Dinner 8/2/08

Went to the Pacific Fish Grill at the new mall here at the home town. Two blocks away from a high school! Those kids must be stoked! Fresh, awesome, cool...totally! Went there thinking it was a sit down joint, my wife wanted to get a cocktail too, but when we walked in, it was a fast food type joint where you order your food at the front, sit down, and they give you the food. Do you tip at those joints? I had their fried scallop plate. The little scallops, not the big ones. It was all right, came with coleslaw with raisins with the scallops over a bed of fries with some green flakes of some herb on the fries. I guess it makes the fries fancy with the herbs on it. Didn't add flavor or anything to it though. I guess it just makes it look fancy.

Mocha Macchiato

Made a mocha macchiato the other morning in my 3 ounce bodum pavina cup. I put a half ounce of some Ghirardelli chocolate syrup I made by mixing chocolate chips and water over a double boiler. That's right, I know what a double boiler is. Food Network baby! I had made the syrup a week ago and it was chilling in the fridge. I poured the syrup in the bottom of the cup and the shot went over it, about 1.5 ounces and then the half ounce of steamed non fat milk. The macchiato had some strong coffee and slight chocolate taste in the beginning with a finish of cool chocolate with a hint of coffee to it. Next time I'll heat up the chocolate syrup first to get a better mixture. I liked the cool chocolate finish though.

Latte For My Wife

Made a latte for my wife tonight. I understretched the milk this time around. It was whole milk and I only stretched to 80 degrees instead of 85 to 90 degrees. I guess overstretching the nonfat milk was still in my head.

Got a nice little heart though.

Breakfast 8/1/08

Had to get my wife's car serviced and it was going to be an hour and a half wait so I walked over to a nearby McDonald's and had breakfast while I waited.
McDonald's Chicken Biscuit Breakfast with orange juice.

Espresso Shot

So enough with this masking the espresso with milk and art stuff, what about the espresso on its own? Here is a video of a shot. I dose and tamp and then flush the over heated water. When the indicator light on my machine turns off, I count to 10 one thousand and then lock and pull the shot. The thud in the background is beause when I locked the portafilter in, I moved the machine a bit and knocked a tamper off and it fell to to the ground. I will flush the water into a bowl instead of the drip tray so my cup won't fog up.

The shot. Tasted nice. No bitterness from a shot being too hot. 5 days post roast.

Sweet Maria's Espresso

Roasted some Sweet Maria's Monkey Blend but didn't get to pull a shot until 5 days later. I was gonna make a latte and looked in the fridge and only had low fat and non fat milk! What? I guess I bought the wrong milk. I bought 2 boxes and ofcourse the regular milk is all gone. I went with the nonfat and had a brain fart. I've read the articles on the forums about foaming milk, whether regular, non, low, or even soy. I forgot all I read and overstretched the milk. I reread a bit of one article afterwards and ofcourse nonfat is easier to stretch than regular milk but has less sweetness. Here are the pics.

White spot, should have cut the shot off a little earlier

Here is my overstretched art. I'll call it the cucumber. Tasted nice.

Lunch 7/31/08

Had lunch today at a place called Bon Chon. A Korean fried chicken joint in LA. Sounded like a French/Korean place because of the name. A coworker wanted to go there because he heard they had good fried chicken. They do. Nice and crispy and we all noticed that they weren't oily whatsoever. We got two orders, one garlic (I think) and one spicy. The spicy is really spicy and I don't like spicy, but I had a couple pieces anyway because before it burned my tongue off, the sauce was actually pretty good. Had a sweet flavor to it and then the nuclear reaction took place. If they had a non-spicy version of that sauce I'd tear it up.
Menu. It's only 2 pages. Hehe.

Front counter

Salad to start things off. It was all right. Thousand Island dressing.

And the chicken. The garlic on the left and the nuclear spicy on the right.