Archive for the ‘food’ Category

December 2007 Providence Geek Dinner

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

December 2007 Providence Geek Dinner

Don’t miss this month’s Providence Geek Dinner (this Wednesday!); In the spirit of the holiday season and giving back to the community, Providence Geeks is a proud sponsor of Rhode Island’s 2008 FIRST FTC Robotics Challenge. The program provides high school students the opportunity to build working robots and test their creations in head-to-head competition. At Wednesday’s Geek Dinner, Tech Collective President Tim Hebert and other RI FIRST FTC team members will give an overview of the program, the kids, & the robots, and explain how Providence Geeks members can serve as volunteer mentors and referees. Details and RSVP here.

Last Geek Dinner of the Summer Tonight (Wednesday, July 12)

Wednesday, July 12th, 2006

Providence Geeks is delighted to be hosting another Geek Dinner. Get while the getting’s good, though. This is the last geek dinner of the summer! Read all about it here.

Providence Geek Dinner: April 19

Monday, April 17th, 2006


The Providence Geeks have once again put together a Geek Dinner for your enjoyment and general edification. Read all about it and RSVP at the Providence Geeks Blog! I’ll also be helping to give a brief talk and demo on a powerful topic.

Folgers Breakfast Blend

Sunday, October 24th, 2004

Russell Beattie has a great
post
that tells me where I can find the most caffeine. This may
explain why I can drink cup after cup of dark roasted coffee, and not
get one bit higher. I marked his post as “Keep New” in Bloglines for a while, and finally
moved it into my coffee
links on del.icio.us
. I’ll keep checking on it since I know it will
be a magnet for interesting coffee suggestions.

The one I find most interesting is the suggestion
to check out
Same Old
Grind
.. They have some kind of cold brewing system that sounds
really neat. You cold-brew the coffee into a syrup and mix it with hot
water as needed. What grabs me is the claim that “it tastes like coffee
smells.”

If you check out those del.icio.us bookmarks, you may find evidence of
shopping for a new coffee maker in there. I decided to go with the Cuisinart.
Not only did it get a great review on Whole Latte Love, but Consumer
Reports gave it a top ranking (but not a best buy, since it’s about $50
north of most coffee makers).

Dosing Tips

Tuesday, May 18th, 2004

WebMD:
“By taking small, frequent caffeine doses they did, however, avoid the
jitteriness and other side effects of larger doses.”

Illuminated by Chocolate

Friday, March 19th, 2004

LaughingMeme:
“Ocean Roasters in Providence, RI makes a mocha with unsweetened
Barvarian chocolate milk that is an experience.” mmmm… Bavarian
chocolate experience… I’ll have to give that a try sometime.

It’s Not the Caffeine that Worries Me

Monday, February 2nd, 2004

Paul
fesses up to that occasional double espresso. I’ve got a strong
appetite for that kind of thing, although my weakness is for soy lattes.
The problem is, I can’t drink much of it because of my cholesterol
levels. Contrary to what a lot of people think, it’s not the caffeine
that causes the problem, and it’s apparently isolated to coffee that’s
made without a paper filter. From Consumer
Reports
:

…lab tests, mainly from Europe, found that regularly drinking very
strong coffee could sharply increase volunteers’ cholesterol levels.
Researchers even isolated a fatlike chemical in coffee, cafestol, that
was clearly responsible for the rise. (Cafestol shows up in coffee
whether or not it’s decaffeinated.)

However, the brewing methods used in the lab studies involved boiling
ground coffee in water, a method that produces extremely high
concentrations of cafestol. By contrast, the filter and percolation
brewing methods used by more than nine of ten Americans remove all but a
trace of cafestol. (So-called French-press brewing results in a cafestol
content close to that of the boiling method.)

When Joan and I first got together, I had just broken my coffee maker,
so I used her french press. It was a couple of months later that I got
my first cholesterol test; my total cholesterol was close to 300. My
doctor gave me a couple months to sort out my diet, but I didn’t make
any major changes, except for one. And I had no clue what I had done: I
got a coffee maker as a gift from my in-laws, and went back to brewing
with a paper filter. The next test, my cholesterol was down by about 40
points. It was a few months later that I learned about cafestol.

I’m not trying to put Starbucks out of business here, but if you have
trouble with your cholesterol, you probably want to drink a little more
drip coffee than you do espresso or anything else made without a paper
filter. And if you’re my age (mid 30s) or older, and haven’t got your
cholesterol tested, please do, especially if you have a family history
of that sort of thing.

Forbidden Eggs

Thursday, October 9th, 2003