The Auburn Plainsman February 14, 2013
Eat this, not that - page 2
The Food Issue
It’s “POP” Secret - page 5
AU Grad Now Head Chef - page 7
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The Auburn Plainsman
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Eat this, not that Nathan Simone Managing Editor
Melody kitchens / SPECIAL SECTIONS EDITOR
The jar artwork is signature to Sims Food Inc. The dancing pepper and pickle were drawn by Auburn native and longtime friend of Will, Trey and Anderson, Matt Harris.
Wickles Pickles spices South Bianca Seward Copy Editor
Wickedly delicious pickles. Well, wickedly delicious pickles, okra, relish, pepper rings and pepper strips, to be exact. What started as a grandmother’s homemade recipe has blossomed into an nationwide operation that pickles, packages and ships 10,000 cases a month to help perfect potato salads, barbeque sandwiches and every other major holiday dish across the country. The company is run by brothers Will and Trey Sims and long-time friend, Andy Anderson. Dadeville is home to both Sims Food Inc. headquarters and the Sims brothers. Anderson is originally from the Auburn/Opelika area. “When we started we could only turn out 27 cases,” said Will Sims, partner of Sims Food Inc. Although the business partners have found great success in the pickle business, it has not been without obstacles. The company’s warehouse was destroyed by the devastating tornados of spring 2011,
leaving Sims Food without any place to continue their work. “We were so lucky to have help,” Will said. “Terry Ratlif helped us move into a temporary space in Opelika. We were back in business within two weeks.” Will, Trey and Anderson rebuilt the warehouse, which is now back in business just as before. “It was a hard time for us,” Trey said. “But we worked through it and we only ended up missing one shipment in the transition.” After 10 years with Wickles Pickles, the Sims brothers and Anderson say they are still surprised by the success they have found. Neither partner was a business major nor did either attend culinary school. “We learned through the school of hard knocks,” Will said. “Really we just had to take it slow. Don’t try to build it all in one day.” Before Wickles Pickles took the nation by storm, the unique pickle brine was brewed in a one woman show, Dana Ferniany. Ferniany began jarring the uniquely sweet and sour pickle
brine for friends and neighbors as gifts. Cousin to the Sims brothers, Ferniany helped to start the company in December of 1998. By 2001 Anderson joined the team. “First time I tried them, I loved them,” Anderson said. “I told them right away, ‘if y’all ever need any help you let me know.’” The company has grown from the original pickle product to incorporate six jarred goods, as well a gourmet product line, Not Yo Mama’s, whichfeatures a pepper and a habanero marmalade and bloody mary mix. “Our friend was bottling up the Not Yo Mama’s mix, but he wasn’t going to be able to keep it going,” Anderson said. “He was basically working out of his basement. So we said we would take over it and bring it on as one of our products.” Wickles Pickles can be found in grocery stores, online at simsfood.com and on your burger or in your bloody mary at the popular downtown restaurant, The Hound. Get a taste of the uniquely sweet, wickedly delicious pickles today.
