"Carl's Lounge" (Off-Topic Discussion, Traditional Knife "Tales & Vignettes")

jackknife said:
Spam, umm!

We like to fry it nice and down and serve up with a couple of eggs sunny side up on top. Spam and eggs is the breakfast of champions. Add it a cup of nice black shade grown Costa Rican coffee and it's a meal to kill for. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
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Carl it’s almost like we have the same name or something. That’s a darn fine breakfast.
 
jackknife said:
Spam, umm!

We like to fry it nice and down and serve up with a couple of eggs sunny side up on top. Spam and eggs is the breakfast of champions. Add it a cup of nice black shade grown Costa Rican coffee and it's a meal to kill for. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
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I'm with you on the coffee from Costa Rica. I think it is the tastiest coffee I ever had.
 
Copperberry said:
Firstly, as much as I love American pocket knives I love seeing Japanese steel in the kitchen.

Second - and this is important - the best breakfast sandwich I’ve ever had, and I’ve made it many times now, is fried slices of spam on toasted Hawaiian sweet rolls with a fried egg, green onion, and sriracha mayonnaise.

One slice of SPAM fits perfectly on two squares of Hawaiian sweet rolls.
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I'd never thought of using the Hawaiian rolls! We do love to have spam breakfast sandwiches on well toasted Thomas's English muffins, but the muffins being round and the spam square, theres always that little overhang of muffin.:(

Square rolls, of course! Have to try it. :thumbsup:
 
oldtymer said:
I'm with you on the coffee from Costa Rica. I think it is the tastiest coffee I ever had.
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To be honest, I never knew the difference in coffee's until we found ourselves in Costa Rica.

When our oldest boy, John got sent to Costa Rica for his company and was going to be in San Jose for 6 months, he 'arranged' for us to have a trip there. He set us up on one those guided 'eco tours' of the rainforest as he knows what nature lovers Karen and I are on our woods outings with out binoculars. The trip was a hiking and camping trip with the days hike always ending at the campsite the guides had set up at the next nights stopping point.

Meals were campfire cooked and ready an hour after we got to camp, and the guide staff was outstanding. But breakfast was this totally mind blowing outstanding coffee like I had never tasted in my life. When we go home, Karen looked around and found that the coffee company Gevalia had Costa Rica shade grown coffee and we ordered some. Coffee enlightenment!!.o_O I thought the stuff out of the Folger's can was coffee. Boy was I wrong!!!!

We've also tried some shade grown Mexican coffee that was just as good. I've been spoiled.

That was the same trip that also enlighten me to what an awesome combination of a small machete and a SAK was. The jungle guides all carried a small 10 or 12 inch machete in a nice leather sheath and a SAK in a nylon belt pouch with a Bic lighter. The small machetes got used for just about everything from on the trail during the day to slicing the bread at dinner, to carving up the pig that was roasted on our last night in the rain forest. The last dinner was a pig roast and the machete's sliced and served up the roast pork.
 
jackknife said:
But breakfast was this totally mind blowing outstanding coffee like I had never tasted in my life. When we go home, Karen looked around and found that the coffee company Gevalia had Costa Rica shade grown coffee and we ordered some. Coffee enlightenment!!.o_O I thought the stuff out of the Folger's can was coffee. Boy was I wrong!!!!

We've also tried some shade grown Mexican coffee that was just as good. I've been spoiled.
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The 3 biggest factors with coffee flavor that I've found are freshness, grind consistency, and brewing temp.

Coffee is at it's best flavor within the first week of roasting. It loses flavor through oxidation and if it's ground, the increased surface area speeds up the process.

A good grinder makes way more of a difference than I initially thought. Getting a burr grinder was probably the biggest improvement toward really good coffee.

The ideal brewing temperature is between 195 and 205 F. Most auto drip makers don't get the water hot enough unless you get the really expensive ones. This is also why French Press and pour over coffee have become more popular recently.

For anyone interested, there is a huge coffee thread in the Community Center sub forum. There are some folks there who know quite a bit about the subject. As with many other things the more you learn. the more you realize you don't know.


BTW Carl, I'm glad that things are going as well as possible for Karen considering the circumstances.
 
All this breakfast talk has got my stomach growling! I've always been partial to Sumatran coffee, but like dannyp says, freshness is the main thing. I've been fortunate enough to have Kona peaberry made in a French press by the farmer who just finished roasting it. Literally still warm when ground. WOW! That was 12 years ago, and the coffee was $35 a pound, then. We've spent a lot of time in Hawaii, and we think the best Kona coffee is from Heavenly Hawaiian. The owners are awesome people, too. Look them up.
 
I zeroed in on regular roast whole bean Sumatra coffee about a dozen years ago. I buy it in 5-pound bags and keep it in the freezer. I grind it while still frozen and immediately make coffee with that, using a Melitta Drip maker. Sumatra is low acid, but has a very earthy flavor. Some folks don't care for it, but it's top notch to me.

I realize that most folks tell you not to freeze coffee. But I have found that if you grind it while still frozen and immediately make coffee with it, you don't lose any flavor due to keeping it in the freezer. (I've made a pot with unfrozen coffee fresh from the vendor to compare.) And I have found that it does extend the "shelf life" of the coffee. 5-pounds lasts me about 6-weeks and it's full flavor for the entire time.

