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More Adventures in Flavoured Coffee

April 13, 2014 by Michele Neylon 1 Comment

I’ve been trying out different flavoured coffees over the last few months. Why? Because they’re tasty.

Is it sacrilege? I don’t think so.

Yesterday I picked up 3 different flavours of coffee from a local shop:

vanilla
Macadamian nut
Bavarian chocolate – I’ve no idea why Bavaria would be associated with chocolate, but I thought I’d give it a go

When I’m travelling in the US I come across a lot of flavoured “milks” and other things, but they’re not readily available in Ireland. You can, however, get your hands on some of the syrups in some supermarkets. While I like the syrups they’re full of sugar and so I’d prefer to avoid them it at all possible.

The flavoured coffees are a good compromise 🙂

Tracking Coffee Consumption With Up Coffee

March 15, 2014 by Michele Neylon 3 Comments

I love coffee. However I’m also conscious that I probably drink a bit too much.

But how much coffee and caffeine am I consuming every day? What kind of impact does it have on me?

While the new app from Jawbone “UP Coffee” might not be able to able to answer these questions with 100% accuracy, it does a pretty good job of trying to.

The app is pretty simple.

You log the coffees and other caffeine beverages that you consume throughout the day (including the time you drank them) and the app calculates how much caffeine is in your system and how soon you’ll be able to sleep:

So after two cups of coffee I should be able to sleep again after 4pm.

The app can hook into your Jawbone UP, if you have one, and if you tie the two together you should be able to access more data about things like your sleep quality. As I’m a Fitbit user I can’t take advantage of those options, but I can still use it to track coffee consumption over time and compare my habits to those of other users.

Of course the problem with this app and most other apps that track food etc., is that you have to remember to log what you consume. Sure, you can go back and add things “after the fact”, but you still need to do it.

The app’s a nice idea and if I was seriously concerned about my coffee consumption or suffered from insomnia I might use it more.. As it is it’s a bit of a fun gimmick.

You can grab the app via the Apple app store.

Up Coffee is Jawbone’s solution for America’s caffeine addiction (theverge.com)
‘UP Coffee’ App Measures Caffeine Consumption, Impact On Sleep: Could An App Help Treat Caffeine Addiction? (medicaldaily.com)
UP Coffee app helps you track and understand caffeine consumption (flowingdata.com)
Control Your Caffeine Jitters with the ‘UP Coffee’ App from Jawbone (ireport.cnn.com)
App helps the caffeine addicts (news.optuszoo.com.au)

How Important Is Breakfast?

March 8, 2014 by Michele Neylon 1 Comment

While my diet and weight loss isn’t as much of a success as I’d like I have made a conscious effort over the last couple of years to improve certain aspects of my lifestyle.

Breakfast is important. You need it. If you skip it the rest of your day is going to be screwed up.

Why?

It’s all about your metabolism and how it handles things.

So for the last couple of years I’ve been having breakfast of some kind pretty much every single day. Sure, there are times when I simply cannot get breakfast for any number of reasons. For example if you have a flight at 5 or 6 in the morning the likelihood of being able to even find anywhere that can serve you simple breakfast is slim. But I will at least be able to pickup a coffee and maybe a pastry.

This graphic explains some of the factors as to why breakfast is so important as well as providing some figures on how Americans treat it. I doubt the figures for Ireland would be drastically different, though we don’t have a Starbucks on every corner!

Via

Semi-healthy Convenience Food

March 3, 2014 by Michele Neylon 1 Comment

When I’m in the office these days I prefer to bring my own lunch rather than eat in the canteen. There’s nothing wrong with the canteen, but I like cooking in the evening, so having a large lunch would be a bad idea..

So for lunch I try to vary things as much as possible. There’s only so much soup that you can eat!

One recent discovery is Uncle Ben’s Rice Time range.

Here’s what you get (via the official site):

They currently come in five flavours:

Sweet & sour
Medium curry
Spicy tikka masala
Mexican chilli
Cantonese

(Though I’m pretty sure I’ve seen at least one other flavour for sale there isn’t any mention of it on their site)

They’re easy to prepare and very tasty.

At less than 400 calories (most seem to be around 330 or so) they’re heavier than a soup, but not insanely so.

Preparation time is only a couple of minutes and since we have crockery etc., in the office I can easily chuck the final product into a proper bowl and eat it at my desk.

Exploring Different Flavour Soups

January 29, 2014 by Michele Neylon 1 Comment

While I’d love to be able to make my own soup every single day it’s not going to happen just yet ..

Even a “simple” soup requires preparation time and I haven’t quite got to that stage yet.

So for the moment I try to keep it “interesting” by choosing as wide a variety of soup flavours as possible.

Today for example I had a very tasty, although a bit salty, split pea soup.

I think I picked it up in my local Tesco or SuperQuinn. To be frank I’m not sure, as it’s a tin, so it’s probably been sitting in my cupboard for a couple of months

More Kitchen Gadgets!

January 22, 2014 by Michele Neylon 2 Comments

When I tried to make pasta for the first time a couple of weeks ago I immediately ran into a small, yet quite annoying problem. Being able to roll out pastry requires a rolling pin. Sure, I was able to use a wine bottle, but it’s not exactly ideal.

So I added a rolling pin to my shopping list 🙂

Since I’m a bit of a gadget geek I was attracted to the Joseph Joseph adjustable rolling pin. I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, but I love the concept.

Instead of simply being a rolling pin this one gives you the option to adjust how thick the pasta ends up being rolled

All you have to do is switch the rings .. so you can have thick or thin dough, or maybe you can start out with thick and roll it until it’s easier to make it thinner.

The other problem I ran into with pasta was drying the damn stuff. A friend suggested I use my clothes airer, but that’s not going to work too well if I’ve got clothes on it and it’s only a “stop gap” measure

There are, however, specific racks available for drying pasta. In fact there’s quite a few different models you can choose from. I ended up going for the DB-Tech Wooden Pasta Drying Rack (available on Amazon and elsewhere). It’s not a fantastic bit of equipment but it should be able to do what I need ie. dry pasta on something that isn’t also used for airing my laundry

Unfortunately the rack doesn’t ship with the vegetables included!

I now need to research storage of fresh homemade pasta – while homemade might be better for you than stuff you buy off the shelf (at least it tastes better) you can easily end up with a rather large quantity. Ideally I’d make the right amount of pasta, but I can’t see that happening any time soon .. and besides, it’s time-consuming, so making enough for two meals at once would make sense.