bread, coffee, chocolate, yoga

the panama finca hartmann

2009-03-11T06:29:00.002-08:00

the last few days i've been enjoying oren's panama finca hartmann, a lovely sweet coffee that's very bird-friendly. it's a just a nice morning eye-opener with a splash of half-n-half.

living here in brooklyn, many of the songbirds we enjoy in prospect park winter in different parts of central america. so bird-friendliness there actually affects my life here a great deal.

highly recommended.

and of course thanks to all who have sent this news story to me. you might as well insure your coffee palate for a million bucks, sometimes it seems like it's that hard to cultivate, and you have to sacrifice so much. . .i know, you just have to force me to cup coffee, right?

2,000 internet readers, who've known me for years, have just fallen outta their chairs in hysterics. . .

cuppin' da mermaid

2009-02-18T18:12:00.005-08:00

you know a class act when you see one, and a long time class act's always been buzzy o'keefe of the swanky river cafe & the super-swanky water club. this afternoon he hosted a most unusual event in the most elegant surroundings: a cupping of the mermaid's new instant coffee. (don't worry, it won't be replacing buzzy's unique and extremely fine mocha-java from don schoenholt's gillies any time soon.)

so this cupping's put together by a nice girl reporter from smart money. but because buzzy and don are involved, naturally, it's high style all the way — we get ferried around in the green jaguar with the burled maple interior, all that. what depression?

what depression, i ask. . .um, we're cupping instant, that's what depression. and the wonderful oren bloostein of oren's daily roast joined us.

now let's step back a moment and wrap our minds around this. why is the mermaid introducing instant? doesn't it totally run afoul of the fancy custom-drink, lite-jazz vibe that he's spent decades successfully cloning across the globe? howard, what the hell are you doing to your brand?

your brand is your most precious asset, howard, why are you doing this to yourself? diluting your impressive image for short-term gain doesn't work. (and it's probably dumb to tick off the entire u.k. while you're at it, dreamboat.) does anyone remember when halston made elegant gowns? no: now all we remember are the cheap patent leather belts from the downmarket j.c. penney.

now, on balance, i like howard, altho' i have never liked his coffee. he's a coffee evangelist, and he's from brooklyn.

but for the past 4 years, he's just been following a bone-headed strategy. over time he's destroyed all the factors that made the mermaid great: the comfy seating, long gone; the gorgeous handmade manual italian la marzocco espresso machines, long gone; the smell of delicious fresh coffee, gone and replaced with the disgusting odor of "breakfast sandwiches."

howard, you weren't just selling semi-decent coffee at time when that was hard to get in most places; you were selling a warm, jazz-filled, emotional, custom-drink experience at a time when most retail experiences were minimalist, cookie-cutter, techno-music and cold. that is your brand. it's an upscale brand. have you lost your mind?

even if you intend this coffee for offices and airplanes, it's not who you are, howard. no, no how. and at about a dollar a serving, it's outrageously expensive. obscenely expensive. a real cup of the finest specialty coffee brewed at home will cost you 30 cents!

ok, enough rant. how was this instant coffee? understanding that a regular cupping worksheet wouldn't do, don sweetly made up custom worksheets asking questions like "does this stuff even have the color of real coffee?" well, ok, he put it more nicely than that. see da pic.

buzzy, don, oren & myself dutifully treated this as a serious blind cupping. the reporter brought the samples herself, labelled A thru G. 2 were the new mermaid instants, while the rest were standard store brands. she doled out the "coffee" into the cups and poured the hot water.

we sniffed the undissolved "coffee." we tested it to see how nicely it dissolved. we judged its color, density, aroma, brightness, taste, aftertaste, body. total points possible: 100. i didn't give any of the contender anything higher than a 34.

after a fair amount of time, all of us agreed that blind coffee A was the best. in the cup the "coffee" looked vaguely like nice fresh ground as if for moka pot. the color of the dry stuff in the cup looked rather like droste cocoa and smelled a bit like stale coffee.

it readily dissolved into a pleasant maroon-black or oxblood color. it almost had some body. low brightness, its aftertaste was a bit burnt. i pegged this as the mermaid immediately due to the aftertaste.

after A, buzzy, oren & i agreed B was best, then D. don reversed that order: D, then B. we all agreed that E and F were putrid; G was literally undrinkable swill.

oren compared it to the ripe scent emanating from an nyc manhold cover in august, while i called it raw, rotten cabbage, or possibly raw, rotten, brussel sprout (to capture a nasty bitterness). the aftertaste of G was literally hot asphalt - everyone's smelled hot asphalt, right? now imagine that smell as a taste - a clear sign of defective robusta.

i must have eaten literally half a box of water crackers in an effort to get that taste outta my mouth. anyway, i won't spoil the results anymore. the article should be out tomorrow.

oren's blend no. 44

2009-01-05T14:33:00.003-08:00

nope, it's not a perfume — it's oren's fascinating new blend in honor of the 44th president. o had the incredibly clever idea to include a coffee from each origin with which the new president is associated: kenya, kona, colombia (for columbia, where he attended school!), etc.

i've pressed this coffee and chemexied it. it's a sunny, bright, smooth-as-satin brew with a nice floral aroma from the kona and a pleasant complex taste.

the blend is really seamless, and of course since o put it together, really clean. i doubt i could identify the blend components separately.

that's how well it works. highly recommended morning cup!

kona, yemen & sidamo

2008-12-26T06:52:00.002-08:00

and happy holidays to all from bccy. i've spent mine drinking oren's fantastic kona from greenwell farms.

oren gets a special selection from them that's quite noteworthy. seriously — you would expect fine coffee from a farm that's been winning awards since 1873.

many coffee lovers will roll their eyes at the mention of kona, arguing it's overpriced, it's not rare, quality, etc. etc. but a lovely kona is a rare product — nothing fills your house with floral fragrance like a freshly ground high quality kona.

and at christmas it's pleasant to be able to feel a connection to the coffee farmer on a traditional american family farm.

today i'm spending with oren's yemen, which i've discussed before. o's yemen is a fascinating, complex but clean coffee.

it's a great switch from andrew's enchanting and oh-so-lightly blue sidamo. but how that blue does ecco!

andrew's sidamo arrives

2008-12-09T20:22:00.003-08:00

and just when had spent what seemed an endless stretch of the dawn staring into andrew's empty ecco bag, shuddering with sobs that the brazil was no more, i breeze on into work and discover a pound of his ethiopian sidamo, an organic bean from kemal abdellah waiting to rescue me.

andrew describes this as a berry basket (yummy - you can just imagine that little straw basket filled with delicious, delicate, perfumed mixed berries. . .) and with a dutch cocoa finish. well, he had me at hello with that one.

you can bet this is going to be brewed first thing tomorrow! thank you, andrew!

andrew's brazil as an americano

2008-11-30T13:59:00.002-08:00

what a horrible, icky, miserable, drizzly, dreary day today! and i ended up talking to various people about that depressing topic, the financial crisis.

yuck.

the only thing keeping me happy this afternoon &mdash beyond my habitual pizza-making &mdash is andrew's brazil as an americano.

highly recommended.

great coffee, fuzzy pic

2008-11-29T07:22:00.007-08:00

ooh ooh ooh — i know the pic's not the greatest, but i was so excited when i received a sample of oren's awesome holiday gift pack!

it features 4 of the fantastic coffees i've written about here: his brazil daterra yellow bourbon (i do have a weakness for yellow bourbon!); the amazing amazing yemen mocha haraaz; his very nice guatemalan amatitlan; and many people's snappy fave, the famed la minita. (if only he could get his hands on some sun dried. . .!)

i myself happen to find the antique map box charming. obviously this is highly recommended as a gift for coffee lovers by coffee lovers!

a problem many gift packs have is that they can be a little girly in construction, too cutesy. this a quite handsome in contrast, appropriate for men as well as women.

in response to readers' requests

2008-11-27T20:25:00.002-08:00

how kind of you to email me asking about my dinner! ok, brace yourselves. . .consider how i started a new tradition here in bklyn.

truly long-time readers may recall that i frankly believe no man should be forced to eat turkey. if you sit them down, they will all, once they are fully convinced it's safe to do so, confess that they hate the stuff.

this is certainly true in my house, and stick-with-it bccy pals will remember that as a result, i now always serve porterhouse for thanksgiving. oh yeah: the perfect no-work holiday.

forgive me, i just can't understand people who work all day, sometimes even baking the day before, only then to face more than an hour of clean-up after. and for what? turkey?

look, i have total respect for everyone else's holiday traditions. i encourage you to work like a dog to uphold them. . .but really, i think he'd prefer you didn't!

1-1/2 inch thick porterhouse, a sensibly priced california cabernet sauvignon, a little salad, a little delicata squash, and julia childs' chocolate mousse. that's it.

the great thing about this menu is that there's almost no cooking. you make the mousse in 20 minutes at noon: putting julia's mousse together basically consists of microwaving the chocolate and whipping some cream. next.

the squash you halve, butter, drizzle with maple syrup and bake for an hour in a foil pan. salad gets spun, then dressed with a quick hazelnut oil vinaigrette.

the porterhouse you grill for 12 minutes. pop the cork — you're done. later, everything just goes in the dishwasher. no scrubbing.

i'll hand-wash the wine glasses tomorrow morning. and the best part? you feel like royalty.

porterhouse.

more on oren's jbm, andrew's brazil

2008-11-27T09:10:00.002-08:00

and a happy holiday to all of you!

i began yesterday morning with another cup of oren's fantastic jamaica blue mountain. i really have to talk about this coffee in some detail because it's really sparked an entire meditation on the coffee cupping concept of ashy/mineral.

it's clear, i think, from drinking o's rws jbm that is grown in some powerful volcanic soil — it has the floral fragrance, brightness, and a "mineral" taste that comes from being grown in a pumice-type soil. to continue the description, it also has a lovely caramel aroma and a super silky smoothness.

what it doesn't have is a strong cocoa character in the aftertaste — so if that's a prominent sensation you seek in all your jbm's you won't find it here. oren's setting up a different, more elegant experience here.

the overall balance of the coffee is remarkable, if you are a careful enough taster to appreciate such structural poise, which i believe is a hallmark of oren's general coffee style. the issue here is how to describe that volcanic mineral taste, which we seek in coffees of this type.

here's also a moment to consider the difference between us specialty cuppers, who search out positive nuance, as opposed to commercial-grade cuppers, who primarily seek defects and taints. i mean, if a commercial cupper finds a nice flavor, you'll see them write "good mild" or something on their cupping sheet. but they just aren't concerned with these aromas the way specialty folks are; they're just not in that business.

most specialty cuppers will use the term ashy to mean the sensation a very dark roast can give a coffee's aftertaste. they are trying to use this term in a positive way, to describe a pleasant, soft, dark roast characteristic, as opposed to carbony, which we all agree is all bad. carbony = the mermaid. avoid that.

commercial cuppers however use the term ashy to describe this volcanic soil flavor, and this is where the confusion can arise, should a specialty cupper try to discuss a jbm with a commercial cupper. this is why i prefer to use the term "mineral," esp. since i do believe this flavor is due to the pumice in the soil.

this is one of those times you just wish flament talked more about soil conditions in the final coffee flavor chemisty, you know? altho' it's been quite chic for the past few years to discuss the terroir of coffee — and as here in oren's jbm, the terroir can show — but in general, processing, roasting, and preparation also have a huge effect on what the coffee lover finds in a cup.

the effect of terroir can often be quite muted in coffee by these factors; whether you think this is an issue or not pretty much shows where you stand on the fine coffee idea map.

even as i consider this, i must say, i'm enjoying doppio macchiati of andrew's ecco brazil, the fazenda cachoieta i received this week. just a wonderful single-origin espresso! and it is marked by a strong dutch cocoa aftertaste!

googling andrew barnett's fazenda cachoieta

2008-11-21T19:44:00.005-08:00

deep joy ensued here when i received a message from long-time bccy pal andrew barnett that a pound of his ecco fazenda cachoieta brazil yellow bourbon for espresso was on its merry way. i had to find out more about this bean.

so i picked up my iphone, tapped the new google voice-activated search app - oh i was so happy to see google geek mike labeau! finally, a guy who listens so he can give me exactly what i want - and just started talking at the sound of the tone. now the first time you use the google voice search app, you may not get the best result, because you can't speak too fast or too slow.

for example, when i installed it, the first name i tested was robin hanson. but i was too fast, and google app thought i said "robinson." second try, i was too slow, and google app starting search at just the "robin," which gave me a nice wikipedia article on little birds. but i had the hang of it by the third try and got, well, robin hanson.

now confident in my ability to talk to that google cutie mike labeau through my beloved iphone in a way that boys could hear, i just said "andrew barnett coffee fazenda" and mike ran out to get me "andrew barnett coffee." which got me to a dining article about ecco, and then a link back here to bccy! poor mike just couldn't catch that "fazenda." work on that, ok, dreamboat?

the next search i tried thru mike was "oren bloostein coffee jamaican," in honor of oren's awesome jamaican blue mountain, which is what i'm drinking this week. but mike absolutely couldn't handle that, he tried "korean bluestein coffee jamaican." well, mike's young, we'll wait for mike 0.3.2.

both of these exquisite coffees, by the way, are highly recommended.

yemen to die for

2008-11-12T19:38:00.004-08:00

for the past week i've been living on — let's face it — oren's yemen mocha haraaz. just open the bag and the whole beans smell like blueberry jam.

oh, that is all good.

the fresh grounds keep that gorgeous blue going. oren loves to chemex all his beans, but honestly this is another one i prefer in the cafetiére (a.k.a. french press to you!), as it benefits the body so.

when i pour the hot water in, the bloom of this ultra-fresh coffee's just intense, like shaking a liter of coca-cola. wowza! is that stout or coffee?

at the second pour, after the first bloom subsides, the careful nose can detect many defects or taints. but oren's mocha haraaz is clean, almost surgically so.

i suppose this might disappoint the true romantic cupper, who thinks all yemen should have a hint of the clay roof on which the coffee dried, and that mysterious historic mixture of straw basket bathed by donkey sweat as the farmer brings it down from the high mountains to sanani. ah donkey sweat!

get out your scaa flavor wheel: oren calls this coffee's taste bright, but unh-unh, i think it's wine-y. and i'm pleased by its strong caramel aroma. the coffee's also impressively smooth, again, an artifact of the press brewing, i think.

of course this coffee's completely organic, doesn't even need to be certified: for the simple reason these tiny yemen farms are just too remote for agribiz trade 'hos to get there and the farmers are frankly too poor to afford any chemicals even if said shysters could arrive.

when it comes to that last point, we coffee lovers really shouldn't feel to good about it, so when you see o's charging US$19 a pound, don't be afraid to open your nose and pay through it. the coffee's worth it, and the farmers deserve it.

you'll be glad you did. a delicious, delicious coffee.

must have coffees from oren

2008-11-03T09:07:00.005-08:00

i've been a tad remiss in discussing oren's latest coffees, so let me get started quickly here by noting the must haves:

his c.o.e.-winning nicaragua - this came in second in the competition and is just a wonderful floral, bright, citrusy, caramel coffee, coming from just a few trees two sweet little farms. he sent me his yrg with which to compare - honestly, this is better. worth every penny. i mean it.
his smooth-as-james-bond canterbury blend - charming in the morning
his holiday blend - you have to do this in the chemex for best effect. seriously, otherwise its lemon-candy thing is overwhelming. but in the chemex, it's great. and the aroma's amazing, it will fill your house! well, it does mine.

oren's brazil as an s.o.e.

