Coffee Klatch

Two of my favorite cereals have always been Lucky Charms and Captain Crunch’s Crunch Berries. Yesterday I found out that there’s a new version of Lucky Charms where the pieces of cereal are berry flavored. It combines the best of my two favorites! It SMELLS extremely berry, but it doesn’t taste nearly as strong. In fact, the base cereal is not really any sweeter than the regular version. But it’s berry flavored with Lucky Charms marshmallows. Cool!

This morning Topher IMed me a link to a coffeemaker that just made me drool. It’s at Bed, Bath & Beyond, and it does EVERYthing! There are settings for almost everything and all you have to do is push a button. It grinds (conical burr), brews (filtered water), and even froths milk! All automatically!

The ultimate in super automatic coffee centers is here! One touch is all it takes to create the perfect cappuccinos, espressos and lattes every time. The Impressa Z5 only requires you to place a cup under the dual nozzles while it takes care of the grinding, brewing, frothing and steaming using 2 state-of the-art stainless steel-lined thermoblock heating systems and an 18 bar power pump. The programmable controls and a rotary dial allows limitless customized coffee creations. And a 32-oz. thermal container keeps milk fresh for up to 8 hours. It also features customizable coffee-strength settings, one-touch milk-frothing buttons, height adjustable spouts for short and tall mugs, 6-setting commercial solid steel conical burr grinder, electronic bean level sensor, funnel for pre-ground coffee, 96-ounce removable water tank with a 60 espresso capacity, a Clearyl water care system that removes all impurities from water before brewing and so much more!

The only problem? It’s $3,199!!

Check out this link to the Jura-Capresso Impressa Z5, and, while you’re there, pick me up one, also!

Ahhh… it’s hard to beat a nice, traditional Irish supper. Like anything else, I couldn’t take it EVERY day; still, the meal is rare enough to be a treat.

Tonight it was corned beef and cabbage and potatoes (your typical “boiled dinner). Add to that a loaf of freshmade Irish soda bread that I just made from scratch this afternoon, and you’re in business. Served with a glass of Killian’s Irish Red (the bottle says, “The official beer of St. Patrick’s Day”, even though I thought Guinness was, and I’d probably prefer that), and you’ve got a dynamite Irish supper!

Yum!

Starbucks is running a special promotion TODAY ONLY. Nationwide, they’ll be giving away FREE “tall” coffees between 10:00 am and Noon. If you like Starbucks coffee, get there before NOON today to get a free coffee! Woo-hoo!!

A nice thing about this time of year is that chocolate-cherry foods start appearing. Chocolate-covered cherries are easiest to find in early February. Ice creams with chocolate chunks and cherries are more common. Lots of great stuff like that.

Probably the BEST Little Debbie Snack Cakes I’ve ever had are the Cherry Cordials! The pink hearts are okay, too, but there’s just something about the cherry cordials that is mmm-mmmm!

Another couple weeks and they’ll be gone for a year, so get ‘em while you can!

After talking with a representative from a reputable coffee manufacturer/distributor, I’ve come to a conclusion that will astound many “coffee connoisseurs” who have always thought the opposite. If you’re buying coffee by the pound or 1/2 pound, you will probably get better results if you buy it ground instead of whole bean.

Whoa!! That’s smacking of heresy in the coffee world! But it’s true. Why? It’s the method of grinding.

There are three primary methods of grinding coffee because there are three basic types of coffee grinders: a blade grinder (this is what most people have), a flat-plate burr grinder, and a conical burr grinder.

By far the most common type of coffee grinder has a couple of blades that spin. You dump your beans in and hold the button down until you think it’s done grinding. Sometimes you can tell by the sound whether or not there are still any big pieces left floating around. The problem with this method? It chops or tears the beans, resulting in your grounds being all different sizes. Some pieces are larger (maybe an eighth or a tenth the size of a bean), while others are practically powder.

Burr grinders use spinning elements that crush the bean into pieces that are all the same size. The flat-plate grinder has one of these elements next to a flat plate (go figure!), while the conical burr grinder just has the spinning metal cones. The result of using a burr grinder is that you don’t get powder and chunks, yet you can usually control the size of your grind, thus making the perfect grind for whatever type of coffee you’re making.

When the pieces are different sizes, then the oils are not extracted at the same rate. Some are over-extracted, while other are under-extracted. This will greatly affect the taste of your coffee.

Speed is also a factor. Speed creates heat and heat burns off some of the oils, resulting in a less flavorful cup of coffee. Burr grinders tend to use lower speeds for better heat control, but there are some blade grinders that are built to have slower spin rates to help reduce the heat.

The most critical element in making a quality cup of coffee is first the bean, of course, but then it’s the size of the grind and the speed of the grind. Last is the extraction method, which affects the taste as much as the grind does. Even more, depending on how you’re brewing it. But back to the grinding issues….

If you only have a blade grinder at home, you just might have a better cup of coffee from getting it ground at the store or at the factory. Many packagers are now using a nitrous-mixture or vacuum packaging for bagging up their ground coffee. As long as the coffee is not exposed to air, it will stay fresh for a long time. Once you open it, the coffee will begin to get stale. Heat, moisture, light, and air will cause the coffee to lose much of its flavor in 7 to 10 days! Be careful about storing your coffee in the refrigerator or freezer, because it can pick up the odors of the things stored around it, plus frequent movement in and out will result in condensation in your storage container, and that would easily negate the benefit of the refrigeration.

The best solution? Buy your coffee right from the roaster and get it whole bean. Then use a conical burr grinder to grind only as much as you need for each day. Then use a cone-filter coffeemaker or French press to get the best cup of coffee possible.

