Page 4C
East Oregonian
EAT, DRINK & EXPLORE
Saturday, July 21, 2018
COOKING ON DEADLINE
An hour of meal
prep on Sunday
sets you up for
a yummy week
AP Photo/John Minchillo
Shane Juhl, owner and proprietor of Toxic Brew Co., poses for a photograph at his taproom located in the Oregon
District, Tuesday in Dayton, Ohio. After experiencing its best days in the first half of the 20th century, Dayton is
reinventing itself with impressive results. Minor-league baseball, a riverside park and a cluster of craft beer pubs
are helping revitalize a downtown that had become frayed around the edges.
Wright Brothers’ hometown rises
again thanks to baseball and beer
By MITCH STACY
Associated Press
DAYTON, Ohio (AP)
— When I was growing up
in greater Dayton, Ohio, in
the 1960s and ‘70s, the city
already had been to the top
of prosperity hill and was
coasting down the other
side.
Early 20th century Day-
ton was a metropolis that
hummed with innovation
and commerce. Popula-
tion topped out in 1960 at
just over 260,000. After
that, the city gradually lost
families to the suburbs and
others left as manufactur-
ing declined and jobs evap-
orated. Downtown retail
operations moved out as the
population shifted.
By the time I left in the
early 1980s, Dayton —
and downtown especially
— was frayed around the
edges.
Moving back to Ohio
after three decades away,
I returned to Dayton and
found plenty of good stuff.
There was a minor-league
ballpark downtown, a
lovely riverfront park, peo-
ple out enjoying themselves
and a burgeoning craft-beer
culture.
Craft beer!
The place had become
kind of cool.
Understand, the econ-
omy here will never again
be what it was when mul-
tiple General Motors plants
provided thousands of jobs,
and National Cash Regis-
ter stood as a proud symbol
of grand homegrown com-
merce (the company took
its headquarters and 1,250
jobs to Atlanta in 2009).
Some parts of the city still
reflect the malaise, and opi-
oids in this region repre-
sent a serious public health
problem.
But efforts to diversify
Dayton, trumpet its rich his-
tory and make it a cleaner,
brighter, more interesting
place are working.
The city spruced up the
Great Miami riverfront,
creating a family friendly
downtown park. An old rail-
road freight house was con-
verted into a popular pub-
lic market. The city scored
a minor-league baseball
team — the Class-A Day-
ton Dragons — and put up
a fan-friendly, 7,200-seat
stadium.
Fifth Third Field has
sold out every single game
since it opened in 2000 —
the longest streak in any
professional sport. The
ballpark draws crowds even
though the Cincinnati Reds,
a Major League Baseball
team, play just 55 miles
away.
“Certainly this side of
downtown wasn’t doing
really well, and that started
to change around the time of
the ballpark opening,” said
AP Photo/John Minchillo, File
In this May 17 file photo, visitors and period re-enactors gather beside the Mem-
phis Belle, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, on its first day of public exhibition at the
National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near
Dayton, Ohio.
Alan F. Pippenger, whose
venerable family business,
the Requarth Lumber Co.,
is situated just beyond the
left-field foul pole of Fifth
Third Field. The Requarth
building has been there so
long that the Wright Broth-
ers visited to buy lumber for
their early flying machines.
When Pippenger came
back to Dayton to take over
the company in 1985, one
of the only places to get
lunch was the basement
snack bar of the Sears store
down the street. There are
way more choices now. And
more people around.
New restaurants and bars
have opened up around the
ballpark. Closed factories
and warehouses have been
converted to sleek apart-
ments that are snapped up
as fast they’re built. Con-
struction equipment down-
town has become a famil-
iar sight.
Dayton also boasts a res-
ident philharmonic orches-
tra, 2,300-seat downtown
performing arts center and
a nationally recognized
art museum. Not bad for
metro area with just around
800,000 people, including
140,000 in the city itself.
Here are five more rea-
sons why Dayton is a hap-
pening place:
THE WRIGHT STUFF
The city’s favorite sons
are Wilbur and Orville
Wright, who built the first
airplane in their bicy-
cle shop and, after mak-
ing the initial powered
flight in December 1903
at Kitty Hawk, North Car-
olina, came home to Day-
ton to work the bugs out.
A memorial stands at Huff-
man Prairie, where they
made flights in 1904-05
and really learned to con-
trol the plane. Don’t get us
started on claims that any-
where else is the “birthplace
of flight.”
AP Photo/John Minchillo, File
In this March 2017, file photo, Providence’s Jalen Lind-
sey (21) and Southern California’s Chimezie Metu (4)
vie for the opening tipoff of a First Four game of the
NCAA men’s college basketball tournament in Dayton,
Ohio.
music.
MORE AIRPLANES
The National Museum of
the U.S. Air Force is one of
the greatest museums in the
country and a stop on the
“Dayton Aviation Trail,”
which includes many of the
Wright sites. The museum
attracts about a million vis-
itors a year and has on dis-
play such national treasures
as a Wright 1909 Flyer, the
Air Force One that brought
President John F. Kennedy’s
body back from Dallas, and
the newly restored World
War II bomber “Memphis
Belle.”
