Category: How to…

Don’t buy “cinnamon coffee”, put cinnamon in your coffee.

Flavored coffees have always bothered me.  I don’t mean coffee with flavored syrup – I mean coffee that has some mysterious chemical layer of something-ness that infuses coffee beans to somehow taste like cinnamon, or french vanilla, or pumpkins.

You know me…. I’m a girl who likes to keep things au naturale.

But I get it.  Sometimes I don’t just want a plain black cup of coffee either.  Instead of buying cinnamon flavored coffee, just add some cinnamon to your coffee.  Grounds, sprinkle of cinnamon, brew, enjoy.  It works for a french press; it works for a drip brewer.  And yes, it’s really that simple.

Ok, cinnamon seems simple enough, but what about those other flavors?  Here are some popular flavors, and my solutions for infusing your coffee instead of coating it with chemicals:

2012-12-31 09.48.27Cinnamon: Duh, we already covered this… add powdered cinnamon, or a fresh grated cinnamon stick

French Vanilla: Pinch of raw sugar and a whole vanilla bean

Hazelnut: Grate a few hazelnut shavings into the grounds

Pumpkin: Sprinkle of pumpkin spice

“Christmas”: Mulling spices (go easy on them… a little goes a long way)

I’m all ears for other ideas…

What do you do to add pizzazz to your daily cup?

Video: How to core and quarter tomatoes

I spent a lot of my Labor Day in the kitchen with lots and lots of tomatoes.  I bought 10 pound from my local farmers market and though my intended sauce turned out like juice (this is the topic of another post, perhaps), I thought that it would be fun to start a tiny little how-to video series!

I have tons of recipe books, but sometimes instead of browsing through index after index I find it’s just easier to google stuff that I want to know instantly.

So here I am on the YouTube, in my teensy apartment kitchen (hey, a lot of awesome stuff comes out of that little room…), giving a quick lesson on how to core tomatoes.  The video is tiny, like my kitchen, because it was taken by iphone… but you’ll get the idea.

So, what do we think? Yay? Nay?  Want more of these? Let me know!