The Auburn Plainsman A SPIRIT THAT IS NOT AFRAID
Newsroom - (334) 844 9108 Robert E. Lee, Editor Nathan Simone, Managing Editor Melody Kitchens, Special Sections Editor Bianca Seward, Copy Editor Sydney Callis, Community Editor Raye May, Photo Editor
Anna Beth Jager, reporter Kailey Miller, writer Abigail O’Brien, writer Emily Brett, freelance graphic artist
A happy tiger is a healthy tiger. In the South, we’re no stranger to excessive sugar (sweet tea), fried foods (we’ll fry anything) and slathering our vegetables in fat, (ranch dressing, anyone?) but it doesn’t have to be like that. For all the numerous unhealthy options offered on campus, there are always alternatives to choose at your favorite hangouts. 1) Au Bon Pain’s corn chowder vs. 12-veggie soup (medium size, 12 fl oz) It’s no secret that corn chowder is simply delicious. In The Plainsman office, one could even say there’s a cult-like following. Trips to ABP are always followed by “Did you get the corn chowder?” Answers of anything but “yes” are met with disapproving stares. However, that tiny bowl of corn chowder packs 350 calories, 17 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat and 1,120 mg of sodium. Switching it up with 12-veggie not only adds more than corn to your diet, but reduces the overall calories to 180 with only 6 grams of fat, zero grams of saturated fat and just 900 mg of sodium. 2) Papa John’s the meats vs. garden fresh personal pan pizza (4 slices)
If you have your heart set on pizza, you might as well choose the healthier option. While nothing served at Papa John’s would particularly impress your significant other who happens to be a nutrition major, you can still rejoice in the pseudo-Italian atmosphere near Starbucks while supporting locally-grown Alabama vegetables. Choosing that meat pizza will set you nutritionally back 960 calories, 44 grams of fat and a whopping 2,760 mg of sodium. Garden fresh, while depriving you of bacon, will only add 720 calories to your diet along with 20 grams of fat and only 1,760 mg of sodium. 3) Chick-fil-A’s chicken sandwich vs. chargrilled The original Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich delights us with 440 calories, 1,400 mg of sodium and 16 grams of fat inside that fried piece of heaven sitting in a buttered flour bun. But if you grill that chicken instead of fry it, switch the flour bun with whole wheat and add some lettuce and tomato, you’re looking at only 290 calories with 4 grams of fat and 900 mg of sodium. Otherwise known as the #7 combo, it’ll soon become your number one. Chick-fil-A has also always offered healthier alternatives to fries such as fruit cups and side salads.
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The Auburn Plainsman is published in print weekly every Thursday. We can be found online at ThePlainsman.com.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
The Auburn Plainsman
Fizzes, Old Fashioneds featured at Avondale Bar & Tap Room Abigail O’Brien Community Reporter
The new bar located on North College offers a classic and upscale option to Auburn’s night life. Avondale Bar and Tap Room sits above the University Barber Shop, its narrow black staircase entrance positioned in between the barber shop and Wrapsody. Hardy Gilbert, owner and Auburn alumnus of ’93, said he wants the bar to be known for its classic cocktails and timeless feel rather than specific tailored drink specials. Gilbert said they want to expand the customer’s horizons. “You create a drink menu, and then people come in and that’s all they tend to order,” Gilbert said. Avondale wants to cater to the customer’s past and current preferences. “What do you like to drink?”Gilbert said, exemplifying how they want to help customers make decisions. “What kind of liquor do you like to drink?... Do you like something really sweet, do you like something tart and sweet, or do you like something that’s not sweet at all? Do you like something with fizz in it? Do you like something on the creamy side? All those little things: we want to encourage conversation and a dialogue with the customers.” The classic ambience of the bar is supported by the black and white decorations, Coronado Jukebox that Gibert said will soon be able to play 45 record singles, dim lights and sharply dressed bartenders. There are TVs, but they are hidden behind cabinets and only turned on by request, Gilbert said. Avondale also never has live music, so customers need not worry about a cover charge.
raye may / photo editor
The Princess Leigh Cheri and an Old Fashioned are examples of Avondale’s timeless feel and new concoctions. Gilbert has been working on the idea of Avondale since March 2011 and said the area used to be an empty loft. He had previously been toying with the idea of opening a restaurant. “I was overhearing some friends who are my age and they were all talking- it was about 10 o’clock on a Tuesday night and they were like, there’s no place for them to go and drink that they didn’t feel too old…And I said, ‘Forget the kitchen,’ and I was like, ‘Forget the restaurant, just do the bar.’ And that’s how the whole thing started.” They have recently started making ‘fizzes,’ which are cocktails made with egg whites, Gilbert said. One such fizz is their Sloe Gin Fizz, made with Sloe Gin, fresh squeezed lemon juice, simple syrup, egg whites and seltzer water. The fizz is stirred until the straw stands up straight in the cocktail glass, Gilbert said. Justin Strawn has been bar-
tending for 18 years, and said he was looking for a place to work that would emphasize the quality of the drinks. The Princess Leigh Cheri tastes like a creamsicle and is named after one of his favorite characters in Tom Robbin’s “Still Life with Woodpecker,” Strawn said. The drink is made with equal parts vanilla vodka and Solerno Blood Orange Liqueur, with a splash of PAMA Pomegranate liqueur. Avondale also offers an Old Fashioned: two slices of orange, a Bordeaux cherry that is muddled with a sugar cube, a full shot of bourbon of the customer’s choice, soda water and ice. For Strawn, bartending involves a great deal of inventing. “In a way, it’s kind of weird to say, but I kind of consider myself a little bit of an artist when it comes to making drinks.” Strawn said he feels Avondale has been well-received by the Auburn crowd and said he likes the mix of older and younger people who come in.