2008-10-16T13:36:00.006-07:00

must. keep. promises. in this case, to you, dear readers! and i promised to discuss oren's brazil cerrado as a single origin espresso.

i pulled this double shot on my beloved steamy latin lover, carlos expobar. long-time readers will recall that carlos is set for italian espresso temperatures, which are lower than those usually seen in most independent coffee shops.

oren's brazil cerrado is a little brighter than you might expect. this is good, because so many brazils are a little dull. but for some this would mean that it's not what they're looking for in a straight espresso, esp. brewed at a lower temperature.

however if you're making an americano or a cappuccino, the brightness helps, especially when it comes to helping the coffee cut through the milk. oren's brazil had an acceptably syrupy body and and an ok amount of crema.

i think in the end its woody-spicy aromas (i thought nutmeg, myself) made it a nice latte, but i can see how most espresso hounds would prefer it as an americano, 1-1/2 oz. espresso (that's a double in my house) to 4 oz. hot water.

i liked it best with a spoonful of raw sugar too.

the nino franco rustico prosecco

2008-10-11T18:07:00.003-07:00

you know, oren so sweetly sends me his beautiful coffees - today i was going to write about his interesting brazil. this is noteworthy because his brazil is in fact interesting, whereas most brazils are boring. in this regard, i might think about o's brazil in terms i'd normally use for andrew's ecco brazils.

the truly long-time reader may recall i used to love making single-origin espressi from andrew's brazils. (and a big shout-out to andrew, who's in noo yawk today!) anyway, i will still write about o's unboring brazil, which i think also makes great single origin espressi.

but i'm afraid it's been hijacked by this prosecco i'm in love with this evening - so will write about o's brazil tomorrow, probably in the form of the americano.

ah, to the prosecco: it's really quite the best non-vintage prosecco i've ever had, this nino franco "rustico" from valdobbiadene in treviso. robert parker, of whom i'm not always fond, likes it too.

i will agree that the rustico smells like peaches & pears, sliced up and tossed in a big majolica bowl. it tastes so "mineral white" and bright, it sambas on the tip of your tongue. oh yeah.

Not all heroes wear capes

2008-10-06T15:14:00.007-07:00

Last Friday I awoke to discover a small annoyance -- my beloved iPhone popped up its blue error message saying "cannot make or receive calls. Repair needed."

As long-time iPhone owners know, this is usually no big deal at all. Usually it just means you need to reseat your SIM card.

Thus without thinking twice, I reached for the all-purpose Apple repair tool a.k.a. the paper clip.

Apple devotees have been using the paper clip since time immemorial for various small tasks, such as getting your Mac to spit out a stuck floppy disc or CD. The paper clip is a hallowed Mac instrument, and I frankly carry one in my purse at all times for just these kinds of tiny issues.

However this time reseating the SIM didn't work. I tried again, and again. Uh-oh. My original 4GB iPhone wasn't co-operating that morning. So I tried hooking it up to iTunes, but iTunes couldn't see it.

Ok, there's a workaround for this too -- holding down the Home button and the camera button for 10 seconds while the iPhone's hooked to iTunes. iPhone's screen kept telling me to connect it to iTunes, but iTunes still wasn't seeing it.

Sigh. Time to go to work. Only one thing left to do: make an appointment at the Genius Bar at the Apple store.

This is of course completely simple to do online, but sadly the next appointment was for Sunday! Yesterday! 3 entire days without an iPhone.

I won't describe the torture. So that afternoon I rushed to the Apple store on 14th Street here in New York, took the 3 flights of frosted glass stairs up to the Bar in a single bound, and there he was. Edgar. Edgar, my Genius, calm and confident in the zen space of the Bar.

Edgar tried all the things I had tried, and even moved on to a few nifty Genius tricks I couldn't quite see. He did finally get iTunes to see my poor iPhone, but it wouldn't boot. He tried to Restore it. Alas, it wouldn't take the software.

Oh no. Edgar turned to me with a somber look. I feared this was the end, so I glued my eyes to his "Not all heroes wear capes" T-shirt and braced myself for the worst.

"Well Fortune," he said, "I'm just going to have to give you a new phone."

"A new iPhone?" I said. "Yes," he said,"I'm replacing your phone."

"Um, like for free?," I asked, "because I didn't think my AppleCare..."

"Yes," he said with deep seriousness, "I'm going to have to give you a new phone for free." And so he did. I signed the papers in a near daze.

Whenever I hear people complain about tech support, I think about the Genius Bar. Because every experience I have ever had with Apple iPhone support at the Bar has always shown Apple staff to exceed expectations. As Edgar did yesterday.

AT&T, however, that's a different story. As I sailed home to activate my phone, I had no idea the activation service would be down for most of the day. After waiting about 4 hours, the activation market finally came back up.

When my iPhone re-activated, I tried to Restore from backup. However, the new iPhone only had firmware 2.0.1. iTunes sweetly told me it couldn't Restore, that would have to Update and then Restore. Ok? Ok, I clicked.

And iTunes did. It Updated to 2.1, Restored all my data from backup, re-synched my tango music, and 10 painless minutes later, I was back in business as if I had never been away. Hooray! I wasn't missing a single email or calendar appointment.

Not all heroes may wear capes, but those great Apple employees at the Genius Bar certainly at least deserve propeller beanies.

What was I drinking during this non-traumatic experience? Oren's Panama Finca Hartmann, that's what. Yum.

oren's papua new guinea

2008-10-03T10:35:00.004-07:00

i've spent the morning drinking oren's png — it's just a great morning coffee, bright, smooth, floral & toasty.

i could extol its balance, except to many people balance implies a certain dull symmetry, with no big exciting aroma waving its arms above the rest. but what i mean is more how it's heading towards that nureyev thing — this coffee is just poised in its structure, like a dancer standing on one side of the stage.

i recommend it with milk, for breakfast. so pleasant. yeah.

lovely packages

2008-09-28T12:09:00.008-07:00

and what appeared at my door this weekend? 2 lovely survival packages, one from oren, and the other from don! hooray!

in a great time of chaos & need, rescue arrives!

o sends:

beowulf espresso, perfect for cutting thru syrup and milk for those textured morning lattes
ooh ooh a panama! never had this one!
and the most exotic png, a wonderful origin that most people, even coffee lovers, have never heard of, but of which you can say: yes, coffee like this is probably grown by indigenous people. if you want to help the truly poor, who are so impoverished the coffee has to be organic because they can't afford chemicals, stuff like this is probably the way to go

don offers:

the famous sumatra lintong of my dreams
the even-more famous lemon-candy yrg
a costa rica tarrazu shb ep i've never had before, from cariblanco, very thrilling

thanks, you two coffee saviors! now to ponder which will make the best americano on this misty day. . .

oooh oooh oooh more oren

2008-09-21T09:25:00.008-07:00

don't ask me why, it's just like oren month around here — and that's a good thing.

in a year when the mermaid has been forced to close stores and revamp its format, notice that o, who is the very picture of the independent specialty roaster-retailer, has managed to hold his ground. it's true he is closing 1 store, but that's only because the landlord greedily refused to come to an accommodation on a decent lease. welcome to mall-hattan real estate 101. . .

so. i was dancing tango at my fave triangulo milonga where a nice german journalist was writing something — who knows what? — about the nyc tango scene, which is in fact huge, and she was going on and on and on about my newest pair of velvet tango shoes. to be honest, i do not have the world's most awesome tango shoes.

i have the same comme il faut's everyone else has. i agree, it's a cult, a very sexy cult. . .i mean who doesn't want to be "firmly nailed, never disappointing, can do it backwards, and always looking fantastic?" and of course they're 4 inches tall. what's the point if they're not 4 inches? but i digress.

returning from the milonga after the jounalist's enthusiasm, i was heartened to find a nice box of oren's freshest patiently waiting on the doorstep. it contained not only his ethiopian longberry harrar, the famed beowulf espresso with just a touch of a certain special something to ensure it cuts through even whole milk, but also what seems to me the cleanest, least twisty yemen mocha i've ever had, as well as — that this seems like almost an afterthought shows you how shockingly good o's current coffee line-up really is — the rightfully revered la minita.

another thing that's not widely appreciated about the beowulf i think is how it also survives syrup quite well. this is an artifact of o's long retail experience. it can be really be a downer to make a nice espresso for someone from a fantastic, subtle bean, only to have them ask for the vanilla syrup and then solemnly note that they can't "taste the coffee."

in fact we coffee lovers tend to want to strangle such people. i confess that even after long experience serving coffee to the-otherwise-well-meaning my fingers still twitch when this happens, and i have to put a lot of effort into carefully smoothing my the skirt of my alberta ferretti dress instead.

but there we go. such are the perils of having friends: as professor dr. robin hanson might say, coffee isn't about the caffeine. thus the beowulf: not only it is fine coffee, but it's kept me on decent social footing with quite a few neighbors. highly recommended.

sam beckett come home, or oren's ethiopia harrar ayinage

2008-09-17T18:20:00.004-07:00

to follow on from yesterday, dear readers, recall that i brought home a fresh-roasted sample of oren's ethiopian west harrar. i was wrong yesterday, it turns out, when i identified ayinage as the co-op.

no way, girlfriend! rather, as with the famous label m.a.o. — which are the initials of the export house's head, mohammed abdullahi ogsadey, from the town of dire dawa — ayinage is the exporter.

that aside, o fortune, you ask me, how the heck was this certified organic coffee? i brewed this morning in the cafetière, known to you all as a french press.

and o sweet heaven, the ayinage is like a triple stack of blueberry chocolate-chip pancakes with extra dark chocolate syrup.

yeah maybe that's not on the scaa flavor wheel, but that's what you get in the cup. i wanted to bathe in it. . .all day. it's wine-y, it's got a sexy body, it's, it's, it's. . .so blue.

how blue is the juicy ripeness squishing in every sip of this jewel? it's not often you get to spruce up your coffee talk with some sam beckett:

VLADIMIR - Do you remember the Gospels?
ESTRAGON - I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Colored they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty.

i don't know when o is going to release this for general sale. but it had better be soon. and i want a pound a week please until every last bean of this has kissed his roaster goodbye.

i'm calling this one a must-drink. 2008 has just been a good year for blue coffees from ethiopia, it seems!

in which oren & i agree on almost everything

2008-09-16T11:52:00.005-07:00

so today i ran up to the upper east side to have a little cupping with oren. i stopped for a moment to gaze at the vintage couture for sale in the shop next door to o's building, and then ran through the strange narrow maze to his office.

his building has a super-weird internal layout and you have to twist around, navigating by the art nouveau posters hanging on the walls. anyway, i arrive.

o knows what the coffees are, but i'm cupping blind. we have 1 flight of 4. oren has roasted up the samples to cupping level, and then ceremoniously grinds the beans at the last moment just as the water boils and starts to cool.

he scoops a level and equal amount of each into a drinking glass in front of the sample tray of green coffee beans. we sniff.

"hey o, i say, sample #1 smells coriander-y." "what?" o asks. "i don't know what that means, but i like it."

"it means it smells kinda woody-spicy, like you stick your nose in the jar of whole, un-ground coriander seeds that's been sitting in your kitchen spice cabinet." "ummm, well, if you say so," o says mildly, "i think it's a bit nutty." for o, this isn't usually the greatest quality for a coffee at this stage. . .

on to sample #2. i liked sample #2, sweetly floral. o agrees. i stick my nose so far into #3 that i get grounds on the end of my nose. what's great is that o doesn't notice, or at least is sweet enough not to say anything if he does.

"dry hay," o says of #3. "brown rice bran," i offer, "very health-food store-y smelling." neither of these are good. "no," o says, "it hasn't got to the cereal stage yet. it's still green, it's still growing." it's still bad.

