . . . wait for it . . . organic/artisanal/small-batch wheat farming. Hello, New York publishers! This is so money! Where is my book deal??

Oh right. I haven’t finished the proposal. Right.

Anyway. The piece (which is focused on the revival of small-scale wheat farming in upstate New York) notes that small-batch wheat is hard to work with. Flavor, moisture, and gluten content can vary from season to season, posing a particular challenge to bakers, whose craft often relies on finely calibrated measurements to create a consistent muffin or loaf of bread.

This made me flash back to early this summer, when I picked up a plastic cup of Island Wheat at the 25th anniversary party for KK Fiske–the first I’d had in a while–and was surprised by how different it tasted. Frankly, it wasn’t as good as I remembered: it seemed thinner, more mass-market in flavor. It may well be that they changed the recipe;* I switched to the Rustic Ale and consequently, unsurprisingly, forgot to ask. But when I mentioned it to Leah she pointed out that it could just as well be a reflection of a particular crop.

How long is it going to be, I wonder, before people start talking about the terroir of beer? 

* This guy seems to agree and offers some insight; I also, fwiw, noted the weird “metallic taste.”