the food rant thread

[barakta]

Ok, four minutes later and I've found the "beyond lesbian biscuits": http://www.thisisbiscuit.co.uk/contact-us/

I know the editors of this esteemed publication... 

Bisexual tea is whatever you want it to be, we don't force people into any definition. If you have the potential to like tea in any way shape or form you can identify as bisexual

[CAMRAMan]

My Monsoon Malabar beans cost £4.50 for 1/2lb. I get about 10-12 cups out of each bag...

Only 10-12 cups? Really?

I like a good, stiff one...

[ian]

I buy my coffee from the station when I'm getting the train – it's an independent place and I'd rather give them my cash than the usual chains. It gives me a good twenty extra minutes in bed and let's me drink the coffee at my leisure on the train rather than having to chug it down and run out the door. Mornings are a stormy ocean, and caffeine is my life raft.

Alternatively, set a routine where getting the brew going is an early task then pour into an insulated cup and take it with you. Your coffee, the way you like it at far less expense to yourself. By the end of the year you have probably saved enough money for N+1.

I'd have to be a lot more organised than I am. I'm not allowed to touch anything that involves electricity before 9am. I have to wander around in padded mittens to stop me breaking things (the mug avalanche of 2007 won't be forgotten, at least by my wife it won't, but seriously there's two of us, why do have an entire cupboard full of precariously tessellated mugs?) My travails in the an early morning kitchen are like an Indiana Jones adventure, if Indiana Jones were a lot more clumsy. Plus I'd need to remember to set up coffeebot and ensure she was correctly watered before I go to bed. It wouldn't be the first time I've forgotten to fill the bean hopper or to add water (occasionally both). Truth be told, I have more money than I have time, so lazy options appeal.

It scares me in NYC though because you can't just order coffee. You have to order a convoluted drink perfectly, machine gunning the barista with syllables as you order your nofatlattefrappichinomochabarranowithhalfnhalfandhazlenutsyrupandsplendalukewarmventatogo. Frankly if you can rattle that off at 7am you don't need caffeine.

[contango]

I buy my coffee from the station when I'm getting the train – it's an independent place and I'd rather give them my cash than the usual chains. It gives me a good twenty extra minutes in bed and let's me drink the coffee at my leisure on the train rather than having to chug it down and run out the door. Mornings are a stormy ocean, and caffeine is my life raft.

What I used to do was prime the coffee machine before going to bed, then when I got up I turned it on and got in the shower. By the time I was out of the shower I had a cup of coffee waiting for me. Had time been really critical I could have had the machine make my coffee into a flask rather than a cup.

[contango]

I buy my coffee from the station when I'm getting the train – it's an independent place and I'd rather give them my cash than the usual chains. It gives me a good twenty extra minutes in bed and let's me drink the coffee at my leisure on the train rather than having to chug it down and run out the door. Mornings are a stormy ocean, and caffeine is my life raft.

Alternatively, set a routine where getting the brew going is an early task then pour into an insulated cup and take it with you. Your coffee, the way you like it at far less expense to yourself. By the end of the year you have probably saved enough money for N+1.

I'd have to be a lot more organised than I am. I'm not allowed to touch anything that involves electricity before 9am. I have to wander around in padded mittens to stop me breaking things (the mug avalanche of 2007 won't be forgotten, at least by my wife it won't, but seriously there's two of us, why do have an entire cupboard full of precariously tessellated mugs?) My travails in the an early morning kitchen are like an Indiana Jones adventure, if Indiana Jones were a lot more clumsy. Plus I'd need to remember to set up coffeebot and ensure she was correctly watered before I go to bed. It wouldn't be the first time I've forgotten to fill the bean hopper or to add water (occasionally both). Truth be told, I have more money than I have time, so lazy options appeal.

It scares me in NYC though because you can't just order coffee. You have to order a convoluted drink perfectly, machine gunning the barista with syllables as you order your nofatlattefrappichinomochabarranowithhalfnhalfandhazlenutsyrupandsplendalukewarmventatogo. Frankly if you can rattle that off at 7am you don't need caffeine.

But it's more fun to go in on a day that you don't need to be anywhere in a hurry, look a bit bewildered, and ask for a cup of coffee. Then watch as peoples' heads start exploding. Chances are the first one will be the barista struggling to comprehend how anyone could ask for "coffee" when there are no fewer than 4,861 different variations on "a cup of coffee". Then the people behind you should start popping as you take more than 41 nanoseconds to rattle off your order and get out of the way.

[ian]

I'm sure I read an article the other day that said Starbucks had a billion or two drinks combinations. Waiting in the queue at the branch north of Penn Sq and I swear I heard them all. I miss American food ordering. I'd like a salad, but without the lettuce, tomato, and cucumber, and could I have the dressing on the side, but only a half portion, and can I get an egg with that, a dinosaur egg. I think the best one was: do you have things not on the menu? Now that's an opening gambit. The waitress nicely touchéd with a yes and left a nice big stretchy, lazy yawn of silence for the fiend to fall into. We got stuff and we ain't telling you. I like, when they reel off the thousand-and-one salad dressing options, or the beer list, to see how many times I can make them repeat it before they get murder eyes. It's all double-fun in NJ, because every syllable seems to be trying to pull itself out of a mud pit. Muggablubbgahbabubb they advise.

