The path to a better Reuben

The Reuben has its roots in a Jewish-American delicatessen, no matter the telling of its origin. It didn’t come from the biblical character Reuben, nor the tribe that bore his name, but rather a man, owning one deli or another in New York or Omaha, who had the sandwich named after himself, or the deli he worked in.

The name of a sandwich is one of those things best left to the Food Network to discern. It’s mostly folklore and local pride that dictates which story is out there to believe. I’m a man who loves sandwiches, though, and I don’t care who invented them, so long as I can get the best version of the sandwich possible.

 The various components of a Reuben, when constructed properly, are actually quite healthy for the digestive tract. Rye bread, Swiss cheese and sauerkraut are all alive with probiotics. The other two components, corned beef and Russian dressing may be lacking in the health department, though they do provide much of the flavor.

All combined, they produce a deli favorite. I am of the opinion that a system, like a batting order, a production line or even a sandwich, is only as strong as its weakest part. With that in mind, what is the best Reuben we can make?

Bread

Rye bread, aside from being the nickname of every Ryan the world over, is a low gluten, high protein alternative to the traditional slice. It is common in Scandinavia, and is often mixed with wheat in the baking process. Rye doesn’t rise like traditional breads, and mixing in an alternative flour is a way to make an attractive loaf.
Russian dressing is based on a blend of mayonnaise and ketchup, seasoned with, perhaps horseradish or hot sauce. Depending on what you mix with the ketchup and mayo, it could end up as Thousand Island, if that gives you an idea where we are going.
Kraut seems like one of those things one makes fun of for being awful. At least, that was my experience. My grandfather made his own sauerkraut in the basement of their home on the leak, and it smelled worse than the fish cleaning cabin. That’s MY experience with sauerkraut, as it is with my cousins. I’m sure that most others in the world view it more positively.
Despite having "Swiss" in the name, there isn't much Swiss about Swiss cheese. It was invented in the United States and called such because it looks like Emmental, which actually is Swiss. At least it's modeled after something Swiss, which makes it truer to its name than Russian dressing.
Finally, here we are at the literal meat of the matter. Corned beef is not named after corn at all. Instead, it is kind of like the world’s first Spam. The “corn” in the name likely refers to the large salt granules used in the preservation process. Corned beef was brined and preserved for shipment overseas, turning corned beef into one of the first mass produced lunch meats.

That said, all rye flour makes pumpernickel, and Reubens aren’t generally made with pumpernickel. There are a lot of ways to make rye bread, and we will want to make sure we aren’t veering too far towards wheat bread. There are often seeds or other foreign bodies added to rye in order to give texture or accentuate the existing flavor.

There aren’t a lot of surveys as to the best rye bread in America, but there is one. Saveur, a food and travel blog, points to the rye from Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan as having the best deli rye, thanks to a crisp surface and punctuated with caraway and caramelized onions. In fact, Zingerman’s uses their bread on a housemade sandwich that includes Russian dressing. It sounds like we have our bread.

Russian Dressing

It’s tough to call any mayo-ketchup blend better than another, thought we can account for what is mixed in with those primary ingredients. Martha Stewart has a fairly tame version of the sauce, with only pickle relish, a dash of lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce, with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. This won’t get in the way of the other strong flavors in the sandwich.

Sauerkraut

I'm not entirely sure how anyone boiled cabbage, pickled it, smelled it and still decided it would be good for eating. It is just cabbage, though, and the fermentation process brings out some of the probiotic elements of the food. Intentional or not, sauerkraut is mostly good for you, even if it sounds like something you would eat on a dare.

Most research I have found says that authentic German sauerkraut is the best, but when you look at recipes for it, one of the elements of making authentic German sauerkraut is to remove the kraut from the jar. I know my grandfather, rest his soul, made it from scratch. I have the still singed nose hair to prove it. Lets compromise and say that the best kraut is from an authentic German market, which you would likely find in rural middle-America. Failing that, Kuhne barrel sauerkraut gets good reviews.

Swiss Cheese

The cheese, like sauerkraut, undergoes a fermentation process, in which the bacteria naturally endemic to cheeses consumes the lactic acid, which release gasses like carbon dioxide, which in turn cause bubbles late in the manufacturing process. When sliced, those bubbles look like holes.

The longer cheese is allowed to ferment, the larger the holes become, so you might think that the best cheeses are the ones with giant holes. Those don’t exist, though, not anymore. The federal government actually restricts the size of the holes, which is probably not a bad thing for a couple of reasons. First, the large holes don’t slice in industrial slicers, and second, you migght end up with a bunch of holes on your sandwich, instead of cheese.