One other trick I've learned is I make the first half pot using 100°F water and the second using very hot water. It does a better job of extracting all the flavor. To a chemist, making coffee falls into the realm of "performing a chemical extraction". And you want to make sure you extract all the low boiling oils before you hit it with really hot water. If you start with hot water, some of the flavor oils boil off instead of going into the pot.
 
Note: a standard percolator like my parents used is good enough for Hills Brothers or Folgers, but not for actual coffee.
 
knarfeng said:
I zeroed in on regular roast whole bean Sumatra coffee about a dozen years ago. I buy it in 5-pound bags and keep it in the freezer. I grind it while still frozen and immediately make coffee with that, using a Melitta Drip maker. Sumatra is low acid, but has a very earthy flavor. Some folks don't care for it, but it's top notch to me.

I realize that most folks tell you not to freeze coffee. But I have found that if you grind it while still frozen and immediately make coffee with it, you don't lose any flavor due to keeping it in the freezer. (I've made a pot with unfrozen coffee fresh from the vendor to compare.) And I have found that it does extend the "shelf life" of the coffee. 5-pounds lasts me about 6-weeks and it's full flavor for the entire time.

One other trick I've learned is I make the first half pot using 100°F water and the second using very hot water. It does a better job of extracting all the flavor. To a chemist, making coffee falls into the realm of "performing a chemical extraction". And you want to make sure you extract all the low boiling oils before you hit it with really hot water. If you start with hot water, some of the flavor oils boil off instead of going into the pot.
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Sumatra is one of my favorite origins. I also like Ethiopian beans. I have an old popcorn popper for roasting and a bodum that heats the water to just below boiling before covering the coffee (no warmer plate either, just a double wall insulated carafe). Works almost as well as a pour over.
 
We've been buying whole bean Mayorga Cafe Cubano for a few years now. It's a dark roast and we make it strong. We either use a drip maker or French Press, depending on our mood. Makes a good cuppa that works for us.
 
There was a local coffee roaster in town who I would buy coffee from, $10 for a 1-lb. bag of whole beans, at the local farmer's market. He imported the stuff from everywhere and did a good job on the roasting. I got out of the habit of driving downtown on Saturday mornings and going to the farmer's market, and now it seems he's no longer in business.

I use to like the bolder darker roasts like Sumatra but I've found I prefer more of a medium body like Guatemala or Colombia. For a while I have been just going with whatever beans Starbuck's was promoting as their flavor of the month, which guarantees at least some level of recentness to the roasting, though I will fall back to their House Blend if nothing else is available.

However, there was nothing like getting a bag of beans that had been roasted just a couple of days before, and grinding them right before I made the coffee using a Melitta #2 cone filter that makes one cup at a time (I make a 16 oz mug), using a wire mesh insert instead of a paper filter. I would get the "bloom" when the water would cause the ground coffee to expand into sort of a dome of foamy bubbles on the first pour of water. You wait until that subsides before pouring in a little more, and then repeat the pour a little, wait till it drains, repeat.

I drink mine black so it needs to taste pretty good to have an enjoyable experience.

I guess I need to find another local roaster.
 
Arabica Blue Mountain beans from Jamaica. Best beans. Best coffee. The Arabica from Papua New Guinea is almost as good. Soils and climate.
 
I've been roasting my own beans for about a year and half now. It's a great way to always have freshly roasted coffee because I'm able to do it in small batches that can be used up quickly. The smell of brewing fresh roasted coffee is one of my favorite things. I was surprised by how much a bean can expand during the roasting process. IIRC this was some Brazilian Santos coffee.


I've tried a bunch of different brewing methods, but lately I've been using the Clever Dripper. It lets you steep as long as desired similar to a french press, while having the paper filter and easy cleanup of a filter cone. The only downside is that it limits you to only one cup at a time. I use a big #6 filter cone that fits into the top of a carafe or thermos if making coffee for multiple people.
 
jc57 said:
I was responding more from my own perspective. Since I am not actively acquiring more knives, my posting has dropped off rather significantly in this forum. I don't know if that's applicable to you.
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Oh, I understood where you were coming from, and was mostly laughing at myself, and the concise aptness of your statement.You have once again cut to the chase in a refreshing (if sometimes startling) way. :)

I have been spending more time offline in general, for all kinds of good "living my life and using my stuff" reasons, but it does seem that I now have enough knives (:eek:), my focus and energy here have changed.

o_O

~ P.
 
I grew up in a very bland and uncultured family... to my parents, Asian food was a can of LaChoy Chop Suey on a bed of minute rice and the most extravagant spice in the pantry was standard chili powder. My graduation from Hills Bros coffee to French Roast Folger's was a huge deal and my eventual move to Cameron's whole coffee beans should have made the local news. I just use a Hamilton Beach spice grinder and Brewstation. Not fancy by any means but I really love Cameron's Highlander Grog and one they call "Jamaican me Crazy" :rolleyes: I'm a sucker for puns so I had to try it LoL. Anyway, thanks for all the brew advice everyone, I think the one that caught my eye were the comments on Sumatra... sounds intriguing and it looks like Cameron's makes a Gold Roast Sumatra blend, might make a grocery run in the AM ;):thumbsup:
 
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