The first batch!

Aaron and I took a class last month at Mr. Green Beans.  It is a terrific “domestic arts” shop on Mississippi that focuses on coffee roasting, but also offers materials and classes on cheesemaking, soapmaking, preserving, and fermentation. After a really informative class where we were encouraged to ask lots of questions, we were sent out into the world with a pound of green beans and an instruction booklet that contained an overview of what we learned.

As my friends know, I’ve never been a huge fan of coffee from the large chain that shall not be named, although with enough cream and sugar nearly anything is drinkable. As our instructor pointed out, the one thing that can be said in their defense is that no matter where in the world you are, you know exactly what to expect from their coffee because they strive for consistency.  Of course, the same thing goes for the world’s largest hamburger chain.

While coffee from some of the local roasters taste better because there is a shorter amount of time between the bean roasting and my coffee pot, as the companies grow in size and distribution they suffer from the same issue of striving for consistency in their well-loved varieties.

Aaron has been asking me to find a popcorn popper as recommended in the class so we can start roasting our own beans. I had been putting it off until I really noticed the drastic taste difference between a pound of locally roasted beans and a pound from a nationally distributed mid-quality roaster. That was all I needed to spur me into action, and I purchased a popcorn popper off of eBay.  It arrived today!  Since the beans should have some time between roasting and brewing, I made a batch this afternoon so we could have fresh beans in the morning.

Following the directions from the booklet, I made sure that everything I needed was on hand within easy reach, including a fire extinguisher (just in case). Since we do not have a lot of natural ventilation in our small kitchen and the hood above our stove does not vent outside, I brought in our window fan and set it to exhaust. This worked really well!  I also opened some windows in other parts of the house. My home will smell like roasted coffee for several days (such a bummer, right?), but I did not set off any of our smoke alarms. The popper’s shipping box was the perfect size to catch the bean chaff during roasting.  It just needed a couple of strategic cuts to make it fit flush against the machine. So far, so good!
I also set up a cooling station with a bucket, a metal mixing bowl, and a metal colander. After this picture was taken I added metal skewers under the colander to give it more stability.

Measured 1/3 cup of beans? Check. Put them in the roaster? Check. Camera ready? Check. I started the stop watch timer on my iPod, plugged in the popper, and I was in business! The roasting of the beans is measured by when they crack, and the first crack for this batch came in about 4:30. The total amount of roasting time was 9:30. I don’t have a thermometer to test the final bean temperature, but the ambient temperature was 44 degrees with 73% humidity.

The video is a quick glimpse taken towards the end of the roasting. Between setup and cool-down this process only took 20 minutes of my time. If our coffee in the morning is any good, it may be a while before we buy roasted beans again.

Postscript: The coffee was absolutely amazing!!!

Arrested Development Fridge Magnets

A few weeks back I discovered the Arrested Development Paper Doll Collection illustrated by Kyle Hilton. I loved them so much that I felt they needed to be a set of refrigerator magnets. Paper dolls are cool, but magnets are better!

I have only made the Tobias and Lindsay sets so far, but now that the rest of the family is available, I’ll make those, too.

Below are the steps I took to make mine.  Office supply shops do sell printable magnet paper, but the magnets are really weak, so I went with stronger stuff.  The laminate paper makes the magnets easier to handle and less prone to wear.  This technique also works well for any other printed materials.  It works great with decals and bumper stickers!

Supplies

• Arrested Development paper doll PDFs
• Self-adhesive laminate sheets
• Self-adhesive printer paper
• The strongest magnetic sheets you can get your hands on.  I found mine at SCRAP, but it might also be worth checking at shops that make magnetic signs and see if they are willing to give you remnant pieces.
• Arrested Development DVDs (optional)

Tools

• Color Inkjet Printer
• Sharp scissors
• DVD player (optional)

Using my color inkjet, I printed out the doll sheets on adhesive paper. These were attached to the magnetic sheets.  Once this is complete, the sheets were covered with adhesive laminate. Put on an Arrested Development DVD, and start cutting the dolls out.  Since the dolls are on magnets, you can cut off the tabs around the pieces since you won’t need them.  It only took half a season to complete our Tobias and Lindsay set, and now we have a terrific conversation piece.

Special thanks to Kyle Hilton for permission to use his artwork for this tutorial.

This was so simple it was almost criminal.  A buddy of mine picked up a 50 lb bag of coconut flour from Bob’s Red Mill (don’t ask why) and distributed samples for us to play with. I took the oatmeal cookie recipe off of the Quaker Oats box, but substituted coconut flour for the traditional flour.  I figured out later that I should have added an additional egg or two to balance it out, but the cookies still stayed together pretty well.

Aaron decided that “fried ice cream” flavor ice cream would go really well with oatmeal cookies, so that is what I used.  I used a large spoon to squish ice cream into my silicone muffin pan.  I filled them all the way up, but next time I would only fill them half way. You could probably do this with a regular muffin tin, but the silicone makes it really easy to release the ice cream from the mold.  The muffin pan went into the freezer while I prepped and baked the cookies.

I used a circular cookie cutter to make the cookies match the same size as the muffin pan reservoirs. Cookies were a little crumbly because I didn’t use enough egg, but oh, were they tasty!!!!  I think it is better to assemble the pieces while the cookies are a little bit warm because that helps the ice cream to stick to the cookies.

I put together my own self-watering pot for my container vegetable garden for under $10 for materials! (Does not include cost of soil and plant)

Red tub $7.50 (Costco)

Laundry basket $1.59
Source: Goodwill Outlet – everything is sold by the pound!

Watering tube $0.25
Source: SCRAP www.scrapaction.org
Tube was formerly a large thread spool

Cotton wicking $0.25
Source: SCRAP www.scrapaction.org
Officially a sewing notion, but works great in this application

Tools needed:
Electric Drill w/large drill bit (I used 1/4 inch)
Scissors
eXacto knife

Took me longer to round up the supplies than it did to build it.  More details and pictures here…

Putting together my tiki-themed bathroom has been a lot of fun. I’m picky about the tackiness level of the stuff that goes in there, so it’s taking a while to decorate.

A plain wrought-iron-esque towel stand has been in my bathroom for the last few years, and while it is functional, and my friends agree that it never quite fit my style.

Time for a makeover!!!
8 oz. of raffia, an armful of tropical-looking silk flower stems, and a roll of floral wire later, I got to work. Several strands of raffia were picked up, then knotted around the wire perimeter in grass skirt style. Once the raffia was all the way around and thick enough to cover the stand, I began weaving the flowers in with floral wire. Alternating the three flower colors made a nice effect.

I don’t think anything else needs a grass skirt, although since that was so easy I’ve come up with more ideas to tiki-fy the bathroom. I want to make a custom cover for the lightswitch, cover the plain white clock near my sink in bamboo, and pick up more Trader Dick’s mugs and tropical drink glasses. A nice framed vintage hula girl print would be great, too. I just haven’t found the right one, yet. Fortunately there’s a dealer in the nearby antique mall that deals strictly in Hawaiian kitcsh, and I usually stop by to see what’s new when I take my Saturday morning neighborhood walks.