After making a coffee roaster this weekend, I just roasted my first batch of coffee beans. Jules found some green coffee beans at the Ypsi Food Co-op for only $5 a pound unlike the $9 for 10oz at whole foods. 
As soon as the roasted beans cooled down I brewed a pot of coffee and it came out great. I think I’ll go for a slightly lighter roast next time. Here is the roaster and finished product.
If you’re in the Ypsilanti area, don’t forget that the Corner Brewery is opening up on Thursday. It’s a new micro-brewery pub located in the old Motor Wheel plant just north of Depot Town. It’s owned and operated by the owners of the Arbor Brewing in Ann Arbor. Support your locally owned businesses. We need more of them in Ypsilanti and everywhere else. The brewery is at 720 Norris St in Ypsilanti
Ypsilanti, has a real plethora of great Mexican food, and none of it comes from a chain or franchise restaurant. The old stalwart is of course La Fiesta Mexicana on W. Cross St. Michelle Roman and Guillermo Aleman (Memo) have been running their little establishment across from the EMU campus since 1990. On most evenings it is quite busy and they are also open for lunch. Jules and I and the kids have been going there for many years and always love the food. They specialize in traditional Mexican dishes primarily from central Mexico. The enchiladas verde covered in a tomatillo salsa have always been one of my favorites along with the tamales which are available with several different fillings. The fresh tortillas especially the corn are also extremely tasty. I could just sit and eat the corn tortillas for a meal. The carne dishes are fabulous too and the pollo con molle is a special treat as a are the Fajitas. Make sure you get some guacamole and a carafe of the limonada to drink. You won’t be sorry. Now Michelle and Memo have opened an offshoot called Taqueria La Fiesta on Packard at Carpenter Rd next to the Hollywood Video store. We’ve been there a couple of times now and it is great. The Taqueria is different, mostly takeout with a few tables. The menu is also very different from the original restaurant, with tacos, gorditas and Mexican sandwiches, none of which are available at the original. The lengue tacos are particularly good and a new favorite of Max. This place is definitely worth checking out if you are looking for some quick food on the go.
Another recent addition is Taqueria LaLoma on W. Michigan Ave. The location has been home to several different establishments in the last few years but it looks like La Loma is going to stick around for a while. The food is great, and the service is really fast. The chimichangas are very tasty and the various tacos and burritos are great too. They also make great Mexican sandwiches. Depending on what you are looking for each of these restaurants has great choices to offer, with their own unique menus.
On the other hand any “Mexican” restaurant that doesn’t know what cilantro is must be avoided at all costs. In that vein make sure you stay away from Tios. This place started in downtown Ann Arbor and has had a second location in Ypsilanti for a few years now. The appeal completely escapes me. We’ve tried it a couple of times and been completely underwhelmed each time. Throwing some jalapenos and hot sauce on your dishes does not make Mexican food. The hot sauces seem to be the sole appeal of Tios, and if you take those away the food is bland and uninspired, reminiscent of Taco Bell.
Today was a gorgeous fall day, the sun was shining and the temperature was about 70. Max had a football game this morning. During the warmup the guys did great, they were catching everything. Once the game started they ran their patterns, and they got open. The defense reacted to the changing formations on the line of scrimmage just like they practised this week. There was just one minor problem. They couldn’t get seem to catch the ball. This little sequence basically tells the story of the game. Just click on the picture to see the sequence.
Later we had lunch at the Sidetrack. I love the fish and chips there, but today I had the BBQ pork sandwich and it was great. If you are ever i the Depot Town area of Ypsilanti definitely stop in at the Sidetrack. Then this afternoon I took Max and his friend Nick out to a corn maze. The boys had a good time running around the maze. Then we stopped off and got some apple cider and donuts. All in all a really nice fall day. The Ypsilanti area is really a great place to live and raise a family.
Mark Maynard has a good post this morning that is mostly about vandalizing SUV’s. For years I have fought back the urge to deface all those pristine Explorers, Hummers and especially Cayannes (Ferdinand Porsche must be rolling over in his grave ever since this one came to be. Porsche management should be ashamed of themselves). Fortunately I think all we really need to do is wait a bit for gas prices to climb to $4-5/gallon. At that point natural selection will take its course and most of the suv’s will just get parked. But my main point here is with regard to the last paragraph of Mark’s post:
For many years I think PETAs tactics have just been stupid and most of the celebrities they have advertising for them are just dilettantes looking for attention. I don’t hunt, but that is not because I don’t believe in it. I just don’t feel like it. I have no problem with hunting or fishing. I do think that there need to be rules to prevent over hunting and fishing so that we preserve the population for the future but that is just common sense. We also need some safety regulations for hunting, like where you can and can’t hunt and making sure that hunters know how to properly use a firearm or bow or whateever. Where PETA could actually do something useful but doesn’t is the case of industrial farming. Any potential impact that PETA could have on industrial farming is largely lost because of their extremist views and tactics when it comes to hunting.
Industrial livestock farming does a great deal of harm to animals, and also to human health. They pack tens of thousands of animals (pigs, chickens, cows etc) into impossibly small condtions. They force feed these animals on feed that is not what they would normally eat, pump them full of hormones and antibiotics, and mutilate them to get them to grow as fast as possible so they can turn them around. They produce chickens and turkeys with big white meat breasts, but no taste. They make lots of milk but pass along antibiotics and hormones to humans. The antibiotics allow bacteria to grow resistant so that they become more dangerous and the normal human antibiotics become ineffective. The feed is made from all kinds of stuff the animals would normally never eat, like bones and brains of cows, leading to problems like mad cow disease. Cows are supposed to graze on grass in pastures.
Americans have become so used to eating artificially cheap food that all of these problems have become endemic. The problem is that instead of paying up front for good food, they pay after the fact in increased health problems, and tax dollars that go in insane farm subsidies to industrial farms. What proponents of those billions of dollars a year in subsidies don’t tell you is that the vast majority of those subsidies go to the huge factory farms not individual family farms. This money should be redirected toward a single payer universal health care. People need to stop supporting factory farms and buy there food from places like Sparrow Meats in Ann Arbor. All the meat Sparrow sells comes from local organic farmers. The beef is grass fed in a pasture, the chickens are free range and it all has vastly more flavor than anything with a Tyson or Purdue label. Whole Foods also sells a lot of produce and meat from local farmers.
Support your local farmers, buy good local grown and raised food. It is better for the farmers, better for the environment, and better for your health.
Thursday night my friend Mark and I went down to Depot Town in Ypsilanti to grab some dinner and catch up. I haven’t seen Mark since he quit working where I do in February. Thins are still in flux for Mark but he just got back from his annual family vacation in France. His wife Pascal and the kids are coming back next week. Depot town was really cool. They have these cruise nights onThursady nights, and it seems to be getting really popular. They have been doing it for several years in the summer time, but this is the first time I have gone down there on a cruise night in a couple of years and it was packed with people and cars. There were old classic cars lining both sides of Cross street all the way from River street to Huron. It is great to see events like this doing wo well in Ypsi. The downtown area is improving too. If you are in the Ypsilanti are make sure check out some of the eateries. If you like Mexican food make sure to check out La Fiesta Mexican on E Cross St. They awsome authentic mexican food. Michelle and Memo run my absolute favorite restaurant. If you like Vietnamese Dalat downtown on Michigan ave, has great food. And in depot town the side track has great fish and chips and burgers and a wide selection of beers. Aubree’s in dpot town is also good. And when you are done stop into Bombadill’s downtown next to library for a coffee.