A Cleaner Buzz: Yerba Mate

South American plant makes for a healthier caffeine high

The US may be a nation of drug addicts, but that doesn’t mean a caffeine habit has to be unhealthy. Black and green teas have long stood as subtler, slower morning buzzes, and now there’s another option for kicking your brain in the face every morning. While not technically a tea, the similarly prepared yerba mate plant has been growing in popularity as an alternative to coffee. The plant grows in South America, where it is traditionally prepared by infusing its leaves and twigs in hot water inside of a hollow gourd. The resulting drink is then consumed through a shared metal straw.

Certain companies have packaged mate and imported it to the States. Sold as an herbal tea in tea bags, mate may be also combined with actual tea leaves for a hybrid beverage. The drink has been trending in the US for its high caffeine content and other purported health benefits.

Yerba mate fuels a pleasant high, a less jittery alternative to the coffee buzz. It contains nearly as much caffeine as coffee, but calms the drinker with additional natural chemicals. Theobromine in particular serves to relax blood vessels and improve blood flow. Unlike coffee, yerba mate might even lower blood pressure in certain cases thanks to its theobromine content. For those predisposed to hypertension, mate can provide a safe mental boost. Caffeine addicts disillusioned with the shakiness associated with large amounts of coffee and energy drinks may also do well to make the switch to mate.

Like most teas, yerba mate boasts plenty of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Its disease-fighting roster includes manganese, potassium, zinc, vitamin C, and B vitamins. It’s a healthy, energizing boost with possibly more overall benefits than coffee thanks to its physically relaxing properties. It manages to stimulate and soothe at the same time. Buying mate teabags will generally set you back more per cup than coffee, so be prepared to shell out for its pluses over our nation’s signature vehicle for caffeine.

Home Products You Don't Need to Buy

Some ways to outfit your apartment for cheap or free

Apartment living as a young adult can be tricky at first. You're still figuring out how to take care of the new place you call home, how to cook and clean up after yourself unassisted. And then there's all this stuff that people want to sell you. Since I moved into my first apartment two years ago, I've found that a lot of standard home products are easily replaced by cheap or free solutions. If you're new to the apartment game, budgeting is always good. These are five things I eventually realized I didn't really need to buy.

An Electric Coffee Maker

If you don't drink coffee, you obviously don't need a coffee maker. But for those of us hooked on this sweet black nectar, there are other options too. Unless you're brewing coffee for a ton of people every day, a simple coffee cone or French press will suffice. The latter is a good option because you save money on paper filters. I personally use a little ceramic cone and "tea" pot to brew about 16 ounces daily. You use less electricity and your water gets hotter when kettle-boiled. 

A Full Knife Set

If you're cooking for yourself, you'll definitely need knives. But most companies will package six, nine, or twelve into one set and price it accordingly. Really, you'll only need three knives starting out--a big one, a small one, and a serrated one. Your big guy works for bigger vegetables and meat, while your little guy acts as a paring knife for things like garlic. The serrated knife should be big enough to be a bread knife, but can double as a tomato knife in a pinch. Unless you're doing some gourmet foodwork in your kitchen, you're not going to need a big expensive knife kit anytime soon. 

Drinking Glasses

"What?" I hear you say. "But how will I sip my lemonade without a drinking glass?" Here's what you do: go buy a jar of jam, use the whole thing, then rinse it out. Tell me it doesn't bear a striking resemblance to those glasses that can cost you three, four, five dollars a pop, or more. Just reuse every jar you buy until you've got a steady supply of glasses to drink out of. On that note, you also won't need to buy...

Storage Jars

Hey, I have a lot of these! They came free with my pasta sauce. Why IKEA and Crate & Barrel charge money for glass lidded jars is beyond me. Sure, if you need a really big storage container, you might want to buy one. But for most of your bulk storage needs, a good mason jar will do the trick. 

Cleaning Fluids

Unless you've got some heavy duty mess, you don't need to shell out on chemicals to clean your home. Vinegar, lemon juice, and baking soda are time-tested substances that will disinfect and clean most bathroom and kitchen surfaces. Just mix one part water with one part vinegar or lemon juice and put it in a spray bottle: instant counter and tile cleaner. Or mix baking soda with lemon juice or vinegar and put it on a sponge for a deodorizing cleaning paste. It's way cheaper than buying the pre-bottled stuff, and much greener too. 

I'm sure there are other clever alternatives to common home products. What cheap solutions have you found to work for you? 

Bodum Bistro Burr Grinder Review

The benefits of burr coffee grinders and how the Bodum Bistro stacks up against the competition.

