What are you eating?

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Darn. I read the FOOD link w/out looking first ... now I'm HUNGRY and it's too late to go drive and get some.

It means I'll have to cook ... (don't much like cooking for one ... )

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

Had a breakfast thing: an egg on an English muffin with HP sauce.  Yesterday I had it with kolbassa meatloaf as well.   

Wednesday night I went to a Korean restaurant for the first time.  I had Bibm Bahb - it was very good.  I'll have to go back, but the atmosphere (literally) in the restaurant we went to bothered my wife a bit: they've got a personal gas-fired grill built into each table, so the place is a bit smoky.

[Aggie]

Ooooh... did you get the stuff in the stone bowl?  That's extra good.  Bibim bap... 

I left the kimchi out too long last week (to jump-start the fermentation) and it got sour quickly, so we've been eating kimchi nonstop lately.  Kimchi pokum bap (fried rice), kimchi chige, kimchi pancakes.... 

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

Yup... the waiter was very careful to warn me: "the bowl is very hot!"

It was the first time I'd been to a Korean restaurant... we were in downtown Toronto and just happened to pass by while we were hungry.  I gather their specialty is a variety of grill-it-yourself things (hence the personal grills).

But I live out in the suburbs - the only kimchi we get at the grocery stores around here comes dessicated in the packages of the "fancy" ramen noodles.  We do have apple orchards, though, so that makes up for it.

[Aggie]

We had a hard time finding a decent Korean restaurant in Calgary (Koreans view opening a restaurant as an 'easy business', so the owners are not always very good at actually serving tasty food)... there's one little food court place that does a great Yuk Gae Jung (spicy beef noodle soup), but they have a limited menu.  Oh, and one place that does what Koreans would call "Chinese food"...  jjajang myun and such.

The all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ in Edmonton (Ginseng) is great, though. Grilling it yourself is fun, but you need a proper grease hood over each table to pull it off. 

[Aggie]

According to the wrapper, "Eraser Tea Candy"

Tastes a little like chrysanthemum.  Or maybe E.Raser....

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

Drinkin' coffee.  Like normal.

[DeadPoet]

Espresso! More Espresso!!

[Aggie]

Coffee!  

I'm not sure what style of coffee to describe this as... I take whole beans from a local roaster (a dark roast), grind 'em as fine as I can, probably to about an espresso grind or past, and brew it in a single-cup drip cone.  

Very dark and strong...  kind of the body of coffee with the flavour of (bad) espresso.  I don't dare compare it to good real espresso, or some purist will whup me.

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

I grind my stuff* in my grain mill, so it ends up rather non-uniformly graded; have a fair bit of fine grinds in with everything, so it gives it a bit of bitter espresso taste.

Others might not be too fond of it, but I actually like it.



*Not organic rainforest stuff... it's the cheapie Costco whole bean coffee which, for some reason, is Fair Trade Certified (yet is cheaper than the non-Fair Trade coffee).

[Aggie]

Is that the Kirkland-branded beans roasted by Starbucks?  That stuff's pretty good.

I get the organic rainforest stuff for birthdays and Christmas; it takes me quite a while to get through a pound of beans, so the Costco pack would be overkill (and this stuff isn't overly expensive I think). 

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

Is that the Kirkland-branded beans roasted by Starbucks?  That stuff's pretty good.

And the cheapest stuff I can find, so it works out well.   

I get the organic rainforest stuff for birthdays and Christmas; it takes me quite a while to get through a pound of beans, so the Costco pack would be overkill (and this stuff isn't overly expensive I think). 

I usually drink a 12-cup pot (about 5 large mugs) every day, so it makes sense for me to buy in bulk.   

Hmm... when I say "I drink a pot a day", it sounds like a lot.  Maybe I'm drinking too much coffee...

[Aggie]

I try to keep it to a cup a day, and usually let it slide into two cups.  This year, I've been making a point of brewing my own cup using fresh-ground good beans instead of drinking from the office coffee pot, which keeps me from drinking too much out of convenience (I suspect that due to the way I brew it, my total caffeine intake is just as high or higher).  The main coffee drinker in our office (one of the bosses) insists on buying the crappy-preground-by-the-multi-kg-tin stuff like Folgers or Maxwell house, and brews it up on the weak and sour side... we've tried switching him over to the Costco stuff, but he goes back every time. 

I drink about 6-8 cups of green tea, at two cups/bag, to fill in the need for a hot drink.  It doesn't give me the growlies like coffee, and keeps the caffeine levels at a reasonable background, so I don't get the post-coffee crash. 

[Swatopluk]

I drink about 6-8 cups of green tea, at two cups/bag, to fill in the need for a hot drink.  It doesn't give me the growlies like coffee, and keeps the caffeine levels at a reasonable background, so I don't get the post-coffee crash. 

.5-.75 l tea would also be my usual quota. I use a very mild sort of black tea (also cheap as dirt) where it does not really matter wether you let it stand for 2 or 15 minutes (others sorts get unswallowable after about 3 minutes)

[Aggie]

Yes, that's why I like green tea.  Black tea requires attention or it gets horribly bitter, but the greens I drink generally brew up fine by flipping a bag into the cup and refilling with hot water after the first is done.  I recently switched over (read: was made to switch by SO) from dirt cheap jasmine to the President's Choice Organics line.  Their jasmine is a bit bland (something's missing - I think it must be the lack of floor sweepings and insect parts), but the lemon green is quite nice and will probably become my new tea-of-choice.

BTW, I think it's a Canada-specific thing, but the President's Choice Organics line in general is EXCELLENT (I like even the regular PC products as much or more than big brands) and often cheaper or marginally more expensive than the comparable major non-organic brand.  I haven't gone totally organic, but we've been trying to switch over on the most highly contaminated items (some produce, BUTTER, what little prepackaged food we eat).  I need to get back into organic meats (read: shooting things), but Alberta has pockets of Chronic Wasting Disease, so I may wait to get back to BC.