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Recipes from an Australian Barista
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 731
He carries his instant coffee around with him in his "swag", which means all swaddled up like a newborn baby. He loves his instant coffee. And he sort of doesn't like that Canadian stuff that's made with real beans and grounds, lacks something in the flavour department he finds.
Which inspired me to transcribe some notes and recipes from an Australian Barista, so you can enjoy Australia's finest coffee experience without the threat of Kangaroos and Dingoes.
- Black Coffee: 1 Teaspoon (from hear on in abbreviated to tsp) of instant coffee crystals. Mix in 1 cup hot water. Wait to cool, drink.
- Milky Coffee: 1 tsp instant coffee crystals. Most of a cup of hot water. Milk and sugar to taste.
- Espresso: 1 tsp instant coffee crystals. 2 oz of hot water. Stir vigorously.
- Americano: 1 tsp instant coffee crystals. 2 Oz hot water. Wait 1 minute, add 10 oz more hot water.
- Canadiano: Use 1 tsp of instant coffee crystals to make 16 oz cup of instant coffee. Hold in reserve. Use 1 tsp of instant coffee crystals to make 2 oz of espresso, then top up with the cup of instant coffee.
- Cappucino: Make an Aussie style espresso (see #3). Boil milk, taking care not to burn it. Froth milk by blowing into it with a straw. !! NOTE: Take care, boiling milk will scald your face if you're not careful !! THIS IS WHY AUSTRALIAN BARISTAS ALL HAVE BEARDS!! Add frothy boiled milk to Aussie espresso. Add instant coffee crystals to top of foam to make a happy bearded face.
- Cafe Latte: Add boiling milk to Aussie Espresso. Don't worry about foam. Swirl some instant coffee crystals into top to make a pretty picture.
These recipes would probably be better done in a series of instructional YouTube videos. I'm gonna talk to him and see if he's ready for the kind of internet celebrity that will bring...
1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee - Laredo
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Other
- Hits: 749
Now I'm not one to generally rave about things, especially cars. I drive 'em and dump 'em at the wreckers when I'm done. A car is the freedom to get from point a -> point b.
That said some cars are clearly better than others. The Volvo, for instance, 1990 240 DL, was the best car I've ever owned. Never complained, withstood Canadian Tire's worst assassins, and when finally it died it was more due to inconvenience and the lack of competent mechanics - it wasn't my will, not by a long shot.
That said, this Jeep has been a miracle. I mean, there was Colorado a couple of years ago - but since then, Nada, nothing, it's gotten me over 100, 000 KM, 20, 000 KM on logging roads that haven't been in service in 20 years, I could do you guys ads. I need a Go-Pro on the hood, you wouldn't believe it. I don't sometimes. And I'm hard on cars, but this baby, she keeps running. If it died tomorrow I would have gotten 10X my money out of it (That's not giving it permission, I got a few miles to do yet...).
The Volvo was good, but this jeep has been done a lot of roads the Volvo wouldn't even attempt. And it's always gotten me back. If you ever need a good, used vehicle, think the 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo, buy low miles, it's money well spent.
I heartily endorse this product.
Drumheller
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Places
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On the whirlwind tour of Calgary with the daughter, "If you had a father for 8 hours, where would you like to go?" I ask, and she wanted to revisit Drumheller, go searching for dinosaurs in the badlands, relive better memories of her youth, and so after the 7 hour haul from Nelson to Calgary I picked her up from school and we went onward to Drumheller.
It's been a few years, changed a lot, a lot of new twee museums and amusements designed to capitalize on the tourist dollars, the audio/visual museum (??), dunno, a Star Trek museum, which doesn't make sense unless you think of that episode with Captain Kirk and the Gorn, and then it does, and all sorts of other fleeting attractions caught from the corner of our eyes. I'd stop, but our time is limited, we fill up at McDonalds, visit Dollorama for drinks, and then head off into the canyons...
A beautiful day. Not too hot, big Cumulus clouds building in the background, perfect for this...
Walking, a thousand little dead-end canyons to explore, our first real find:
Which, if you look close, is a piece of quartzite boulder napped into the shape of a hide scraper. A native artifact.
Big, the base (bottom) would fill the palm of your hand, the edges obviously shaped: most boulders in these canyons are complete, and better artifacts are found made from better materials, and with clearly better workmanship, but the napping on the edges, several flakes broken off, suggest this was made with purpose. It's a prize.
(Note: That said, I'm pretty bad at mis-identifying things as "Native artifacts" ... and it's very possible this isn't...but, it seems a little too convenient that nature would have napped this boulder several times to produce this flake, hard enough to find a single broken boulder, let alone one that's been broken and broken again. I vote artifact.)
And from here onto other finds:
Dinosaur bone in soil...
Dinosaur vertebrae (left), leg and claw (Right).
***
As always we find dozens of bones, but that's not why were here, it's a competition to find the best skull, get naming rights on a new species, and in our few hours we find nothing we can interest the museum in, but there's always a thousand more canyons to lead us on, and the day is ending too soon, we're just beginning and we have to get back to Calgary for dinner with the boy, I could spend weeks out here, and she's giving me to believe she could too, endless little dead-ends to explore, countless eroding discoveries, and the thought of having to be back to work by tomorrow are killing me, but I'll be back next year with a week or two to kill and then we'll be finding it all...
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