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This morning Danielle made pancakes for breakfast. Mmm.
Here is the recipe, although you may wish to cut back on the amount of baking powder in them.
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Today was a good day. After fitting a new set of Avid FR-5 levers on my bike to replacement the one I snapped in a rock garden I put my bike on the car and headed over to Stony Creek. A bit under an hour later I left, having covered all the single track and a second go through The Pines.
The trails were in excellent shape, as many of the freshly fallen leaves have begun breaking down which both keeps them from being as slippery and reveals the roots and rocks they had obscured for the last couple of weeks. This made for a very nice ride, and I felt like I was able to push myself a bit harder than normal and right to the edge of my ability quite a few times.
Danielle had been hoping to ride the paved areas while I did the XC trails, but a really bad headache kept her back at my house. Normally her and I would split up for some riding then I’d join her for another lap around the park, but that just didn’t work out this time.
After getting back here and showering we headed out to
Now I think it’s time for bed, then tomorrow will be a birthday party, some cleaning up around the house, returning a few unwanted things to REI, and likely some other, unforeseen things.
Oh, and here’s two photos:
· Looking down a short piece of single track, past some old fence posts, at Stony Creek on a very nice autumn day. (As Seen Above – Full Res)
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· Part of the single track in the first third of the Roller Coaster at Stony Creek. (Full Res)
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I’ve mentioned before that I’d been logging how many cups of coffee were made, how many grind cycles executed, and how many coffee filters consumed in my daily coffee making. This was done so that I could determine just how cost effective it is for me to make coffee at home each morning versus stopping to get coffee.
First, the stats:
Two Pounds of Kirkland-brand (Costco) Coffee Beans, whole: $11.99
Mr. Coffee-brand burr grinder, grind set half-way between C and D, timer set to 7 or 8: ~$35
Aerobie AeroPress Coffee Maker: ~$30Servings Produced: 25
Grind Cycles: 21
Filters Used: 4
Water Used: 2 Cups (Per Serving)
As the AeroPress and grinder are more than two years old, I will consider these sunk costs and not take them into account in these figures. I am also still working through the original set of filters which came with the AeroPress, so I do not need to take filter cost into account yet. Once I do, typical cost is $3.99 – $5.99 for 350 filters and I normally use a single filter for around five servings, adding $0.00228 to $0.00342 to each serving of coffee.
Electricity will be particularly hard to quantify with the challenges of metering a hard-wired appliance, so I will assume the microwave consumes 1000W peak, which is typical for a microwave of this size. My most recent electrical bill was charged at just under $0.12/kWh. At 3:30 of usage per serving of coffee, this is around $0.007 of electricity.
The two pounds of coffee were ground into just a bit more than was needed to make 25 servings. The measurement for this was not particularly accurate, but as I use the same technique for scooping each morning so this shall be assumed to be a consistent measurement. With the $11.99 price for the two pounds of coffee, this results in a cost of $0.48 per serving for each cup of coffee. It must be noted that the coffee used in this study was a bit more costly than typical Kirkland-brand coffee. The three pound bag I purchased to use after this one also cost $11.99. It can then be expected that this bag of coffee will cost 50% less per serving ($0.3197).
Now, the figures:
Tall Black Coffee from Starbucks: $1.64 (incl. tax)
Medium Black Coffee from Beaners / Biggby: $1.79 (incl. tax)
One Serving (~16oz) of Coffee From Home: $0.487 (at $11.99 for 2 lb)
Daily Savings: ~$1.25 – ~$1.40
Sure, there’s also a time cost, but preparing this coffee takes around five minutes per morning, which is a bit less than the amount of time it would take to stop at a coffee shop and pick up coffee. It’s also more convenient to not have to stop somewhere every day. With the cheaper current bag of coffee, the daily savings will increase by around $0.15 per serving.
I could save even more by waiting until I get to work and drinking the coffee there, but it’s really awful quality Aramark-branded crap which has a persistent smell and taste of burnt brush. There is a Flavia machine in one of the buildings at work which I could use, but the layered plastic and foil packet discarded with each serving is horribly wasteful and I prefer not to use this for the exact same reason why I eschew home-use single serving coffee packages.
Speaking of single-serving coffee makers and waste, making coffee at home produces far less waste. While I do throw out coffee grounds every day and the inevitable bag it is all packed in, these would be discarded by the coffee shop. What I do not dispose of is the paper cup, jacket, and plastic lid provided with each cup, and I hope that the grounds contribute (in some small way) to a landfill decomposing just a little bit faster.
For completeness sake, here’s the process I follow to make coffee each morning:
· Run a grind cycle.
· Microwave two cups of water for 3:30.
· Fit the AeroPress with a filter, selecting a new one if the current one is clogged or old, setting the AeroPress on a pint glass to catch the coffee.
· Put three measures of ground coffee into the AeroPress, measured with the scoop provided with the AeroPress.
· Pour enough water (about one cup) into the AeroPress to fill it, then stir with the paddle until all grounds are suspended (about 10 seconds).
· Push the brewed coffee out through the filter with the plunger.
· Remove the filter retainer, rinse and save the filter if it isn’t too clogged nor old.
· Discard the used grounds into the trash can†.
· Pour coffee from the pint glass into the Bodum Travel Mug that I use daily.
