Coffee Snob

I don't have licenses to any of the stuff you see in the right...I just wanted to show off my "coffee counter".  I'm not a huge coffee snob by any means, and I don't have to have the cup of joe every single day either.  It's just nice sometimes to have a cup now and again and it helped when my mother in law gifted us the Keurig a few years back.

At the time of the Keurig, I really didn't think it was going to catch on like it did.  Having to use one little disposable cup per cup of coffee?  Specialized machine?  And it's how expensive to buy a box and a machine?  Well, it certainly did kick off another world of coffee making devices, and this one is one of the earliest machines that came out.  It's still working fabulously, sans an occasional bad k-cup, but otherwise I can have a cup of coffee in less than five minutes if my heart desires it, so it's grown on me.

For those of you in the "coffee club" and perhaps also a member of the "sci-fi" club, you'll recognize the little worm from MIB (in this case it's a bobble from the trilogy BD set) drinking his cup of joe.  I really thought it was a fitting addition to the coffee counter.  They never really went far with the worms on the movie.  The first movie they were pouring coffee, then leaving the planet with smokes and that was it.  Second movie the princess ended up staying with them awhile, but no coffee.  The third they were around a bit but not all that important.  What's funny though, is that if you're like me, you'll remember them having a much stronger 'coffee presence' at one point or another, and that came from the MIB cartoon series that was on for quite awhile.  The worms were almost always drinking coffee (probably because their other vices, cigarettes and alcohol weren't allowed on a children's cartoon) so if you ever caught that series you'll know what I'm talking about.

My history with the coffee cup began at an early age.  I know my mom always loved to drink her coffee, and I'm not sure when I first started to be able to order my own cup of it in the mornings.  It was pretty early, because I do remember on the first day of Junior High, I remarked to my mom that I would like to start having coffee in the morning because I had to get up so much earlier than I used to in Elementary school.  So it was probably around 12 or 13 when I first started having coffee fairly regularly.  I even introduced a JH buddy to it at her Dad's birthday party by showing her how to mix up a good cup using cream and sugar.  At that point she was mostly into Moon Mist and other caffeinated soft drinks.

Coffee was a fairly boring thing though until I reached about college age.  I used to call where I lived "The Town Starbucks Forgot" because it wasn't until after college we got our first real, stand-alone store.  Before that point we had to go probably an hour's drive to visit a Starbucks, and even though there was a little kiosk in a local Hudson's (later bought by Macy's, basically the same store) it really wasn't the same.  There was a couple of fancy coffee places around town, one was "The Coffee Beanery" which I didn't realize until later was actually a chain.  It had perched itself next to a bookstore called "Young and Welshen's" in town and eventually they even opened a doorway between the two so you could have coffee and books.  But I never really partook in that until a few years later when Border's opened across the street, driving that chain closed and then moving the "Beanery" down the street into the mall.

HOWEVER...don't mistake me, even with these coffee options available, I was a poor college student who was working as many hours as I could and paying my way through.  Most of my money went to the cheap vending machine cappuccinos and lattes.

A friend of mine whom I met online introduced me to my first freshly ground, brewed through a natural filter, real cream, real sugar, in a pretty little coffee cup.  It tasted so completely different than the Folger's and Maxwell house I'd pretty much grown up with that it was a special treat every time I had it.  And even now, to this day, I can't quite copy the supreme coffee mastery she had, even grinding my own beans and using all of the same ingredients.  She had a touch with the ordinary cup of coffee.

Fast forward years later when I first moved in with my soon to be husband.  He drank tea.  He wouldn't touch coffee until I got him to taste a sip of mocha here and there.  And even then he'd never actually drink an ordinary cup of coffee.  But then came the Keurig.  Then came the coffee grinder and the Starbucks cards and the Caribou Coffee and the local Stauf's.  I actually think it was the local Stauf's that was the final nail on the coffin for him.  Most specifically the "Highlander Grog" and "Snickerdoodle".  When he found out you can flavor coffee before you even brew it, and it doesn't taste as much like coffee...I think that did it.

Since then we've both become low-level coffee snobs.  We won't drink the extremely cheap stuff and we both like to grind our own.  We have Keurig for when we're too lazy to do it.  Heh heh.  Coffee left on a burner for hours?  NO.  Coffee made from something out of a can... Most likely no, unless it's freshly opened.  Gas station coffee?  No way!  And we're both gold card members for Starbucks...

Yeah..it's that bad.

