Pivot Number 10

The questionnaire Bernard Pivot used and James Lipton uses ends with the question "If Heaven exists, what would you like God to say to you when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?"

My previous answer was fairly generic, along the lines of, "Welcome."

Now I have my answer. "Would you make me a pie?"

But what kind of pie would God want? I'm curious what you think.

Une tasse n'est pas une tasse.

So I've had my French press almost 18 months. And I've been fairly ritual in my preparation of coffee, i.e. waiting 10 seconds for the water temp to drop 4 degrees before adding it to the fresh grinds. Friday morning I tweaked the formula. Instead of having a scoop of beans for each 8 ounces of water, a normal cup, I went with a scoop of beans for every six ounces, a cup of coffee. So this means instead of four scoops of beans for four cups of water/32 ounces, I went with 5 scoops for about 30 ounces. The difference one additional scoop of beans made was really great. So much so that I let out a little whoop of glee as I was driving to work drinking my newly improved coffee. And in case you were wondering I was brewing with a washed Ethiopian Sidamo bean. I really like all the Ethiopian coffee I've tried be it Yirgacheffe or Sidamo. Dry-process is a favorite of mine too. And if size matters to you, get a Papua New Guinean bean, they're like twice the size of other beans.

I Miss You Mitch Hedberg

In Mitch Hedberg's Comedy Central Presents special, he talks about how he's a stand-up comic, but people are always wanting him to do things related to comedy that aren't comedy, like writing for a tv show, developing a sit-com, making a movie script ["I gave a script to a guy and he said he really liked it, but he wanted me to rewrite it. I said, 'Fuck that, I'll just make a copy.'"]. He said it's like going up to a chef who's worked years at becoming a good cook and someone says, "So you're a cook, Can you farm?"

I've made a lot of pies. I'm getting good at it. I know how much sugar to include so as to not overwhelm the flavor of the provided fruit. I'm getting better at choosing which flavor extracts to put in the crust (current favorites are jasmine or almond, but I'd love to try a hazelnut if I could find it). Sometimes if I'm making a rhubarb pie, I'll add a half cup of buckwheat flour, because they're part of the same family, and it adds a nice color and nuttiness to the crust. There's a few reasons I make pies, including: I really like them, and I want people to think highly of me. This second reason creates weird situations for me.

People will try my pie or bread pudding and say, "This is really good, you should open a (bakery-cafe-pie shop)." No, I shouldn't, so stop making me a "farmer" when I'm a "cook."

Ahh, Sweet Squalor

I've long been of the opinion that my room is a place of squalor. It's been this way for a while now, and while I really want to clean it up so I can do yoga in the morning and sit in a chair and read in the evening. Alas it is not any better. I finally looked up squalor in my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, and I was quite delighted with the definition.

Squalor: 1 The state or condition of being physically squalid; a combination of misery and dirt. E17.

Flavor of the Day?

Tonight we went to the Blue Moon Coffee House to hear John Walker play and sing. I enjoyed him as ever, and he had a very nice version of Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight." I didn't notice it right away, but I'm guessing they didn't sell much of their flavored coffee today.