The reason that the hole restriction is in place is that there is a theory, so far bearing itself out, that the bubbles initiate around imperfections and particles. Be grateful that the cheese is cleaner, but be sad about the reduced fermentation time. Unless you go to Switzerland, you aren’t going to find anything as pungent as Emmental in America any more. Choose your favorite deli sliced cheese, because the government caps how delicious it can be.

Corned Beef

There are two different styles, a richer Jewish variety, and a more briny Irish variety. For the purposes of a Reuben, there are two solid reasons to opt for Jewish style corned beef. First, regardless of the story behind the Reuben’s invention, it was created in a Jewish deli. Second, sauerkraut on rye with briny meat sounds unpalatable.

Regardless of the variety of corned beef, USA Today insists that the Detroit area is a hotbed of quality corned beef. For some reason, all the best components for a Reuben seem to be found in Lower Michigan. If you want the very best of this American staple, it sounds like you might just want to head to the Wolverine State

Iowa is not the team they were the year before

Last year, around this time I was treated to a game in Iowa City between the Drake and Iowa women's teams. Iowa has had a fairly decent run in the past couple of years, making the NCAA tournament the last 8 consecutive years, and they looked like the more capable team that night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

On Sunday, the tables were turned, and it was Drake that stymied the Hawkeyes. The game was in Des Moines, and the win was a 5 point victory for the Bulldogs, but it was still a sign that this Hawkeye team, despite some early season triumphs, is not nearly the team it's been in recent years.

Most Hawkeyes fans acknowledged that this season would be a bit of a let down after a veteran core graduated and moved on, but their work so far this season must be a disappointment. Not only have they lost to Drake, but dropped another game to South Dakota State, another opponent that the tournament committee won't be able to shrug off come selection time.

While much of the issue with the team can be attributed to the loss of some senior leaders like Whitney Jennings, some members of the team are not developing or contributing as much as Hawkeye's fans should hope. For every Tania Davis or Ally Disterhoft, who ARE contributing and excelling in their role, there is a Chase Coley, now a junior relegated to the end of the bench. Despite the talent level being lower with this iteration of the team, Coley has seen her playing time reduced, even after being the second leading scorer a year ago. Alexa Kastanek is another upper classman who has seen her role on the team reduced significantly, appearing for only 2 minutes in Des Moines, as her role has been reduced progressively since a 1-10 night against UCLA around Thanksgiving.

The game against Drake was a perfect example of a team still trying to figure itself out.  There were two sources of offense, Disterhoft and Megan Gustafson, who accounted for 44 of their team's 76 points. The rest of the team shot less than 28% from the field,, with the point guard Davis managing to only hit 1/9 in the field to lead the way. They obviously carried their frustration to other aspects, allowing 81 points to what should have been an inferior opponent. 

The Big Ten regular season will begin in a week, and Iowa's schedule will get much more difficult. A leader needs to emerge from within, otherwise this will be the most difficult season the Hawkeyes have faced in a decade. 

Aldershot, a happenstance that became a community

People go to Aldershot to do things. Not things like go to the movies or go to the pub, but they are sent to Aldershot with a purpose to serve. It's a fine place to live, but it isn't a hometown that developed organically. It wouldn't really be noteworthy unless the Crown had stepped in back in 1854, and while it is now a town of some renown, it is not a place many people fondly remember as the place from whence they came.
But Aldershot has meaning. It is the site to one of the largest military training grounds in all of the United Kingdom, and has been since 1854. Colloquially, it's known as the home of the British Army, thanks to its permanence, existing as an important garrison for 160 years. Before 1854, Aldershot had only about 1,000 people, but shortly thereafter, the population shot up to about 16,000.
Aldershot Town is home to only about 50,000 people, but along with the other towns and villages in the area, most notably Farnborough, the region is home to 250,000. There is no obvious nexus to the region, but like the garrison, other important institutions seem to gravitate towards Aldershot.
They host the biggest soccer team in the area (Aldershot Town) as well as being the host to the local cricket and rugby clubs. Most famously, they are home to the Aldershot, Farnham and District Athletics Club, a regional host to some of the best runners in the region. AFD has produced 10 Olympians, including three at the Rio games.
People go to Aldershot to do things. They go to the town because they have enlisted in the military, or they have joined an organization or club. Aldershot is thrown together as both a military town and the center of a conurbation. It is not a home town, but it is a community, with all the elements of this town, this happenstance, interacting as they do in any community.
The surest sign of a community's strength is how it copes with tragedy. The garrison was the site of a deadly IRA attack, when a bomb went off outside the mess hall in 1972, killing 7. The site is now home to a plaque honoring the victims, and the garrison continues, just as influential and important as it has always been.
Less than a month ago, the important elements of the town came together in a terrible tragedy. A still unnamed soldier, garrisoned in Aldershot, drank too much and got behind the wheel, ultimately striking and killing two young runners, 17 year old Lucy Pygott and 16 year old Stacey Burrows, members of Aldershot, Farnham and District as they trained for a competition coming later that week. Both had met some success on the competitive circuit, with Lucy winning a bronze medal in Tbilisi, Georgia in the European Youth Championships. Their status earned the attention of the greater athletics community of the United Kingdom, but their deaths gnawed at souls of their friends and family in Aldershot.
There were memorials covering the ground and fence near the accident scene, a procession by flashlight of loved ones and those there in support of the team and the girls' family. For all the mechanics that engineered Aldershot into the town it is today, it can't escape its inherent humanity.
People go to Aldershot to do things. Do things like come together and support one another

