I love Costa Rica!

I think I’m in love. Roasting has been a blast and drinking your own product is awesome. The Toose Hoose has been hooked on Limu for a while now with most of the family jumping on the Ethiopian bandwagon too. But I think we have a new leader. The Costa Rican we roasted on Monday is super tasty with our new website up and running, ready to take your orders.

Posting on Roasting

Sam has already posted on this, check out the pics and video, but I thought I’d put in my two cents.

I’ve just been playing with the lighter of the 2 roasts we did last Friday. You can see our first three attempts in the pic. Guess which was our first I’m usually a fan of espresso with milk even if it’s just a macchiato – I enjoy both the flavour and the ritual of making it. So darker roasts are more my style, but this was pretty tasty. I’ve got nothing on Michelle for her tasting notes, but here goes: a bit of lemon and dark chocolate with a really full, syrupy mouth feel with a long lasting, sweet but slightly bitter (in a nice way) aftertaste. I tried the darker, but still slightly underdone, roast yesterday with similar results although less lemony – pretty good for only our third go. If you’re reading this Michelle would you like some of the lighter roast? I reckon it’d be right up your alley.

Roasting, on the whole was a blast. Good times to hang out and another skilll to learn (and hopefully master). Keeping roasting notes is kind of fun too, a bit like taking vital signs on patients which is my sort of thing, looking for patterns and differences. So far we’ve been recording: Date, Time, Outside Temp, General Conditions, Relative Humidity, Beans, Start weight, End weight, Start Temp, 1st Crack Time, Lowered Temp Time, 2nd Crack Time, Time Removed, and Notes. Any other suggestions?

Judgement Please

From the RSS you might have been expecting something a tad more serious and/or theological. These guys here and here do that sort of thing much better.

Busying

As well as all the other stuff below we’ve been busy with:

Sophia L’s baptism.

Watching the Wallabies.

Parent teacher interviews (for Kate).

Baby shower for Bernie which I went to – hah hah – a boy at a baby shower. I got in with my coffee machine to make drinks for the ladies. Bernie went into labour that evening. She and JJ have had a baby boy – Nathan. Yay!

All this and working which I’m really enjoying recently.

I’ll try to keep up on the blogging now that I’ve broken the drought. Thanks for pestering me about it

Drinking

Coffee of course..

Occasionally with friends and crew from North Rocks at Night

1st Nekked Shot

Nekked Group (Handle)

Couldn’t resist taking a ’study break’ to cut up my single group handle and make it NAKED! Neil’s advice here was invaluable – thanks! I had the tools and the inclination, what was to stop me? For play by play photos go here.

Want me to do yours?

The cupboard was bare…

Young Matty Toose, came home to the hoose, to get his brain some caffeine.

When he got there, the cupboard was bare and had to make do with a tea.

We’ve run out of beans! We were looking forward to a coffee this afternoon before bible study especially after a late night writing reports and finishing a uni assessment.

Toose Hoose Italian style

Starter
Garlic Bread

Main
Chicken Breast wrapped in Prosciutto and pan fried (Chicken Saltimbocca)
Mushroom Risotto with Truffle Oil
Steamed Broccolini

Dessert
Tiramisu

Scott and I were wondering what other desserts or recipies use coffee or more specifically espresso in their ingredients. I thought of some chocolate cake recipies and even a chocolate mousse that have coffee in them. I used 2 double shot long blacks in the Tiramisu – Yum!

Babycino

I made my first babycino this morning for Adrian’s son Nicholas when they came over for brekky and to borrow some movies for Rowena who’s hurt her neck – get better soon Row! I wasn’t really sure how to make one so had to ask Adrian. I over frothed some milk and scooped the thicker foam with a bit of milk into a small espresso cup and sprinkled some chocolate powder over the top. After first shaking his head at the proffered cup and spoon which I placed in front of the little guy we soon heard the clinking of metal on ceramic – I must have got it right

Any tips for my future Babycino attempts? Do you put some coffee in or is that a no no? How much chocolate? What should the foam to milk ratio be? What size cup do you use? Maybe I should do a Barista course