#4 is a shock. "i'm thinking, ummm interesting. bad interesting," i just come out with it. "fruity," o says, "too fruity. maybe fermented." ok, so someone let this washed coffee sit around wet too long for sure. . .

o elegantly measures and pours in the hot water; we sniff again. i time 3 minutes on my iphone.

o still finds #1 nutty, but the nut's a little mixed in. #2, we both love #2, great flowers, no defects. (you can often smell a lot of defects in this stage when cupping.)

#3 smells even more like old toast to me. o takes his composition cupping notebook, draws out a little quick grid in pencil, and scribbles "road." uh-oh. road. you don't road in coffee.

#4, there's no saving #4. "it smells like stale apricot brandy," i say. o just wrinkles his nose. "it's not the worst coffee," he says with a light in his eyes that suggests yeah, but this is still just terrible.

since o may actually be buying one of these coffees, he does the break — that is, he drops the browl of his silver cupping spoon through the crust of grounds floating on top and clears them to the bottom. as he breaks each one, his nose goes deep into the glass, just a millimeter from the liquid.

when he comes to #4, he offers to let me break. ha ha! i decline, "no thanks o, that's the one i want to smell least!"

so we taste each sample, pooling a bit in the bowl of the big cupping spoons and then doing our best thunderous sluuurrrrrppppp! to spray the brew as even across the tongue and palate as we can.

the slurp is always the most hilarious part of the cupping, and i never stop cracking up the whole time. o's staff in the other room looks around a little, nervous: why can't this crazy woman stop cackling? (i can't stop cackling because cupping coffee is fun!)

#1 is obviously bright, but i don't really detect any other fantastic quality in it that i would name. "sweet," o says. "yeah, ok," i agree.

#2. i had the highest hopes for #2. i was thinking, you know, prom corsage already, so i was looking for a hot date here. and it was sweet.

i was beginning to be happy here. "this just smells like good coffee," i say. o likewise is a little perky about #2.

oren deems #3 nutty suddenly, citrus-y and nutty. uh-oh. i just don't find anything in it. very neutral. i can barely even summon the word "neutral" to my mind.

#4 is wine-y, but not good wine-y. it's all bad wine-y. o even goes so far as to scribble "rough" in his notes. . .

of course the final stage is when the coffee cools a bit. how does it hold up? this is crucial when it comes to actually drinking and serving it.

o thinks #1 gets a little better, a little rounder in the cooling, but still terms it "dry." i understand what he means by that, in so far as after i swallow a bit of cooler #1, i really want a drink of water. not another sip of the coffee, i want some water. not so good!

but wait, here's our prom queen, #2! and we eagerly sip a cooling #2, to discover. . .nothing. what a let down. none of the interesting qualities we had hoped for made it into the cup at all. it just flattened out like ribbon and rolled away across the carpet.

#3 stayed like itself. no change. because there was nothing there to change, alas. #4, i just couldn't even bring myself to do #4 at first, but o did, so i manfully kept pace.

"tinny," o said. "cla-aaarrrck-gh," i said, sticking my tongue way out between my teeth like a tibetan demon. "nasty."

"o," i stated with sudden insight, "you're not buying any of these coffees." o looked at the sample trays with a certain sorrow. "no," he said with a slight eeyore note, "no, i am not."

i didn't know what to do. my heart was still aching from the disappointment of #2.

"ok o," i asked, "where does these coffees come from?" o flipped the labels — all were supplied by volcafe specialty — #1 was a kenya aa from the leanna co-op, #2 was a kenya ab from the same leanna co-op, #3 was a tanzania, and #4 was a uganda bugisu from a well-meaning person uptown who wanted to help farmers.

not a coffee professional, obviously, because, to be frank, shopping that lower-quality coffee around probably was doing more to hurt the farmers than help them! i would never ever in a million years guessed the origins of any of these coffees, they so lacked any of what i consider the distinguishing hallmarks of their origins. which is another reason they just, in the end, somewhat indifferent beans.

but playtime was over, sadly. o tossed some same beans he had, an ethiopia west harrar from a co-op called ayinage into his funny old beige sirocco home coffee roaster. yes, i said a sirocco. i mean no one's seen one of those for like a million years!

i hung for the requisite time as the beans went to a nice brewing color, took the small sample, thanked o, and skedaddled. just another day of fine, very fine coffee!

on the way home in the subway, i smelled the fresh ethiopia. already the blueberry was coming out. . .oh yes and yes and yes. . .

btw, have i mentioned o's new coban yet? word to the wise: if you like guatemalan coffees, you will love o's new coban.

things you sniff: Bond No. 9 & Oren's Coban

2008-09-11T20:27:00.004-07:00

bccy is sneaking back. it's a stealth mini-post today:

bond no.9's warhol lexington ave — the nice people from bond no. 9 figured out i was living in their so new york concotion of espresso & chocolate, so shot me this over to augment my habit. i love classic chypres like mitsouko – so take a chypre and add a gourmand quality – perfume you wanna lick right off the body! it's me all right, very me. sensuous, hedonistic, epicurean, and the bottle's all about shoes.
oren's new coban — you may recall his old coban. well, trust me, you'll be hearing more about this after i cup with him next tuesday afternoon. in the meantime, let me proclaim its great body from the housetops. and of course, floral, bright, clean. stay tuned.

hello world!

2008-09-04T20:12:00.003-07:00

after a very long hiatus — let's not get into more than to say, i got promoted and took up sexy tango — the wonderous oren wrote me today and said, "you know, if you started blogging again, i might send some coffee."

and for the first time in a long, long, long time that suddenly sounded lovely. absolutely lovely.

coming soon: the return of bccy.

in which oren and i have a slight perceptual difference

2007-12-18T19:00:00.000-08:00

so the awesome oren sent me said colombia tolima corazon and i immediately tore up the bag the way greedy children descend on ruffles.

and boom! the aroma of super-fresh roasted beans struck me with a near physical blow. i swear.

in a daze i rushed to contact o. himself. "o o o," i said, "this tolima certainly is nothing like any ordinary colombian. it smells like roast chicken!"

this caused o to hesitate slightly. "well," he replied, "if you think it's chicken, i hope at least it's fresh chicken."

his answer had the gentle air of "what kind of lsd have you put your nose on, girl?" but that's the way it goes in coffee sometimes. i happen to love chicken, so i meant it as a compliment.

ah the memories of roast chicken in the farmhouse in kansas. . .but while o has an impeccable cupping nose from which we all can learn, i cannot give him my scent memories, so in this case alas we are forever separated by time.

this too is part of specialty coffee's loveliness. it is intensely personal in a way that can be hard, so hard, to convey, despite all the training we get on the scaa flavor wheel!

finally a real vibiemme manual

2007-12-16T12:10:00.000-08:00

long-time readers recall that i presently have 3 espresso machines: my beloved italian princess, the rancilio silvia (it's interesting to note how this machine has held its value – i could easily sell it for what i paid for it since it is in excellent condition!); my steamy latin sweetheart, carlos expobar (thanks as always, wll!); and of course, caesar vibiemme from jim of 1st-line.

everyone knows the italo-inglese of the standard vibiemme manual is, um, difficult at best and unhelpful at worst. so jim has sent out a great illustrated pdf, more than 30 pages long, of everything you need to know about caesar.

it is most excellent. i adore caesar, he can have my whole kitchen!

thanks so much jim; caesar has been a great addition to my life and makes great coffee with ease.

how i developed my relationship with caesar without it? well, caesar isn't too bad really, but this manual does provide some great hints on descaling, temperature adjustment, and gasket replacement!

fantastic work, jim.

and the beauty pours down

2007-12-14T19:43:00.000-08:00

woot! more delicious coffee has arrived from:

forrest at batdorf: the dancing goat. many thanks for the staple espresso of bccy!
oren at oren's daily roast: colombia tolima, kenya aa. rock on, o!
don schoenholt at gillies: the best sumatra ever, the lintong kuda mas, triple-pick, japanese prep grade 1; the famous yrg(a.k.a. the best yrg ever); and his yemen moka sanani. divine! so grateful

but picking up from yesterday, i started the morning as promised with mark inman's taylormaid spicy-floral and bright miraflor in the cafetiére.

go for it. highly recommended. will chemex tomorrow and write more. oh, wait. . .i have about 7 lbs. of coffee in da houae.

the beauty pours and pours on down.

yes i am alive!

2007-12-13T19:02:00.000-08:00

sorry for the long delay, folks, but vacations happen. i went to jamaica, where among many other things, i visited the twyman's old tavern estate and walked through wallenford.

young david twyman is energetic and passionate; his lovely mother dorothy is as delicate as a bird. she roasts the beans in her diedrich, and prefers her coffee dark to accent the chocolate flavors.

drinking the twyman's dark roast is exactly like making a great cup of mild island coffee and then melting a dark chocolate candy bar in it. oh yum.

i also hiked up a road through the dennis estate (hi james!), where mr. right chatted up some coffee pickers briefly.

hurricane dean in august roared through, ruined the roads, and tore up the trees. in some places the shading banana trees were taken down, really affecting growth.

also, a longer than normal rainy season, which the farmers attributed to global warming, made everything too wet for too long. this caused david twyman to fear that fungus would take root; he was hoping for much sun from now on.

i have many pictures of driving-thru-the-landslides in the cloudforest until you get to the place in "downtown" section where the road washed out, leaving a gaping break about 100 feet long that plunges 2500 feet straight down. a twisted tongue of asphalt dangles in space.

that's when you push the car through the dennis estate road and hike around the hill with the pickers!

but now back in sleet-storm noo yawk, i'm greeted with a loving care package from long-time bccy pal mark inman of taylormaid. oooh ooh ooh.

wonderful organic coffees, his red rooster, the goat rock, fave espressi a and 0, a couple of fantastic single origins. . .the one i'm drinking tomorrow readers is the fair-trade uca miraflor natural reserve.

finca siberia returns

2007-11-17T11:06:00.000-08:00

long-time readers may recall that i regularly review batdorf's famed finca siberia pacamara from el salvador (here and here, for example).

this is what's so fantastic about enjoying the privilege of a long-standing relationship with a coffee roaster — we can return to the farm year after year and see how the coffee changes, how the farmer has been able to improve quality, how the roaster has been able to build on the relationship and roast the coffee from a full understanding of all its characteristics.

and speaking of relationships, it's a pity my long-time friend jessica marshall left batdorf to return to school this fall. best of luck jessica!

you are a super girl. to paraphrase the dolphins, "so long and thanks for all the coffee."

(actually my favorite d. adams quote remains "all it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground. . .and miss.") but this allows us to welcome forrest, a pretty groovy guy himself.

forrest was kind enough to send me this year's finca siberia. woot! thanks to you, big guy.

got your scaa flavor wheel handy? ok let's go.

the finca is roasted as always to what i'd call full-city- (the beans showed no traces of oil). i chemexed it in the usual way.

i know that even people with long experience reading this site are flummoxed by the notion that coffee really has a near infinite flavor range, within the taxonomy of the wheel. but those who truly love coffee won't be surprised when i describe the lovely pacamara as having a spicy ginger-flower fragrance, a crisp green-apple brightness, and a basalmic rice nose with a caramel-vanilla-type aftertaste.

the chemex gives it a pleasant medium body. i easily enjoyed it black.

highly recommended if you like that tingly sensation you get when biting into a juicy tart granny smith. other people might raise their eyebrows. . ."a coffee that tastes like a mix of green apples and ginger flowers and pours from the pot like a maroon satin ribbon falling from its spool?"

oh yes. welcome to the passionate and beautiful world of specialty coffee. forrest also sent some interesting chocolate, which i'll talk about later. . .

tolima in da house

2007-10-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

so this morning i was sampling andrew b's ecco organic nicaragua, las termopilas, from the other day – it's not as bright as i thought it'd be &ndahs; when what arrived but oren bloostein's colombia tolima? life just gets better and better. . .can't wait to brew this baby in the chemex!

thanks again, a & o!

the glorious andrew b. offers c.o.e. salvation!

2007-10-15T18:48:00.000-07:00

ooh ooh ooh. it seems like a dog's age since the fabulous andrew b. of ecco sent coffee!

now i realize what's been missing from my life! but seriously, along with jessica's can't-live-without batdorf dancing goats, andrew's northern italian espresso is a favorite in the bccy household.

and, as always, andrew's so generous with the c.o.e. goodness! today it's an organic nicaraguan prize-winner, with a cupping score above 90!

grown by farmer milton canales on the las termopilas estate in nueva segovia, it's a high-grown caturra! andrew lists it as grown at nearly 4,600 feet.

oh, we love high-grown coffees here at bccy. a wet-processed coffee, it's apparently completely sun-dried, meaning this should be a bright, floral and fruity cup.

with a roast date of the 11th, i can't wait to brew it tomorrow in the vac pot. thank you, andrew!

she's so heavy

2007-10-03T20:06:00.000-07:00

whoa! 10w/40 and that's a good thing!

i'm talking of course about the body i found in peter g's counterculture finca kilimanjaro.

just terrific body in the cafetiére. lightly bright and citrusy as promised.

altho' peter had compared it to a kenya aa, i have to say i didn't find it anywhere near razor-y.

but as i was grinding this morning i noticed by beloved saeco 2002 was having a hard time, grinding very slowly. the motor had a markedly labored sound.

so i decided to rush home early from work this evening, take the puppy apart, clean it, just give it the once over. as i do so i suddenly realize this grinder is about 8 years old now!

and then of course i ran some of josh's great grindz through it to brush up the burrs. all good.

ah, it grinds as speedily as ever and the motor sounds better. . .

