Just dug into the new batch of Peaberry from Boca. After the lessons learned with the August batch, I wasted much less coffee getting a nice shot. The trick seems to be keep the grind just a little too fine, then back off the tamp a little. I think I may want to lower the temperature on the PID just a couple degrees, though, and see how that changes it.
Today being a long run day, I thought it’d be good to do a slow cooker chili. Chili and pasta is good post-run food for me, and it’s nice to leave it cooking while I’m out running.
As always, it needs to sit before I really know what I think, but so far I I like it. With a small mod, I’m likely to do this one again. Recipe after the jump. It’s hot enough to mean business, but not so hot that all you can taste is fire. (more…)
So tonight, finding myself home alone without a good grocery supply in the house and knowing that Hard Times has a special on Chili Mac this week, I decided to walk down to Clarendon to grab a bite and watch people for a while. It turned out to be a much better evening than I expected.
I went to Hard Times for the vegetarian chili mac 3-way with tomatoes and jalapeños. It was stellar, as expected. Then I decided to roam the neighborhood a bit and grab a coffee. On my way to Boccato gelato, I passed Iota. Outside Iota, there was a woman standing around in a Halloween costume playing the fiddle. Naturally, I had to stop and listen, then ask why she was there.
I’m nearing the bottom of my bag of Boca Java’s espresso blend. This one has been really fantastic. Once I found the grind, every shot has been sweet. This is a really easy blend to work with. It’s also got the advantage of coming to my door in 8 oz. bags instead of 1 lb. It’ll definitely land in the regular rotation.
Now that you and I have opened our wallets to help AIG out of their troubled times, their management team needs to relax a little. Things have been stressful lately, y’know?. The smoking gun is there. In just which universe is this OK?
I really can’t say it any better than this right now. I seldom agree with Newt Gingrich. He’s a sloppy academic, a disgusting, reprehensible human being, and it’s stunning that he is not incarcerated. But he’s right on the money today.
My “desktop” machine has been a problem of late. I do most of my home computing on a Mac laptop and like it a great deal. My desktop machine is a tougher call, though. I like the Mac OS well enough to use it there, too, but Apple doesn’t sell the desktop I want. They offer either the all-in-one iMac, the underpowered mini, or the insane Mac Pro workstation. I want a machine in between the iMac and the Pro. Its purpose is to run server applications that I want to use on my LAN (along with serving as a development sandbox for my own stuff) and to be a virtual machine host so that I have a beefy and convenient place to try out new software that I don’t trust yet.
(more…)
This is available locally from Murky Coffee. Besides being relatively easy to work with, it’s what they use in house. This gives me a decent way to benchmark my equipment and technique against the best I can find around here. The batch I got was roasted 9/2. The first shot of the morning was one for the sink, but the second was really, really sweet.
What’s a little mystifying to me is that I liked my shot slightly better than the same shot at Murky yesterday. I have no explanation for this. It’s the same coffee. Their machine is much better. Their grinder is better. Anyone in that shop has much more trained, more consistent technique than I do. But somehow this morning’s shot was more to my taste than yesterday’s. Go figure. (To be clear, just in case this turns up in search results or something… theirs was excellent. Mine today just suited my palate a bit better and I’m not sure why.)
