Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Running Out Of Sugar Can Be Good

(Okay, I set this minor post aside this morning to avoid burying my own lede -- as they spell it now -- but not every post I make is deep and not all of them discuss property rights in terms of underthings, either!)

Used up the last of the Sugar In The Raw yesterday and promptly spaced the purchase of more at gettin'-home time last evening.

So, oh, horrors, I am havin' to sip my fresh Silex-brewed coffee* with high-test sweet chocolate from the organo-mart dissolved in it an' will be enjoyin' mushrooms with scrambled eggs and bacon mixed in instead of oatmeal.

Sometimes it's okay to run out of a staple!
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* The Chemex is taking the week off -- ran out of filters and they're hard to come by. A vacuumatic is almost as good. (Edit: managed to pick up a box of filters -- and a bite of King cake! -- on the way to work. Yayy!)

3 comments:

Dr. StrangeGun said...

This morning I shoveled two scoops of JFG's latest attempt and let my whatever-it-is generic machine dribble hot water over it.

I can be a coffee snob at times, but most morning's it's quantity over quality :)

Usually I've got "experimental beans" and a container of chock-full-o-nuts around the house, the JFG was a stopgap measure...

Roberta X said...

Doc, I understand but IMNSHO, not startin' with a decent coffeemaker is like the fellow with zillion-dollar speaker on a bargain-basment amp fed by a dimestore media player....

Those plastic-and-pot-metal coffeemakers are impossible to get and keep clean enough, usually have the water too hot, and slow the flow down too much. The result is coffee that is a lot more bitter and cloudy than it should be. And after it's been cooked on the "warmer" for very long, it's swill.

My emergency-backup vacummatic (a Bodum Santos) has one plastic part, the little filter disc, which I scrub immediately after every use. The Chemexes are all glass. The stuff that they brew shines ruby-red in transmitted light and even at double-strength, you can read through it. It lacks the acrid bite of coffemaker brew and with really good beans (Jamacan Blue Mountain, when I can find it, when I can afford it) and pure water, the stuff tastes the way fresh-ground beans smell.

The problem is, it'll ruin you for anything else. We've got those high-end vendroids at work, the ones with the little packets of "designer" coffee; I'll drink it but I have to thik of it as a coffee-like drink. Most of the time at work I have tea instead; it's harder to ruin a good black tea and easier to carry one's own fixin'.

...With that in mind, I'm not sure if I am advising you to try a simpler coffeemaker or not; it can become an expensive addiction.

Dr. StrangeGun said...

Yeah, I understand about the cleaning part. But, I only brew two cups a morning, one's drunk immediately and you can spot me in the truck, regular old coffee cup in hand, toodling down the road taking a sip where there are no potholes.

Only spilled doing that once, I was pulling away from a stop sign and the truck did something really wierd, almost like a backfire. Rear wheels locked up, the whole nine yards. It's never done it again, and I haven't spilled my coffee :-D

As far as other stuff, I've got everything but a vacuum pot... filter cones, percolators, french presses, an espresso machine somewhere... Convenience trumps on a harried morning.

I've always thought of finding a vacuum pot though, once I have some spare cash. I've got radios to repair, a room to paint, and a doddge shadow interior to finish restoring first.