You don't have to get too interested in coffee before you realize how wide the quality difference between pre-ground coffee and whole beans really is.  In reality, though, this difference is tip of the iceberg--once you start grinding your own coffee it's wise to choose a coffee grinder that matches your brewing method.  A cheap blade grinder may be acceptable for your average drip coffee maker, but if you’re using a French press or home espresso machine you’ll greatly benefit from a quality burr grinder, which grinds the beans between multiple metal elements rather than chopping them with spinning blades.

The main catch with burr grinders, though, is that they’re considerably more expensive than blade grinders.  In my opinion, if you’re investing upward of $100 in a machine to grind your morning cup of coffee, it had better be well-made and work without problems. 

Retailing at just under $80 (on Amazon.com), the Bodum Bistro burr grinder is relatively reasonably-priced—but does its low price reflect low quality?  In a word, no, but like most home appliances it has its pros and cons.

For starters, the controls are few, simple, and straightforward—the top of the machine has a control for the coarseness of the grain, going all the way from a French press (on the far right) to an espresso wand (on the far left).  These settings are succinctly represented by pictures.  On the top there’s also a time knob, selectable between 5 and 20 seconds, as well as a button that starts the grinder.  On the side of the machine there’s a power switch that must be toggled on before the unit can operate.  Though there are few controls and they seem intuitive, it’s easy to run into issues on first use.  Sure, we all know how long 5 seconds lasts, but how much ground coffee will that amount of time produce?  The manual doesn’t say, so you have to figure it out by trial and error, which leads me to my next point.  The grind function of the machine can only be used once every five minutes, to prevent the machine overheating.  Unless you’re already familiar with similar grinders, you can expect your first experiments to either produce a few potentially sub-optimal cups of coffee or take up a good chunk of your morning waiting for the machine to cool off!

As far as the bean storage receptacle and ground coffee container are concerned, I have few complaints.  The receptacle is removable, so you can empty out the beans you don’t use.  The ground coffee container, as the product description boasts, is made of glass, which prevents static that can cause the grounds to cling to the container.  However, the inside of the machine tends to hang onto a few of the grounds.  It’s helpful to tap the unit a bit before removing the grounds container—otherwise you end up with grounds on your countertop.  Wasted coffee and cleanup are definitely cons. 

Somewhat less importantly, this grinder’s appearance is fairly attractive, although the cone-shaped bean receptacle might not be to everyone’s taste.  I have the black model—I’m really not sure the green, orange, or even red models still qualify as “fairly attractive,” but it’s good to know there are classic color options available for those of us who are less adventurous.

All in all, this burr grinder is a pretty safe bet; though getting the hang of its operation is something that takes a little hands-on experience and (somewhat frustratingly) cannot be done by simply reading the instructions, once you get a grasp of the basics it is easy to operate, clean, and the price doesn’t hurt!

Life with a French Press

A few months ago, my beloved espresso maker started leaking from the steam wand. Now to clarify, this was the cheapest pump-driven espresso maker I could find. I paid about $90 for it, and I used it to make at least three double-shot drinks a day for about a year and a half. So frankly, I figure I got my money's worth out of it.

Nevertheless, it was obviously approaching the end of the road. If I wanted to continue to have the ability to make the odd espresso, I needed to find something else to satisfy my day-to-day coffee fix.

If you haven't been shopping for coffee making options recently, there is a bewildering variety of choices. I wanted a solution that was reasonably inexpensive, foolproof, easy to use, and without a lot of gadgets or replaceable items. I also wanted to be able to make only one cup of coffee at a time, but I wanted to do it several times a day.

I considered and discarded many options. A K-Cup maker was right out - all that plastic waste! All that cost! I have a Bialetti Moka pot, and it would be a pretty good substitute, except that it uses an awful lot of grounds for each cup of coffee. A cup-top strainer was a consideration, but my experience is that they let the water through too fast, leaving you with a weak preparation.

The only thing that really fit the bill was a French press. I had flirted with a French press briefly during the early years of my life as a coffee lover - 1995, or thereabouts. I found the experience, shall we say, unsatisfying.

I know now what I did wrong back then.

First of all, I never stirred the water after adding it to the press. Stirring breaks down that weird floating slurry of coffee grounds and foam, and lets the grounds sink into the water to steep. The slurry happens because coffee grounds froth with CO2 when they get hit with hot water - that's where crema comes from.

Second of all, I was just using regular coffee. If memory serves, I was buying Folgers. (It was a long time ago!) You need to grind your coffee much more coarsely than a usual drip grind like you get with a pre-ground coffee from the store. The coarse grind lets the filter plate do its work, so you don't end up choking on coffee grounds and fishing them out from under your gums.

