I just got back from the opening event of Naturally Boulder Days 2008, the Biodiesel Bus Tour. For now, I will give you a quick overview of our three stops, but look forward to more detailed posts in the future.
Stop #1: Bud Peterson’s Xcel Smart Grid Home
While admittedly, this has nothing to do with food, I can say that I have seen the future of energy consumption. Basically, everything in the house is hooked up in such a way that power consumption can be monitored through a simple web interface. Want to know what items are consuming the most power? Want to control your thermostat from anywhere in the world? How about sell power back to the grid? You can do all of those things, and more. Pretty neat.
Parked out front? A gas/electric SUV that gets ~100 mpg in the city, 54 overall. Crazy right? The gas motor doesn’t kick in until ~30 mph. Average cost is 4 cents per mile, vs. 25 cents for it’s gasoline powered equivalent.
Stop #2: Udi’s Bakery
Udi’s is the premier artisan breadmaker in the Boulder / Denver area, producing around ~6000 loaves of bread per day, all custom ordered. Primarily, these are sold to farmers markets and local restaurants (none of their bread is shipped outside the Boulder / Denver area).
We were allowed to don lab coats and hair nets to tour the inside. The whole concept of starters is new to me, but apparently it’s the base that will be mixed with the dough. The acidity, texture, and crust are all affected by the starter, which is left out to ferment and develop into a leavener. Below is a video of me touching a few of the “starters” they had laid out.
No, these will not be made into bread - just samples for us to play with! On the way out, we all received loaves of bread (not to mention the FANTASTIC box lunches, from Udi’s catering biz, we hate beforehand)! I wrote down a ton of other interesting facts about the company, which I will turn into a more detailed post in a few days.
Stop #3: Seth Ellis Chocolatier
By the way, their products are all organic and they do lots of private label orders (you know, in case you want to impress hundreds of guests with your own custom chocolate bars).
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Sounds like a very enlightening tour! One question - in your description of Stop #2 (the bakery), when talking about the box lunches, did you mean to say “we ‘hate’ beforehand”? It seemed like “hate” was a typo - maybe we “ate” beforehand? Not sure though. Just thought I’d mention it.
Keep up the good work!
Indeed. ‘Ate’ it is.