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The Auburn Plainsman
Thursday, February 14, 2013
We Love Our Students We are handing out free flowers across campus today to the first 100 customers at select venues. Will you be a lucky one? Happy Valentine’s Day from Tiger Dining! The first ten people to tweet “Happy Valentines Day” to @TigerDining will win a free meal!
auburn.edu/dining
@TigerDining
courtesy of Pressed Juicery
The cleanses offered by Pressed Juicery work to counteract the rate at which the digestive system works to break down all the foreign toxins and hormones food puts into your body.
Juice cleanses aren’t just a fad Sydney Callis Community Editor
Put your juicers away folks, there’s a company for that. Pressed Juicery, based in Los Angeles is a company specializing in juice. The company, which boasts 30 different flavors, creates healthy juices, offers juice cleanses and sends them all to your doorstep. Carly Brien and two of her friends, Hayden Slater and Hedi Gores, began Pressed Juicery because their lives were changed by juicing and eating healthy, and juicing wasn’t accessible to that many people. “Most people in their daily diets are eating a lot of foods that aren’t necessarily good for them,” Brien said. “It’s toxic and they kind of build up in your system over a lifetime of kind of eating foods that are heavily processed. People eat things that are harder to digest.” The cleanses offered by Pressed Juicery work to counteract the rate the digestive system has to work to break down all the foreign toxins and hormones food puts into your body. “The cleanse is an opportunity to take a few days give your
digestive system a break from all the work it does on a daily basis,” Brien said. “It’s pure vitamins and nutrients that go into your blood stream so your body doesn’t have to do very much work. What normally happens is after a couple days your body actually starts detoxing some of the toxins inside. You’re giving it a chance to rest.” Brien said there are many pros to allowing your digestive system the chance to take a break if you do decide to participate in a cleanse. “The benefits of doing that are everything from people saying they lose weight, they feel mentally clearer, they have clearer skin, they just feel generally better generally all around,” Brien said. “Maybe not necessarily the first day of doing it, but it inspires a change in lifestyle because they feel so good they start eating healthier, and it’s like the domino effect” However, whether a cleanse is right for you or not, Brien said having one juice a day can still help in the process to improving your health. “We recommend starting the day with a Greens juice be-
cause they give you a lot of energy,” Brien said. “If you want all your juices for the day to be Green juices, that’s great. A lot of people prefer to have a little bit more variety so we can throw in something with beets and carrots or pineapple and coconut water, things that are refreshing.” The full menu of juices is available online and Brien said a benefit to ordering the juices from a company is a way to guarantee great flavor. “My favorite juice in our Greens 3, which is kale, romaine, cucumber, spinach, celery, apple and ginger,” Brien said. “Our juices are packed with flavor. We take our recipes really seriously. We want our juices to taste good. We want people to enjoy them.” Pressed Juicery products can be purchased off their website, pressedjuicery.com through a variety of order packages including kits and cleanses. Pressed Juicery ships nationwide. “Make sure you can check with your doctor and make sure you’re healthy and then go for it,” Brien said. “It’s not as hard as it seems.”
Thursday, February 14, 2013
The Auburn Plainsman
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Emily Brett / freelance graphic artist
Melody Kitchens Special Sections Editor
When Ali Maloney, The Overall Company’s artisan pop maker, first thought of a specialty dessert for The Overall Co., gelato was the frontrunner. Yet after seeing pops gain popularity, she jumped on board. After about a year of research, searching for the perfect pop maker and taste-testing endless flavors, Maloney is making business boom for The Overall Co. February 13 marked the beginning of construction for the upcoming pop factory at The Overall Co. In a couple of months, the old fur vault room will be turned into a Willy Wonka-inspired pop factory with more flavors and dipping stations. Currently The Overall Co. sells approximately 200 pops a day, but with the soon-to-come factory and the now-available wholesale option, the numbers will continue to rise, as well as The Co.’s popularity and success. All photos by Raye May / PHOTO EDITOR. After all the ingredients are in the mixer, Maloney blends them together with the immersion blender.
