I recently presented at the second annual Cocktail Camp PDX, a day-long series of seminars in Portland geared toward the home bar/spirits enthusiast. I, along with Columbine Quillen, a rockstar of a bartender/blogger from Bend, Oregon, talked about homemade syrups, sodas, bitters and tinctures. Columbine wrote about […]
Read more →There’s been a bit of a hot debate going on for a while about constructing the perfect margarita. Tommy’s in San Francisco promotes their 100% agave margarita heavily, which uses agave syrup instead of orange liqueur to sweeten it. It makes sense; eliminating the orange aspect makes […]
Read more →As I mentioned before, I treat my ingredients like a cook rather than a food producer. Yet when you get into food production, as I have been doing while expanding my Small Hand Foods syrup line, there are a few scientific things you must pay attention to. […]
Read more →Every winter we put a hot drink on the menu at the Slanted Door. The last couple of years it’s been a hot buttered rhum cider. It’s insanely good: a trademark Erik Adkins concoction, rich but perfectly balanced. I love it, but I also crave new things, […]
Read more →There I am, stressed out about work and fresh from a visit to my friends’ farm in the Capay Valley (my number one stress reliever). As always, I was sent back with a dozen eggs from their hens and bags full of what they had growing. Which […]
Read more →I haven’t posted in a long time. I know, and I’m sorry. I have a number of partially finished blog posts in the queue. But mostly I am bogged down by the practicalities of running a business. I love cooking, and I love bartending, and I started […]
Read more →Since I’ve had someone else making some of my syrups for me, I’ve had a lot more free time. So when Erick Castro of Rickhouse texted me asking if I make a cranberry syrup, I answered “No… but I could make some. You want?” I figured hey, […]
Read more →I’ve been spending much of my time lately transitioning two of the syrups I make through my Small Hand Foods label, Gum Syrup and Pineapple Gum Syrup, to larger production. On a good day it takes me ten hours to make eight cases of syrup by hand, […]
Read more →Since I started Small Hand Foods, I often get people asking me about my syrup-making process, so I thought I’d share some of it here. When people find out what I do, one of the first things they say to me is, “Wow; you do all of […]
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