half food blog. half tech blog. half george blog.
food
caribou coffee.
Jun 17th
I’m sitting in a Caribou Coffee now.
This place may be one of the best chain coffee shops there is. Their coffee is pretty good, the iced coffee is cold brewed, and their iced tea is surprisingly good that I find myself ordering that fairly often.
The Caribou Coffee nearby my office used to be my little lunch hang-out spot. I’d grab something to eat real quick, head to Caribou with a book, and drain my lunch break poured over a book and a cup of coffee. It’s a nice change from a desk and a screen.
Well, I took a little break from my lunch routine for a few weeks just because it got a little busy at work, but when I showed up at my lunch-time hide-out, there was an immediate sense of distance, rather than coming back to a familiar home. The signage was gone. There weren’t any cars in the parking lot. Then it struck me – they closed down. All in a matter of weeks. I had to suck it up and go to Starbucks.
There’s another Caribou closer to where I live, near Toco Hills. That’s where I’m at right now. I guess there’s some amount of karma involved, since I was greeted by signs indicating the newly-established 24-hour-ness of the place to appease the emotional anguish from losing the other one. Where was this when I was in college? Though, with all the studying I’ve been doing lately, I kind of feel like I’m back in college. Well, not really, since I didn’t study nearly this much in college.
Some grad student just came by to ask me to fill out a survey for her research. She, like a lot of other random girls coming through here tonight, is actually pretty easy on the eyes. I wonder when Emory starts up again…
update.
Jun 6th
Whoa, it’s been over a month.
Not a lot has gone on. Work has kept me busy enough where I haven’t even thought about posting. Actually, that’s a lie. I thought about posting a lot. In fact, I wish you could see the slew of half-written posts that have been abandoned for an undetermined amount of time. Maybe I’ll finish some eventually.
Regardless, summer is in full swing. We’re in the 90′s temperature-wise, and the compelling urge to cook outside is starting to flutter its wings. This weekend will be as good as any to kick off the outdoor cooking season.
To celebrate, I’ve spent the past week frantically searching for parts for my makeshift smoker. After searching every home improvement store in the area, I finally found adequate parts for my own terra cotta smoker. Pictures forthcoming. I also picked up a 6 lb brisket last night. At an estimated 8-10 hour cook time, I will spend tomorrow nursing over my slab of cow while watching movies and firing up the Wii for the first time in weeks. If this brisket test run is successful, next weekend will be ribs! Hang on, the drool is starting to flood the keyboard.
Also, now with the imminent demise of Ringo, it looks like everyone is flocking to Flickr. I actually like Flickr, though it doesn’t have that nice feed that Ringo has. I wonder if I can write my own feed generator with the Flickr API. Maybe that’s what I’ll spend Saturday doing.
By the way, you can find me on Flickr under georgechang.
leave pinkberry alone!
Apr 23rd
What’s the deal about all this craziness about Pinkberry? Granted, I’m a little biased since I love tangy Korean frozen yogurt (the verdict is still out on Yoforia). But people are acting like Pinkberry fro-yo should be banished from the food world for its use of ingredients that the dumb American public – yes, the same dumb American public who gets bamboozled by Pizza Hut’s Tuscani pasta – can’t pronounce. It even struck the attention of the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/dining/23yogurt.html?_r=1&ref=dining&oref=slogin
“There is, it turns out, a great deal more than yogurt in those costly white cups.
The ingredients list for Original Pinkberry has 23 items. Skim milk and nonfat yogurt are listed first, then three kinds of sugar: sucrose, fructose and dextrose. Fructose and maltodextrin, another ingredient, are both laboratory-produced ingredients extracted from corn syrup.
The list includes at least five additives defined by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as emulsifiers (propylene glycol esters, lactoglycerides, sodium acid pyrophosphate, mono- and diglycerides); four acidifiers (magnesium oxide, calcium fumarate, citric acid, sodium citrate); tocopherol, a natural preservative; and two ingredients — starch and maltodextrin — that were characterized as fillers by Dr. Gary A. Reineccius, a professor in the department of food science and nutrition at the University of Minnesota and an expert in food additives.”
It’s not like they’re putting toxic waste in it. Since when did people freak out about eating corn syrup and emulsifiers and *gasp* “fillers”? Steer clear from packaged foods then, my friends, because you’re going to be in for a huge shock. Yes, I know the argument is about it being “all-natural”, but the fact of the matter is that all that stuff that is in there is synthesized and extracted from naturally occurring things. No one used black magic to create “emulsifiers”.
News flash: mustard is an emulsifier. Better steer clear from that Grey Poupon.
And don’t even get me started on the fact that it has to be made off-site to qualify as actual approved “frozen yogurt” under California law.
With all that said, Pinkberry and Red Mango, whoever opens first here in Atlanta (and I mean Atlanta ITP – I’m looking at you, Juicy Green) gets the official georgechang.net endorsement. Believe me, it’s a higher honor than that AmEx Plum commercial.
tuscani pasta.
Apr 10th
Has anyone else seen that new Pizza Hut commercial where they bring all these people into this new “restaurant” called Tuscani? They bring all these urbanites in this restaurant space, serve them pasta in large-lipped shallow bowls (it’s the sign of a fancy restaurant), then after they’re all done raving about how great the pasta is, they reveal that the pasta is actually from Pizza Hut.
I hate that commercial.
This means one of two things:
a) Pizza Hut’s pasta is actually really, really good.
b) A lot of people pretend they know about food but can be so easily deceived – and yet have no qualms in giving their meaningless opinion.
Call me crazy, but I’m going to go with the latter. Bunch of kids.
baking bread, roasting coffee, and tornadoes.
Mar 15th
We got rocked by tornadoes last night. Okay, it wasn’t really that bad. Tornadoes in Texas are much much scarier. But I guess it was pretty bad that it ripped through downtown as opposed to some field in Boring, Texas. Right now east Atlanta is getting destroyed by 3.5″ diameter hail. That’s like baseball sized.
Meanwhile, I just tossed a loaf of bread in the oven. This is actually my second loaf of Bittman’s no-knead bread with a few modifications by Cook’s Illustrated and yours truly. I hope it turns out better this time around. Last time was good, but could have been better. Homemade bread is sooo much tastier and cheaper than the $4 loaves from the market.
Thanks to my ex-GP, I’ve finally taken the plunge to start roasting my own coffee beans. I just bought an appropriate hot air popcorn popper (Poppery II) to hack and about to order some green coffee beans. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but he impressed me with how easy and tasty it was – and he doesn’t even drink coffee. I’ll update on how it turns out.
Update:
A picture is worth a thousand words. One of those words is success. Another one is delicious.