King and I

As I kid I grew up in Flint, Michigan.

I know.  Can you believe I totally survived that?

Michigan really wasn't all that bad of a place to grow up in the 80's because at the time the car factories were still pretty much in full swing.  Most people worked there, the rest worked in restaurants and shopping centers to supply the ever-growing demand and supply the pretty darn rich factory workers with whatever their hearts desired.  I remember quite a few of my friends had pretty nice houses if they had a dad who worked in one of the factories.

It was when those car factories started pulling out of Michigan and moving elsewhere that things went downhill quickly.  I've seen the rapid decline from a bustling, happy, growing area into a falling down businesses closing and moving out area.  In fact, only since I've been out of High School which was, gasp, 15 years ago.

But I'm going to talk about the happier times of Flint, because those are the times I remember the best.  Besides, it was just some stupid little salad I was making the other day that reminded me of a buffet near my house called the "King and I" - I'm not sure if there was a "the" in the title of the restaurant or not.  But it was on Miller Rd, pretty much at the edge between Flint Township and Swartz Creek in front of one of those many factories I was talking about just a minute ago.

When I was growing up, it was a pretty special occasion to go to the King and I.  We went only after church usually, and that meant dressing up.  I don't remember seeing anyone there wearing jeans (at least not until it moved over to it's second location later on in life).  Well, there are only three things I remember about the place, and that's probably because I was young then, pre-teen at the latest before the whole thing closed down.  But they had this really great fried chicken.  They also had the best freezer cheesecake and coconut creme pie.  And they also had grapes in whipped creme.

Ah the grapes.  Nothing like a giant purple or black grape, hidden in layers of fluffy whipped creme.  It was on the salad bar, so I always assumed they considered it a 'salad' rather than a dessert.  You'd scoop up this big spoonful of white fluff, and then take it back to your table and commence chasing fluffy grapes around the plate with a fork until you managed to actually stab one and bring it to your mouth.  And then the smooth whipped creme and the tart grape underneath it all...oooh heaven!

You don't see this on salad bars nowadays, although I'm rather surprised at that.  It's actually quite a brilliant fattening thing and so extremely simple to make.  Whipped creme + grapes = heaven.

I was thinking about this while making up a Waldorf salad the other day.  I'm not exactly a purist, so if you ever look up a recipe for Waldorf there'll be walnuts - I don't do that, I'm strictly grapes, apples, iceburg lettuce, miracle whip and a bit of sugar.  You'll probably find a recipe with walnuts, raisins maybe, perhaps mayonnaise or some other sweet dressing.

But the big ol' grapes I used for my salad reminded me of the King and I.

Later in it's life the King and I moved across town, I think closer to Grand Blanc (if not in Grand Blanc) near Dort and Hill Rds.  It stayed open for a handful of years before closing and the restaurant turning into a Damon's sports bar/rib joint place.  The original building turned into a place called O'Toole's which had some terrific homemade pies and my Mom's favorite club sandwich which was actually a Roast Beef Club.  Can't find a club sandwich anywhere else that has roast beef, lettuce, tomato, bacon and American cheese all in one sandwich.  But they had it.  They also had a big ol' 1/2lb. O'Toole burger that my brother and I would get from time to time.

That restaurant closed down a few years ago as well during the "Great Recession" of the 2000's.  Many small businesses took a pretty big hit from that recession. I saw a huge change in Flint after that period of time as well.  There had been some re-growth going on in the Miller Rd. area where even though quite a few chains were pulling out, smaller family run businesses moved into their vacancies.  But heck, when a restaurant like Sonic goes under after just a few years, it's a miracle anything survived there.

However...they were just a block away from the family-run Fuddruckers right up the street.  How could Sonic compare to them?  Fuddruckers is owned and operated by the Andrews family.  Mr. Andrews, his wife and at least one of his sons works there.  When nearly all of the Northern Fuddruckers closed down, his has remained open, still producing the fresh buns, fresh ground beef, the gooey cookies, lovely hand-make milk shakes...yum.  I'm drooling just thinking about it.

Every trip back home brings me back to the restaurants and tastes of my childhood and the simple recipes that kept our bellies filled in times of happiness and times of depression.  Maybe you've only heard rumors of places in Michigan, but if you happen up past I-75 through Flint, take a stop over at Miller Rd. and check out some of the small family restaurants, get a giant burger at Fuddruckers, or get a coney dog at one of the handful of Coney Islands around Flint.  (I'd recommend going to Palace Coney Island inside the Genessee Valley Center, they have the best)  And maybe you'll see a bit of the Flint that I knew growing up too.

