It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
We’re currently drinking the Sumatra Pantan Musara from Sisters Coffee Company and it’s really good! There’s a depth of base flavor here that goes beyond the advertised dark chocolate tasting notes. It’s incredibly full in the mouth without being over roasted. I want to drink this all the time.
Our previous shipment was Ethiopia Maduro Natural from Case Coffee. I didn’t review this because it didn’t make much of an impact; the berry notes weren’t really my thing.
Our current Bottomless shipment is a really great Ethiopian. Ethiopia is my favorite coffee country and this one really worked for me. My usual Ethiopian is a much darker roast from Lighthouse Roasters, and the lighter roast was kind of an eye-opener. The raspberry undertones come out way stronger than they would in a dark roast.
Kuma Coffee is local and when/if we get tired of the Bottomless routine I can easily see going there for our coffee needs.
We signed up with Bottomless recently (referral link) because we wanted to get more forced variety in our coffee and because I’m a sucker for tech. I want to make sure I remember what we like so I’m going to try and get in the habit of dropping a quick review.
The first delivery was Penstock Coffee Roaster’s Sisola Mill from Indonesia. The base flavor is a really complex flavor, fairly sweet for coffee, and there’s a sour overtone that’s almost too much for my tastes. I also normally like a darker base. I enjoyed this nonetheless. I might not seek it out on purpose but I won’t be sad if it comes up in our rotation again.
What do you know; it’s a different culture! Um.
That was a pretty great trip. It was really satisfying to find out that I’m still able to do a 14 day trip with one bag successfully; I’m getting older but still pretty functional. We saw places I’d never seen, which is always awesome. My backpack was stolen on the way to Budapest (literally from three feet above my head, kudos to the thief) so that was sad, but I had my electronics and passport and credit cards on me at the time so it could have been worse. I’m lucky to be able to take that kind of loss in stride.
I did find out something interesting about my resilience. I can be very minimal if I’ve planned for it, which I knew. However, as it turned out, the thought of figuring out where to buy some replacement clothing and toiletries and a bunch of other small things was daunting for me. I didn’t mind being bare bones, I minded having to reconstruct my framework for travel on short notice. In the end Delta rebooked our flight at no cost so we could cut the trip short and not spend any additional money. Right call, and we’ll revisit Budapest again some day.
Things I liked a lot, in rough chronological order: Paris croissants, Disneyland Paris (the main park), the Amsterdam houseboat we stayed in, pannekoeken, rijstafel, Amsterdam museums, Utrecht city center, Cologne Cathedral, drinking kolsch in Cologne, the train from Cologne to Vienna along the Rhine, Vienna cafes, Vienna ferris wheel, apple strudel, and a fake ruin bar in Budapest.
Things that were underwhelming: Walt Disney Studios Park, the Disney hotel, the Imperial Quarters in Vienna, and food at Disneyland Paris (worse than Disneyland or WDW’s food).
I was expecting the whole cruise ship experience to be cheesy as hell and possibly not enjoyable without a heavy dose of irony. However, at the tender age of forty-eight, I am keenly interested in new classes of experience and the idea of using a very large ship as a sort of hermit crab shell was intriguing. Also, Alaska.
My short review: that was actually reasonably fun. Alaska is flat out gorgeous and historically fascinating, so you should visit it if possible. There is no way to visit southeast Alaska from the contiguous 48 without a significant investment of time and money; given that, it makes a bunch of sense to unpack your stuff into a big floating hotel rather than unpacking and packing and flying and unpacking and packing and so on. I wouldn’t recommend a cruise for the sake of the food, the entertainment, or the social opportunities — YMMV on the last, I’m a bit of an iconoclast — but all of the above are just fine as side elements to a cruise focused on seeing the sights.
Details: we took Holland America’s MS Noordam on a six night cruise departing from Vancouver. We spent a day cruising the Endicott Arm, stayed in Juneau overnight, and stopped for most of a day in Ketchikan. We also had two full days at sea.
In a little more detail…
1 bottle vanilla soda (we used Dry)
1 shot vodka (Tito’s!)
1/2 clementine, peeled and segmented
Squirt of lemon or lime juice
Pinch of ginger
Ice
I imagine the procedure here is pretty obvious. I squeezed one of the clementine segments over the drink and dropped the husk in, but the rest go in unmolested so you can eat them at the end after they absorb some vodka. The ginger is sprinkled over the top once you’ve mixed it.
It’s really easy to do twice-baked potatoes on the Egg, especially if you have like three hours to kill. Which, sure, sometimes.
Take your nice big russets. Put some olive oil on the outside, and whatever spice you want. I used some hickory garlic rub and that was nice. Wrap them in foil, and kick ’em into the Egg at 400 degrees for an hour. Turn them every 20 or 30 minutes. I did a WoW instance during that hour and I didn’t worry about the temperature once and it all worked out okay.
Then take the potatoes off and let them cool. While that’s happening, fry up some bacon. Then fry some onions and whatever else in the bacon grease; I used some old smoked chiles that Gretchen gave me, and some spinach. I would have used garlic but we were out, which is sad. You need to let the potatoes cool for like 20 minutes so you have time.
Mix up: a cup or so of sour cream or Greek yogurt. We used yogurt. Another cup or so of butter. Chop up the bacon and the spinach and so on. Salt and pepper if you want. Then hollow out the potatoes, leaving like a quarter inch of potato on all sides, and throw that in. Mash it all together. Oh, and some cheese!
Then put that glop back in the potatoes, and sprinkle some cheese on top, and let it go back in the Egg at like 350 or so for another 20 minutes. If you hurry it, like I did, it won’t totally set up and bake but it’ll still taste good.
I am pretty sure this is not healthy.
(Green is the meat temperature, purple is the grill temp.)
Our second run at pulled pork was wildly successful. We used a different rub (hickory garlic, very tasty) but I think the big differences were in cooking technique. First off, I foiled the pork butt at around 150 degrees. This is where you wrap the thing in foil with a half a cup of water or apple juice in it. As the chart below shows, this more or less eliminated the stall while the moisture from the meat evaporates.
Second, I didn’t let it get quite up to 200. 195 degrees and she came off. 
Third, I let it sit in the cooler for a full hour, not just 30 minutes, so the moisture distributed better.
End result was awesome.
Quick notes:
Planked wild salmon from Schaub’s, which is not an everyday kind of treat but man it’s good stuff: soak the cedar planks, let them heat up for 4-5 minutes at 400 degrees, put the salmon in skin down for 20 minutes. You cook these longer than salmon right on the grill because it’s effectively indirect heat.
Burgers: 500 degrees, 2 minutes on either side, close the dome and bottom vent, let them sit for 4-5 minutes to finish up. First time out I put the cast iron half moon in when I put the burgers on, which sucked away a lot of heat, so they were a tad rare. Next time we’ll skip that bit.