HARD ROCK COFFEE PODS

Hanging out a couple of nights at the Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando provided me with the best in-room coffee I've ever had.  The Timothy's 'rainforest espresso' came packaged in environmentally unfriendly pods that magically brewed in a space age Keurig brewer.  This resulted in a delicious cup of coffee, so great that I made another and a third  that accompanied me to my meeting.  Opening the machine ejected the used pod forcefully and sent it flying across the floor almost hitting the vintage Bruce Springsteen photo on the opposite wall. 

Timothy's World Coffee used to be New York City's second largest coffee shop chain (after Starbucks) but they closed after 9 11, and now have no physical presence in the US.  . 

Vietnamese Coffee Gelatin

in case you don't have enough ways to ingest caffeine, there's coffee jello.  Here's a recipe from the Food Librarian:

Coffee Jello / Coffee Gelatin

1/2 c cold water
2 cups strong coffee, hot. (The coffee needs to be strong. This isn't the time for Sanka instant.)
1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk)
3 packages of Knox unflavored gelatin

1. Place 1/2 c. cold water in a bowl.
2. Sprinkle 3 unflavored gelatin packets over the water. Let sit until the gelatin blooms, about 10 minutes.
3. Stir in the hot coffee and mix until the gelatin is completely dissolved.
4. Stir in the can of sweetened condensed milk.
5. Pour into glass pan. Thickness of finished jello depends on the size of the pan. A 9 x 13 pan will give you thinner pieces and an 8 x 8 pan will give you thicker pieces.

Food Librarian Notes: The combo of coffee and sweetened condensed milk is inspired by Vietnamese coffee. You can probably adapt this to use coffee or espresso, cream and sugar (be sure to dissolve the sugar in the hot coffee and gelatin). One packet of unflavored gelatin will firm up 1 1/2 cups of liquid to finger jello "strength" (according to David Lebovitz's "How to Use Gelatin" post you can mold 2 cups with one envelope - but I feel finger jello needs to be stronger).

Links:
The Food Librarian blog: http://foodlibrarian.blogspot.com/
Recipe & Photo on the Food Librarian blog (April 14, 2010): http://foodlibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/04/national-library-week-day-3-coffee.html

WORST ESPRESSO DRINK?

Harmful Drinks in America nominates this as the Worst Espresso Drink:
Starbucks Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha with Whipped Cream (venti, 20 fl oz)

660 calories
22 g fat (15 g saturated)
95 g sugars

Sugar Equivalent: 8½ scoops Edy’s Slow Churned Rich and Creamy Coffee Ice Cream

PRETENTIOUS COFFEE SWILLERS?

The thing that’s cool about Field Notes is it appeals to a rifle-toting Budweiser-drinking mammal killer, AND a coffee-swilling fedora-wearing pretentious Brooklyn hipster. Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners

GOOGLE IS LAUNCHING A NEW SEARCH ENGINE CALLED CAFFEINE?

JAVA POPS?

I can get my caffeine and my sugar all in the form of a lollipop?  

Each Java Pop contains 60 milligrams of caffeine and come in flavors of 

French Vanilla, Chocolate Almond, Irish Crème, Cappuccino, and Chocolate Raspberry. Then, when you're done, you can use the stick as a stirrer for your coffee!

CAN I GET THE MIMOSA AT THE DRIVE-THRU?

My favorite weekend meal is brunch, but sorry Burger King, I won't be putting you on my list of bistros where I can meet my friends.  



Burger King announced they are testing a brunch menu in Massachusetts, Florida and Canada that will include mimosas (minus the alcohol).  I predict sweetened with high fructose corn syrup--just a guess--the company says it's orange juice, Sprite and ice.  

Still the fast food chain doesn't comprehend that people who brunch are not going to do so within the 10:30 AM timeframe when breakfast service ends.  Where's the expresso machine?  It's not brunch without a latte.