2 new coffees from counterculture

2007-10-01T19:14:00.000-07:00

and a big bccy thanks to peter g. of counterculture for two new microlots, the finca kilimanjaro, from santa ana, el salvador, and the finca el puente los cipreses from marcala, honduras.

peter compares the el salvador to a kenya, with notes of blackcurrant and caramel – sounds yummy to me – while he calls the honduras bright, citrus, and smooth.

both of these seem perfect for the chemex to me!

dancing with the goats

2007-09-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

besides discovering that the nice syd low of aliencamel is also a coffee lover and friend of long-time bccy pal and barista champ paul bassett, he and i had a nice chat about email on the iphone, which you'll see posted shortly over on iphonefreak. of course syd has one of paul's sunbeam machines.

and while my job has just been insane recently, again!, i do want very much to acknowledge and thank the ever-wonderful jessica of batdorf for her delicious dancing goats. basically, it's main substance on which i live nowadays. . .

see me again at da freak

2007-09-06T10:29:00.000-07:00

yuppers, dear readers, much as me no fan of the mermaid, i am interested in its iphone integration.

see me on this over at iphonefreak.

thanks big guy!

2007-09-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

i absolutely don't know you, mec, (but this is the famed french comic from which you take your screen name) but thanks for posting me as a link on kopikol! yeah some of the comments are not that great, but who cares?

17,000 hits later, i gotta say, the french love coffee. pity they drink so much robusta. . .cafe au lait and a p'tit espres' for everyone!

freak out with me

2007-09-02T12:45:00.000-07:00

yuppers, dear readers, it's true – you can find me now also over at one of the top iphone blogs, iphonefreak.

here's my inaugural post, where i freak out about the lack of strong calendar integration for iphone. so come on over and dance with the freaks.

i worship my iphone, but that doesn't mean the killer app's been found quite yet. . .and should steve start selling ringtones next week, you bet the first one i'm buying is:

in memoriam alfred peet

2007-09-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

alfred peet

specialty coffee pioneer

grandfather of american specialty coffee

may flights of houris bear thee to thy rest

today is declared an official day of coffee mourning

alfred peet's influence on the specialty coffee industry
is incalculable

on the iphone unlock

2007-08-24T18:46:00.000-07:00

of course the entire internet was abuzz today with the iphone unlock. it was like xmas all over the world.

but the issue that must be addressed – by at&t – is why? why did so many fanbois devote themselves to this odd task?

not just because of a weird principle about open networks. no, it's a direct statement about how much everyone everywhere loathes at&t.

if their executives don't yet have customer satisfaction as part of their compensation package, well, it's almost too late to start. can you imagine how it must feel to work at one of the world's most despised companies?

i mean, no amount of re-branding is going to overcome the intense negative emotion. . . okay, open hatred . . . inspired by at&t. if i were a shareholder, i'd be shaking management by the lapels with rage.

the pity is, it could all have been avoided. at&t could have generally treated its customers better.

but years of arrogance and abuse have brought us to the point that no, it's a global party to stick a finger in their eye.

no doubt now all my friends overseas will be skyping me to beg me to find a way to smuggle them an iphone v.a.t.-free.

the purple princess alights

2007-08-24T18:11:00.000-07:00

woo-hoo! long-time no-hear-from one of bccy's oldest pals, peter g. of counterculture.

but today he kindly sends on his most personal and special coffees, a bean close to his heart – the honduras finca el puente, a.k.a. the purple princess, so called for its shimmering lavender fragrance and lovely fruit aroma.

when you think of coffee fragrance, you rarely think purple flowers from france, but as ted lingle always says "coffee is infinite: the wheel is just a guide to the mountaintop where you go on alone and gaze into forever."

the potential of coffee, its romantic and passionate allure: yes it is most powerfully found in these rare perfumes. everything you could want in coffee is there to be found if you devote yourself to the search.

the finca el puente's a relationship coffee: peter's known the caballero family for years on a personal level, and indeed they visit each other back and forth. the finca el puente's just a coffee that you identify, not only with that specific family, but also peter – drinking it just tells you a lot about who peter is!

so i'm very happy to have this year's purple princess. i'll be brewing it tomorrow afternoon before my regular visit to supermodel central, and of course after my staple bean for the morning cappuccino, jessica's marvelous batdorf dancing goats!

sigh. lemme guess. . .

2007-08-22T18:16:00.000-07:00

"using chemical analyses and follow-up taste tests by humans trained to detect coffee bitterness, the scientists discovered the compounds that make coffee bitter and also how they form."

drumroll please. . .and the answer is going to be compounds formed during roasting, like chlorogenic acid. dark roasted coffees are always the bitterest, from the phenylindanes.

i guess the "scientists" doing this study are like, from mars or something, because anyone who's spent 10 minutes talking to a coffee chemist, to a pro taster, to long-time bccy pal paul songer, or the like, already knows this.

so let's take off our blindfolds and read the rest of the article. sigh.

sometimes you wish people would just read flament on google. for example, here.

please remember that bitterness in coffee should pleasant, as in dark chocolate and stout. anything more than that: overroasting!

bad coffee! the mermaid! avoid, dear readers, flee!

a really dumb idea

2007-08-21T20:18:00.000-07:00

only someone who doesn't actually practice a lot of yoga would think this mat would be a good idea.

i'm trying to imagine how it would be useful in inversions – or even during an intense power or ashtanga yoga class.

yeah, i'm trying to imagine it at greg's class at yttp. where, now that the 20th has passed, i intend to return tomorrow eve.

see ya all at the 6pm class! i'll be a tad stiff for the first round of surya namaskar, but after that. . .i'll be flying!

my little heart leaps for joy

2007-08-19T19:53:00.000-07:00

"Not only are people drinking anywhere from one- to two-thirds of their java outside the home, but specialty brands are increasingly invading the supermarket aisles that were once the purview of Maxwell House and Folgers. And they are seeing success: Brands such as Newman's Own, Intellegentsia and Green Mountain are all gaining market share, largely at the two titans' expense.

Patrick Schumann of Edward Jones said the old reliable brands aren't likely to pick up any lost sales. "The brands that have been established as being higher-quality really are the brands that are going to be able to show continued momentum," he said."

i don't know for how many years now i've been arguing that consumers do respond to coffee quality, as the article concludes. and doing so often in the face of specialty coffee professionals, nonetheless, who often argue that the "average consumer" doesn't know about coffee and doesn't care.

well care they do, 'cuz they've voting with their wallets.

another thing about this piece that makes me really happy is of course to see long-time bccy pal doug zell's intelligentsia right up there as a major regional/semi-national roaster. woo-hoo doug!

this isn't to say that i'm slighting my philanthropic friends at gmcr, tho. not at all!

the only part of the article that bugs me is the end, which describes how tough people find brewing coffee at home to be. pity.

but part of the problem, besides the fact too many americans were stuck with only low-quality supermarket junk available, is that most home coffee machines are just terrible. the water's too cold, the cycle and dispersion are all wrong – it's not america's fault.

we need a revolution in coffee machines just as we have had one in specialty coffee! when will the online machine purveyors really step into the limelight?

who will invent the truly awesome new machine design?

hooray for intelly!

2007-08-18T09:35:00.001-07:00

congrats to doug! long-time readers know that doug zell at intelligentsia is one of bccy's oldest, oldest friends.

and so now his new store in la-la land has opened! congrats to you, doug!

quite remiss

2007-08-12T12:36:00.001-07:00

forgive me all i have been quite remiss in posting. . .especially to thank everyone for their great coffees!

i truly enjoyed unclebeanz 2 samples, the wonderful taina and the la castano. i don't understand why artisan coffees in the latin style like this aren't taking the nyc area by storm.

will somebody please fund norman vasquez so he can open his retail location? because his business niche -- upscale latin consumers -- is a no-brainer. that's a 5-store chain off the bat.

and of course jessica's always delicious dancing goats, the batdorf coffee on which my life runs. basically, due to the demands of this work project, i no longer eat or sleep but just live on the goat.

after aug. 20 i'll tell you how that all went down!

in the meantime, thanks to you all for your patience. i will be back very soon!

from da iPhone

2007-08-06T14:52:00.000-07:00

blogging from the iPhone!!!

Yup blogger.com plays well with iPhone.

And thanks for all your kind words about my latest appearance in the Sunday new York times!

That was fun but the "blue eyelashes" part flummoxed me.

now the at&t hell begins

2007-07-29T12:41:00.000-07:00

ok, so everyone knew the downside of the iphone would be at&t – all american mobile providers, but esp. at&t, are famous for the elaborate ways they torture and rip off customers. my colleagues overseas cannot restrain their amazement when they learn of our primitive phone services here and how many ways we are screwed, ways that are often illegal in the e.u.

so. my time to meet the metal teeth of at&t had come, i guess.

i pick up my iphone to try to contact a colleage (oh yeah, working on saturday and sunday, welcome to my new job) only to discover that at&t tells me "phone calls are disallowed." local & international both: wtf?

after a mere 20 minutes on hold, i get through at&t's various voice menus only to be told i have to call after-hours support. great.

at least after-hours support puts you through only about 7 minutes of voice-tree hell before you connect to a human being. yay!

the rep needs to send 2 updates of some kind to my phone to make it work again. um, excuse me, but i'm supposed to be contacting a european person who is waiting on my response.

but the rep can't give me international dialing. i have to wait until monday for that.

why? just press the freaking button on my account and let me work, please!

oh no, at&t corporate policy wouldn't actually let its employees be helpful. in the meantime, the phone begins to work again.

but of course i've missed my european appointment time. great.

i set the phone down and wander off to make pizza dough (late because of this nonsense!) only to come back and find my euro contact, wondering where the heck i was, had been frantically texting me – not that at&t could bother to deliver a timely text.

these were time-stamped 3 hours earlier! faaaan-tas-tic.

note to steve jobs: just raise the cash and buy out at&t, will you please? toss those mo-fo fat-cat executives outta their high towers preferably without benefit of stairs, ok?

nice mention of our friends

2007-07-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

"Flat White, an award-winning café in London's Soho that opened two years ago, has carved out a niche by specialising in a no-expense-spared version of the Antipodean-style frothy coffee from which it takes its name. The company is now looking to expand.

'What we offer over the chains is a much higher attention to detail and more of a community feel,' says Cameron McClure, the New Zealander who was one of Flat White's founder baristas.

'The big guys are really just making coffee drinking more widespread, which ends up creating demand for us.'

'Those people who can tell the difference end up searching out something better. Our business works by taking an artisan approach that's much more labour intensive than the competition are able to offer.'

Flat White buys its beans from The Monmouth Coffee Company, another small, London-based operator that has thrived in the face of competition by adopting an approach more akin to fine wine than coffee."

nice piece! those english: tea-drinkers no more!

long-time readers will recall my visit to monmouth and even the nice impromptu cupping i had there! congrats to my pals at monmouth. . .

brewing the big o

2007-07-28T09:24:00.000-07:00

so of course this afternoon i chemexied up a pot of o's huila from yesterday. this is the huila that caused so much street attention yesterday.

i swear if you want to make friends in nyc, walk through astor place with an iphone and a bag of o's colombia huila.

long-time readers may recall that o believes kona to be the most deliciously fragrant bean; certainly this huila must be second.

o tells me it's from san augustin.

i can tell you that i'm drinking its spicy-floral, basalmic rice and dark vanilla caramel tanginess black. highly recommended.

fresh coffee in da house

2007-07-27T18:40:00.000-07:00

yeah yeah i know: the iphone is so addictive and overwhelming, when i have time to blog why ever would i talk about anything else? just get one, ok?

but really, coffee continues to be the most passionate and romantic beverage the world has ever known. not only did the lovely jessica of batdorf send the never-usual life-saving dancing goats, but oren waved his magic roaster to manifest some of the most fragrantly fresh beans you could dream of.

you have no idea how many times today i've been accosted on the streets carrying his beans around! he sent me his latest colombia soatle huila, the guatemala coban marago (oren's coban is a beautiful, beautiful thing), and of course the tried and true beowulf espresso.

which one smells best? honestly the colombia is intoxicating like a fresh brown-sugar milk-caramel vanilla candy.

and i haven't even opened the bag! omigod: the chemex comes out tomorrow.

oren. oren. oren.

iphone charge: no issues here

2007-07-26T18:30:00.000-07:00

i've read a lot of stories about people saying their iphone won't recharge fully – or rather that the little charge indicator has a bug, so that it doesn't stretch out to 100% even tho' the iphone is in fact fully charged.

this hasn't happened to me at all. iphone apparently has 2 kinds of screens: version 5 and version 7. i appear to have the version 5 screen iphone, which doesn't suffer from any of these reported iphone issues. . .

i guess i lucked out when i purchased mine! i've met several other iphone users now – like greg from yttp – and none of them seem to have any problems either. thus i believe these problems are likely being over-reported.

iphone saves my life

2007-07-23T20:41:00.000-07:00

due to various reasons that aren't possible to explain here, the serious floods in the uk impaired network access for some people at a certain location in my firm. i happened to be affected by this when i went to that location for a meeting very early in the morning.

this meant plugging in your laptop to the system wouldn't work in the usual way. . .i won't bother with all details.

but suffice it to say i spent the morning working pretty normally by switching to my iphone, which is more like a mini-computer than a regular smartphone – if set up with care.

i was surfing away, getting calls, checking mail, all that. why the pundits say iphone can't be used for business, i don't know.

sure it may not connect with certain corporate email situations, but when those are down, everyone switches to their personal accounts anyway. in the end, i was one of few people who managed to get even half my normal stuff done today.

iphone is free to fly, if i may paraphrase elton john.

iphone battery life, redux

2007-07-17T18:46:00.001-07:00

today i saw my first iphone low battery warning – the blue pop-up bubble that reminds you you're down to just 20% of the battery. and i've clocked past 24hrs on the counter now, well beyond my first post.

so another 20% would give me about another 5hrs, for a total of 29-30 on my very first charge! if it's true that the iphone battery "wears out" after 400 full charges, then hey, it looks like this baby's gonna be good for what?

