A Few Quick Notes 485

-As of about an hour ago it has been snowing. So far their isn't even a centimeter but the grass across from my window is definitely tinged with white.

-Irony of ironies, after going on and on about my search for an unscented antiperspirant my newly acquired unscented antiperspirant's odor is making me feel ill. I almost feel as though I should take a shower to get this stuff off of me.

-The female owner of the two puppies that had been using the grass across from my window as a toilet now seems to be taking her dogs a little further afield to expel their waste. Over the past few days I have seen the small dogs and their owner walking up and down our street. Whenever I see the owner I wonder if she recognizes me as the guy watching her dogs play and use the toilet from his bedroom window.

-For a while Montifax routinely took positions for or against things (being opposed to the re-naming of Parc Avenue in Montreal being one of our prominent stands). For better or worse, this tradition seems to have fallen out of practice over the past several years.

It seems fitting that we re-introduce this feature to the blog with a position that Neil and I both whole-heartedly support.

The position we are taking is against Earl Grey tea, likely the grossest of the teas. This stuff is just foul. Neither of us know why people drink it.

-I attended my department's Christmas party on Thursday evening. Unlike the version of the party I attended 2 years ago, in this instance students sat at tables with professors and vice-versa. All in all, it was a very pleasant event (a fact that was aided by the respect that was paid to my dietary limitations by the organizer).

-I believe it was yesterday when I purchased a 10 kilogram bag of flour for $5.35. What a price.

Another horrible idea? pt. 1

Last night I started thinking about whether or not it would be a horrible idea to try making bread with either coffee or tea instead of water. Not only was the idea of mildly-caffeinated bread somewhat appealing to me, it also seemed that coffee and or tea might work nicely in association with traditional bread flavours.

As good an idea as it seemed to me, I thought that I should probably run this past someone else to get their opinion before embarking on such a potentially disastrous project. My friend Peter, who has been around for some of my more monumental food failures (notably marmoffee - a repulsive mixture of Marmite and coffee) and has worked in a bakery, seemed like the obvious choice when seeking such a second opinion.

Much to my surprise, Peter actually have the whole thing a (tentative) thumbs up. Peter's thought was that tea might work nicely with a whole wheat or rye bread and that coffee might be better suited to something like a white bread.

With this provisional green-lighting of the idea I became somewhat fixated on this idea, particularly the idea of coffee bread.

This morning, after getting home from my final seminar of the semester, and partly as a means of celebrating this achievement I decided to leap forth into the void and give this coffee bread thing a shot.

Of course, I wasn't quite content to just try a plain white/coffee bread (as was my first thought). Instead I decided to mix things up a bit and add a few more flavours and textures to the mix. In the end I decided to go for a coffee walnut chocolate chip white bread.



At the moment the dough, which is an attractive tan, is rising. Soon after this post is up I will start to shape the loaves. Hopefully within an hour and a half or so I should be able to be able to report on the outcome (and if the smell of the dough means anything, I think it should at least be edible).

Hopefully I will be able to post a few more updates (also Peter's recommendation) as the project continues.