· Pour remaining hot water into travel mug until it is full. Stir briefly with paddle to mix.
· Rinse all parts and stack them to dry for the next use.
† Yes, I know that I should be composting these, but living in a condo makes composting prohibitively difficult.
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While at Vince & Joe’s Gourmet Market at 25 Mile and VanDyke this past weekend Danielle and I spotted this giant 5 kg jar of Nutella. The price was somewhere in the $50 range. I wish I had checked out the nutritional info for specifics, but per this a 15g serving has 4.7g of fat and 80 kcal (Calories, for us Americans).
That means that this whole jar would contain 1567g of fat and 26667 kcal. Yes, that’s about 3.5 pounds of pure fat and the one day nutritional requirements for over 10 average, healthy males.
Here, have some more moblog photos:
4 Comments· Today while at Circuit City purchasing headphones I was given a Spore t-shirt.
· Danielle and I sitting at a Cottage Inn Pizza in Ann Arbor waiting for game day traffic to clear.
· The plastic tub which contained the chipotle hot wings Danielle ate for dinner.
· Fifth Third’s new ATM graphics include an image of someone standing at a drive-up ATM.
· Someone at Stony Creek High School parked very close behind me while I was off on a bike ride.
· Bolle Sports Google
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In anticipation of our forthcoming vacation to the UK I’ve begun a thorough cleaning of the house. I really like going on vacation and coming back home to a nice, clean house. As part of this I spent a few hours today cleaning the bathrooms resulting in things like this very shiny faucet.
I also started doing all the outstanding laundry and did a bunch of dishes. Part of the dishes was cleaning off the Aerobie AeroPress which builds up some rather interesting residue on the rubber plunger and flat stirring paddle. Tonight before washing it I partially scraped it off and took that photo above. As you can see it’s a very fine, oily residue.
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Today Danielle and I headed out to Cabela’s in Dundee, MI to find a winter jacket for her. Unfortunately, and contrary to what others had told us, the store did not have a decent selection of plus sized jackets. In fact, they only had one style of plus jackets, in four rather poor colors, without having the particular size which would fit best. Also, the store was nowhere near as impressive as I was led to believe, particularly in light of its place as a major local tourist destination. Except for a rare gun area the store didn’t have any particularly special items. It did have a large mountain in the center covered in stuffed animalsand a bunch of dioramas around the sides also full of stuffed animals which seemed a bit over the top, but not as over the top as the giant bronze statue of two bears fighting over a moose skull located in front of the store.
Heading back we decided to swing by REI in Ann Arbor thinking that we’d be able to quickly stop at the store and get back on the express way. Due to the ramp nearest to REI being closed and initially good traffic at the point where we could exit we pushed on further into the city and ended up stuck in game day traffic. To make it even better, this was the MSU / U of M game. We ended up stopping off at a Cottage Inn and getting a bit to eat while waiting out the traffic.
Before heading out to Ann Arbor we met up with a friend of ours named Sarah and had lunch at Lebanese Grill. I had a large plate of mjadara (as seen above) which was absolutely excellent, Danielle had some beef shawarma, and Sarah had a chicken fattoush salad. Mmm!
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This is a very, very good stew made with hominy and seitan. Danielle made it yesterday, but I’m only now having a chance to eat some. It’s very, very, very good.
The recipe for it may be found in Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2008 at the very beginning of page 374.
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After letting it age in the carboy for almost a year I bottled my latest batch of hard cider tonight. Having sat for so long it had almost completely cleared, resulting in some interestingly stratified sediment in the bottom. After racking it into the bottling bucket I added 160g of dextrose and a packet of Red Star Pasteur Champagne Yeast which made the cider cloudy again, but it should settle in the bottles after carbonation.
I was able to get exactly two cases (48 bottles) filled, plus one plastic bottle as a carbonation test container. Three of the glass bottles from the case used the dregs so it might have a bit more yeast in the bottom, but it should taste fine. These were specially marked so they may be avoided.
This cider started out with an original gravity of 1.082 (on 10-Nov-2008 at 5:00 PM), was at 1.020 when racked to the smaller carboy for aging (24-Nov-2007 at 3:34 PM), and today read 1.005. Based on the formula in this Wikipedia article those numbers puts the cider at 10.4% ABV. Not bad for some local cider, dark brown sugar, and local honey.
Now I just have to wait a few weeks or so for it to carbonate before trying it. After that it might take a few more months to finish settling out and completely clear again, but it should be good to drink as soon as its fizzy. Tonight I drank the leftovers from establishing density and that tasted like a tart, lightly sweet heavy apple wine, so I have good hopes for it once it’s fizzy.
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This is what results when you ferment five gallons of unpasteurized cider from Rochester Cider Mill with a pound of Honeyflow Farm‘s honey, rack it, then let it sit for a year in a cool basement. It’s really, really, really clear.
As mentioned previously, this is the cider that I hope to bottle on Tuesday. I really, really hope it’s good. I’ll be quite disappointed if it isn’t.
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I’m not normally a fan of Sierra Nevada products, but after seeing the Southern Hemisphere Harvest ale at Red Wagon today I decided to give it a try. It’s really quite good. Very, very hoppy, a bit cloudy, and just tasty. It’s lacking that something-is-missing taste I normally equate with SNPA and went quite well with the mushroom pizza that I ate for dinner.
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