Where Is My 8bit Mind?
Where Is My 8bit Mind?
The turkey on wheat that I order nearly exclusively when eating at Subway restaurants came for the first time with tessellated cheese. The cheese triangles that Subway uses are the perfect shape to alternate ends for maximum sandwich coverage. This pleasure was fleeting, though, as I soon realized Subway had a policy on cheese tessellation since July 2010. I now realize the disservice that has been done through months of un-tessellated cheese consumption. I won’t take it anymore.
This could not have come at a better time! I found this work flow chart at the Solany blog in a post on desk space management. Thanks to Sean for pointing it out.
That’s precisely what Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) suggested this week in light of decisions from two of the coffee industry’s behemoths to buy-up large portions of their would-be exports. The charge of stockpiling coincided with a request that U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk send a warning message this month during the International Coffee Organization meeting.
Stockpiling crops would add stress to an already burdened market currently experiencing prices at a 12-year high. The prices spiked in June due to poor crop yields in major coffee-producing regions. U.S. heavyweight J.M. Smucker Co. already raised prices of its Folgers and Dunkin’ Donuts brands. Others, including Tim Horton’s and Starbucks, have said they will absorb the cost increase.
“If it was just weather, there’s not much you can do, but it’s beyond weather. It’s people trying to manipulate the market. We want to stop that.”
Read more at BusinessWeek, New York Daily News and Seattle Times.
Cee-Lo Green, Atlanta-based soul singer and member of Goodie Mob/Gnarls Barkley, is releasing a solo album this October and he’s generating a considerable amount of pre-release buzz with his latest single, “Fuck You.” The song doesn’t take on the tone that one would expect with such a title. It’s sunny, catchy, and if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself singing this quietly in public.
I don’t only post about coffee. I like other things, too. In fact, I love beer. I love it so much I could probably start a tumblr about it, but it’d be far less coherent than what you find here. Like the coffee vids here and here, I recorded a homebrewing session with a buddy of mine over at DCBeer.com (find him here on Twitter). Andrew loves homebrewing and he’s quite good although he’d never tell you that. He did me a solid and brewed a bunch of SweetWater 420 clones for my wedding. It was spectacular.
This video is a Belgian Wit we brewed a couple weeks ago.
If you live in the D.C. area and love craft beer, The Big Hunt is the place to be Wednesday, August 25. The folks at DCBeer.com are hosting a kick-ass beer event featuring Flying Dog Brewery and Stone Brewing Company - Whaaa? Did your head just explode?
It’s called “A Bitch and a Bastard” and its a five-round tasting featuring your favorite Flying Dog and Stone brews. I’ll be there 8-10 p.m. then you’ll likely find me scarfing down Julia’s Empanadas next door.
I heard rumors a while back about a special line of Starbucks single-origin releases, but at the time didn’t pay much attention to the news. I guess I thought it was similar to the Clover release: some token of their culinary value that wouldn’t impact the majority of shops. Today, while stopping by the Starbucks on 15th and K Street in downtown Washington, D.C., I noticed something sitting on the back counter that caught my eye.
This company release indicates the Starbucks Reserve Single-Origin Coffees will be available in stores beginning August 31, and that they’ll be offered at select locations brewed through the Clover machine or as pour over. Apparently this location is in the game:
I have two initial thoughts on this. First, I question whether Starbucks will be able to train their staff to deliver a consistent, quality pour over. I’ve done pour overs for a couple years now and I still think I have a lot to learn before I’m consistently pumping out premium coffee. There are a lot of variables to account for - grind size, coffee amount, water heat, bloom time, pour style and flow-through rate. Even if this is released in select stores I’m not sure the Starbucks baristas will be able to pull this off every time.
The second concern I have is the company’s ability to reconcile a fast food consumer conscious with culinary coffee. Pour overs take time! And I’m not certain the woman grabbing a skinny vanilla latte on her way to the office wants to stand and wait while I’m watching my pour over brew. Will there be a special area for pour overs? Will it only be available during non-peak hours? We’ll see soon enough.
A while back I was given a journal to collect my wine adventures. I loved it, and for a while it was frequently updated to chronicle each conquest. But times do change and a number of factors led to its dicontinued use. Primarily, I moved. The same wine in D.C. may be $2-3 more than it was in Atlanta. I also lost my wine buddy, Nathan, whose participation not only enabled the purchase of higher priced wine, but whose culinary creativity led to the pairing of wine with Cheetos or intermediate swigs of Miller Lite to cleanse the palate.
I still plan to open the wine journal again. But in the meantime I’ve decided to keep a coffee journal to keep record of what I’ve had and how I’ve had it. This will also serve as an all around respository of all things coffeee - blog ideas, video production notes and the like. I’m recycling a Franklin Covey journal cover I had collecting dust. Filled with a standard journal it looks pretty good, and it even has the first two entries.