The Overall Company’s most popular flavor is salted caramel dipped in chocolate.
Maloney makes all pops by hand, and said she will soon begin using organic sugar in the recipe.
She aligns the sticks, pours mixture into mold and places the pops in the machine for 20 minutes.
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The Auburn Plainsman
Thursday, February 14, 2013
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Thursday, February 14, 2013
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The Auburn Plainsman
Chef McDaniel sticks to his roots with SpringHouse Robert E. Lee Editor-in-Chief
A year ago, Auburn graduate Rob McDaniel was competing against chef Bobby Flay in Food Network’s “Iron Chef.” Now he’s serving up fresh and seasonal cuisine as executive chef for the SpringHouse at Lake Martin. Originally from Haleyville, McDaniel graduated from Auburn in 2002 with a bachelor’s degree in hotel and restaurant management. “I started cooking about a year and a half before I graduated,” McDaniel said. “First I was at Ruby Tuesday’s and then Amsterdam Cafe, and I changed majors to hotel and restaurant management and knew that I wanted to go to culinary school. I just loved to cook.” After spending five years on the Plains, McDaniel attended the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont. After the two-year program, McDaniel moved to Birmingham. He said finding a place, and a chance, to work was not easy. “Long hours and working for free a lot of times, which nobody does anymore,” McDaniel said. “I washed dishes, reupholstered chairs—I did a lot of stuff for free just to be able to learn at restaurants.” McDaniel worked as a sous chef for Chris and Idle Hastings at Hot and Hot Fish Club after moving back to Birmingham. He competed on Hastings’ team on Iron Chef in February of 2012.
McDaniel now spends his time at SpringHouse at Lake Martin and said he wants his cuisine to be seasonal, fresh and simple. “We’re not going to serve tomatoes in December because tomatoes aren’t any good in December,” McDaniel said. “There is a season for everything and that’s when it needs to be served. We don’t complicate things. We don’t do a lot of sauces and stuff. I want people to taste the food for what it is, not a bunch of sauce and that stuff. If you’ve got great ingredients and they’re at the peak of their season then they should speak for themselves.” His philosophy on fresh food not only means locally grown and in season, but organic when possible. “Organic has become a very widely used term in the last couple of years,” McDaniel said. “Organic is good, yes, I would prefer local farmers who I have a relationship with. A lot of what I do these days is not necessarily cooking, it’s building relationships with farmers and fisherman and cattleman and things like that.” He said opening a restaurant in Auburn would be much different compared to what he has encountered thus far. “With it being a college town, it would probably be different,” McDaniel said. “I’d love to have a place in Auburn that was part bar, part just good food, but small bites and simple and fast and focus on local ingredients, but affordable.”
courtesy of rob mcdaniels
Auburn grad Rob McDaniel is the executive chef at SpringHouse.
English major, member of ROTC hopes to start food truck Anna Beth Jager Intrigue Reporter
Katelyn Reed hopes to one day start a food truck business that makes delicious, golden, melt-in-your-mouth crepes of all different flavors and ingredients. She’s also a senior in English and is a part of ROTC. “We’re taught that army is a lifestyle, but you know, I’d like to see myself being pretty diverse,” Reed said. “I’m very interested in cultures and what builds a culture, and I think a lot of times for people, the family of it all is in the food.” The Huntsville native hasn’t always been a fan of cooking, however. “My mom was always into cooking,
and I hated cooking when I was younger, basically because of all the dishes,” Reed said. “But as I got older, I really got into the culture of cooking. When I got to college, I wasn’t poor, but I was definitely living on a budget, so it encouraged me to get creative with what I had.” Reed’s father was in the military, and she spent a lot of her time in Germany. “Crepes are pretty big (in Germany). When we say crepes, we’re talking dessert crepes, Texan crepes, Thai crepes, anything and everything.” Reed said she likes to know what is going into her food, and this spurred her decision to cook heathier foods for herself and her friends, which inspired
her idea for a crepe food truck. “I guess the idea for the crepes came from the food trucks craze right now,” Reed said. “Plus, I have a guilty pleasure of watching the Food Network all the time so I thought, well, maybe I could start something off with a food truck, and it’s smaller, reasonable portions. If you eat things that you really enjoy and that are made well, you’re not going to overeat or feel unsatisfied.” Food trucks are just the first step in Reed’s dream, she said she hopes to eventually expand from food trucks to something a little bigger. “The goal is to eventually have a bed
and breakfast, or something like that. Like I said, it really depends on where we go with it, what kind of things succeed, and what part of the business works. So you know, that’s why I figured we should pick out a niche- something that we can do easily and quickly, and we can do a lot of variety in.” Reed will be joining the National Guard once she graduates from Auburn. “The National Guard is pretty much the same as the Army, but it won’t be my full time job. I’m actually going out to Fort Huachucha, Ariz., for military intelligence school, and then my unit will be back here in Montgomery.”