4 years of use? i'll see what the second charge is like, but my personal experience right now suggests that these iphone battery issues so many reviewers supposedly identified apply only to those who don't exercise common-sense power management.

or perhaps my practice of turning features on only when i intend to actually use them is extreme? nah. . .

the kenya geisha, redux

2007-07-15T12:03:00.000-07:00

as long-time readers know, each method of coffee brewing highlights various aspects of the bean. the finest flavor nuances are best seen by vac pot brewing; while body is showcased by the cafetiére.

this afternoon i brewed yesterday's astonishing batdorf kenya geisha in the french press, according to the usual scaa guidelines. the body comes out like an indonesian – thick and velvety.

as expected, the sparkle's much reduced. but this rhubarb-y kinda thing does in fact show up.

and this was pretty amazing, as i wouldn't have ever thought to see a sour-ish (in a good way, like a sour apple candy) rhubarb in any coffee. i'm still drinking it black; it requires neither milk nor sugar.

still, i think the vac pot renders this coffee better. i'll chemex it tomorrow, but these truly fine coffees almost always benefit from vacuum brewing the most.

many many thanks to jessica for this one! the history of the oakland estate on which this coffee was grown seems unusual too.

the kenya geisha

2007-07-14T12:59:00.000-07:00

that's right. you've read correctly.

a kenya geisha.

that's what that beautiful and sneaky jessica included in my regular coffee shipment yesterday. omigod!

long-time readers know about the rare coffee variety called geisha. originally from ethiopia, in its panama terroir it's one of the planet's most sought-after rare coffees, one for which discerning coffee lovers won't think twice to pay US$50+ a pound for.

and here, without telling me, jessica pops a geisha from a kenya terroir on me, the "wild forest." i had no idea there was geisha in ruiru.

one of the things that distinguishes these geisha coffees for me are their unusual flavor combos. the panama had strawberry, passion fruit, pineapple aromas, clear as day.

this kenya is a raspberry coffee, an orange-blossom-honey and raspberry combo like i've never smelled before in my life. . .but i'm getting ahead of myself.

let me just say that at US$20 for 12oz. it is underpriced. coffee lovers, steal it now from batdorf because next year once this has caught on it will be double that, easy.

lemme do this right. roast-dated the 10th, i think the coffee's a full-city+, as many beans show slight patches of oil.

i brewed it in the vac pot at 1.75oz coffee to 28oz water for exactly 4 mins. round trip.

get out your scaa flavor wheel, 'cuz this one is a trip. just opening the bag, the beans smell of orange-blossom honey and molasses.

this becomes stronger as in the fragrance of the fresh grounds. to my mind the raspberry isn't so discernible until the coffee cools a bit.

then a somewhat puckery raspberry appears, along with a balsamic rice, honey, and molasses aftertaste.

while the vac pot tends to attenuate the body of any coffee while intensifying brightness, the kenya geisha emerges with a sparkle and a medium body.

i'm drinking this coffee black, without sugar, with ease. it's also lovely with milk, altho' you lose the raspberry then.

highly recommended. an absolute must.

friday the 13th

2007-07-13T20:02:00.000-07:00

so today i was having a complete friday the 13th kinda day – at one point i thought tears were my only option short of rescue remedy – when i was completely saved by total bccy pal jessica marshall of batdorf. yes, even when the world is crumbling, dear readers, jessica's delicous goats come dancing through.

i had no idea today was going to be such a disaster, since last night i bumped into long-time yoga buddies alan klein and teacher rachel feinberg. we all played with the iphone, and i took rachel's pic (i swear i'll email that to you tomorrow, rachel!).

rachel had never been to yoga to the people, so i suggested some class times. it'll be interesting to see what she thinks.

speaking of interesting, the iphone gets more so every day as developers release shareware to offer document storage, voip, instant messaging, and even controlling your home mac remotely from the phone. that's right -- you can control your desktop from the phone and have it send you songs and documents!

the voip and document storage will be the first things i'll try this weekend.

iphone time

2007-07-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

you hear much talk about the iphone's battery life. well, here's my hint.

put the thing in airplane mode, turn off wi-fi, switch it to auto-brightness, and use it like an ipod except when you explicitly intend to make or receive a call, email, web surf, etc.

it's said a battery charge will get you 24hrs pure audio. i think more, actually.

so far i've got 17.5hrs+ of such use and my battery is showing just under 50% – making me think careful iphone use could get you 30hrs+ between charges if you play it smart.

iphone stylin'

2007-07-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

Fitted Sleeve
For iPhone ok ok so it's probably obnoxious if i tell you all that i'm living in my iphone these days, drinking gillies yemen. sue me, i don't care; i love my pink iphone incase!

my only gripes about the iphone are that you can't cut & paste from email into contact information and that sometimes when you set up wi-fi, the iphone won't connect to it unless you do a quick reset. the iphone seems to prefer the at&t network first, and if it feels that is a little stronger, it will just toss you over the "edge" instead of using the wi-fi.

finally, that the calendar doesn't keep my various flavors of appointments (home, work, etc) separate and syncing correctly is also a must-fix issue. i think these can all be addressed with system upgrades.

i went this evening to the apple store in soho to attend the "advanced iphone" seminar. one of those laurie anderson and her iconic hairstyle types was sitting behind me.

both of us felt the apple rep presenting didn't have a good grasp of the phone. she didn't even know the dots that appear on the bottom of the screen in some modes could be used for paging from one item to another!

c'est la vie: but she did say applecare for the iphone was coming and that it would probably cost US$69.

i think overall that most of the iphone reviews i've read are classic "perfection is the enemy of the extremely mind-blowing."

those fanbois just expect the effing impossible and have no sense of proportion. the iphone is a break-through device that i love using, unlike my old motorola phone, which i dreaded.

walking down the street with ms. pink in bklyn this evening, 3 people stopped me and asked to see it. they stared at it with wide, lustful eyes. . .

tickle me woz

2007-07-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

so my iphone a.k.a. "tickle me woz" arrived yesterday, and i tried to activate it last night. ran into the usual problems, called at&t this morning.

where of course i received the usual "i could care less, so drop dead" response. more than a little aggrieved, i wandered down there and had yet another non-stellar at&t experience.

of course at&t is well-known for its ability to take otherwise reasonable people and turn them into raving anger monsters at olympic-record speeds – i think it's a required skill to pass their employee training course – so finally i just moved to another customer rep.

and she was a gem. the only helpful at&t employee i have ever encountered in my life.

her name is tiffany edwards, and she fixed it all for me in 5 minutes. those of you in brooklyn with iphone issues, get yourself down to at&t on court & montague to see tiffany.

tiffany is the goddess!

the only other iphone issue i had after activation was the wi-fi set up. to get safari to use the wi-fi and not the edge network, i had to reset the iphone after activation.

but now it's a dream. so i'm listening to charlie parker and typing away.

the keyboard is great. i took no time to learn to type with it at all. . . .the word correction guesser is amazingly accurate.

the tickle-me-woz's a keeper.

no news to us here

2007-07-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

"patients who each day ate 6.3 grams of dark chocolate, about as much as a hershey's kiss, reduced their blood pressure after 18 weeks, according to a study."

bingo. more evidence is stacking up on the cardiovascular benefits of eating dark chocolate in moderate amounts.

my main problem with this current study is its very small size. i want to see this one confirmed in a much larger study!

real chocolate

2007-07-01T17:30:00.000-07:00

and today i grabbed a bar of something i haven't seen in a long-time: real chocolate. devoted readers know i've spent years tracking the attempt to foist fake chocolate on us, by way of the lowering of food standards.

real chocolate should only be allowed to have miniscule amounts of lecithin, if any, not too much "milk powder" or "whey solids," a good amount of cocoa; and of course anything called chocolate must be largely, overwhelmingly, possessed of real cocoa butter.

but everywhere you turn the e.u. and the u.s.a. are being lobbied by mega-multi-national corporations who want nothing more than cheap out the chocolate with fake-y "replacements." the e.u. caved, pitifully.

will the u.s.a. be next?

the entire situation is tragic. that's why i was thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to see one of my favorite artisanal chocolatiers, bernard castelain, back in the store today. i love the 77% noir intense.

it's much better than old, old bccy pal alex rast lets on. i nearly bought out the whole store, but confined myself to one unctuous pure cocoa butter bar.

heavenly.

another howler from the nytimes

2007-06-30T19:25:00.000-07:00

"without the bitterness produced by hot water, the cold-brewed coffee had hints of chocolate, even caramel."

i swear to khaldi's goats, where does the greatest newspaper in the world find these people? hot water doesn't cause bitterness in coffee: overly dark roasting and/or poor brewing practices cause bitterness in coffee.

amazing that you would find caramel and chocolate flavors in coffee! wow – 2 of the many categories on the scaa flavor wheel!

woo-hoo, maybe the times will next discover that wine comes in red, white and pink too.

yes, the times is amazed to discover – as i have long said – that you can easily make perfect delicious coffee with any glass jug or jar and a clean muslin sock.

if you know how to brew. can't wait til they hear that saturn has rings.

"my friend carter, something of a cold-brewing savant, turned me onto another homegrown trick: freeze some of the concentrate into cubes. matched with regular ice cubes, they melt into the same ratio as the final blend."

long-time readers will join me laughing on the floor at this one. what a discovery: coffee ice cubes.

i guess i published it here oh – how many years ago? but that's the arrogance of the times for you; if it's new to them, why no one else could have possibly heard of it.

oh no. but the problem with cold-brewed coffee is that it's boring.

it's flat. it has no brightness.

and it is brightness that gives coffee its refreshing zest. . . brightness is a positive attribute in coffee – when the coffee is properly brewed in the first place!

which was the start of the entire problem. sheesh.

more goats

2007-06-29T17:31:00.000-07:00

well, a friend of mine said he stopped reading this blog "once he got to the goats," but what can i do? coffee might seem boring until you drink it!

which is always the purpose of this blog – to describe the passion and romance inherent in tasting coffee. oh, there is no doubt that coffee is the most seductive beverage!

so, i felt sorry for my poor friend, who hasn't tasted the nutty sweetness of jessica's batdorf dancing goats as an espresso. of course today my regular goat shipment came, without fail!

thanks jessica! there's really nothing as relaxing as a batdorf cappuccino and the morning paper. . .as i was walking home with my fresh coffee, i passed the local at&t store in bklyn.

i counted: the 175 people in line seemed cheerful, patient, chatting quietly among themeselves. newscameras were trained on the door. . .i'm buying mine online at apple waaay late tonight.

the mark of zorro

2007-06-26T19:53:00.000-07:00

it's quite a shock to go from the gillies winey, spicy yemen to yesterday's gmcr tanzania gombe. it's an scaa flavor wheel workout, for sure.

i'm calling the gombe's roast level a vienna+: ragged looking beans with patches of oil, and a few "elephant ears" or shells. by which i don't mean peaberries or caracols, but the defect called shells.

anyway, i chemexed this coffee at the usual oren proportion. even as i ground the beans, their floral fragrance seeped across the kitchen.

done brewing at 4 minutes, i took a sip: whoosh! like a fencing foil across the tongue. this baby is bright, bright, a classic razor-bright coffee.

really, it was a mark of zorro moment.

i'd have said it was a kenya aa at this point. once the coffee cooled a bit, a passion fruit tartness also sprung to the fore, balanced out by a honeyed character.

i'd say there's a light milk-chocolate aftertaste, not that you notice with your clothes in tatters. douglas fairbanks? he went thattaway. . .

gmcr's gombe reserve

2007-06-25T16:03:00.000-07:00

yes, it's finally here – long-time bccy pal's gmcr has finally sent me some of the tanzania gombe reserve. devoted coffee lovers may remember that dougie posted about it this spring.

of course everyone who was at scaa's 2005 seattle conference remembers dr. j goodall's incredible keynote, which basically blew all minds present – including mine – for about, oh, a year.

the buzz on this bean is that you can't brew it drip. pish-tosh.

if you know how to brew coffee, you can brew it by any method; if you're using a machine-based system, then of course you have to have a decent machine.

that above website says "it fails in a drip coffeemaker" and then recommends you use a chemex – um, what else is a chemex but drip? when did chemex become, oh, an espresso maker?

this comment is proof only that said website has a bad auto-drip machine, or bad auto-drip machine technique, but let's not go there.

let's talk about jane and gombe. nah, better yet, just read about it.

for the record i'll be brewing this tomorrow in of course, the chemex. . .thanks to all my pals at gmcr!

empty

2007-06-23T14:31:00.000-07:00

in some kind bizarre socio-astrological conjunction, nyc has pride weekend, the mermaid parade, and the first great beach day all at once.

this meant supermodel central was dead, dead, dead. oh well. however i did get to pick up a dagoba 74% superfruit bar at a great price. the currants are noticeable, but the acai and goji are not.

the bar tastes pretty good, but the texture drives me nuts; will not re-purchase. if i wanna eat my functional hunza superfruits, i'll do it with the organic himalayan mix from international harvest.

why don't these guys have a website? their stuff is a cut above the usual dusty, stale health-food store fruit fare.

interesting note

2007-06-20T18:34:00.000-07:00

"Hi

I just saw your posting on cafestol, coffee and cholesterol.....

just to let you know that there was a mistake on the original press release regarding this study... it has now been corrected on the BCM website. The mistake was that 5 cups of French press coffee amount to 10-13 milligrams of cafestol (not 30mg as originally reported), which raises cholesterol by 6-8%....

each cup of French press contains about 2.6mg of cafestol..... just thought that you might like to know...