Russians were drugged, but we're the dopes

The Olympics are nothing if not a source of nationalistic pride, platform for individual accomplishment and home to dramatic achievements. They are also a microcosm of global politics and political aspirations, as well as a reflection of a nation’s status within the international community. The catastrophic run up to the Olympics in Rio have likely altered the type of nation that will be asked to host the Games in the future, but aside from that, no actual change will stem from these particular Games, as the Olympics will continue to remain a proxy for planetary ideology, rather than an agent for reform. They are a reflection of the world, not an influence upon it.

There is no country more isolated on the world stage right now than Russia. Even more reclusive China is starting to enter the global market, going so far as to deal with the ideologically disparate West, as well as more dependent local nations like North Korea and Mongolia. Russia, meanwhile, is at war with the Ukraine and within its own borders in Chechnya and Dagestan, and at odds with nearly every other country in the world over their appropriation of foreign lands and strong-arming dependent nearby nations. Other nations deal with Russia, but not willingly, and only if there are no other options.

It’s easy, then to figure why Russia might try so hard to show us how strong they are athletically. They want to remain a superpower, and they want the world to continue to respect them. Short of open warfare, the Olympics are the best measurement of competitive strength between nations.

It’s also not particularly surprising that Russia is lashing out at its Western nemeses now that wide ranging doping among its Olympic athletes has come to light. Whether or not there was culpability with the Russian government was immaterial. The IOC’s decision to ban many Russian athletes was a conspiracy by the Americans, in the eyes of the Russian state run media.

Evgeny Tishchenko wins gold

When the Games actually began, many more athletes were kept in suspense as to whether or not they would be allowed to compete. Those that did were lustily booed. In the heavyweight boxing gold medal match for example, Silver Medalist Vassiliy Levit of Kazakhstan had to admonish the crowd, as it was so hostile to Evgeny Tishchenko, the man who had just defeated him to win Russia a gold medal. This must have been a wakeup call to the Russians that were able to sneak out from under the purview of the ever watchful eye of Vladimir Putin’s government. Certainly, they couldn’t have anticipated the negative response from fans in Rio de Janeiro.

In 2014, when Russia was hosting the Winter Games at Sochi, their athletes were extremely successful. Of course, we now know that their athletes were artificially enhanced. While they were putting on a strong face for the athletic community, they were also occupying the Crimean Peninsula and waging war in the eastern Ukraine. The projection of strength on the athletic stage was a small scale manifestation of their geopolitical activity.

Following the suspension of their athletes and the pariah status of those that made it, the Russian government’s official response seemed to be petulance. There is the blaming of the West by the Russian government, and the lambasting of the IOC and WADA, the drug enforcement agency of international sport, by those that support the country. Those that still made it to the games continued to excel for their home country, though, with Russia still finishing in the top five in the medal count.

Will the international community’s dismissal of all those athletes, and the hostile crowd for those that competed humble Russia? Likely not. Will the success that the country achieved, despite the odds against them by the dismissal of so many top performers, embolden the country in the face of a world that has thumbed its nose at them? That seems a bit more suitable for Russia and Putin’s personality. /

The first sign that Russia is going to assert their strength rather than take their lumps is coming internally. There are several reports of the Russian government leaning on whistleblowers, trying to threaten those that have spoken out against the doping program, and there are even allegations of political assassinations of high ranking Russians that have testified against the Russian Olympic federation.

That is an obviously draconian response to the exposing of a sports scandal, further suggesting that this means more than simple athletic competition to the Russian elite. With any impropriety scrubbed from the Russian media, Putin and his government seem to have closed their grip on power and the good favor of his people, broadcasting a message of victimhood domestically in response to their failure to achieve their accustomed success during the games. The world, in the eyes of Putin’s Russia, cannot tolerate Russian strength, and is out to undermine the Russian people.

