TUrkey licking Thursday

Hey There Turkey Licker. How is going? Ready for the Big T-Day? I had to get up a little early on this cold ass Thanksgiving morning to get a good start on the candied yams that I promised to bring. I also promised to bring some green bean casserole, but Yesterday, when I went to Trader Joe's it was a flipping madhouse by golly. People were scrambling everywhere like looters in security camera footage grabbing what they could and then getting in line before it got too long. I had made a list of shit I needed, but mob frenzy took over and soon I was in the the midst of them fighting an old lady for the last pumpkin pie sample , dodging kids, scaling walls, grabbing organic sugar pumpkins that I really did not need, and pretty much forgetting about the list altogether; the crunchy onion things, the green beans, the mushrooms and such were completely ignored.

I walked out of that asylum with my large recycled pop bottle bag full of all kinds of shit, but only about half of the things that were on my list. Instead attempting to revisit that terror, I decided to walk over to the Lucky Supermarket instead. Besides, according to the sticker on the organic sugar pumpkin, I needed some condensed milk in order to make a good flippin pie (don't ask me why, but I like using flippin now).

The supermarket was also nuts, which of course it would be on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Once again my mob mentality took over mixing with the the energy rush I got from the sugar in pumpkin pie sample and I charged through the crowds, grabbing what I thought I needed and getting the flip out of there.

Pie tins check, marshmallows check, oh sweet evaporated milk 10 for 10 bucks, check and mate. I even stop to check to see if they whole nutmeg because Alston Brown from Good Eats says that you should always use fresh ground nutmeg but it turned out to be way to flippin expensive. I did see a Campbells soup green bean casserole display, but my hands were already full, so I hustled my way over to the self checkout where I was forced to wait as two panicked middle aged women did their best to figure out how to get the machine to ring up their produce.

So, the people are just going to have to live with my candied yams and homemade pumpkin pies with un-fresh nutmeg. Also, I had to improvise a little, since the pie recipe called for condensed milk and I got evaporated, but I think it will be okay. I also forgot the whip cream, but I am pretty sure there's a 7-11 along the way. Well thats what I am doing up so early, getting ready to prepare my part of the upcoming feast. Of course, I am also drinking some coffee, a Ethiopian Harar/ India Sanskrit blend that is really rocking and making me wish I had some more of and doing a little writing in my blog.

Oh pooper scooper, look at the time, I really need to get started on those yams. besides the Lions game is almost on, and I need to prepare myself to be scared, hopeful, optimistic and then dissapointed once again.

The little turd

Yesterday Morning, as I was finishing up a pot of India Sanskrit that I had roasted up the day before and doing my best to finish up an article on Dandelion Wine (the drink, not the book). The little turd pictured here was doing his best to bug the living crap out of me. He has this little game he likes to play with me when I am at my computer desk . He takes his nasty "suckle ball" and uses it as a sort of battering ram to force his way through the roll-out keyboard tray and get to my lap.

This suckle ball is a indestructible fluffy white ball that has pretty much been hauled over every filthy square inch of our apartment. When he is not trying his best to tear it apart or dragging through his own filth, he is contentedly suckling on it.

Here is a pic of the nasty thing

I think it is made from recycled plastic bottles or some shit like that.

It smells like dirty dishwater and piss.

So anyway, he dumped the nasty thing on my lap, and then just stood there, giving me that expectant pleading look, that all dogs seem to master. Being busy and in no mood to dick around with his smelly old ball, needing to finish up my article on dandelions , I did my best to avoid his stare, took a sip of my coffee, and continued plodding along on my keyboard. The India Sanskrit brew had gone cold, but still tasted okay, although not as good as the Mysore Nuggets. It was a bit too hearty and Robust like for my taste, but it could have been the P1 roast cycle that I used.

"MMMphhh" Said the little turd, as he danced to and fro and did his best not to bark at me, which would have led to banishment to the living room.

So I took the ball and tossed it, wiped the residual filth off on my pants and continued typing.

This was a mistake.