You probably want a better, darker roast, in order to compensate for using a coarser grind. I have also learned not to pour every single drop into my cup. It's hard, because you see liquid coffee, and you want it in your cup! But trust me - leave behind the last little bit of fluid, because it's very "texture-rich."

As for the grounds, I have found that if you pull out the plunger, then tip the French press on its side, all the grounds sort of fall to one side. Then you can squeeze them with the plunger, and get the rest of the water out. You can now scoop out the relatively dry grounds and compost them without making a big sloppy mess of it.

Go Team French Press!

Photo credit: Flickr/fritish

The AeroPress Coffee Brewer

Fresh, hot, and better than French Press

I've written about any number of coffee-brewing methods. These range from the very easy, like using a Melitta plastic cone and filter, otherwise known as pour over coffee. One of my favorites is the French press. Until recently, I thought the French Press made about the best cup of coffee I think you can make, especially, if you use just ground quality beans. I've even written about some of the more outré methods, like cold-brewed coffee. Cold-brewed coffee is particularly fabulous as the base for iced coffee on hot summer days, and for cooking with coffee. Then, there are the regional variants, like Greek coffee, and Chicory coffee.

Last fall a friend introduced me to the AeroPress as a method of brewing coffee. The AeroPress is a sort of variant of the French Press. You heat your water and while it's heating, measure espresso ground coffee into a slim plastic tube with a cap and paper filter one end of it, and an opening in the the other. You pour the hot water into the tube, over the coffee, and briefly stir the coffee-grounds-and water with the plastic stirrer. Then you insert a plastic plunger, position the entire assembly over a coffee cup, and press the plunger.

The resultant coffee has the advantages of the French Press—it is simple, fresh, hot, and low-acid. You can use it as is, as a sort of ersatz espresso, (or add milk) or you can add more hot water to produce something more like drip coffee. But because of the small paper filter, the coffee is clear, without the grounds that inevitably appear in the cup when you use the French Press. It truly is excellent coffee, and the entire process, including heating the water, takes about five minutes, maybe less. It's also easy to clean the AeroPress.

Since its introduction in 2006, the product of Stanford faculty member Alan Adler's inventive mind (he also invented the Aerobie flying ring, sold by the same company as the AeroPress), the AeroPress is making in-roads not only in the hearts and homes of coffee aficionados, but in the hearts and hands of coffee professionals. Barristas are using the AeroPress to produce "manual" espressos, or for making quick sampling brews to aid customers in selecting a bean for home use. There's even a brisk after-market add-on trade, with coffee cups designed specifically as companions for the AeroPress, and stainless-steel mesh reusable filters, among other items. AeroPress users have begun making a noticeable mark on various online coffee forums, where they attempt to determine the exact temperature of the hot water for effective brewing, the perfect grind, and various advanced techniques for producing more crema.

Health Friend or Foe?: Coffee

My art teacher in high school used to drink six cups of coffee a day.  She was calm despite students throwing clay on the wall or making obscene finger paintings on the desk, and tall well into her sixties. We didn’t understand this because our parents told us coffee would make us jittery and stunt our growth; they told we should never get started drinking coffee because it was so bad for our health.

            As we went through college and beyond, though, we found this ancient substance to be completely necessary for survival.  And, as we learned the pleasures of staying up long into the night and other things our parents warned us we should never do, we also learned how wrong our parents were about the health risks of coffee--maybe. 

  According to studies by the Harvard Medical Center, coffee has numerous health benefits—aside from not getting whacked on the head by angry employers—including lowered risks for diabetes and prevention of gallstones. However, most people can find some peace with mom and pop on the subject—Harvard says that whatever negative or positive effects coffee may have on our bodies, its overall effect is negligible either way.   

            Coffee in moderation has health benefits, even if some of them are inconclusive.  Coffee has been proven to offer cardiovascular problem prevention, as well as ward off cancer.  A 2005 study showed that coffee drinkers were 50% less likely to develop liver cancer than their non-drinker counterparts.  Other studies show a lower risk for colon, breast and rectal cancer. In addition, coffee has been linked with a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease in men and gallstones in that coffee changes the composition of cholesterol in the liver’s bile. 

            Still, these positive results are not conclusive—some of the properties in coffee can have negative effects, as well. Coffee contains kahweol and cafestol, which have been proven to raise cholesterol levels.  Drip coffee drinkers can rejoice—paper filters catch these two substances.  Still, with the number of people drinking espresso drinks like cappuccinos and mochas, baristas do not use paper filters to trap these potentially harmful substances. Decaf drinkers are not necessarily protected either—these same substances can be found in the type of bean used to make many types of decaffeinated coffees.

