tin_the_fatty: Food and Drinks

Tue, 28 Jan 2003 22:54:44 GMT

Signing Off

I am retiring my Radio weblog. You are invited to visit my new MovableType weblog.

Sat, 11 May 2002 05:05:07 GMT

I walked passed the self-serving booth of these folks at my local Welcome supermarket, and picked up another one of their pamphlets. It's the same old "Quality is ever our compromise" slogan as mentioned before. However, they now have a brand new website, which is IMO better than their Flash-rich old website. One thing I notice is that they floated the company in Singapore at the end of last year. They no longer mention their slogan on their website, so I suppose once all the current stock of pamphlets are gone there won't be a reprint, and they will have a new one done.

Sun, 17 Mar 2002 12:43:41 GMT

Did tons of writing and planning for some forthcoming presentations/sales pitches. Finished a BIG5 beautifier function/procedure for my WebCM package (well not quite finished, I had it working in python, have ported the code to PHP, but have no way to test it. Maybe I really should go buy that Apple TiBook.)

Generally speaking, good progress over the last couple of days. With no distractions, I work better.

Went to this place called Cafe E.S. Kimo for lunch. I have been off my daily routine of latte for the last few days. Had one there. It was reasonable. Cream on top was too thick, but that I could live with. RMB18 each, I don't suppose they sell a lot of those.

Quite a few sites have been blocked off by the national proxy servers, so I couldn't read about Paddy Ashdown vs Milosevic on the BBC website. I tried to setup an ssh tunnel use my server at home as a proxy, but couldn't get it to work. I am not going to spend more than half an hour of my precious time to fiddle with it, so maybe next time. I am quite annoyed.

Time to go for some food. Went to the resident's club last nite. Very quite, but food was okay. It's also gone much cheaper than before. It used to cost more to eat there than to eat out in town plus the taxi fare. Pity they have also stopped doing the buffets.

Sat, 26 Jan 2002 14:57:06 GMT

On this cold evening, I just had a cup of latte with Baileys. Nice.

Went to Cass Pang's concert last nite. She talked too much, and didn't sing enough. In the first half of the concert her performance was disasterous. The sound engineer should be shot. They probably didn't rehearse enough as so many things went wrong. The production crew was incompetent. Her sessions with Wong Yiu-Ming and Paul Wong had no spark whatsoever. Very disappointed.

Thu, 24 Jan 2002 16:00:42 GMT

Now that I am nearly there regarding the grinding size of the coffee going into the filter of my espresso machine, I am starting to experiment. I am still stuck with crap coffee from the TW folks, and I have yet to meet up with Jimmy to obtain some benchmark coffee, so I have gone off straight espresso for now. However, Jimmy was kind enough to send me some reading materials on coffee, and I have been trying to make some latte tonite. I am getting the hang on steaming the milk, and made two cups of latte. The drinks are still not as warm as I would like, but that's probably because I didn't steam the milk for long enough. But I am getting there.

Sat, 19 Jan 2002 06:31:49 GMT

Yes! Finally, crema!

Nothing was going right with my previous attempts to make a decent cup of coffee with the espresso machine. Discussed with friends on the net and on the phone. We suspected that the coffee was grinded too finely. Jimmy even offered to provide me with some benchmark coffee! I have been busy all week so couldn't take up his offer.

I went back to Welcome's and bought some more coffee at the TW Coffee Concept booth, only this time I grinded the coffee quite a bit coarser than last time. It works out okay. Coffee for the Lady tonite I suppose?

Picked up this pamphlet of Tsit Wing Coffee Co., Limited. Don't rush off to their website yet, 'cos you'll be bored. I surely did as I went thru two routing pages and one splash page between these two before I got to the main site.

Looking at their pamphlet is yet another torture. Their slogan is "TW Coffee Concept - Quality is ever our compromise". No I am not kidding you. These guys are unreal. The literature in the pamphlet is highly entertaining. Sigh.

Sat, 12 Jan 2002 01:56:33 GMT

I have been unable to produce that crema on my espressos. All I got was some oily greasy patches. Yes I pressed the coffee powder very hard into the metal filter. Must be the cheap coffee.

The steam pipe is still leaking, although much slower than yesterday. Today is the third day I got the machine, and I can still take it back for a new one or have my money back. Maybe I should.

Fri, 11 Jan 2002 15:59:08 GMT

My second cup of espresso for the evening.

A few complaints: it's too slow. It's not as hot as I'd like. The steam pipe is dripping water.

Maybe I should take it apart and see what I could do about it.

Having said the above, I must say espresso is an excellent way to relax oneself. I am feeling a bit dreamy now.

Thu, 10 Jan 2002 13:57:04 GMT

I must be mad or something. I have not mentioned anything about my new digital camera, or the 2nd hand slide scanner I am about to acquire... but I am talking about this low-tech home-use espresso machine which I just bought today. It's a Krups Espresso Primo, which is no longer made. The local agent is doing their annual grand sale. Espresso machines like this starts from about HK$2K, but I got mine for HK$500. Not bad at all.

But it's not all without problem. When I took it home, it wasn't working. Although the boiler became hot, the pump wasn't working. I took it back (just under an hour's journey each way) and had it exchanged (the unit comes with a three months warranty and three days one-for-one exchange). The technican who handled it was very kind and nice about it. He agreed to my request to test the new one. No luck with it either, and good thing we tested it. The kind technican then took the machine apart and fixed it on the spot while I was watching, and now I know how to take it apart myself. Cool. It turned out that one of the power connectors to the pump came off so it was an easy fix.

At the office where I work during the day we have a Nespresso machine, which is a high-tech consumer version of the normal espresso machine. Every month from a choice of about 4 to 5 different tastes you order from Nestle little cartridges of concentrated coffee extract to make cups of espresso. To keep the machine relatively fool-proof, the pressure it creates is nowhere near as high as the 15 bars created by my Krups. As a result the fluffy milk (called froth) it generates is pretty pathetic. Having said that, one thing that is good about the Nespresso machine we have is that it is much quicker. It would fill up a mug in about 30 seconds. My Krups on the other hand was slow. Maybe I had the coffee powder compressed too tightly or something, but it was dripping rather slowly when I was making my first cup of coffee. I waited for about 5 minutes, and the cup wasn't even half full...

Home-use espresso machines are no good for entertaining your guests. One could only do two tiny cups at a time, and by the time you are on your third and fourth cups, the first and second cups would have gone cold. Cup warmer you say? In fact there is a newer model that features a cup warmer at the top of the machine, but there wasn't any at the sale so I couldn't get it. In any case, it would take forever to prepare four tiny cups of espresso. Might well just bring out the scotch instead.

I made the first cup of coffee into a Cappuccino, which is half espresso half fluffy milk and a bit of chocolate powder on top. The milk-frothing thingy worked really well, and it was actually quite alright.

I have a little idea about a web project that involves my Krups. I shall reveal it in due course. In the meantime, you may be interested in the original Trojan Room Coffee Machine. I have been told that my Krups makes much better coffee.