Home at the Hendels

Aunt KK's Salon

Another few hard working days but things are looking brighter.
Cindy is back! I was feeling a little dejected because things didn't seem to be moving much on the SF front and to make matters worse, my shining hope had disappeared. Well I got hold of Cindy today and she was just taking a break in Hawaii, so my hopes are alive and well. She is starting her own business and concentrating on Tech jobs. Should hear from her soon. Welcome back Cindy, you were missed.

On the coffee front: Had my first messed up roast (over-roasted) and the next day I recieved a Swiss-Gold press pot that I had ordered. With it came 2oz of Uganda Bugisu. I had heard great things about this coffee but I noticed that it was even darker than my over-roasted beans. In order to get away with selling inferior beans places like *$s and Peete's over-roast their beans. This way the varietal quality of the beans gives way to the roast flavor and you are none the wiser. So it was with these, as well as my over-roasted ones, Charcoal water! Mr Peete would have been proud. The pot is great though, much better tham the Bodum. SMs doesn't stock them anymore. Pity, but I have a source now:)
It made me extra carefull with the Ethiopian Harar Horse so I hit right on city+. It was wonderful, although I thought the Fair Trade Horse I had with Karen was just a touch better.

Update on the Chile Colorado. It was great. Got to do this more often.

Haven't posted in a few days because I've been working my tush off getting this project up and going. It's due in a couple of weeks and I was ahead of the game until they wanted a meeting (they were too busy during the design phase???) and that put be back a week or more. Hence not much posting. Meals were largely warm-ups of last w/e dishes and coffee was good as always but I'm working on using up some odds and ends so that I can really enjoy the Ethiopian Harar Horse (I've got 4lbs) 2 of MAO and 2 of Fair Trade. Should be roasting some tomorrow. Read "Thom's" great descriptions of them.

Went to visit a coffeegeek who works down at Wilderness Perk and had a great ristretto. He really knows his stuff. No Latte Art though.
Tonights pot of good stuff is going to be some Chile Colorado. Seems to be shaping up to be close to great.

It's nice having a three day weekend, but I worked most of it.

Roasted some Ethiopian "Yirgacheffe" and still had some Kenya AA. Very interesting cupping them both side by side, the Chardonnay-like Kenyan and the sumptuous floral Yirg. Quite an amazing contrast

Enough about coffee (for now). Working my butt off to get this project completed. I just know that after this SF here we come. And to be fair it is an interesting project, .NET gives one so much power and I am trying to make the most of it.

If you are still using MS Internet Explorer – DON’T. Check out Firefox, it’s a free download, is secure, it's fast and it gives you tabbed browsing (plus a whole lot more if you want). Not as flexible as Opera but you have to pay for that. MS has been letting that slow old clunker die on the vine. The only “upgrades” have been to correct it’s many security flaws. Let them wake up or let it die.

Well it’s getting warmer. Only 12F this morning, better watch out or we’ll have a heat wave.

The coffee I roasted yesterday Kenya AA Auction Lot 220 – Karatina (from Sweet Marias of course) turned out beautiful, stopped at the start of 2^nd crack. Probably a Full City roast. I wanted to do it a little lighter but I am finding the Z&D is getting me to second crack faster than I anticipate. Anyway the proof is in the cup. This coffee just underlines the similarity between good coffee and good wine! Beautiful acidity that helps to bring out the clean flavor profile and a lingering fruit and chocolate aftertaste.

Well with this kind of weather you can hardly fault a good hearty beef stew. I have been doing less and less of the French braising method and more and more of the Italian: instead of using a lot of liquid, the Italians use just very little so you get little sauce, but what you do get is intense. Got some decent cabernet to go with it. Making me feel warmer just thinking about it

Nice and warm down there - not like Nebraska right now


Record Low for this date

I was going to post some pics of my coffee roasing endeavours but they came out so badly with my ultra-cheapo camera and it took so long to upload them via my printer that I thought I'd scrap that idea and wait till I splurge on a decent camera BUT...
In the process I stumbled across Picassa (a neat program for capturing video for the web) and Hello another neat program that can run as a IM or that has a program that lets you post to your blog including with video.
Both of these programs are from Google and free. Google is doing some great stuff and if you dont have gmail - beg for an invitation because it really brings the world of email under control and no spam - and it works with Firefox, in fact Firefox has a notifier you can install to notify you about mail in your gmail inbox.
Too cold to go out so I'm going to cook up a pot of Cajun Pea Soup with some (cajun) hot andouille I made last fall. Perfect way to laugh at this crappy weather.

Happy New Year to all and may we all have a wonderful 2005.

This blog shouldn't be called "Home at the Hendels". The Hendels are thankfully in a pre-homeless phase prior to moving back to San Francisco after four, not very rewarding years in Nebraska. So the next Home will only be after - getting a job - moving - finding a home - moving our stuff - moving in - and finally selling this house.

So keep returning, getting updates and post a comment. Soon you should be able to say hello to us in San Francisco again, and eventually in a new home.

In the intro I obliquely mentioned a new hobby. Here is how it started: After returning from a trip to Europe (Switzerland and Italy) I was really missing my couple of espresso shots in the morning, but when I returned to the Sates and started drinking the coffee I found I had the jitters. A 6oz cup of American coffee has 100mg of caffeine, a double espresso has 50mg and we drink 12oz mugs!
I’ll cut a long but informative story short. I found http://www.coffeegeek.com and learned so much from the forums and reviews. After I was all ready to order an espresso machine and a burr grinder, the price of the machine went up so I ordered the grinder and a Zach and Dani’s roaster, having read about how wonderful freshly roasted coffee could taste.
Well the burr grinder (Solid Maestro Plus) arrived and I had not yet received my beans from Sweat Marias (http://www.sweetmarias.com/), so I ground up some beans from a local roaster and brewed in the Bodum French press. We were amazed. But when we roasted some of our own – especially the Sumatra Mandehling – we were in a new world. Coffee now had all the complexity of a great red wine – maybe more.
So now I have a new hobby, and I haven’t given up on the espresso. I also have a new girl friend but she will have to wait until San Francisco- Andreja- http://www.chriscoffee.com/products/home/espresso/andrejapremium