Carrot-o-chino

Hello!
Merry Christmas all, and Happy New Year to come.

Seeing as the upcoming year is the "Year of the Pig"... I find it apropos to post up my musings of late. I'm worried, you see... that I eat a whole lot of junk. Specifically, that I drink a lot of junk. Namely, sodas and lattes. I'm concerned a little more about my health, now that I'm growing older, or should I say... fermenting a bit. (Most people say, "aging", but I like to think of myself as growing a little older, and a little more odoriferous, much like a fine cheese, injected with lovely blue mold, living in a cave, etc., etc.) Anyhow, other than these two vices, my intake of goods is pretty respectable, and easily adjustable, since I'm not really "married" to anything I eat on a regular basis. Just that soda, and that latte, they are hard habits to break.

I think I've found the foil to the soda thing. San Pelligrino bottled carbonated water is the first bottled water I've ever had that doesn't taste overwhelmingly bitter to me, and since the 'bite' of the carbonation is the real reason that I drink soda, subbing the San Pelligrino for the soda has pretty much killed my craving in just a few days.

But that latte.... Hoo boy. I've tried to cut the milk to 2% (which still has quite the load of fat,) but I'd like to find a suitable alternative that delivers the same effect. The loss of the butterfat in the milk is quite noticeable in the flavor of the coffee. The fat coats the tongue just enough, and the coffee's bitter nature is gently soothed, and left deposited on the taste for several lingering seconds, allowing the nuances to come forward. 2% doesn't have this magic butterfat effect (although it gets a little better if you put a pinch of kuzu root starch in the milk just prior to steaming... If worse comes to worse, maybe I can experiment with this a bit.)

The other morning, as Mystery and I were eating, I ordered a carrot juice, and was once again surprised by the similarities that fresh, unpasteurized, ultra good carrot juice has to milk. Try it, don't get ANY pastuerized carrot juice, not ultra pasteurized, not flash pasteurized. The moment heat touches carrot juice, it turns coppery, vile, EVIL. It gets so bad, it should be in detention. But unsullied, it's friggin awesome, angelic, sublime. The taste is not unlike a subtly sweet lactose flavor, and the texture is creamy without being creamy, and it has the same lingering effect on the tongue, but with NO FAT, and I thought.... "You know, this would rock with a shot of espresso in it." So much so, that I gave it to Mystery to taste: "Taste that, I bet it'd be awesome as a cappuccino." Mystery tasted it, and surprisingly, she agreed. (Unlike the time when I gave mystery a big bite of melon, and said, "Now wouldn't that just ROCK with onions and some boiled egg?" It would've too, I stand by that assessment.)

So I bought a five pound bag of carrots, juiced up some of them last night, and this morning, tried to put this theory to the test.

I fired up the boiler, pulled a nice healthy shot of Espresso Roma's "Frankie and Tony" blend, added it to the juice, and tasted it. Hey! Not bad. Needs some honey, but all in all, pretty good. So I gave some to Mystery to try. "Here, try it, it's not half bad." Mystery took a drink. At this point I'm thinking that with some work, I might have a marketable unique drink to add to my mental menu of "Someday if I ever have a coffee bar..." recipes.

"That..." She said, "Is the single worst thing I've ever tasted."

"What are you talking about?" I'm thinking, "It's not espresso vivace, but it's on par with starbucks," so I take another drink, and wouldn't you know it? She was absolutely right. It was the worst thing ever.

Funny how fantasy can cloud your taste, isn't it?