If you don’t have a burr grinder, then take advantage of the roaster’s or store’s burr grinder and store it in an air-tight container. Don’t stir it up much and keep it someplace cool and dark. (Even better, get one of those cool vacuum coffee containers with a pump!) That should produce a noticable improvement in your coffee.

I‘d been planning on making more scalloped potatoes for the Student Appreciation Days at the library, but with the school closed today, I found myself up at 6:30 with nowhere to go, so I made potato pancakes for everyone. It’s a great German side dish that I like to use as a meal for brunch. These aren’t sweet pancakes; they’re more like hash browns, cooked with a little bit of onion and served with butter and salt. After working with several recipes over the years, I offer you my own recipe, a combination of ones I’ve found. It’s simple, yet VERY tasty! Feel free to cut out the section below and add it to your recipe cards.

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Ingredients

• 6 medium potatoes
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 5-6 eggs
• ½ cup flour
• 1 tsp salt
• bacon grease or oil

Steps

1. Grate the potatoes into a large bowl. Drain.
2. Add the onion, eggs, flour, and salt, and stir until well blended.
3. Over medium-high heat, melt bacon grease on large skillet.
4. Once pan is hot, use ¼-cup measuring cup to scoop potato mixture onto skillet.
5. Flatten (and round) with spatula until ¼-inch thick.
6. Flip when edges look cooked through and side is nicely browned.
7. Once the second side is browned and crispy, remove to a warm plate. Butter and salt.
8. Serve as soon as possible.

Makes about a dozen pancakes.

Source: Scott Pfitzinger, http://pfitzblog.royaltylinks.com/archives/2005/12/09/potato-pancakes/

Notes

• Potatoes really are juicy vegetables and they will generate juice in your bowl throughout the entire process. Drain or stir in as necessary.
• Potatoes also discolor quickly after processing. They will turn brownish in the bowl as you grate the remaining ones. This is perfectly fine and the pancakes will look normal when cooked.
• If you don’t like onions, try substituting onion powder. You won’t have to chew the vegetable, but you’ll still get some of the flavor which combines well with the potatoes.
• The eggs help hold the pancakes together; the eggs and flour are what make these different from hash browns. You can adjust the number of eggs to balance the moisture level to your taste.
• I typically double this recipe for the family, since everyone eats 5-6 apiece on average. If you don’t want so much, you can halve the recipe and it should work fine.
• While I suppose you could keep these on a warm plate and serve them to everyone at the same time, it seems to work better to just dole them out as they’re finished, allowing people to get them fresh and eat on their own. (This usually results in a line, since boys tend to eat faster than potato pancakes cook.
• Germans often serve this with applesauce. Beer would also be common, but coffee or juice is great if served as a brunch.

So, what beer would you say has the most famous commercials? Which of these quotes seems the most familiar to you?

• It’s Miller time!
• From the Land of Sky-Blue Waters
• Tastes great, less filling
• So tonight, tonight, let it be Lowenbrau
• Give me a light… Bud light!
• The beer that made Milwaukee famous
• Everything you always wanted in a beer… and less.
• Foster’s: Australian for beer
• It doesn’t get any better than this.
• The King of Beers

Want to take a quiz (only 10 questions) to test your beer slogan knowledge? Visit the Beer Slogans quiz at Bella Online.

And here’s a good Database of Beer Slogans.

So anyway, what beer commericials do you even remember? That’s a good sign of which are the most famous. I’d have to say that, in all deference to the others, Budweiser has the most classic and most memorable commericials. Let’s see… we’ve had the Frogs (Bud-Weis-Er), the lizards who reacted to the frogs, the Wazzup series (”True”), Cedric The Entertainer doing his dance thing (and sometimes spraying beer all over his date because of his dance), Leon the egocentric football player, the donkey who wanted to be a Clydesdale, and of course the classic Clydesdales! They’ve played football, thrown snowballs, and done all kinds of crazy things in the name of Budweiser. Plus, you KNOW it’s getting to be close to Christmas when you start seeing the Clydesdales pulling the sleigh through a winter town, with the Christmas lights all lit and the classic Choral Arrangement of “When you say Bud, you’ve said it all” playing in the background! I heard that commercial from the kitchen this weekend and knew that the Clydesdales were back and it was officially Christmastime. (Isn’t it odd how the best Christmas commercials are all for beers?)

BeerHistory.com offers us Beer Commercials: A History, which provides a nice history of tv commercials for beers.

And if you want to see a GIGANTIC list of Beer Commercials (with downloads), visit http://home.tiscali.nl/beercollection/movies.htm

Budweiser’s own commercials can be found here: http://www.budweiser.com/wholesale/

Current music: Impressions of the Season, by The Raleigh Ringers

Looking for some good coffee that’s not too expensive? I would recommend Paramount Coffee to you. They used to be just a supplier of restaurants, etc., but now they’ve got a retail store online. Shipping’s pretty cheap and the coffees are GOOD! I recommend trying the Diner’s Choice, the German Blend, or the Kona Blend. Prices for 12-oz. bags are mostly between $5.89 and $6.49, which is cheaper than most that you’d buy in the stores (unless you buy the CANS of coffee–shudder!).

Current music: Swing 39, by Django Reinhardt

This just in: eating cheese can alter your dreams! More specifically, different kinds of cheeses can lead to different kinds of dreams. The British Cheese Board performed the study that led to these findings. You can read about it and listen to the radio story on NPR’s website.

Current music: Aphelion, by Amethystium