One of the other roasters that led me down the path of coffee enlightenment was Portola Coffee Roasters. At the time, I was mainly a Starbucks drinker. To me, I thought the lattes from Starbucks were decently good… at least better than Peet’s and Coffee Bean. However, a good friend of mine introduced me to Portola Coffee on a trip down to Orance County. They roast their own coffee in addition to the normal cafe serving espresso drinks. I ordered a latte and the first sip was such an eye-opening experience. The flavors, the aftertaste and even just the aroma from the beans gave me such a “wow” feeling. Soon after, I began to experiement making my own latte’s in the morning and fell into the caffeinated spiral of no return.
Anyways, this past weekend… I was running out of MOMOS Coffee and opted to buy a bag from Portola while I was down in the OC area for a networking event. These beans do not disappoint. If you’re ever in the OC area, drop by the cafes and enjoy their espresso drinks.
20 years… Trillions of dollars later… Countless military lives lost…
I never understood why countries do not learn from history. Nation building is only successful when you absolutely take control of EVERYTHING and rebuild it from the ground up. Like Japan after WW2, the US rebuilt a demoralized Japanese population into a functioning democracy. They did so by taking control of the government, minimizing any militaristic threat, and helped the people recover from the ravages of war. But… I don’t think the US did any of that to any degree of success in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s militaristic threat was still present. The new government still clung to the old religious views and clearly corruption still remained. After reading numerous articles and opinions in the past 20 years… I came to the conclusion that the US seemed to be “half-assing” this “nation building exercise.” They never pursued all means necessary to eliminate the Taliban threat completely including leveraging Pakistan to eliminate the Taliban from Pakistani borders. The US also never fully committed to building essential services for the the people. Sure some infrastructure projects were built… but is that truly enough to win over people? If you think about Maslow’s heirarchy… Safety/Security and Survivability/Food comes first. US never provided these two items to all the Afghani people. It’s no wonder there nation building failed.
To be honest and to my surprise, a search of “why did Afghanistan nation building fail” gave me two links (link 1, link 2) and a PDF to read. The two links all point to the need to take control of everything or commit the necessary resources for success. A quick read points to the facts that the US could never have won this war because 1) the scope of the war changed from War on Terror to Nation Building 2) the US political system could never agree on the type and level of support needed. These two major issues limited the resources needed for a complete US domination. Bush Jr never fully was able to commit to a US domination since it would have technically required Congressional support (in both troops and money). So… the war on terror / nation building was doomed for failure from the start. Here’s an interesting VOX article about Biden’s history discussing the Afghan War. Egads…
So what now….? 1) The US should accept any and all females who are seeking refuge/refugee status. 2) The US absolutely must help any and all Afghanis that aided the US troops in the war. 3) Rebuild all the lost reputation and good will from the past 20 years.
I stopped by a local coffee shop called Kumquat Coffee and Tea over the weekend. At this shop, there were quite few imported roasted beans from Korea. Since the most recent Angels Cup roaster shipped a less than the normal amount of beans, I thought it might be wise to stock up on at least one additional bag of beans. Since I’ve had the opportunity to taste roasted beans from Ethiopia, I ended up choosing one that I thought was close to the Yirgacheffe region where many of the roasters also bought their beans.
What I found out later is that that MOMOS Coffee is actually famous because one of their barista was the 2019 World Barista Champion (2nd link, 3rd link). Talk about luck of the draw… Anyhow, I made my latte and this instantly tastes similar to all the other lattes I’ve made with Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans. Not only does it taste similar, it’s extremely fruity and floral. This is one of the more delicious lattes I’ve made in a while too.
August’s Angels Cup goes international with Pirates of Coffee who hail from Canada (says the Angels Cup communications… though I can’t really confirm that info on the Pirates of Coffee website). But nonetheless, coffee is coffee right? The beans come from another Tarrazu, Costa Rica. Reading the website description, I didn’t know there were eight coffee growing regions in Costa Rica with Tarrazu being the most popular.
Angels cup sent only a 6oz version of the beans. They were kind enough to reimburse half the monthly subscription (probably at a loss). Drinking my latte, I do get this nice chocolate flavor.
July’s Trade Coffee comes from Kuma Coffee. Kuma is the Japanese word for “bear” and it just sounds rugged and rough. These beans come from the Antiguan Highlands in Guatemala. Looking back at previous roasters, I haven’t had too many Guatemalan beans. From the website, the beans were picked by small local farmers combining the best beans from each farm.
I had a chance to not only make my latte but also did a cold brew and a pour over with these beans. The cold brew was probably one of the tastiest brews I’ve made that wasn’t a latte. It was bright and fruity with low acidity.
July’s Angels Cup comes from Dynamite Roasting Company. The beans are a light roast from Rwanda. This should make for an interesting experience since I’ve had beans from Rwanda before.
Opening the bag, I’m greeted with a lovely aroma of fruits and nuts. Making my latte, I was surprised by the sweetness of the latte. The sweet flavor morphs into this enjoyable fruit flavor. There’s this enjoyable floral aftertaste after each sip. What surprises me about these beans are that I don’t taste any nuttiness in the coffee that I usually get with nutty aromas.
On an unrelated note, I think I might stop posting what I taste/smell for future beans. Reading through the past 100+ bags of beans, they all sound very similar to each other. For those rare beans that are standout “I just can’t stop drinking it”, I may make a note of it.
The Oinkster is one of those hole in the wall restaurants located in a fairly middle class neighborhood called Eagle Rock. Thanks to Food Network’s Dine-In, Drives and Dives… I had lunch here after watching Fieri’s clip and immediately loved the food. I’ve eaten through their menu multiple times and will recommend people to try the Oinkster pastrami, the Reuben, the Cluckster and the Chicken Salad Sandwich (my favorite). To go with the sandwiches, I also recommend their french fries (either normal or piggy style) with extra order of their garlic aoili sauce. This aoili sauce is amazing and complements any of their sandwiches. I’ve also been told that their Veggie burger is extremely good as well too. I had a bite of it once and their special mix of veggies to make it juicy and textured is amazing.
But I’m here to post about my favorite sandwich: Chicken Salad Sandwich. At the start of the pandemic, Oinkster actually took this sandwich off their menu. I’ve ordered from Oinkster maybe four times over the past 16 months and was always disappointed to not see this sandwich. But… I recently saw on Oinkster’s Instgram that they were bringing back the Chicken Salad Sandwich. I went. I ate. And I loved every bite.
On an unrelated note, I always try to order directly from the link provided by the website. If I can, I will always try to skip the delivery apps like DoorDash, UberEats, Postmates, etc… AND also do pickup in person. These delivery apps tend to take a much higher percentage from the restaurant and with the pandemic hurting restaurant sales, every little bit of savings will help.
OK… back to the sandwich….
There’s something magical about the combination of generous chunks of chicken, creamy mayo, raw onions and sweet crunchy pickles. Everything just works well together. The crunchy pickles and raw onions giving way to the soft creamy mayo chicken feels very satisfying when I take a bite. The pre-pandemic version actually served the sandwich on a focacia bread which got a little soggy as it soaked up some residual mayo creaminess and tomato liquid. But this current version is served on toasted sourdough doesn’t have that problem at all. However, I was a bit apprehensive that it would be too dry. Looking at the sandwich though, there toasted sourdough resistant to the mayo and liquids that I could hear and feel an audible crunch with the first few bits. The toasted sourdough helped enhance the crunchiness of the onion and pickle combination!
This was so delicious that I sat outside in their patio area just enjoying the sandwich. I’m going to have to go back multiple times as this is just a one month only special. =[
A Guy and His Thoughts... 