Kent McMillan, post: 395870, member: 3 wrote: Now as for never having tasted really good coffee, that is easily remedied by purchasing a Yama vacuum pot with a stainless steel screen filter. They are about fifty bucks in Austin, so you'll pay more in Abilene.
Recommendations, buy the bamboo stir stick as well and upgrade from the cloth filter to one of stainless steel screen, which works great and is easy to clean. The bamboo could be replaced with a stick about the width of a large tongue depressor if the wood doesn't impart a taste to the near-boiling water, but the bamboo stirrer isn't expensive and works very well.
Also, we have natural gas to cook with in Austin, but if you're relying upon 'lectricity, there's one additional piece to buy, a grid to separate the glass boiling flask from the heating element. If you'll be using a wood-burning stove or Sterno to heat the water, you shouldn't need the grid.
James Fleming, post: 395645, member: 136 wrote: It's an upscale Aldi for soccer moms
I've never been to an Aldi Diskont, which is apparently mostly an East coast phenomenon in the US, but Trader Joe's has all the right elements:
- instead of selling ten different kinds of mayonnaise, they sell only one or two and those are high-quality TJ house brands. The same is true throughout most of the store. The idea is to use shelf and floor space efficiently by selling high-quality products that most people would prefer to buy if given a choice of several, not to overload the store with slow-moving diversity on the shelves. Take mustard, for example. While I'm a fan of Spicy Brown Mustard, you can buy regular Yellow Mustard, organic Dijon Mustard, and a few other different variations on tumeric and other spices, you won't see five different brands of each. They're all TJ house brands, typically.
- The work structure is much better than a typical big-box grocery store in that the staff rotate in and out of all of the store functions during the work day: checking to taking inventory to stocking to parking lot cart check to food samples in back. The employees like that arrangement and that translates into a store environment which doesn't appear to be draining the life force from staff an hour at a time. In Austin, shopping at Trader Joe's is a pleasant experience and a large part of that are the people.