Powells.com Ink Q&A - Christopher Moore

Powells.com Ink Q&A - Christopher Moore

Hehe, I love Christopher Moore!

Coffee Observation tidbits

So I am only writing this post because the new boss at work gave all of us a Tulley's Coffee giftcard so I have been to Tulley's a couple of times lately and this got me to thinking about all the coffee houses I pass on my way to work. I pass several starting with Cafe Vita, then on to Cafe Zingaro, Cafe Ladro, Peet's Coffee, Uptown Espresso, Starbuck's, Tully's and finally Espresso Elegance. Normally I go to Uptown Espresso since IMHO it is by far the best coffee in Seattle and perhaps the best coffee in the world outside of France and Italy. The list below is based soley on my observations and is ranked from my most favorite to my least favorite.

• Uptown Espresso - By far my favorite coffee house. The coffee is really really good and the barista's are always fantastic. Even if you get coffee to go you will generally leave with an experience, not just a cup of coffee. The customers here walk or ride the bus and rarely do I see people drive up and get out of their cars. The people here are locals.
• Cafe Ladro - The coffee here is good too and the baristas are nice and friendly, almost the equal of uptown. Most of the customers here are locals too and rarely does anyone drive up. I normally pass here because it isn't quite as good as Uptown and it is usually more crowded. These guys have the best outside chairs around their place though, like the ones coastal B&B's have overlooking the ocean!
• Cafe Zingaro - LP and I voted this relatively new coffee house, most likely to fail. It is not very good location, off the main drag, and is in a building that looks more like an school district administration building than a coffee house. Yet the coffee is good (except for this weird thing I had once) and they have great deserts, great art on the walls, and now these great vegan donuts from Mighty-O (http://www.mightyo.com/). They've pulled in a nice crowd being that it is a nice place to hang out, surf the web and chat. The crowd here is mixed, mostly locals though, although there are more drivers here (free off-street parking). The drivers seems to be Seattlites forced to commute by automobile (Like BEAN!) and not the bridge and tunnel crowd. This place also tends to get people from the theater and other Seattle Center visitors. I've never seen a tourist though as they probably wouldn't know that it is a coffee hous without the mermaid on the sign....
• Espresso Elegance - I rarely go here but that is just because they open too late in the winter (8:00 AM), but the coffee is decent and acceptable and the girl that works here is nice. The space is great, in the bottom of old industrial buildings, converted to work lofts. There are lost of very hip graphic designer types around here. They also have lunch which is a big plus of soups, panini's and organic chicken sausages. I wish more of the coffee houses had food. There is rarely a crowd here, but it seems that most of the customers are the architects and graphic people from all the loft space around
• Peet's Coffee - Peet's was my favorite when I lived in Cali, but now I am less of a fan. It suffers from being in a grocery store and not a coffee house so it is all buy and take away. The barista's are very slow and the coffee is still not super consistent, but if I have to stop in at Larry's in the AM I will go here. The customers are either people like myself who had to stop in the grocery store, former Californians who had it there and locals who walk.
  
• Tully's - First of all I have to say this beats out Starbucks only because it isn't Starbucks. Tully's is another Seattle chain that is getting big around the country and I have no idea why. (At least Starbucks is pretty good coffee). Anyway the coffee is adequate. If I were in Minneapolis and had my choice between Caribou Coffee and Tulley's I would pick Tully's any day, but I am in Seattle and the only reason I go here is the free coffee card. The workers here are nice but bland (Think Chick Fil A in a mall food court) and slow. The customers? Can you say golf and bragging about whose Beemer is more bland? Yup there is more khaki accented with boring leather jackets here than at a Cutter and Buck fashion show. Can you say Bellevue?Needless to say after the card runs out so will I.
• Starbucks - Starbucks doesn't need my money and with so many choices in Seattle there is really no point in going here. The Starbucks here is just like the Starbucks everywhere else. The coffee is good, costs more money and the workers are boring. Still Starbucks is a place I will go if I am outside if the NW and there are no other coffee options. After all they've probably supported the Organic, Fair Trade, Shade grown coffee movement more than anyone else. And they pay benefits to they're employees etc. Still they don't need me. The crowd here? All eastsiders, driving in and hotel guests. The Starbucks here is in the base of a hotel. I've never seen anyone walk in here unless they just came out of the hotel.
• Cafe Vita - This is a small local shop and only makes the bottom of my list because these are the rudest employees I have ever seen. LP and I have been here 4-5 times and I think only once were they nice. On top of the that the coffee is sometimes good, sometimes horrible, nope this place is off my list permanently. The customers? Lot of locals (maybe they get treated nicer) and a lot of yuppies driving their SUV's down from the top of Queen Anne hill. After all it is on the main route down the hill and parking is easy.