Regards

Marie-Louise
(Yes - I am the one who did the study.. in case you're wondering!)"

wow! thank you, marie-louise, author of the study!

i had no idea bccy was a must-read for the coffee science crowd too! very pleased to have you here, marie-louise.

i do hope you stop by more often. thank you for such a gracious and personal note.

and in other news, don schoenholt's promised coffee shipment from gillies finally arrived. yummy!

a half pound of his 167th anniversary yemen. yuppers, dear readers, you read that right – 167, which makes don the 12th oldest continuously functioning business in new york city, and the oldest amercian coffee roaster.

that's why it's called gillies i840 after all!

the food movement that dare not speak its name

2007-06-17T11:16:00.000-07:00

long-time readers know that when i started this blog, you couldn't even say the words "slow food" without being called a communist nut-case. now a few years later, everyone's familiar with the idea of food miles and local production.

when the foodie bloggers started up, it was all about (supposedly) their recipes and their rush to get a cookbook/food tv deal. they all wanna be "stars."

there were very few of us who, like the founder of slow, carlos petrini, were focused on ingredients and traditional (often home- or craft-based) techniques.

thus my little heart lifted today when i read this interview with petrini:

"he also has harsh words for the celebrity chef culture, obsessed with 'recipes, recipes, recipes'."

yuppers, i delighted in the interview, which you can read here.

new goats

2007-06-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

and thanks as always to jessica marshall of batdorf for her fresh delicious dancing goats. what's amazing about batdorf is that the customer service is flawless.

and has been for years. it's the consistent spot-on never-miss-a-week that makes jessica so awesome.

plus of course the coffee is delicious. long-time readers know my husband will drink no other outside of italy.

and you thought i was a coffee snob! ha!

chemex anyone?

2007-06-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

"cafestol, a compound found in coffee, elevates cholesterol by hijacking a receptor in an intestinal pathway critical to its regulation, said researchers from baylor college of medicine in a report that appears in the july issue of the journal molecular endocrinology.

in fact, cafestol is the most potent dietary cholesterol-elevating agent known, said dr. david moore, professor of molecular and cellular biology at bcm, and dr. marie-louise ricketts, a postdoctoral student and first author of the report. cafetiere, or french press coffee, boiled scandinavian brew and espresso contain the highest levels of the compound, which is removed by paper filters used in most other brewing processes. removing caffeine does not remove cafestol, however.

studies by a co-author – dr. martijn b. katan of vriye univeriteit amsterdam, institute for health sciences, the netherlands – indicate that consuming five cups of French press coffee per day (30 milligrams of cafestol) for four weeks raises cholesterol in the blood 6 to 8 percent."

very interesting study; we coffee lovers should pay attention to see if it can be duplicated and confirmed.

in the meantime, if this worries you – there's always the chemex! the website claims it's the most "pristine" and "chemically correct" way to make coffee, terms that today have gained new meaning!

cafestol may seem threatening, but other studies seem to suggest it may be an anti-cancer compound. . .ah! mysterious!

yummy yemen on its way

2007-06-10T09:50:00.001-07:00

woo-hoo! new yemen from gillies is on its way. . .will report as soon as it arrives. and in further news for gillies fans, the popular lunch chain circa has finally dropped their second-tier chain coffee and returned to serving gillies.

the blend there makes a great iced coffee, so i suggest you check out a circa near you (despite what the website sez, there are actually several of these around town – in-the-know-noo-yawkas know.

and of course now that summer's here, if you make your own iced coffee, i refer you to the 2 crucial posts:

btw, i was pleased to learn today from the nytimes that top-tier resto per se makes pizza exactly the same way i do. but of course; who wouldn't?

back in chocolate baby

2007-06-07T18:37:00.001-07:00

howdy! it's great to be back, all shiny & certified (i hope!).

so my husband thoughtfully helped me celebrate the end of the fearsome itil certification test with a nice slice of german chocolate cake from famed nyc cakeshop magnolia. it's almost as good as before it was sold.

can't wait 'til i have my own geeky green pin. . .

but as a follow-up, i must announce that i'm giving up the nyc coffee meetup group. work pressures are just eating away at my time, alas.

so with a lot of thought, i have turned it over to scaa board member and pro barista, nick cho of murky. this way it stays in the scaa's hands and he can find a local scaa member to run it, while aligning it with his group in d.c. and ensuring it stays on the scaa message.

it was great being organizer of the group while it lasted. i grew it from 5 to more than 700 people, but it's time to move on.

i want to thank all the members for their patience, support, and love of coffee over the years! keep on brewin'.

not just a geekette

2007-06-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

oh yeah but it looks like i might be on the verge of becoming a certified geekette. and a member of the british computer society!

snort – but seriously this itil stuff all went down ok so far, despite it most decidedly not being cake.

it's challenging. and there are more courses, "manager" level and "practitioner" level.

just in case anyone besides me has the desire to be a change manager. . .basically tho', you won't be hearing much from me until, oh, tuesday. . .

until then i'll be living on jessica's batdorf dancing goats. seriously.

what am i doing? eating chocolate cake!

2007-05-30T18:17:00.000-07:00

i know it's highly unusual for me to miss a day, so thank you for all your kind emails. i've been itil'ing, which as those of you who have done it know, is an intense process.

so honestly, you may not hear much from me until sunday. because we're doing a rather crash immersion course.

i'll be back soon enough. . .after doing my homework this evening, i did take a break long enough to try a piece of the highly-regarded salty-caramel dark chocolate cake from baked.

long-time readers know i love dark chocolate-covered caramels decorate with gray french sea salt. it is deeply yummy stuff.

and the cake's not bad either. i like.

no wonder it's apparently flying off the cake stand in red hook!

ot: family treasure

2007-05-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

yuppers, the memorial day holiday means crab cakes. real crab cakes, not nasty hockey-pucks stuffed with bread.

long-time readers will recall that this family treasure recipe is here.

i serve these with a nice backdrop of organic baby lettuces and mesclun, along with steamed tender french green beans. . .if your family contains a lot of seafood lovers, go ahead, steal my recipe.

why not new york?

2007-05-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

"the vermont economic progress council is encouraging green mountain coffee roasters inc. to expand with US$1.56 million in job creation incentives."

congrats to long-time bccy pals gmcr!

but at the same time, i wonder why famed biz guy and billionaire mean mayor mike bloomberg is trying to discourage the coffee industry in nyc? as it is, nyc is losing its important light manufacturing base:

"manufacturing, which lost 13,000 jobs between 2005 and 2006, was the only private industry to lose jobs over the year," says this state report.

these are good jobs, solid blue collar jobs with health benefits; not everyone can be a hedge fund manager, after all.

bloomberg should take a hint from liberal and eco-friendly vermont on this one.

ot: lunch

2007-05-26T15:58:00.000-07:00

i just fell in love with some italian cheeses i had today for lunch:

from alta langa in cuneo, a fresh goat cheese, the rutulin
another from cuneo, a mixed-milk, semi-soft cheese, the raschera d.o.p.
also from alta langa, a goat camembert-type cheese, called "boccocino di pura capra," milky, pale, delicate (i second the recommendation of this for people who find other cheeses of this type too strong)
a nice bit of parmesan reggiano
a valtellina casera d.o.p., pretty hard, with lacy holes

sottocenere al tartufo

some persicata or peach paste

on jaiku we had a little discussion as to what would have been the best wine to match. . .anyway, i highly recommend the sottocenere and the raschera!

the tanah tinggi as espresso

2007-05-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

ho! i bet you all thought i'd never get around to jessica's batdorf organic sumatra tanah tinggi as a single-origin espresso.

but of course i pulled 2 doubles of this morning on beautiful caesar vibiemme. this coffee's very easy to work with; i scarcely had to adjust the mazzer mini beyond the usual arrow point.

espresso preparation seemed to concentrate the tobacco & and spice in this bean. and of course as a sumatra it displayed thick, bountiful crema and a heavy, buttery body that clung to the back of a demitasse spoon like thick turkey gravy.

all good.

on a side note, long-time readers may recall my love song to da vinci gourmet. i do like their sugar-free simple syrup, and when my husband wants a flavored latte, he always takes their white chocolate syrup.

so today i get one of these email marketing surveys from them. i go over, and it's just an endless slog, page after page of endless questions with repetitive answers on a scale of 1 to 5.

i got tired of it fast, and frankly abandoned it. why don't online marketers learn to make these things short and sweet?

so i wrote the marketing guy and told him why i gave up on him. and you know what?

he actually wrote me back, offering a free bottle of syrup if i'd finish the thing! wow - see there's a reason to fall in love with da vinci again, after all!

ok ok, i'll put it on my list for this holiday weekend. . .

gout?!?

2007-05-24T19:57:00.000-07:00

"a canadian study has shown men who drink four or more cups of coffee a day reduce their risk of gout."

ok, ok, we coffee lovers are used to the idea that our favorite beverage in moderation appears to have many health benefits. but even so, this one took me by surprise.

gout? isn't this disease like, so benjamin franklin? do people even get gout nowadays?

indeed, they do, much to my amazement. and coffee helps.

since high consumption of dairy products also appear to reduce gout, i guess you'd better take your java as a classic noo yawk reg-uhla.

who needs a tea pot anymore?

2007-05-23T18:35:00.000-07:00

"the uk coffee shop market is set to nearly double in size over the next decade, new research has predicted. . .

"having grown at more than 15% annually for the past eight years, the market is set to expand further to 6,000 outlets with estimated turnover of more than £2.5b within seven to 10 years, according to consultancy allegra strategies."

long-time readers will recall the day bccy linked to the stats confirming what many of us had suspected; that the british had switched from a tea-drinking majority to a nation of coffee lovers.

and that's a-gonna double in just 10 years? i know many people are shocked to discover that japan is the planet's 3rd largest coffee importing country (they're not a majority tea country any more either) and we all know china (and here) and india are moving fast to coffee.

this is of course the best way to raise coffee farmers out of poverty and to encourage coffee agriculture, so we coffee drinkers can enjoy higher-quality beans. increasing consumption globally – reaching out to educate in places historically into tea, as well as in coffee-producing countries themselves – should remain a top priority for all those who appreciate coffee as a fine beverage!

raising consumption in guatemala

2007-05-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

"guatemala has launched a canned coffee drink in a drive to introduce japanese-style drinking habits and raise languishing domestic consumption.

the central american country is a major origin of high-quality beans used to make ready-to-drink canned coffee, which sells massively in japan, but guatemala's home coffee consumption is low and has barely grown in recent years."

how very interesting! of course long-time readers know that an important step in stabilizing the coffee market and providing a secure livelihood for coffee farmers and their workers is to increase consumption in coffee-producing countries.

but that's hard to do, because most coffee-growing nations are frankly poor, where many citizens find access to clean water and electricity difficult. this makes it hard to brew and enjoy coffee.

what the average guatemalan is used to calling coffee, as all long-time readers know, is weak brew made from the worst beans, those too bad to export, with toasted corn as a filler, and a lot of sugar. needless to say that's a very acquired taste.

what i find of particular interest is that statement from the head of anacafe, the guatemalan coffee agency, that improving the quality of the coffee in the canned drink is what spurred sales. even people without a cultivated taste in coffee can instantly tell good from bad and prefer the good!

working from home isn't so bad

2007-05-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

today i had a very early meeting, but rather than schlep into the office at o-rooster-30, i decided to do it from home and then go in at the usual time. which was an excellent idea.

instead of drooping 3/4s asleep on the subway, i curled up on my comfy spot with my beloved macbook pro 17" and kept myself alive with jessica's wonderful batdorf sumatra tanah tinggi.

my entire company's windows, but i opened all the files necessary in pages and keynote without issue. i citrixed in for my email while pouring myself another cup.

if anyone needed me, there i was on twitter and jaiku. so that's what this enterprise web 2.0/mobile office stuff is all about. . .

pizza as usual

2007-05-20T14:31:00.000-07:00

of course sunday nite at bccy is always pizza nite, so i've been a-makin' the dough, sauteeing the broccoli rabe, and naturally i have the remaining tiramisu.

all good. meanwhile, i notice that said darling husband – who has finally after years of my urging started uploading his pix onto flickr – is suddenly the internet star!

after like 2 weeks on flickr, even his casual snapshots are being named flickr bests! he's invited into elite special members-only groups and contests where his pix are vote-getters!

his fans range from the philippines to nepal to california. people ask where they can buy his prints.

it's amazing, it really is. and here i am, still dutifully blogging away. . .

tiramisu with giuliano hazan

2007-05-19T14:01:00.000-07:00

so today's a rather cold and rainy day, quite unseasonable. i felt like i needed dessert on such a gray day.

hmm. . . but i also feel really, really lazy and unmotivated. i needed an easy, inexpensive but superfun situation.

and thus i hit upon giuliano hazan's tiramisu. now it's possible to buy cheap tiramisu made with cookies, sugar syrup, coffee flavoring and whipped topping at the supermarket for about US$3.50 a serving.

i don't think it has any real marscapone in it, or not very much; it's mostly whipped stuff. giuliano's recipe calls for the usual: savoiardi (some people prefer stale poundcake), left-over french press or moka pot coffee, whipped cream, eggs, mascarpone, liqueur.

my darling husband got into the idea and actually braved the drizzle to dash into sahadi's for the mascarpone and the savoiardi. there – everyone knows mr. sahadi has the best prices in all nyc – you can get the required package of real italian balocco savoiardi for just US$1.66!

imported polenghi mascarpone is now unfortunately US$7.75 for 8 oz., but that's the effing euro for you nowadays. those without access to mascarpone or who aren't as lazy as i'm feeling today can make their own at home with ease; it just takes some time to drain.

people usually have eggs about and all the rest, so those are no big deal.

but! let me do the math anyway. the cost is considerably heightened by my personal choice to always use organic, cage-free, field-raised eggs; if you're not so worried about that, the cost can be much less.

ok, so doing my math, i think an 8" x 8" x 2" pan of tiramisu costs US$15 to make at home. if you figure 8 servings, that's US$1.88 a serving.

very affordable even with my luxurious premium ingredients, such as all the fancy stuff above, not to mention the 43 and flor de cana dark rum. the classic recipe calls for strega and rum, but i just didn't happen to have any strega at home. . .so i winged it.

and heaven knows home-made tiramisu's easy: whip 1/2 cup cream in the stand mixer; beat 4 egg yolks, 1/4 cup sugar, liqueur, all the mascarpone; dip the cookies in your leftover coffee, and layer all that in the dish.

sprinkle cocoa powder on top and chill. 8 hours later: heaven.

it really is better the next day, but it never makes it; you'll actually be lucky if you can manage to keep it for 4 hours, i think, before everyone descends on it like locusts.