            In addition, scientists worry that coffee may raise homocysteine levels, amino acids that may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, as well as affect the aorta. 

            Even more confounding, coffee has inconclusive risks or benefits in the arena of blood pressure. Common knowledge and early studies showed that cups of coffee increased drinkers’ blood pressure.  Still, long-term studies show that constant coffee drinkers feel less of an effect and develop more a tolerance to coffee's blood-heightening effects over time. 

            With so many inconclusive studies, miracle health foods and death-trap edibles, it’s no wonder that the debate about coffee’s healing or sickening principles rages on.  For this long-time devotee, however, the choice is clear: drink coffee or stay in bed all day.

Source and further reading:  

http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/update0406c.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homocysteine

Have You Tried Boba Tea?

From what I understand, boba tea, or bubble tea, is this tea drink made from tea, fruit, and small pieces of tapioca. This sounds both amazingly delicious and disgusting, depending upon how you visualize it; after doing a quick search and looking at the photos, I’m inclined to think they just might be the former.

What I’d like to know is if anyone has ever tasted a boba tea and if they are as good as the reviews I’ve read make them seem. I love tea and I absolutely love fruit drinks, but I’m not a big tapioca fan. So would I like this type of drink? I ask because we apparently have a specialty shop that sells them up in St. Louis (it’s in The Loop, so it would be a drive for me), and I really want to try them, but if it’s not worth the trip (gas and cost of the drinks!) I’d be better off getting something delicious at my favorite local place, Katie’s.

Can you ask for the drink without the tapioca (and if so, is it still considered a boba)? Does it even really taste like tapioca? I’m one of those people who hates certain foods—say, onions and tomatoes—with a passion but once they are transformed (crispy, thin onion rings, or ketchup) I really enjoy them, so if the tea changes the taste of the tapioca, then maybe I would like it.

Also, I’ve really only had cheap vanilla tapioca pudding, so who knows? Maybe this kind of tapioca is different and tasty. I’d love to read some reviews and suggestions for types to try for the first time.

Exploding Water

You may, at some time, have received a chain email about the dangers of boiling water in the microwave. But unlike pretty much every single chain email ever sent in the entire history of the internet, this one is actually true. 

We think of "boiling water" as "water that is bubbling a lot." But the bubbling action is just a secondary effect. Water hits the boiling stage at 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit).

Typically when this happens, the hottest part (in a pan on the stove, this would be the bottom) starts turning to gas. The gas bubbles up to the surface, cooling the water slightly as it does so. 

If for some reason the bubbles don't form, the water doesn't turn to a gas, but it can still keep on heating up. When a fluid gets heated beyond its boiling point without turning to gas, it is said to be a "superheated fluid."

Let's back up and look at those bubbles again. In the same way that raindrops and snowflakes form around particles of dust, bubbles in boiling water form around particles, too. If the water is extremely clean, and the container is also extremely clean, it is possible that the bubbles will not be able to form.

Bubbles form around what is called "nucleation sites." You may be familiar with this term if you have seen the Mythbusters episode about Diet Coke and Mentos. The Mythbusters crew found that it's the nucleation sites - the microscopic pits - on the surface of the Mentos candy which allows the bubbles to form. 

In the case of dropping a Mentos candy into a Diet Coke, the candy has so many nucleation sites that the bubbles form extremely quickly, and with exceptional volume. To such an extent that to us viewing the action in normal time, it appears to be an explosion. It isn't really - it's just the normal process of soda foaming around an object - but faster and more vigorously than usual.

The same thing can happen if you boil water in the microwave.

Boiling water needs nucleation sites to form bubbles. If the water is very clean, and your cup is very clean (cleaner than mine tend to be!) AND you microwave the water for a very long time, you can accidentally create a superheated fluid.

Then you drop a teabag into it, or even just tap the sides slightly, and the same thing happens as when you drop a Mentos candy into a Diet Coke. Except instead of a fun (if sticky) soda explosion, you have an explosion of boiling water.

As you might expect, this is extremely serious. In fact, many people report this having happened to them. It can cause second and third degree burns to your face and hands, a trip to the emergency room, and even skin grafts in particularly severe cases.

Luckily, the answer to this problem is simple: always put something into your water before you boil it. Whether it's a chopstick, a wooden spoon, a wooden stir stick, or a (staple-free) teabag, the object will provide nucleation sites - and prevent your boiling water from exploding all over your hands. 