On Baking Challah Bread

This is what came of my first attempt at challah bread.

A few months back I heard about the Jewish bread while watching Unwrapped and thought, "that stuff looks pretty tasty" and I came to find it pre-made at one of the local bakeries in my favorite grocery store.  It was soooo yummy!  I think you could easily compare the taste to Hawaiin sweet bread since it had that really light, fluffy consistency, you could just pull chunks off of it and eat it without any butter or anything (although cinnamon butter tasted pretty good too).

A month or so later I found a magazine that had the recipe for it.  It's the Fine Living Breads issue, and after a bunch of hoopla to get my hands on it (a coworker offered to buy it for me as she bought hers with a coupon and it took an extra week to get payment and my magazine in my hands) and another week or so before I tried a recipe out of it.  The delay was caused mostly by the chocolate issue that followed after it and I tried two recipes out of that one as well as Alton Brown's homemade gourmet ice cream (which, by the way, the chocolate is every bit as good as anything you've ever tasted...unless you've had Jeni's and then maybe it's a bit weak on the chocolate side, but her ice cream is crazy rich).

Anyway, after dithering over the bread making thing my mother-in-law took me into the kitchen the last time I visited and taught me how to make cinnamon rolls using the Kitchen Aid mixer.  Thank goodness because even though I had made a recipe of bread with it since I got it for Christmas, I hadn't tried anything that turned out to taste really good.  Those cinnamon rolls however, were pretty darn tasty.  Good enough in fact, that a week or so later I made a large batch of dinner rolls which we're still eating on out of the freezer.

So, with cinnamon rolls, bread rolls, and a kind-of-okay loaf bread out of the way I thought "It's time to try something a bit more difficult".  And with Easter Sunday off, it was the perfect time to try this Jewish treat.

But... the house was too cold, and I forgot to rise the dough in a warmed oven, so it rose too slowly.  Then I warmed up the oven too much and ended up killing some of the yeast (I'm pretty sure).  But the dough stretched good and it braided just fine, as you can see from the picture.  It browned a bit fast, but the recipe warned me so I did as told and covered it with foil and then waited to see how pretty it was.

It looked beautiful and the house smelled terrific.  It had to be good, something that looked this good, right?

Wrong.

I over-baked it.  The recipe warned about under-baking so I never once thought that maybe the timer would be too long.  It was also dense, dry, not nearly as sweet as the store-bought loaf and didn't pull apart...nope.  Had to use a knife.

Thought to myself, "Maybe it'll be better the next day."

Nope.

Still dry, maybe more so, even after being placed in a Ziplock bag overnight.

Solution?

Bread pudding.  First attempt.

This is the first time I've ever tried to make homemade bread pudding, and usually it tastes better when you make it with cinnamon rolls (the best I've ever had was made from a cinnamon sticky bun that was bought from a restaurant called Gracie's Country Inn up in Michigan - they would have it on their buffet from time to time).  But this turned out to be a close second, but for the fact I must not have beat the eggs and milk completely because there were a few chewy portions of egg.

The problem I found, soon afterwards, was that I didn't have a good vanilla sauce recipe.  I wanted something that tasted like those sauces I had as a kid at Gracie's and heck, even like my mom made, but most of the sauces that looked right online had ingredients I didn't have at home.  I ran out of eggs doing this and don't keep whipping cream or whole milk on hand.

The solution?  A mix of different recipes I found online, which basically came down to a cup of 1% milk (which I do have), 2 tablespoons of margarine (again, no real butter) a tablespoon (plus some) of cornstarch, 4 tablespoons of white sugar, another 2-3 of brown sugar, and then stirred and stirred and stirred on low, then let boil and it thickened up and I added a teaspoon of vanilla extract.  Voila!  So yummy!  Oh, and for the record, I was dumping by this point so most of the ingredients are estimates at best....heh, kind of lucky it worked out really.

So..... what have I learned about bread making?

Challah bread should have plenty of time to rise and become really fluffy - and sweeter, I think there should be more honey in it than my recipe called for.  And in the future I'll probably just buy it...  And as for bread pudding...ah heck, it tastes GREAT with enough sauce on it so who can complain?  Oh, some people I'm sure, I don't put in raisins as you may have noticed, but that's a personal choice since I'm not a big fan.

I hope you like my little bread story.