(and yes, cindy chang, that is still the bottle of flor de cana you so kindly gave me!)

uncommonly good, uncommonly bad

2007-05-18T18:34:00.000-07:00

woot! yesterday the beautiful jessica of batdorf sent me their new latitudes organic sumatra, the tanah tinggi. and i gleefully brewed it up the cafetière (that's a french press to you!)

oh yeah, drag out your scaa flavor wheel for this one. jessica's 3-day-old coffee looked to me like a city roast, no visible oil.

these beans are of wildly different size however, which is probably part of what gives this coffee its delightful complexity. opening the bag alone was a delicious experience – the beans offered a lovely touch of turmeric even in the bag.

slightly earthy, exotic, and also somehow sweet. i was transported to asia already.

the fresh grounds offered a fantastic spicy-fruity fragrance. more turmeric, but also a yellow fruit; roastmaster scott calls it mango, but honestly it reminded me more a sweet, very ripe starfruit for some reason.

ok, we agree at base this a golden-yellow coffee. in the cup, there's no doubt about the cedar aroma and the scented pipe tobacco aftertaste.

the coffee's mellow taste made it so easy to drink black, while body trembled and shock with a near-gelatinous quality. oh yeah: that's the freakin' earthquake-heavy body we associate with a sumatra in a press pot.

lovers of sumatra, this is a coffee for you. uncommonly good.

last night, coming home, i chanced to take a different train than usual, and so popped up in front of the new bklyn coffee shop uncommon grounds. when it comes to coffee retailers, i'm an optimist.

i always want to like 'em. but how rarely do i get that chance!

the shop itself is promising: charming, funky, lots of cushy seating, wi-fi, nice big mac display, cute curved marble counter.

i was deeply put off by the window sign saying they served seattle's best. omigod. the mermaid's second-tier brand.

but hope springs. . .i ventured inside and talked to the chick-behind-the-counter, one bree. i ordered a decaf doppio macchiato (yes, i know i'm evil).

first good sign: bree appeared to know what this order meant. second good sign: the machine was a 2-group la marzocco displayed like an art object in a niche in the wall.

i looked around. where was the grinder?

i asked bree, who told me it was around the corner from the machine. i'll let you pro baristi faint at the workflow mechanics of such a set-up while i plow on.

so bree wandered around the corner and returned with a silver bag of pre-ground coffee. i did not see her grind coffee. i did not hear her grind coffee.

i saw her scoop pre-ground coffee from a silver bag. trying not to faint, i casually asked her if the espresso was also seattle's best.

suddenly bree turned coy. "it's our own brand," she said, "for us, special to us." oh. ok.

after an eternity in the twilight i got an 8oz. cup half filled with coffee and topped with a large cap of stiff beaten-eggwhite type foam. no latte art here, for sure.

i paid bree, dropped my tip in the jar, walked out with the cup, took a sip, and promptly disposed of it in the corner trash can.

i hate to say it, but the mermaid herself would have made a better beverage. uncommonly bad.

what they're doing to that linea oughtta be a crime.

yoga lines in bklyn

2007-05-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

of course i was thrilled to finally get the announcement that the local yoga business omala has finally opened a physical store. of course i support local bklyn designers and also renewable, environmentally friendly fabrics like bamboo.

now the problem with too many lines of chic yoga clothing is that frankly, they're not cut for "real-sized" people. the clothes will say large, but actually be a stick-skinny size 6.

this to my mind is anti-yoga, which should be about compassionately accepting all body types. long-time readers know i've written about the yoga clothes dilemma before.

so i called tamara of omala and asked her point-blank: what's a size large? and she replied it's a 12-14; that the clothes are cut a little generously.

i was a skeptical, but she pointed me to the pix of the "ipod dress," the general after-yoga cover-up. it's cute.

i want one, even tho' above-the-knee isn't usually my style.

and as you can see from this shot, the model is a real human being with a chest and hips. she's a beautiful woman of color with an actual female-shaped body.

well, that's excellent! but i also personally would encourage the designers to add an extra-large 14-16.

i can't wait to go try this dress on. also, the side drawstring on the yoga pant is very good – it's a pain to try to do a nice paschimottasana only to have a big knot of drawcord hit you in the diaphragm!

a gift from david byck

2007-05-16T08:09:00.000-07:00

it's amazing how generous the international yoga community can be. today i received an autographed copy of david byck's it's a long way to the floor from byck himself.

devoted readers will recall that i've mentioned byck's book previously! it's david's story of how he, one regular kinda sports-watching, married guy, found his way to successfully changing his life through yoga.

plus, he loves coffee!

just skimming through it so far, let me say that david's an ashtangi with a slightly self-deprecating sense of humor:

"[the yoga teacher] continued to say that is was unfortunate that our culture had taught us that if we're not moving forward we must be moving backward, and although this applies in some situations, it doesn't apply to yoga. . .of course all this went in one ear and out the other."

unlike many yoga writers, david offers his audience a simple, plain, engaging and very down-to-earth style. he also gracefully but directly deals with some hard yoga issues. for example:

"in my opinion, one of the things that makes a yogi a yogi is knowledge and faithful following of the yoga sutras. in the second chapter, it mentions the 8 limbs of yoga, the first of which is yama or restraints.

essentially yama depicts the relationship between a yogi and others as it pertains to non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, sexual restraints and non-greed. this alone will keep me out of this elite group.

even after i realized i and everyone else who practiced yoga weren't necessarily yogis, i still thought everyone who taught yoga was. . . anyway, i guess the only reason i approach this subject is because when i attend a public class, i can see in some students eyes that they too think every instructor is a yogi, and by discussing this subject openly, hopefully bad feelings and disappointment can be avoided.

. . .one of the things that disappointed me was how focused some of the instructors were towards money. and again, if i didn't think they were yogis, i wouldn't have given it a second thought."

i can't wait to read this book cover to cover. long-time readers know ashtanga makes me grumpy, but so far david byck makes me smile!

thank you muchly david byck! i think i can right away recommend this book to my fellow yoga students without reservation!

for all the coffee in china

2007-05-15T19:48:00.000-07:00

"du yansheng, a farmer on the southern chinese island of hainan, hasn't gone without his morning cup of coffee in five decades, not even during the cultural revolution -- when such 'mock-western' practices could have landed him in prison.

'people here have never stopped drinking coffee,' du told reuters in xinglong, the cradle of coffee culture in an otherwise tea-drinking country.

du's father was one of china's first coffee farmers, at a time when it was considered an exotic foreign beverage. he brought robusta beans from indonesia in the 1950s -- decades before nestle or starbucks corp. arrived on china's shores.

today, coffee is fast catching on, especially among younger urban chinese, and the percentage increase in demand is in the double digits -- though still less than one tenth of tea consumption.

and coffee grown in china is beginning to climb the quality ladder. arabica from the southern province of yunnan is now catching the eye even of specialty roasters such as starbucks or italy's illy."

my my was i ever fascinated to read this. of course the only roaster i personally know who has tasted the yunnan is don schoenholt of gillies, who if i recall correctly had some to sample a couple of years ago.

of course all long-time readers know how quickly coffee consumption in china is growing – 15% a year – which is a healthy clip. other than that, i have to confess i don't know of any third-wave specialty roasters who currently offer yunnan in the u.s.a.

hmmm. . .

mixed feelings

2007-05-14T19:16:00.000-07:00

while it's true i often decry the overly scholarly and awkward translation of yoga texts – particularly patanjali – at the same time the idea of a "feminine" translation also makes me squirm. thus i have mixed feelings about renowned yoga teacher nischala joy devi's new translation of patanjali for girls.

i guess what digs at me is the idea that women can't understand "left-brained" or "analytical" things. and so need a special fluffy version just for their little heart-centered skullmush. . .is this accessibility or the biogtry of low expectations?

the book's coming to me via slow shipping, so i'll be interested in seeing how this "positive re-interpretation" actually reads. devi is a widely respected teacher; it could be good.

will update you in a couple of weeks.

3400 phinney

2007-05-13T15:00:00.000-07:00

woo. so today when running out for the usual fresh mozz for pizza, i ran into a chocolate bar i haven't seen in nyc before – in fact i haven't seen it since i was last in seattle. and it's a yummy one.

in fact, i tend to think it's the best fair-trade chocolate out there now. of course, i'm talking about theo chocolate.

its cute i-dream-of-jeanie wrapper conceals a nicely made bar. good sheen, great snap, clean break.

fairly well molded, only slight signs of pooling on the back. the bar that's rapidly disappearing in my hot little hands is the 65% semi-sweet coffee.

i love the way this bar smells -- deeply chocolate. another big, big plus is that there's zero lecithin.

the candy's only slightly gritty, due to the very finely ground coffee, but is otherwise creamy and melts nicely in the mouth, covering the tongue and palate evenly.

some people complain that many chocolates have too much vanilla. well, that won't be a complaint with this bar.

highly recommended!

ot: back to vanilla

2007-05-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

if i told you i ran off today and smelled something that was apricot, dried plums, honey, vanilla, and had a long dark chocolate afterfeel, you'd instantly say, "oh she's been at those ethiopian coffees again!" well, coffee is part of it – but it's the awesome frapin 1270 from aedes.

so altho' some feel the 1270's a fall fragrance, i'll take anything that reminds me of a great ethiopian (already i imagine don schoenholt writing me to say, um, this could be a tanzanian too. . . )

i should have known i'd like it, since basenotes recommends it for those of us who love mitsouko.

i also picked up more safran troublant, which ends in vanilla, and serge lutens' un bois vanille to wear right now. i love this mix of coconut milk, almond, and vanilla, even tho' again, everyone says this is a scent for colder weather.

but who cares? well, if these don't work out i can always go back and ask karl or robert for more prince jardinier. . .!

flame away

2007-05-11T18:06:00.000-07:00

"hundreds of millions of paper cups are tossed into trash bins across ontario every year, and they all wind up in landfills. that's why the city's works committee wants to put a stop to the endless waste and is proposing a 25 to 30 cent tax on every cup of coffee that comes in either a cardboard, styrofoam or wax-lined cup."

yeah yeah, i'm gonna get yelled at for this, but i'd actually support such a tax if introduced in nyc. landfill space is precious, and it doesn't cost as much as it should – it's one of these uncounted externalities, you know?

long-time readers know i'm a firm believer in the china cup for coffee anyway. wax and styrofoam both mess with the flavor nuances of fine coffees.

and anyone who knows me can attest that on those rare occasions when i have coffee out, i always ask for a real cup. and so should we all. . .for the coffee as much as the environment.

retail coffee statistics

2007-05-10T18:07:00.000-07:00

"the coffee market continues to grow rapidly, with the away from home segment increasing rapidly, according to datamonitor. five years ago the u.s. coffee market was worth $19 billion, and reached $29.3 billion last year.

coffee sales are forecast to grow by an additional $10 billion, to $39.5 billion in 2011. coffee consumed away from home is unequivocally dominating consumer spending, and is set to account for three quarters of all sales in the next five years.

the big winners are coffee shops whose sales have grown over 19 percent a year for the past five years."

and there we have it dear readers. despite these trends, i still strongly advocate brewing more coffee at home – it's a wonderful, affordable luxury that brings you closer to family and friends.

but i understand at the same time there are days when you have to dash off to work and must stop by the coffee shop! i do hope my friends the third-wave specialty retailers will be able to grow in this environment and benefit.

it would be a pity if chain stores grabbed most of this incredible market. . .

um, sez who, tea drinkers?

2007-05-09T18:14:00.000-07:00

"but yirgacheffe coffee struggles to make money. its floral, spicy aroma is not attractive to western tastebuds, and so it fetches an inferior price."

long-time readers know i'm a big proponent of the coffee farmers and have long inveighed against the conditions that create the so-called "coffee crisis" – which, by the way, despite the recent higher market prices, still isn't over. and it won't be over until coffee has been de-commodified.

so i was down with this bbc article about the structural injustices of the coffee market until i struck the line above. because everyone knows that true coffee connoisseurs adore ethiopian coffees.

i don't think i could even count how many posts here in which over the years i have extolled one kind of yrg or another. from david schoenholt's gillies lemon-candy yrg, to the hama, to the amazing finch wa, to jessica's lavender dream, her kello, to klass van der kaaij's famous apricot nectar – the list of mind-blowing yrgs just goes on and on and on.

all of these coffees were highly appreciated by coffee lovers and sold for major dollars at auction. yrgs are highly regarded both by professionals and consumers!

remember, oren won a roaster's guild award with his!

so the bbc just blew its cred on that bit. pity.

thanks for the link, giuliano!

