Friday Evening

I've just put the pizza dough to rise, ground my Rwanda Nyamyumba for the morning and opened a beer so here I sit in front of the keyboard musing away.

First, the PNW weather holds and is supposed to continue on through the weekend and if the longer range forecast is to be believed, even into next week. The garden is going strong as I wrote last night, and the only thing it continues to want at this point is water; I need to water every day when it gets to these high temperatures of mid-seventies as my garden is in pots on my deck or next to the South facing wall of my house both of which tend to just radiate the heat and intensify the sun.

Pizza - Tonight will be fresh asparagus with my own farmer cheese and drizzled with olive oil plus a sprinkling of finely sliced red onions. I'm sure Henry will be a at least a bit more traditional in his choice when he gets home from assisting with the local Waterfront Festival going on this evening.

Coffee - The nyamyumba region is represented by Rwandan farmers with farms overlooking Lake Kivu. I've found this coffee to be lovely and round, rich and bold in flavor while lacking some of the distinctive "fruitiness" or "wine-like" flavors most often associated with African coffees. While there is some fruit deep down the overall velvety, full mouthfeel along with cocoa overtones with enough acidity to balance the cup; why this is some darn tasty brew. I'll need to try and find a bit more of this one but it's a rare find.

Beer - I've been buying quite a bit of Session lager from Full Sail Brewing in Oregon lately. It goes down smooth, has a lot more flavor than the typical American lagers but keeps the same refreshing crispness of NW hops and the lightness showing not too much malt. Also, it comes in "stubby" bottles and they just feel good in my hand. For those of you who still want to try and tell me after all these years that the shape of the bottle doesn't affect the taste, I cry a loud and hearty PSHAW! as in food, presentation is sometimes as much as 50% of the flavor, so goes it with beer and if the package feels good in my hand and the product pouring out of said bottle tastes good then it is just that much better. This beer has been going down nicely with the warm Spring weather of late and accompanied the ribs last night as well as I'm sure it will the asparagus pizza tonight.

Hasta