Because, once engaged in such activity, the little turd naturally assumed that it was playtime. So once again he took the ball and shoved it up through the keyboard rollout and into my lap and once again put on his pained look of expectation. Needing to get some shit done that morning, I sighed and shoved him and the ball back down, only to have him push back up and drop in in my lap. Then just as I was about to take his damn suckle ball throw it out of the room and then shut the door on his ass as he followed it, he stood up with his paws on my knees, did a little shuffle and then promptly farted a long wheezing fart that sounded a bit like a balloon deflating.

What a character this guy is.

Grampa tells a story

Grampa, grampa, Tell me a story!

Fuck Off kid, Grampa's busy eating delicious candy.

But Grampa! Pleassssse? Tell me a story and I wont stab you with a screwdriver anymore.

Oh, all right....

Once upon the time in a enchanted kitchen across the hallway their was this Magical Roaster that, through the transforming power of heat, helped turned special beans into the greatest elixir that all of history has ever known . Behmor 1600 was its name, an it was truly a very, very special machine.

Grampa, you are not going to talk about coffee again are you?

Do you want a fucking story or not kid? Now, eat some candy and listen to my tale.

So anyway, the mighty little Behmor was truly a magical machine that the kitchen creatures could not live without. However, when it came to loading in the virginal green beans into the sacred wire roasting drum, properly sealing it and placing it in the sacrificial alter to be slowly turned and burned and transformed, great care needed to be taken by the head roasting genie to make sure that everything was safe and working and shit. Otherwise great calamity could come to all the kitchen forest creatures.

Grampa, are talking about last week when you were roasting up an 11 oz batch of Papua New Guinea Peaberry and failed to properly place the drum in the holding notch and then forgot to double check to make sure it turned ok before turning on the roaster and going back to writing your post apocalyptic zombie porn tales only to have the drum fall off the spindle thing a few minutes into the roast and spill the beans all over the chaff collector?

Umm maybe, but hey, I threw in magical creatures and virgin sacrifices and stuff. What the fuck do you want from me kid?

Well, you told me that story already. So tell me another one.

Once upon a time in the magical subtropic mountain forests of India, there was this special tree with magical cherries...

The Results of the The Scary Pumpkin carving competition between my girl-fiend and myself. Mine is on the right carved in the traditional triangle scary style. It had cool looking demon ears, but my dog ate them before I could take a pic. The demented one on the left is hers. The one in the middle is our dogs, who is surprisingly handy with a knife.

Halloween Chili

As much as I love coffee,there are some things that it does not go with. Chili and taco bell are too good examples. I do not know how many times I have done the latter to myself and have suffered the dire consequences of out of control bladder explosions. Thankfully, my seven years of working two blocks away from a Starbucks and Taco Bell (7 fucking years now, really?) have made me a bit immune to the old taco buck cha cha's.

Chili is another story. Especially my special Halloween chili, which is a bubbly oozing mass of beans, meat, spices, and five different peppers, including the ultra rare scary pepper that comes from deep within the jungles of a whole other continent somewhere. Too much of the scary pepper can make you shit yourself, like you just saw a ghost, hence its name. I only add one or two of these bad boys to a whole pot.

I know better than to ever mix my coffee obsession with a bowl of my Halloween chili. I know that if I do, I might end up looking like my friend Pierre here. Pierre just did not want to listen to me. I told not to mix the two, but the motherfucker was too lazy to cook up some eggs and toast. It had been a crazy night of trick or treating and sacrificing virgins to the goat god, and Pierre might have been just a little hung over to realize the danger he was getting himself into. He should have fucking listened to me.

I guess i could have gotten off the couch and swatted the bowl of bubbling death and liquid acid out of his hands, but I was also a bit wrecked from a evening of overindulging in the big batch I had brought over to the sacrifical rites pot luck that our neighborhood was having. The cup of El Salvadorian Wet Process I had brewed up in my Chemex was doing a number on my guts, and it had taken several bong hits to calm it. Still, I should have done something other than yell, "Pierre, what the fuck are you doing? That combination is going to make your guts explode dude," without barely looking away from the Wii game that I was halfassedly playing.

I will have to live with that forever.

I will also have to live with Pierre for a while. His exploding bits got all over my kitchen and it is going to be a nightmare to clean it all up. I might even have to move now. I just hope the cops do not ask me about the hefty trash bags I left on the curb.

Happy Halloween everyone.