[mrcharly-YHT]

My Monsoon Malabar beans cost £4.50 for 1/2lb. I get about 10-12 cups out of each bag, so c.35p a cup. Adding the overhead for the machine and the electricity, say 50p a cup for something infinitely better than the mainstream coffee shops offer at >4 times the price. Plus, I actually enjoy the ritual of grinding the beans, tamping them and staring at my naked portafilter bottom as the juices flow. I spose Nescafe would be 10p a cup, but where's the fun (& flavour) in that?

Where do you order your cups of coffee from? Your (generous) costings for home coffee come to 85p per cup - If I buy a coffee at the station it is under £2. A freshly-made espresso is loads better than something lukewarm from a thermos.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I think the best one was: do you have things not on the menu? Now that's an opening gambit. The waitress nicely touchéd with a yes and left a nice big stretchy, lazy yawn of silence for the fiend to fall into. We got stuff and we ain't telling you.

That's wonderful. 

Of course having stuff that's not on the menu is probably enshrined in the Bill of Rights or the 104th Amendment, whereas back in the Union of Godless Communist Soviets, they had a menu but only stuff that was not on it. 

[jsabine]

My Monsoon Malabar beans cost £4.50 for 1/2lb. I get about 10-12 cups out of each bag, so c.35p a cup. Adding the overhead for the machine and the electricity, say 50p a cup for something infinitely better than the mainstream coffee shops offer at >4 times the price. Plus, I actually enjoy the ritual of grinding the beans, tamping them and staring at my naked portafilter bottom as the juices flow. I spose Nescafe would be 10p a cup, but where's the fun (& flavour) in that?

Where do you order your cups of coffee from? Your (generous) costings for home coffee come to 85p per cup - If I buy a coffee at the station it is under £2. A freshly-made espresso is loads better than something lukewarm from a thermos.

I read it as c35p for beans, plus c15p for overheads to give a total of c50p per cup - at which point 4x50p comes to c£2, tallying with your experience of station pricing.

(Certainly in That London I expect a double espresso to be a bit under a couple of quid and baulk at anything significantly higher, but milk-based drinks are normally well north of the £2 mark.)

[CAMRAMan]

Indeed. And don't forget that watching a bottomless portafilter holder ooze out a creamy shot is almost obscene.

[contango]

I'm sure I read an article the other day that said Starbucks had a billion or two drinks combinations. Waiting in the queue at the branch north of Penn Sq and I swear I heard them all. I miss American food ordering. I'd like a salad, but without the lettuce, tomato, and cucumber, and could I have the dressing on the side, but only a half portion, and can I get an egg with that, a dinosaur egg. I think the best one was: do you have things not on the menu? Now that's an opening gambit. The waitress nicely touchéd with a yes and left a nice big stretchy, lazy yawn of silence for the fiend to fall into. We got stuff and we ain't telling you. I like, when they reel off the thousand-and-one salad dressing options, or the beer list, to see how many times I can make them repeat it before they get murder eyes. It's all double-fun in NJ, because every syllable seems to be trying to pull itself out of a mud pit. Muggablubbgahbabubb they advise.

Ah yes, the endless variations on the theme. It's handy, especially if you want to keep the waitress on her toes. My local diner has a couple of really good waitresses who not only know what I like to eat but also like the rather unusual variations that I like too.

It makes such a nice change from a few places I visited in the UK where they seemed to consider the request to have an extra hash brown instead of a grilled tomato to be on a par with asking for my food to be served by 100 naked virgins riding unicorns. Sometimes this side of the water it seems unusual not to ask for a slight tweak to the standard menu items.

[contango]

My Monsoon Malabar beans cost £4.50 for 1/2lb. I get about 10-12 cups out of each bag, so c.35p a cup. Adding the overhead for the machine and the electricity, say 50p a cup for something infinitely better than the mainstream coffee shops offer at >4 times the price. Plus, I actually enjoy the ritual of grinding the beans, tamping them and staring at my naked portafilter bottom as the juices flow. I spose Nescafe would be 10p a cup, but where's the fun (& flavour) in that?

Where do you order your cups of coffee from? Your (generous) costings for home coffee come to 85p per cup - If I buy a coffee at the station it is under £2. A freshly-made espresso is loads better than something lukewarm from a thermos.

Only if the fresh espresso is properly made. I'd drink cold day-old coffee that I made myself in preference to the garbage often insultingly served as "coffee" in a heartbeat. Sometimes I wonder if restaurants are trying to defile the concept of "coffee" to the greatest extent imaginable. Just like stargazy pie from Cornwall seems to be little more than a jape to see just how far tourists will go in their quest to "eat local dishes", so "coffee" seems to be an increasingly foul concoction designed to encourage people to run screaming into the streets, never to return.

