Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

i've been ordering my coffee from Anthony's since my last trip to Maui...
but now i feel nuts doing it. where the amazing local coffee at? porto rico,
gorilla, stumptown? is there an Anthony hidden somewhere nearby?

I don't really like beer that much except for fruity type things such as fruity Lambic types of beer.

Beer can be fun to cook with. I make a really good beer bread that my friends rave about.

wow - surprisingly enough this did not deteriorate into a war....maybe this will help.

beer is 4 ingredients:
water
malt
hops
yeast

as a beverage, it's fairly simple recipe yet produces a vast assortment of flavors, colors, aroma, style, alcohol levels, fizzy, not fizzy, sweet, sour, etc...

beer is a much more complex beverage than wine which is just grape juice and yeast (and oak when used) Scientifically speaking, wine is a far less complex beverage, and therefore (some would argue) far fussier to pair with food than beer. There is a great book called The Brewmaster's Table by Garrett Oliver that goes into great detail on food pairing with beer.

Now I will confess that I'm a beer brewer and wine maker - I love them both, and they each have their place. but it's hard to beat a nice cold refreshing pint of ale on a hot day!

There is oodles of varieties that one should find to their taste. More and more places are pairing beers with dishes just like you would with wine. Cooking and baking with beer is also fun and can "make" a dish.

Haricot vert in frozen foods
Whole grain english muffins

Great place to buy nuts (cashews, pecans, walnuts) - much cheaper than Whole Foods. Generally, Trader Joe's is fantastic for basics and less expensive than its competition. By basics, bread, condiments - anything packaged.

I wouldn't buy produce there, however, it's better from a farmer's market or a Whole Foods-type store.

- I don't know what they are called but the are butter cookies with chocolate centers. SO GOOD
- Frozen fish items like the seafood mix are great
- Vanilla beans are pretty affordable, especially compared to other places by me

the thing i remember impressed me was there nut selection. if you have a great supermarket nearby this might not do it for you... but bags of unsalted cashews... yum!

Here are my favs from TJ's:

-Artisan Puffy Pastry (which I use to make a Cheat's Pain aux Chocolat)
-Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (it's even better than the Nestle Toll House )
-Sipping Chocolate (available seasonally, winter)
-Joe's O's cereal
-Turkey & Rice stuffed red bell peppers (it's really good)
-Tiramisu (it's what I often bring to a potluck and it's always the first dish finished)
-Blood Orange Soda (this soda is always sold out, I've saw 1 woman put 10 bottles into her cart)
-Triple Ginger Cookies
-Chocolate Orange Sticks
- Carolans (sp?) Irish Cream

I'm not very impressed with Trader Joe's. They have mostly prepackaged specialty items (at my location anyways), and I thought it disconcerting that there is no meat or deli counter at all. I can see the appeal of it if you are in an area where there isn't much variety (i.e. small town). But in my city I can find really fresh ingredients, specialty and ethnic foods at various markets, grocery stores and farmer markets. I would rather go to the corner Halal (or Asian, or Mexican, etc.) market and explore the variety, support local business, and meet people. IMHO.

I'm on the east coast, and I'll be sure to look into all of your suggestions! Thank you very much, and if you think of anything else be sure to let me know!

I though they already had a super automatic machine before the Mastraina, the ones I see at Safeway with the more square hopper lids? Why buy new machines then close down a bunch of stores 6 months later because of budget costs? It would have been easier to tell that machine manufacture to take a hike. Like what are they going to do?

"I suppose when you have over 150,000 employees working in stores with such a high turnover rate, the time, effort and maintenance required for a manual machine isn't worth it. Pushing buttons cuts down on hours in training time, leaving employees to study recipes and milk steaming methods." As a former Starbucks employee, this sentence mocks my position... true I worked on the La Marzocco machine, but it make us Starbucks Baristas out to be fast-food McDonalds employees.