Designer & bike rider in British Columbia, Canada

Food

  • Aeropress Process

    Aeropress Process

    Thirty-three step guide to brewing a single serving mug of coffee with an Aeropress. This is a process in process; suggestions welcome. Water Empty kettle of old water Run fresh, cold, Vancouver Canada tap water in kettle, 1/4 full (approx. 300ml) Put kettle on element, 9/10 setting for electric Place thermometre in kettle Beans Set…

  • Calories per dollar

    Having a Costco membership is changing the foods we eat and how much we spend on them. We recently spent $80 CDN (before taxes) on eight items from Costco and I started a spreadsheet comparing their calories—the carbs, fat, protein and other nutritional information from their product labels. For example, one way to calculate nutritional…

  • First Roast

    First Roast

    My buddy Scott went to Costa Rica last year just as we were getting into coffee and he thought he’d bring back a little vacation souvenir to feed the growing hobby: coffee beans. Specifically green beans, unroasted, direct from the farmer. A couple pounds to play around with. He ended up with 20 kilos. Scooped…

  • Bialetti Showdown: Aluminum vs. Stainless

    Bialetti Showdown: Aluminum vs. Stainless

    I always thought the aluminum bialetti left a metallic taste in its brew so my Lady and I switched our morning ritual to a stainless model over a year ago and never looked back. I’ve heard, and read, of others who felt and did the same, yet there’s always been that little nagging modern doubt:…

  • 2360 Burger Night

  • Two Day Garbage

    The amount of ‘garbage’ I directly created in two days here in Bali. In quotes because it’s important to start distinguishing between waste, which is an endpoint and not usefull to anyone, and a potential resource, such as compostable material. The amount pictured is actually less than I would have created in Canada in two…

  • Dog

    For lunch. The menu on the wall: Head 145 Toasted 150 Liver 120 1/2 Liver 60 Pulutan P65 1/2 Pulutan 45 Pinoneg P65 1/2 Pinoneg 45 Spare P65 Toasted + 5 1/2 Spare 45 Which one is dog, I ask. They all are. That’s all they serve. Served in mugs as a starter: dog soup.

  • Bacon Sandwich

    Recorded May 16, 2007. 1:01 video created with a Fuji F30, MacBook Pro 2.0 and Final Cut Pro. Of note: the music sampled is by OPM (Original Pinoy Music) band BrownBeat and their track Romantikong Bastos. Download the QuickTime movie [5.8 MB].

  • Chocolate

    People are jiving me lately for what they perceive as a blatantly steep new curve in the graph of my weekly chocolate consumption rate.

  • Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix

    American designer Richard Bird held a contest on his website to identify a logo. I didn’t guess correctly, but he still sent 10 responders a package of Jiffy Mix in the mail. I made corn muffins with it.

  • Postum: Coffee Substitute

    Postum is a caffeine-free powdered coffee substitute created by C. W. Post in 1895. It’s not bad, though the packaging could be improved.

  • Keep the Oil In

    As a teen I worked with a chef (and bike mechanic) named Marcelo, and over lunch one day he passed on this culinary axiom: The better something tastes, the more likely it’s got a lot of fat in it. This took a while to sink in. I mean, I don’t watch what I eat. I…

  • On Gastronomic Sin and Adulthood

    In reflecting recently on food and its counterpart, eating, I have formulated two ideas: to eat is an eternal sin, and that the Western right of passage to adulthood involves cooking your first turkey. Whether you “eat to live” or “live to eat,” one’s philosophy for food is mere annotation when our species, in general,…

  • Beacon Hill Drive-In

    If you go to the Beacon Hill Drive-In, get the hot fudge sundae. And during this, the tourist season, when you’re forced to que for your ice cream there, take the line that goes through the door and into the establishment on the side rather than the usual order windows along the front. Tonight with…

  • For the Love of Bread

    There’s this bread they make at Thriftys, that the girlfriend’s parents bought for dinner a couple weeks ago, that was just damn fine bread. West Coast Trail bread, or some such marketing moniker they (Thriftys) gave it.

  • Weber Charcoal BBQ Grill review

    A review of why I bought a charcoal grill and a Weber model specifically, what I use with it, how I use it, what I think of it and the Weber brand overall, and questions I have about it and charcoal grilling in general.

  • Olives

    I’ve been recently learning to appreciate that small ovoid fruit of a certain ubiquitous Mediterranean tree, that biblical of food stuffs, the olive. I’ve always kinda liked them: as a kid grabbing a whole slim, green-lidded jar from the fridge, unable to control myself, eating half a jar of those kind with red cubes that…

  • G.G. Cookies

    Ate an entire box of Girl Guide Cookies today. Felt obliged and embarrassed enough to fork out the 4-bucks-for-a-good-cause at UVic yesterday when a couple of pretty young UVic students I know glanced me mounting my bike and so came running and smiling ecstatically in my direction. I assumed the two ladies simply couldn’t pass…

  • Mating calls / New Food

    Is it mating season among the amphibious members of my neighbourhood again? The chorus of croaking is once more, uhm, charming the night air. The calls of thousands of what must be horny toads travels loud and far from the great pond on the Cedar Hill Golf Course and up the side of the little…