Text 656, 98 rader
Skriven 2013-05-10 10:15:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: tastes &c 530
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From the last trip to the Northeast.

Hawaii's Local Buzz Ka'u coffee - this is supposed to be the
latest thing; as the supplies of Kona are long outstripped
by the demand, some entrepreneurial types are trying to
position it in the midrange of snobbish enthusiasts who are
not quite up to paying upward of $50 a pound for the real
thing. It doesn't work. This was thin and tasted like dish
water for real.

Mint Oreo fudge creams - nothing Oreoish about these, which
are chocolate cookies with a layer of exceedingly sweet
mint cream and dipped in a chocolaty coating that I am sad
to report has milk in it, no matter what the label says.
Despite the milkiness and sweetness and a certain almost
artificiality about the mint flavor, these actually are
rather moreish. I found myself mindlessly scarfing down a
half dozen of them in moments, even though I didn't really
particularly "like" them.

Biscoff cookies are now available at Shaw's stores. These
are Belgian (or Belgian-inspired) snickerdoodlish cookies,
cinnamon and brown sugar and all good things. They used to
come in rectangles for dessert on US Air and I think Delta
(dessert being about the best thing about being on a plane,
other than Courvoisier, which US Air no longer serves), then
they were discontinued, then they came back as rather thicker
grosser rounded cookies of a less refined texture, overbaked
but still of good flavor. US Air has now replaced them by
the altogether inferior Piroucrisp cookies, and I was really
pleased to find Biscoffs in the store.

Anna's almond thins - supposedly Swedish; I've had the ginger
variety and the lemon ones, and they're pretty good, not too
sweet, very crisp to the point that when you open the package
many are broken; nothing to go out of one's way for, though.
These are more boring than the others, with hardly any almond
flavor, or in fact flavor at all. Disappointing.

=

Ch. de Pibarnon (Bandol) 07 - a rather robust wine,
licorice and plums, velvety, mouthfilling, good tannin
and acid but well balanced in a way I don't encounter
all the time; not bad at all. Found it at a party,
where others were shunning it in favor of the likes of
Queue Jaune d'Australie, if you know what I mean. I
drank more than my share of it, maybe 1/3 the bottle;
finished it off in fact and found it had thrown a bit
of sediment, peculiar in a wine of this youth. I was
a little curious about the stuff, never having seen it
before, so I looked it up: Williams-Sonoma has it for a
mere $65 a bottle, whoa. No wonder I liked it, it's way
out of my price range. I venture a guess that one of
the guests got it for a Christmas or anniversary present
from some doting relative and brought it in the usual
way, not knowing what it was, not surprising as I didn't
know what it was either.

Glen Ellen Cabernet Sauvignon 87 - also party fare. A
highly oxidized but not unpleasant wine, brown with
suspended particles, rather thin and acidy, still
drinkable. I used it to lend some character to a glass
of Yellow Tail (see above) that I poured myself after
the Pibarnon was gone; it kind of worked. This had of
course thrown massive sediment but was almost not
gagworthy, rare in a wine of this age. I pointed out
that this probably had cost $1 or 2 tops in its day,
and the person who brought it in the usual way likely
knew exactly what it was, dreck that had been sitting
there unwanted in the back of the liquor cabinet for
20 years or more, so off to the party it went. Glen
Ellen was at the time, you may recall, one of the
pioneers of a new wine called white Zinfandel. Speaking
of the olden days:

Kleen & Dry CRT screen cleaning pads, made by Texwipe - I
had occasion to clean my laptop screen and found a box of
these leftover from when I bought a case with my first PC,
which would make it a bit over 21 years ago. They come in
pairs, the wet pad, soaked with diluted rubbing alcohol,
and a dry pad, fibrous but apparently soft enough not to
damage your computer screen.

Usually I take a Kleenex and wet it and swab it over my
laptop, and it works okay. This works better, and I just
went and looked at some photos on line, and, oh, my, they
were so clear! I felt like I'd had one of those epiphanies
such as Burt occasionally reports. And the colors, just wow.

I wonder who made the packaging for these wipes, which was
remarkable in that the wet pad was as fresh and wet as the
ones from the same batch I'd used around 1990. I hope
they're still in business; the Texwipe company still is.

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