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The Auburn Plainsman
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Diet epidemic: slim chances to fix a heavy issue worse at the start of each new year. The word diet is no longer considered an aspect of a person's daily lifestyle, but instead, it is used to describe the cabinets, pantries and refrigerators across the nation that have been stocked with Special K bars, Slim Fast shakes and those delightfully dehydrated and vacuum sealed meals that are delivered right to your front door. Unfortunately, these commercialized, and sometimes, extreme diets are not permanent fixes, and most do not actually fix the problems that they claim to fix. In fact, diets that emphasize large amounts of protein (meat) while limiting other important food groups such as fruits and vegetables can actually promote future health risk. Similarly, diets like the Sub-
Martha Ryals Graduate student in nutrition
Diet books are conveniently stuffed in those cute racks at your local stores' checkout lines, or advertised in magazines, on commercials, on the radio, on billboards, in waiting rooms, in the grocery store isles, in gas stations, and for the sake of your and my sanity, I will spare you the extent of their presence on the internet. The South Beach diet, the Atkins diet, Jenny Craig, the Paleo diet, Nutrisystem, the Zone Diet, the Mediterranean diet, the 3 day diet, the cabbage soup diet (really?), the grapefruit diet (again, really?), I rest my case. There is a diet epidemic going on, and it seems to get
way diet and Taco Bell diet (not even joking), that promote repetition of the same foods or the same food group are typically unhealthy because they lack variety. Fast weight loss is really the main goal of these diets, which is what most Americans want. Though it may take several months to gain the weight, getting it off has to be “fast,” explaining why we gravitated toward slogans like "lose 10 inches in just two weeks" or "lose 30 pounds in six weeks!" Use of such phrases typically means an “extreme” approach to dieting such as: nothing but meat, no carbohydrates, nothing that cannot fit through a straw, no fat, no more than 700 calories a day, no this, no that. Most of these diets are simply limiting consumption of im-
portant food groups or calories to a level that causes the body to break down its own muscle and fat. Having dietary guidelines are more than acceptable; however, most diet’s guidelines are skewed. Examples of unacceptable practices, which can be found in some diets, are: no carbohydrates, limited allowance of fruits and vegetables, nothing but cabbage (you’d be surprised), high consumption of meat and meat products, extremely limited consumption of calories. Despite extreme dieting, everyone really can “diet” to lose weight using a healthy approach. We don’t have to rely on diet plans that forbid us from eating certain nutrients or food groups such as carbohydrates, for example. The whole point of a diet
should be to improve health and wellness as well as promote quality and longevity of life. Diet should not refer to a three or six week period of extreme food limitation or over indulgence with the only goal as weight loss. Your diet should be a daily effort to eat smart in order to improve or maintain health, not just to keep the scale under control. Being healthy is not a three week boot camp of food and calorie depravity, but instead is a daily commitment to choosing healthier foods and the stairs over the elevator. Commit to making small daily changes in the foods you eat. Making wise food choices takes time and practice, but in the long run, you’ll really learn to eat toward not just a fitter you, but a healthier you. What’s not to love about that?
We hope you enjoy this year’s Food Issue! Look for our other special sections this spring:
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