Category Archives: coffee

Humidity gone!

Finally, the humidity and heat is gone.  It was in the upper 50s when I got up and I was actually looking forward to going out for a run!  Snacked on a couple dates with PB.

date

Trundled on outside and started jogging.  The plan was to go 4 miles, but that didn’t happen.  My thighs were so tired that I had to keep taking walk breaks!  I was not out of breath or anything, but the legs just didn’t want to go.  Ever have days like that?  It tends to happen to me when I do squats the day before (like I did yesterday).  I ended up doing 3.25 miles and called it a day.  It was so nice out, too!

Breakfast was banana oat bran topped with some PB2 that I did with a little extra water to make it more of a sauce (with cafe au lait!).

brekkie8

Got an early start to work, which means finishing early – yay!  Lunch break was another X-box omelet.

lunch15

1 egg plus 2 egg whites and some feta cheese.  It comes out so fluffy and perfectly cooked.  Guess I do like this machine LOL!  I really should use it more.

Pixie usually sleeps at my feet, but today she sacked out on the couch.  It almost looks like she is on a cloud and she looks so comfy!

sleepygirl

John made me a latte this afternoon plus one of my whole wheat biscotti.latte3

Ended the work day on a bummer note.  I try not to let my work affect me, but sometimes the stories are very sad.  My very last file I did was about a man who was just diagnosed with late stage lung cancer.  He had no idea he was sick, but had an upper respiratory infection with some shortness of breath, so they did a chest x-ray and found out he had lung cancer.  No symptoms.  And he had just gotten married in February this year.  The doctor spoke about how she counseled the patient that curing his disease was unrealistic, but they could try to delay the progression.  Ugh.  I just felt so bad.  You just never know.

I almost wish I could work a little more to not have that be my last file, but can’t do overtime.

Dinner was kind of lunch-like.  Chicken wrap with some laughing cow cheese and spring mix.  I really love spring mix in wraps – it is so much better than iceberg or romaine.  Lovely strawberries!

dinner16

I have my post weeding snack all ready to eat.  Just wanted to take a picture and upload, so it is unwrapped.  This is a Special K chocolatey pretzel bar.  Pretty good.   90 calories.  It is a little dinky, though 😀

snack5

Hmmm….. most of my pictures are blurry today.  What is up with that?

I am going to go out and enjoy this gorgeous evening in the garden!

Granola and roasting your own coffee

Today was the start of my work week!  Had good productivity, so I actually finished up early.  Yay!

The day started with our Sunday bagel and paper reading:

bagel3

No exercise today since it is a complete rest day for me.  Still hard for me to do these days.

Here is the granola recipe that I talked about yesterday.  It’s quite good, not super sweet and I think it actually does better as a topping than with milk.  I might tweak it a bit:

granola

Ingredients:

  • 3 cups rolled oats
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2 tablespoons of flax meal
  • 1 ounce of chopped walnuts
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup (the real stuff, please)
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • 1 tablespoon brown sugar
  • 40 grams of chopped dates

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.  In a small bowl, combine the vanilla, maple syrup, oil, water and brown sugar and mix to dissolve the sugar.  In a large bowl, mix all dry ingredients except the dates.  Add the liquid mixture and stir until it is all absorbed into the dry.  Spread onto a baking sheet and cook for about 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes or so.  I found the granola was not quite crunchy right out of the oven, but it crisped up as it cooled.   After cooling, stir in the dates.  I actually also added some chopped dried cranberries later.

Stats:  31 grams (scant 1/2 cup or generous 1/3 cup):  141 calories, 4 grams of fat, 3 grams fiber, 4 grams protein.   Pretty good for granola!

Had a somewhat boring eating day, but thought you might like to see the coffee roasting process from earlier.  We had run out of all coffee in the house (thanks Susan!) so it was time to roast some.

We purchase green coffee from either Sweet Maria’s or Coffee Project.

Here are the green beans.  They actually smell a lot like legumes, or like dried peas.

Green coffee

Green coffee

I have a large roaster, but we have not gotten the wiring done (need 220 boosted) to set it up, so I have gone back to my good air popcorn popper.  Please note that you do need the lid on it, but I took it off to catch some action.  You just fill with about 1/2 cup of beans and plug it in.  You can see the chaff flying off, which is the outer skin of the bean.

As the beans heat up, they start snapping at the water is forced out of the bean and it expands.  You can stop the roasting from this point on and have a light roast.  Not sure if you can hear the snaps or not.

Coffee all done, super hot and smoking.  This has reached the 2nd crack stage and is considered a dark roast.  This bean is Sumatran, which takes a dark roast nicely.  You can hear the beans still snapping.  Roasting coffee is smoky, so you either need to do it outside or have an understanding spouse 😀

I am going outside quickly here LOL! After the beans have cooled and set for a bit, you can grind them up and have the freshest coffee you have ever had!  It takes about 5 minutes or so to do a 1/2 cup of beans, which is around 3-4 ounces.  I do 3 batches in the popper when I roast.

Hooray for coffee!

Sweet – the more coffee you drink, the less likely you are to have a stroke!

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I am set!!