Photo credit: Flickr/Sterlic

Starbucks News Round-Up

Step Away From The Tip Jar And No One Gets Hurt
Starbucks has been slapped with a "wrongful death" lawsuit by the family of a man who was injured while trying to chase down a tip jar thief.

In a St. Louis Starbucks in 2008, a 19 year-old Georgia man named Aaron Poisson swiped the tip jar and ran away. Another customer, Roger Kreutz, chased after Poisson. Kreutz later died of the injuries he received in his altercation with Poisson. Kreutz's family is accusing Starbucks of not doing enough to protect their tip jars from theft.

The bigger lesson here being: just let the dude run with it. Bank tellers don't run after thieves, and neither should you.

Eco-Unfriendly K-Cup Coming To A Starbucks Near You
Starbucks has confirmed that they have struck a deal with Green Mountain, purveyor of the single-cup K-Cup coffee machine. Now instead of dumping compostable grounds and  a compostable coffee filter for each entire pot of coffee, Starbucks will be throwing away a plastic cup and a plastic lid for EACH CUP of coffee. Argh!

Tribute Blend
Word on the street is the Tribute Blend isn't selling as well as Starbucks had hoped. I admit I'm a little put off by the marketing, which trumpets the limited availability of the blend ("Never Before - Never Again") without saying anything about, you know, how it tastes.

Even the description just tells you it's made with beans sourced from a lot of different places. Is it bright and acidic? Or dark and rich? They don't say. I'll pass on the mystery meat, thanks.

Starbucks Mobile Payment App: Trivially Forged
It took approximately two minutes for malcontents to figure out how to forge credentials for the Starbucks Mobile Payment app. The app lets you pay with your Starbucks Card simply by holding your smartphone up to a scanner at the cash register. (How it's easier to pay by having your smartphone scanned, rather than having your Starbucks Card scanned, is unexplained. Classic example of an app that's the answer to a question no one asked.)

When you hold up your smartphone, it displays a QR code (those square bar code thingies that are all the rage among marketing departments these days) for the scanner to read. Some of you may be thinking, "But how does the scanner know it's the real QR code and not just a copy of someone else's QR code?" And if so, you get a gold star for the day. As well as a suspicious, sidelong glance.

It turns out that yes, stealing someone's Starbucks Card credentials is as easy as snapping a cameraphone picture of their smartphone's Starbucks app. Then you show the scanner your snapshot and presto, free coffee for you (and a balance deduction for the schmuck whose smartphone you photographed).

Some news outlets are using the term "hacking" to describe this. I refuse to do so. Hacking should involve more skill than TAKING A PICTURE AND SHOWING THAT PICTURE TO A SCANNER. (Kids these days!)

Photo credit: Flickr/cafemama

Experiments for National Caffeine Awareness Month

We’ve all heard about the many negative effects—as well as some positive ones—that caffeine has, and I think we could all probably agree that the key to drinking (or eating, as the case may be) caffeinated products is the same key we need to use with many other ambivalent products—moderation. So instead of shaming ourselves for our daily caffeine fix, why not just take the month to look at the caffeine we do ingest, see how it affects us (if at all), and maybe even try out a few new products.

-Try monitoring your caffeine intake. How much do you have each day? Is it too much, or just right? Keep a log for a week just to see how much you usually consume. Is it expensive? Could you do without it? How much do you enjoy it to begin with—and is it for enjoyment or because you perceive it as a necessity?

-Try going without caffeine for a week. At first, you might miss it, but how does it feel after a few days? It doesn’t have to be permanent, of course; just experiment to see what it’s like. If it saves you money, donate it to Japan, or buy yourself something small.

-Try out new caffeine sources. This experiment is my favorite! You can find new sources pretty much anywhere, but if you need some ideas, try…

*Purchasing a new brand or flavor of coffee to make at home. This isn’t very expensive but it might expand your horizons.

*Try caffeine-flavored foods, such as coffee-flavored ice cream or other desserts. Blend coffee into your dinner, or rub some meat with coffee.

*Dress up and go out to a coffee house and spend the day sampling new drinks. Have an espresso, or ask the barista to make you something cute to drink.

*Try a hand at being a barista yourself. Design some pretty designs on your coffee at home; if you start getting good, have friends over and serve them drinks with a flourish.

*Go to a new coffee house and see what kinds of flavors they have. Pick something you’ve never had before.

*Order new garnishes to your coffee that you don’t normally get, like cinnamon, whipped cream, or chocolate shavings.

*Compare and contrast local iced coffees. I’ve discovered, for example, that I love our local McDonald’s coffee and our gas station’s coffee, but I don’t like it at many other locations.

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