2007-05-08T19:58:00.000-07:00

as i was hanging out at yoga class this evening in baddha utthita parsvakonasana, enduring the hilariously bad teacher with the voice like a tasmanian devil, i began to think "omigod, if she can't give decent yoga instruction, could she at least shut up for 30 seconds?" but no, alas, she couldn't.

her habit of raising her voice in pitch and talking faster and faster as the class goes on was beginning to make me quite tense. by savasana she sounds like a tasmanian devil on both speed and helium.

note to would-be yoga instructors: there's a reason so many great yoga teachers have cultivated soothing tones. think about it.

however, i took advantage of my slender knowledge of patanjali here. in one sutra he notes that yoga students can practice concentrating on whatever suits them individually.

naturally, i choose giuliano hazan's mind-blowing chocolate-ricotta pudding. a large bowl of which was sitting in my refrigerator at that moment.

yes, i counted my breath and concentrated on hazan's yummy wonder. whatever it takes.

my pay-off happened when i came home and attacked the budino with a large spoon! hooray!

but what was even better was the email i got from an attentive reader who noted that hazan had linked my blog on his press page. double hooray!

so thanks to you, giuliano. please keep the italian chocolate recipes coming.

finally, i also had a brief email exchange with the amazing stefanie syman, who's writing her incredible tome on yoga. it motivated me to catch up with lois, the historian at the nabe landmark plymouth church of the pilgrims.

i've often heard rumors that when emerson spoke there – which he did several times – he talked to the ladies about yoga topics, among other things. alas, lois noted that the church's archives are unscanned and sitting at the bklyn historical society.

so while she knows that emerson did visit the church, she has no firm knowledge of what exactly his talks may have covered. pity.

until someone has the time to root around in those archives we have no evidence as to what role, if any, emerson and/or that church's progressive congregation played in starting yoga in brooklyn during the 19th cent.

however we must note that emerson died before swami vivekananda gave his famous speech at the world parliament of religions in 1893, organized by unitarians, which of course emerson was.

and given that the vedanta society in nyc didn't open until 1894, anything emerson might have said would have had to come from his own readings and interest in yoga and not from swami vivekananda. emerson was deeply interested in yoga and indian philosophy; he even wrote a poem called "brahma."

he also apparently actually met the pandit ram mohan roy, an important indian philosopher and like emerson, a social reformer.

the entire patenting yoga thing

2007-05-07T07:51:00.000-07:00

of course the yogasphere and my inbox both are abuzz with the ny times article decrying yoga sequence patenting. of course it is obvious that many of the patents given to yoga poses and sequences are errors due the ignorance of the patent office bureaucrats who don't seem to understand the concept of prior art.

of course i had some wonderful correspondence with long-time bccy pal eddie stern. he wrote to me sardonically: "i suppose we can always do the un-patented ones still. . ."

which caused me to respond that in turn he should copyright all "works" of yoga that occur at his space. he replied that alas "yoga works" and possibly by extension "works of yoga" are also already claimed.

therefore on eddie's behalf, i immediately call dibs for him on all rights real and intangible, present, past, and future, whether on or in body positions, paper, film, fabric, images, depictions, sound, in all media, whether physical or digital, by electronic, electric, radio, infrared, or chemical signal (gotta cover thought-waves here too, folks, it's america!) to "yoga expressions" and by extension "expressions of yoga."

this means by "performing" or doing any "yoga" in any space, synchronizing any physical body positions to any music or rhythmic pattern (including the sound of breathing), "thinking" about "yoga" at any time, or by depicting any "yoga" in any form or format, you are caught in the act of "expressing" yoga, and must pay eddie royalties in lavazza or face some really ugly karma later.

in return for reserving all said rights, eddie promised me to never appear publicly in a speedo.

budino cioccolato

2007-05-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

ok so i picked up a super-cheap copy of giuliano hazan's fast-food italian cookbook, flipped it open, and glanced upon his recipe for chocolate-ricotta pudding.

"addictive" he says. "15 minutes to prepare."

bingo. i bought the book, stopped at my local garden of eden to pick up the eggs, heavy cream and fresh ricotta (of course i already had the chocolate at home!) – dear readers you can guess the rest.

this stuff is delicious. it's absurdly simple to make.

15 minutes to make is true: just pop the chocolate in the microwave to melt, add the cream, and beat the eggs in your stand mixer. i added a dash of vanilla.

hazan suggests chilling overnight, but frankly, it won't make it. i think 4 hours is the minimum, and honestly i was fighting my husband away from the fridge for the last two.

i'm calling this fantastic no-cook recipe a must. buy the book used. i don't care. just get your hands on this recipe!

note: i think if you add finely chopped almonds it becomes a budino toscano. just in case any of you are chocolate-almond freaks.

onion or no?

2007-05-06T15:05:00.000-07:00

thanks for all your nice email on my little research piece yesterday on yoga in nyc. on a whim, i extended this out to see what the earliest mention i could of yoga in the google news archives, which go back to the 18th century.

a quick search took me to what google says is jun. 18, 1839, but when you click on the link you actually go a sports page in the oakland tribune for 1939. so i think that's a mistake.

a lot of these early searches turn up what are clearly scanning errors in the text – the articles aren't actually about yoga at all. the mass scans i think so many newspapers did of their archives just weren't very accurate when it came to dealing with those antique typefaces.

checking the google archives timeline for the keyword yoga before the 20th century really marks that hilarious "a western yoga" serial with the humorless miss godkin as a landmark as to when yoga hits the zeitgeist in the u.s.a.

in important pizza news, i am contemplating whether or not to add onion to my sauce recipe. as far as i can tell, it's not normally done in naples.

but i'm still researching to see what the general regional practice might be. anyway, i won't be changing my red pizza sauce recipe this week for sure!

new york's yoga history

2007-05-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

a couple of days ago i was talking to some fellow yoga students here in nyc. one of them happened to remark that well, yoga overall sucks in nyc compared to california because yoga is still relatively new here.

au contraire! i cried. yoga in new york is more than 130 years old.

in fact for a time in the late 19th cent., yoga was quite common among the wealthy, in light of the fad for theosophy – you have to remember theosophy was founded here in new york in 1875.

but of course i was greeted with skeptical looks. so this afternoon i took a plunge into the ny times archives – which is difficult, as their search engine generally has more bad hits than even msn.

but the ancient .pdf articles in the times reveal that it was a popular past time for ladies to hear yoga lectures. these are listed sometimes under the heading of "amusements in the evening."

in those days yoga would have probably meant not asana, but popular introductions to advaita vedanta. the more substantial hits on yoga don't start coming until oct. 5, 1884.

long-time readers may recall that many times i have complained how poorly most sanskrit texts and indian ideas are translated, so that you basically need a degree in indology and a handy specialist reference book to read even the simplest works.

guess what? i'm not alone!

"very few books have been printed in english which are harder to follow than 'hindu philosophy popularly explained,'" laments a book reviewer on that day. an indian christian, ram chandra bose, wrote this work on vedanta in an aim to show its inferiority to christianity.

it was duly published by the venerable funk & wagnalls. despite these difficulties, new yorkers apparently kept their interest up.

another review of interest, published on may 27, 1889, dwells on the exoticism of fraudulent fakirs, suspicious and dangerous occultist yogis, and the injustices of indian life.

what particularly caught my attention was an april 15, 1889 book mention of what has to be a very early translation of patanjali's yoga sutras, by a theosophist, william q. judge, entitled the "yoga aphorisms of patanjali: an interpretation."

in fact, yoga continued to be such an interest of popular fascination in new york that lurid penny-dreadfuls were published on the topic. an example of this, from the march 22, 1891 edition is a potboiler called "atman: the documents of a strange case," by one howard williams.

in this fantastic gothic bit, a mysterious and evil artist wolff and a tender innocent named margaret fall into the clutches of the diabolical lambro john pedicaris, who is described as having "the secrets of the rig-veda and the upanishads at his fingers' ends. the mysterious om he pronounces without a shudder."

but apparently new york ladies could not be dissuaded from their interest in yoga. a serial dated oct. 15, 1893 features a young miss godkin entreating her society friends to join her in learning "a western yoga."

but in an antique version of sex & the city, they seem more interested in clothes and parties. miss godkin turns to a handsome fellow charlie to encourage him to join her in yoga exercises – this seems to be the first mention of asana i can find.

charlie demurs: "i will do anything in reason to please you," he says, "but would standing on one leg and looking at the tip of my nose be considered reasonable?"

nonetheless, miss godkin persuades them to try one yoga pose the next day. she returns and tries to teach them tree, standing with their backs against the wall.

"i feel the holy influence," intones miss godkin, "can you not sense the presence of karma in the room?" the session ends when other friends arrive and mock them for looking like "waxworks."

however by jan. 13, 1896 the tone of the times seem to change somewhat, with a fairly straight description of a lecture on vedanta and pranayama, given by an american named claude falls wright, another well-known theosophist.

it seems as if by this time theosophy's presentation of yoga and asana were unremarkable in nyc, as theosophy itself had become a normal topic of conversation among the social set. yoga's star seems tied to theosophy according to the archives.

yoga mentions start to fade away as theosophy falls out of fashion. but as we all know, yoga actually enjoyed several post-theosophical revivals later on!

the psoas joint

2007-05-05T08:05:00.000-07:00

i think all long-time readers know that i've been saving for an iphone. actually it might be more pertinent to say "well, who isn't?"

let's face it, an iphone with a good contract is going to be a pretty penny, all upfront. this has led me to have to compromise and balance some things, among them my yoga classes.

there are places in nyc where you can get "budget" yoga. unfortunately, this means you also get budget teachers.

for example, yesterday and the day before. i went to classes at the same place – where my attempt to do yoga often seems to interfere with the "teachers" attempt to lead group exercise – the classes can scarcely be called real yoga, i'm afraid.

by chance both of these classes were led by the same new "teacher," a 20-ish woman with a voice like broken glass who has yet to learn the difference between projecting and screaming. as we were all assidously breathing through baddha utthita parsvakonasana, she explained to us how important it was to hold this pose, as "the psoas is the largest joint in the body, where we keep a lot of tension."

i couldn't help but laugh so hard i nearly fell outta my bind. the psoas joint!

ok, so the girl has graduated from a supposed 200-hr. program and doesn't know the difference between a muscle and a joint. i think even an aerobics instructor who'd taken one of those weekend yoga "certification" courses would be better than this.

but i let it go. taking classes at this studio is hard because the low cost and location draw a lot of frankly mentally ill people.

at that same class a hysterical woman placed her mat at the very front and spent the majority of time in a strangely heaped sort of balasana weeping and moaning quite loudly. she was actually shaking on her mat; i finally turned to the "assistant teacher" and begged her to call bellevue because this girl was presenting major symptoms.

but of course the teachers did nothing. there's another lady often seen at this studio whose behavior is also quite irregular – she'll leap up abruptly in certain poses and thrash her arms about or sing loudly for a phrase or two in the middle of a pose and then rush pell-mell thru the lines of mats to lock herself in the studio bathroom – this is just what goes on there.

the second amusing incident with this teacher happened friday when she came over to me in a pose and encouraged me to "extend the crown of my neck." again, i couldn't help but giggle.

thank heavens the iphone will be out soon. i can pay for the phone and the contract and then start over at eddie stern's.

in case you couldn't spend all day in the park

2007-05-04T19:50:00.000-07:00

today was definitely the most beautiful day we've had all year. but like most people you probably had to work in an office somewhere, farming a cube or rockin' your smed.

that's ok because my husband went to the brooklyn botanical garden for you. brooklyn really is this beautiful.

i don't mean to brag, but yes, he takes photos like this all the time.

he's one of these people who can't take a bad picture or make an ugly mark. it's frightening really, but on the other hand, that's why they pay him the big bucks, you know?

to make things worse, he bicycled home and made his delicious lighter-than-air spinach gnudi in sweet fresh tomato sauce.

and worse than worse is he won't give me his recipe. . .aarrgh!

how does he make them so light? they are like little meringues of ricotta deliciousness!

the estrella del sur

2007-05-04T08:15:00.000-07:00

ok, so while i keep tweakin' my tones so they're not too pale on some macs, i'll just thank you all for your input! i appreciate it.

in the mean time, as promised, i chemexied up jessica's batdorf estrella del sur.

opening the bag was itself a delicious experience -- the fresh beans gave off brach's caramel aromas. yummy: candy coffee!

the fresh grounds offered up a lovely, spring-time floral scent. this seemed like a very clean coffee to me – i couldn't detect a whiff of anything that shouldn't be there as the coffee vapors bloomed.

tasting the coffee was the surprise: instead of the crisp or sparkling taste i expected, i thought this coffee offered a hint of wine-y! and i also understood exactly what roastmaster scott meant when he talked about the complexity the mixed bean sizes bring to cup.

because this coffee's not just nutty; it's like the nicest bag of mixed nuts ever. hazelnut, almond, brazil.

and overall this arching caramel-vanilla feeling into the aftertaste, like a good colombian. i loved this coffee from the get-go, but of course – as is my wont – i couldn't help but saying it also makes me pine for the ultimate colombian, scott's los lirios.

still, short of that, i'm so happy to have this estrella del sur! recommended.