Vladimir Putin

Now Russia seeks to insert themselves into the international community once again. It appears as the Russian strategy has been to ingratiate themselves with nations that are also on the outs with the rest of the international community. They’ve sided with the regime in Syria and Turkey, who are both recently in the process of putting down coups and rebellion, but are generally ideologically different from each other in nearly every way, save for their functioning autocratic governments.

Another example of Russia’s insisting itself upon international hot spots occurred in the Arabian Peninsula. Since the games ended, Yemen, a long time foil to Western activity around the Red Sea, offered Russia use of its airports in an effort to fight terrorism. Of course, Yemeni terrorists have never really been much of a threat to Russia, but the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula is a strategically important part of the world that Russia will benefit from having a presence in, while Yemen can  thumb its nose at Saudi Arabia and her allies.

Russia gets to put forth a strong face and stand up to the IOC because they are such a strident contributor of resources and athletes, hosting the games twice and regularly sitting atop the medal count. Likewise in the real world. They can throw their weight around in the international arena because of their vast geography, and huge population. They have tremendous access to natural resources, notably gas and oil, which they can leverage in any negotiation with their neighbors in Europe.

They employed such a strategy to expand their coffers in headier times, however, Russia’s economy has taken a hit thanks to sanctions thrust upon them in the wake of the Sochi Games. Of course, it wasn’t the Games that resulted in the sanctions, but their concurrent actions in the Ukraine, and their annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. When Russia was freer to take independent actions, they could be more overt with their intentions.

These current troubles have forced Russia into a more coy international strategy. They are seeking other international outcasts like Yemen or Syria for some sort of gallows friendship. They have also come through the scandal with confidence and a sense of infallibility, given their internal political fortification and their athletic success despite limited access to the games. Russia has somehow come away from the scandal prouder than when it was before the news broke.

What seemed like a firm stance against the Russians, doesn’t seem to have had the desired impact. Usually, in the United States, we think that punishments are corrective and will encourage a change in behavior, but the outcry by the rest of the world only seems to have emboldened the Russians. It affirmed their course of action, rather than deterring it.  

Now we sit in October, with the Olympics long over, and our focus on other sports and other news. We have all but forgotten about this scandal in the West, but may revisit it in two years. You can believe that Russia won’t forget, and will stew until Pyeongchang. Not just the athletes, but the entire government.

Could North Dakota State compete in the FBS

Obviously, the Bison have consistently shown the talent to compete with FBS teams. Even this year, they've beaten the Iowa Hawkeyes, as if to drive the point home that good players want to spend the best years of their lives in Fargo. No, the question isn't "can NDSU beat teams in FBS?" because clearly they can. Can they actually compete?
In your mind's eye, of the Bison playing in FBS, what does that look like? Who is on their regular season schedule? What conference are they playing in? North Dakota State, as much as they are darlings every year because they manhandle Big Ten and Big 12 teams do not belong in the classes of either conference. The Big Ten has strict academic guidelines that the member institutions must meet, and NDSU does not meet them. North Dakota, ironically, is more closely adherent to those guidelines. The Big 12 is in rough shape, and if they can't decide on existing FBS schools to expand with, I can't imagine they would add an FCS team. Sure, North Dakota State might be able to put up a fight if paired with the big boys, the big boys won't want them.
In the Midwest, the go to "small conference" is the MAC, but that doesn't seem like a fit either. The conference is centered around the Great Lakes, and has chafed when trying to add to that. UMASS opted to go independent, for example, and Temple and Marshall have elected to go to the American and Conference USA.
Conference USA is a troubling fit because the part of the USA it covers is the southeastern part. The nearest member school would be Western Kentucky. The Sun Belt is a southern conference and the American is splattered from New England to Florida to Texas, putting the nearest member in Cincinnati.
The only really good conference is the WAC. Wyoming is as close as NDSU is going to get to a natural rival, and the conference aspires to contention. They have a membership base of teams in isolation, from Wyoming to Boise to New Mexico, and they have the budget to support those travel expenditures. The conference is full up, and may ultimately put one of its member teams in the Big 12. That would be the best situation if NDSU ever wanted to make a move up.
I don't think the Mountain West is looking to make that move, even if North Dakota State is. For the time being, I guess the Bison will be left to crush the competition in FCS.

Hello, and welcome back to the future

Here is a fun thing that is happening in my life. As of this week, I will be moving all of my Twins content to Twins Target, which is hosted by NESN. In an effort to save some money, I will be moving all of my other content back to Blogger. I could go back to the Victoria Times, but dammit, I spent too much time putting together that Rhino and Compass logo. Anyways, if you come for the Twins talk, I suggest you go to www.TwinsTarget.com, but if you are just here for me, then I suggest you keep your dial on therhinoandcompass.blogspot.com.