[Pingu]

Gah - my coffee mug's filter has fallen to bits 

[nicknack]

stargazy pie from Cornwall

Yum!

Or is that just me?

[ian]

Found some coffee beans in one of those hampers that people give you at Christmas. Hampers like that are, as far as I know, merely a mechanism to get rid of stuff that no one would buy otherwise, and charge a massive markup because they've put them in a box that you'll feel obliged to keep around the house for the next ten years because your wife thinks 'it might be useful.' Oh, pickled walnuts, how did you know, let me dash into the kitchen right now and serve them up! Usually I can salvage a bottle of wine from the desultory rewards and fortunately my appreciation of fine wine is calibrated by the fact I usually drink it out of a wine box. Sometimes I use a glass. I'm the person who gets excited in French supermarkets because I can buy wine in a carton.

So, yeah, coffee beans. I'm ain't one of them foo-foo types hereabout, forever over-excitedly spurting their crema over anyone within espresso range. I figure they can't be that bad, at worst the generic supermarket beans. I only ask that it be brown, strong, and caffeinated.

I figure wrong. This is worse than US conference coffee. It tastes and smells of nothing. Where did it go. These are beans of despair.

[Efrogwr]

Ian is not the only one who gets excited over finding wine in cartons!

[contango]

Found some coffee beans in one of those hampers that people give you at Christmas. Hampers like that are, as far as I know, merely a mechanism to get rid of stuff that no one would buy otherwise, and charge a massive markup because they've put them in a box that you'll feel obliged to keep around the house for the next ten years because your wife thinks 'it might be useful.' Oh, pickled walnuts, how did you know, let me dash into the kitchen right now and serve them up! Usually I can salvage a bottle of wine from the desultory rewards and fortunately my appreciation of fine wine is calibrated by the fact I usually drink it out of a wine box. Sometimes I use a glass. I'm the person who gets excited in French supermarkets because I can buy wine in a carton.

So, yeah, coffee beans. I'm ain't one of them foo-foo types hereabout, forever over-excitedly spurting their crema over anyone within espresso range. I figure they can't be that bad, at worst the generic supermarket beans. I only ask that it be brown, strong, and caffeinated.

I figure wrong. This is worse than US conference coffee. It tastes and smells of nothing. Where did it go. These are beans of despair.

Sir, I respectfully refer you to the second sentence of your own post. Hampers are a mechanism to get rid of stuff that no-one would buy otherwise. Sadly "stuff" includes the truly dismal coffee beans that nobody who knows anything about coffee would ever buy, but someone who knows someone who likes coffee might regard as a suitable gift. After all, it's in a hamper so it must be good, right?

Yeah, right.

[ian]

I know, I know. It was in a bag and said 'Guatemalan something or other' on the label. I figured the Guatemalans knew what they were doing. Possibly they did. I tried experimentally making a cup with about about eight scoops of beans in the grinder, and nothing. It looked dark and slightly dangerous, but tasted like hot water. In the bin it went.

[T42]

Guatemalans do know what they're at, but there's some [wilfully-]negligent sods between them & you.

[fuzzy]

The Guatemalans DO know what they are doing. That is why they export the shit as opposed to drinking it themselves

[spesh]

The Guatemalans DO know what they are doing. That is why they export the shit as opposed to drinking it themselves

See also most Australian and Leftpondian brands of lager... 

[ian]

I normally drink something called Guatemalan Pocohontas (or something like that) which I quite like. So imagine my disappointment. Then square it because it was Monday morning and I needed a good strong coffee hit.

[contango]

I know, I know. It was in a bag and said 'Guatemalan something or other' on the label. I figured the Guatemalans knew what they were doing. Possibly they did. I tried experimentally making a cup with about about eight scoops of beans in the grinder, and nothing. It looked dark and slightly dangerous, but tasted like hot water. In the bin it went.

The Guatemalans know what they are doing where coffee is concerned. At least some of their coffee is pretty good.

Sadly the marketing men also know what they are doing and know that if they put some truly tragic excuse for coffee in a bag, mark it "Guatemalan" and then - wait for it - place it in a hamper then some schmuck will be along shortly to pay through the nose for it.

[Efrogwr]

Have you discovered Himalayan Rock Salt yet? It's magic! It contains 84 essential minerals and elements that are essential to health!

I can't be arsed to count, but of the 94 naturally occuring elements in the Periodic Table are there not some that are not found on their own, are not "bioavailable", are toxic, are radioactive or are inert?

…or am I missing something?

[ian]

Weirdly, I have a big grinder full of Himalayan rock salt. I saw weird because I have no idea where it came from. OK, the Himalayas, obvs.

Doesn't make any other claims on the label though. Seems to be from Lidl. I've never been to a Lidl or the Himalayas.