On Gays in the military

I was sitting here, sipping on my Rwanda FTD India Robusta blend, checking out the latest news and shit when I came across a blurb about Gays in the military. While I did not actually read the story, nor do I remember what exactly the little news flash said, I must say that I am in full support of Gays in the military. I think that anyone who has big enough balls (that applies to both genders in a metaphorical sense) to put their life on the line for this country has the right to be whoever they are.

Besides, nothing is hotter than two chicks, armed to the teeth, making out in the the middle of hostile territory. I saw a movie like that once, it was called GI Janes or something. Or maybe I just imagined it. Anyway, those chicks were not only hot, but they kicked some major ass.

Whats that?

Oh...

Well, that kind of make sense too, with the nice uniforms, the whole dress code and "neat" thing. Yeah, i can see that. Well, thats great too, although I do not want to imagine what that movie would be like (GI Joes, or perhaps Joe's GI tract?).

Anyway, about the coffee....

I had about 8 oz left of the Rwanda FT Dukunde Kawa Musasa and I was torn as what to do with it.I thought briefly about just roasting up the 8 oz on the Behmor's half pound setting, but decided against it because thanks to the crappy power in my building. I had difficulty getting even 6 oz just dark enough for my taste. I really did not want to make a small batch that would leave me hanging by Monday, and I did not want to try to cheat and roast the 8oz on a full pound setting (10 is as low as I allow myself to go).

I figured that maybe I should do a little blending experiment. After fishing around in my cabinet, I found some India Robusta that I had laying around. Dark, dense, chalky and chocolaty, I thought it just might go well with the flowery Rwandan FTD, so I threw in 3 oz of it and burned up the first and only batch of the " Robo Rwandan". I say first and only, because this mixture was pretty much a failed experiment. The Robusta ratio is way to big giving the coffee to dark of a overtone that made drinking the full batch these past couple of days a bit of a challenge.

This morning however, as I was gazing at this hot pic and thinking about gays in the military, this blend actually tasted better then the previous pots. Perhaps, because I had made it very strong, almost espresso like, or maybe the five days of sitting in the bag finally mellowed it out enough to allow the two beans to mingle.

Speaking of Mingling Beans

Perhaps time has finally mellowed this nation's ass backwards stance on who is and is not worthy of serving and protecting their country.

Guinea pig

Go Green!

Go White!

Sorry had to say that. It is looking like a big year for Sparty. Of course, retail being my other gig, I have only gotten to watch one game of theirs. It was the classic against Notre Dame, and I nearly shit my pants on that final play. It would have been nice to see them stomp on their little BLUE sister's throat. But, gloating about it is just as good. Still the upcoming battle against Iowa, is almost enough to make me consider getting one of those case of the Mondays to casual Fridays jobs that the rest of my fellow MSU alum have gotten.

So anyhow, here I am, up in the wee Sunday Morning Hours, sipping on some El Salvador Manzano Process Experiment Wet and quietly watching whatever Michigan State football porn that I can get my hands on. This week's game was against the lowly Illini, and all the sports sites are jerkin each other off about the way Bucky the Badger cornholed the Buckeyes to say anything about Sparty. Still, I will take what I can get.

As for the coffee...

Being a sucker for learning and shit, I decided that I could not pass up on this opportunity to taste the same coffee processed three different ways. You see, just like tuna and kittens, there is more than just one way to process coffee and each process brings its own flavor profile to the bean....yada yada yada...

So anyway, this past Wednesday, I roasted up three separate 6 oz batches of Manzano Wet, Dry and Pulp Natural and have been giving each a initial swirl around my old taste buds. The last of the Wet that I am drinking this morning as I look for Sparty action, tastes better on four days rest than it did the second day. It is clean and bright and lemony, a good Sunday morning cup. Since the crack did not come until the very last allowed minute of the P1 roast cycle, I was worried that this one was be to green tasting for me. But it tastes just fine today.

My favorite ended up being the Natural Dry Process, which I got to a bit darker roast with a bit of tweaking with the Behmor. This one was so good that I ended up swilling it down in two days, while letting the other two "rest". I will have to make sure to ration out the next batch, so I have some for next Sunday, when I get up early to catch some more college football porn when Sparty takes on a Wildcat.