she craves

Good Stuff: Charming Beard Coffee, El Recreo

PRODUCT:  Charming Beard Coffee (El Recreo)

Origin:  Beans, are single-origin sourced from Jinotega, in Northern-ish Nicaragua, situated among the country's several natural preserves; Small-batch roasting and packaging done in Salt Lake City, Utah

Flavor: Light roast actually means that - you smell characteristic "coffee" but with that a touch of fruity top notes. Really good expression of cocoa.

How to Best Enjoy:  [prep] Coarser grinds for French press and pour over; would be lovely finer grind in espresso. Would also be gorgeous as an iced coffee. [add-ins] As with other coffees, I never recommend ruining all the effort for good beans with skim milk or flavored creamer. Heavy cream is lovely here. Coconut cream/milk overpowers it. But my favorite is as is, naked,  nada. [sweeteners] Demerera (sugar in the raw) or light brown paired the best; honey lovers avoid clover varieties and try instead w/orange blossom - wow.

Where to Get It: Online here or if sold out, local sources such as Caputo's Market and directly through Charming Beard at Saturday's Artisan Market at Caputo's Market (10am-2pm; check for availability). 

Cool Fact: The company combines the ethos of the charming socialability of SLC Mixers with the backyard, micro-roast passion of La Barba coffee. 

I Like to Smell Good.

Bon Appetit Daily - the magazine's blog posted about this Brooklyn company called I HATE PERFUME and their atypical fragrances. I'm a total fragrance geek and I love perfume, but I'm also slightly warped enough to be intrigued by the scent of Roast Beef. I would totally eat, er, smell like that. Read more here.

Haagen-Dazs Blueberry Crumble, You Kill Me (And Not in the Good Way)

The kids can have their halloween candy. My sweet fix needs to be something a bit more comforting, a bit more cold, creamy, and ideally, something that need not be rationed out or, even worse, shared.

I make no secret about my love of desserts. I make it a priority in any special dinner out. And when life can be especially tricky or the mind needs a bit of comforting, my dessert of choice is ice cream. More often than not, dessert often becomes the meal. Which in a way is a good thing, considering that I can easily put away a whole pint by my lonesome. 

Nutritious? No. But comforting, completely. That is, it usually is. 

"Haagen-Dazs" and "sucked" are words I don't usually use together. After all, who am I to argue with their dense offering of Dulce de Leche, Cookie Dough, deeply flavorful Mint Chocolate Chip, Coffee, even a plain but stunning vanilla? It's a go-to. An easy fix when the craving strikes. And it struck hard the night of Halloween. 

Like an addict I made a night time pilgrimage, long after the Optimus Primes, Vampires, and Slutty Cops had retired from public viewing, to my dealer. In this case, a supermarket with a paltry ice cream selection. But there it was, Haagen-Dazs Limited Edition Blueberry Crumble. It was supposed to be so good. "After slowly simmering ripe blueberries," it says, "we fold them into dense blueberry ice crea with rich, buttery cobbler crust and crumbles." They even include a flavor sheet on the side of the pint to prepare for the flavor bomb about to unfold. Flavor bomb me.

I should have figured from the air-light pint something was amiss. The "dense blueberry ice cream" was a cloud, a sad whimper of fruit thanks to high overrun (air churned into the ice cream custard) and slightly freezer burned from bad temperature control. The blueberry crumbles, nothing but texture that left an oily film on my sad sad tongue. 

Oh, Haagen-Dazs Blueberry Crumble, where were my simmering ripe blueberries? Where was my bursting fruit flavor, my top note of bright ripe blueberries? This was supposed to be my treat, my guilty pleasure. Turned out to be a trick. Empty calories never turned out to be more true.

There was nothing guilty about you except for the fact that you sucked. I want my money (and calories) back.