Whew that was a lot of stuff! I must go add value now!

Be nice, Be safe, Be green and never, never veer to the right!\

Cheers

Afghan on trial for his life for being Christian

Afghan on trial for his life for being Christian

This is the kind of "freedom" Bush is showering on the Middle East. Isn't this a regime we set up?

The Seattle Times: Local News: Bellevue: Nightlife at last

The Seattle Times: Local News: Bellevue: Nightlife at last

This is good news for us here in Seattle! Now maybe they won't be driving their SUV's through stop signs and speeding up and down our lovely streets. It should also mean a measurable drop in khaki out and about at night! WOO HOO

Girlscout cookies are full of Partially Hydrogenated Oils

Today I discovered that Girl Scout Cookies are full of partially hydrogenated oil. This stuff is bad. I decided to write the Girlscouts.

here is my letter:

So today I was in the break room of my employer and someone was selling Girl scout cookies. Boy I used to love these things and there were 4 different varieties. But when I read the ingredients I was shocked to see that a major ingredient of each one was "partially hydrogenated oil". I can't believe that an organization such as yourself is peddling an ingredient as dangerous as that. It is a trans-fatty acid, just as dangerous as cigarette smoke and is completely unnecessary. In fact the EU is considering banning the substance. I urge you to pressure your vendors to give up this habit and if you refuse to buy from then we can make a better world. Here are several references.

Thank you,

Ryan

http://www.recoverymedicine.com/hydrogenated_oils.htm
http://www.treelight.com/health/nutrition/PartiallyHydrogenatedOils.html
http://www.bantransfats.com/

Now the Funny Part it takes an act of Pan to get the ingrediants of the cookies and get to the supplier for the GS. Here is their FAQ page:

Frequently Asked Questions: Girl Scout Cookies®

Now for the vendor websites:

Little Brownie Bakers
Where Girls Go -- Girl Scout Cookies -- ABC Bakers

--and the dietary info page--

Dietary Exchanges - GirlScoutCookiesABC

Here are theingredientss for Carmel Delites:

Ingredients: Sugar, enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), corn syrup, vegetable shortening (palm, partially hydrogenated palm kernel and/or soybean oil,), coconut, sweetened condensed milk (milk, sugar), high fructose corn syrup, contains two percent or less of: sorbitol, dextrose, cocoa (processed with alkali), whey, glycerine, salt, leavening (sodium bicarbonate, ammonium bicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate), soy lecithin (emulsifier), corn starch, natural and artificial flavors, artificial color (red #40 lake, yellow #5 lake, blue #1 lake, blue #2 lake)

I urge everyone to stop buying this crap and to write the girlscouts. Also check out the webpages and do your own research on partially hydrogenated oils!

Dr. McCoy

So my coworker, TC and I are talking this morning and a guy down the way yells, "Dammit Jim...", famous words of Dr. Leonard McCoy of Star Trek fame. So TC and I get to talking about the old Doc and we realize that the guy never took responsibility. He was always saying "Dammit Jim, I am not something!" It is at this point we realize that this must have been the start of the why-me generation. A generation of victims. It all makes sense now. Dr. McCoy was in the 60's, this movement must have started in the 60's and by the 90's had taken root in American culture. Yes, it all makes sense now...yes....

Obese American Tourists, Ho! / One vacation to the Baja coast is all you need to see the staggering downfall of the country

Obese American Tourists, Ho! / One vacation to the Baja coast is all you need to see the staggering downfall of the country


Amen!