THE
OREGON
DISTRICT
The center of residential
life in Dayton’s formative
years, the historic Oregon
District has some lovingly
preserved buildings and
homes. Fifth Street now is
a hipster haven, lined with
bars and restaurants and
a great place to see live
GOOD BEER
Craft beer has become
the next big thing, with
at least a half-dozen bars/
restaurants and four brewer-
ies opening within a mile of
each other near Fifth Third
Field, part of the Dayton
Ale Trail. Besides sublime
local brews, many of the
places have excellent eats.
FIRST FOUR
March Madness begins
every year with great fan-
fare in Dayton. First Four
play-in games of the NCAA
Tournament have brought
the national spotlight to the
city for the past 18 years.
The event is well-supported
locally as eight potential
Cinderellas play at Univer-
sity of Dayton Arena for the
chance to break into the big
dance. The second night of
this year’s First Four set a
new attendance record for
the event.
Sarah E. Crowder/Katie Workman via AP
This November 2016 photo provided by Katie Work-
man shows food being prepped for a meal in New
York. One hour of meal prep on Sunday can make
life easier and more delicious all week long.
By KATIE WORKMAN
Associated Press
What if you had a prep
cook in your kitchen? A
sous chef who made sure
that all of the slicing and
dicing and mincing and
zesting was done for you,
so that when it came time
to make dinner, all you had
to do was wash your hands
and start cooking?
Most of us aren’t going
to get this in our lifetimes.
But what if we took an
hour on Sunday evening
to be our own prep cooks,
and make life easier all
week long?
Yes, you can buy many
of these items pre-cut —
but since they’ve been cut
days before, even as you
take them from their bags,
you can see some brown-
ing or dryness or aging.
When you prep the ingre-
dients yourself, you have a
better shot at a longer shelf
life, and you know exactly
how fresh they are.
If you are a meal plan-
ner, already aware of
which recipes you plan to
make for the week, then
identify the ingredients
that can be prepped ahead
of time, add them to your
shopping list and get them
into recipe-ready shape.
But if you aren’t quite
sure what you are making,
then you can still be your
own best friend by prep-
ping a bunch of ingredi-
ents you likely will call
into duty.
If you have a food pro-
cessor, this task just got
easier, as you can pulse
everything up, small
batches of one ingredient
at a time, and have your-
self an arsenal of prepped
ingredients at the ready.
Keep all of your prepped
items in tightly sealed con-
tainers in the fridge.
Here are some sug-
gestions: ingredients that
make frequent appear-
ances in my kitchen. But
you’ll determine the ingre-
dients you most often use.
MINCED GARLIC:
This will last for up to a
week in the fridge, and
mincing it yourself is
much better than buying a
jar of pre-minced.
MINCED
SHAL-
LOTS: If you don’t cook
with
shallots,
please
reconsider. They are a bit
of a cross between onions
and garlic, but they have
a mild sweetness as well.
Use about half the amount
in any recipe that calls for
onions, and twice as much
if you are subbing them for
garlic. Shallots are perfect
in vinaigrettes.
CHOPPED OR SLIV-
ERED ONIONS: How
nice to get any onion-in-
duced crying out of the
way in one fell swoop. I
usually sliver one onion
and chop a couple.
BIG
CARROTS
PEELED AND CUT
INTO STICKS: Keep-
ing them as sticks means
you can munch on them
throughout the week, or
if you need them chopped
for a recipe later, you are
halfway there.
CITRUS ZEST AND
JUICE (LEMON, LIME
AND/OR
ORANGE):
Use a grater (a Micro-
plane is good) to remove
the brightly colored outer
layer of your citrus fruit
and store that in a tiny bag
or container. Then juice
the fruit and strain the
juice into a container. Both
items will lend a welcome
bit of brightness and fresh-
ness to recipes of all kinds,
from soups to sauces to
salad dressings.
BROCCOLI
OR
CAULIFLOWER FLO-
RETS: You might simply
roast or saute these later
in the week, or use them
in stir-fries or soups, or
lightly steam them and use
in pastas and salads.
CHOPPED
PARS-
LEY: Useful in dishes and
as a finishing bit of fresh
herbiness on all sorts of
foods, especially hearty
stewed and braised ones.
Other fresh herbs are less
sturdy, and to get a head
start on those just pull the
leaves off, fold them into a
slightly damp paper towel,
and store them whole. If
you chop them they will
blacken in a day or two.
COOKED
CRUM-
BLED BACON (DON’T
JUDGE ME): A little con-
tainer of this is like gold,
perfect to top off a soup,
add to potato or pasta sal-
ads, stir into a frittata —
there are more ways to use
cooked, crumbled bacon
than can be mentioned in a
few sentences!
GRATED CHEESES:
Yes, you can buy some
pre-grated cheese, and you
should definitely do that,
but sometimes you want
to grate your own Parme-
san, or you need a grated
cheese that’s not as easy to
find, like fontina.
Week to week, your
list of pre-cut foods will
vary. Sometimes it might
be sliced radishes or
cubed butternut squash
or chopped celery. It
depends what recipes are
in the forecast, and also
what ingredients are in the
fridge and begging to be
used.
So, next Sunday, pour
yourself a glass of wine
or make a mug of tea, put
on some music and pay it
forward. Your Wednesday
self will thank your Sun-
day self shortly.
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