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Wow, that’s brutal. I would drink that only if it was the only option. It’s better than no coffee at all….maybe.
I was visiting a construction site one time and they offered me a coffee – “Yes, thanks, with cream.”
“Sorry, we don’t have real cream, only powdered carcinogen.”
Ever since, in my mind, Coffee Mate is powdered carcinogen.
I also read Adrian’s request as, “Can you get me some Hazelnut Coffee, mate”. Punctuation is important as I would have brought flavored coffee.
Can I offer you a cup of coffee flavoured beverine?
Yes, I take it grey with creamium.
It would be interesting to know whether hazelnut-flavored Coffee Mate is as flammable as Original… which is alarmingly flammable as a powder.
Looks like I’ve got afternoon plans.
That reminds me of the kid at the theater who asked me, “Do you want butter flavored grease on your popcorn?”. I can’t not think of that every time I go to a movie.
Honest. Smartass, but honest.
Black coffee for me only. I never wanted to find myself in the desperate state of running out of sweetener, etc.
Besides, I don’t need the extra in my coffee because I’m amazingly sweet and creamy on my own!
This entire exchange is both hilarious and charming.
I’m also a big fan of hazelnut Coffee Mate. I’m surprised it’s not available in the UK. We know our British cousins are well-acquainted with the humble hazelnut, they’ve been binging on Nutella longer than we have.
I gifted my EU based trainers bacon panko after a particularly not waste of time week of training. Upon trying bacon wrapped shrimp, they had commented that you don’t mix pork and seafood, but somehow it was delicious. I of course told them ‘muricans put bacon on everything. Hope they made it back without incident.
La mortadella (in Italian; I can’t find more than a brief clip from the English version, probably because it got pretty crappy reviews from US critics)
Sophia Loren trying to carry a mortadella the size of a basketball through JFK customs and offended at the insinuation that an Italian pork product could be a source of infection. She says something like “do you think the pig had a cold?” Looks like a wonderfully cheesy movie. Thank you.
More sausagey, I’d say. (Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.)
It was directed by the same guy who directed Big Deal on Madonna Street , and it’s a commentary on America at the beginning of the seventies. I’ve only seen it once, when I was a kid and it ran on either mid-morning or late-night TV. The NYT review complains that it focuses on the less-attractive scenery of period New York, but that was kind of the point.
Italy was not in very good shape in early 70s either.
This is a lovely little story. Adrian, if you really must defile coffee with hazelnut, why not at least go all in for the best: Philz Coffee Philtered Soul.
$20 a bag? That is some SV hipster bullshit. I can get Lavazza for £4.
My morning is basically centered around consuming as much Lavazza Gran Selezione as possible before tachycardia sets in.
https://www.reddit.com/r/espresso/comments/1aiy1tj/lavazza_qc_is_peak/
God Save the UK if Adrian visits America during Pumpkin Spice season.
It’s migrated here, regrettably.
I used to talk shit about pumpkin spice. But then I realized I should know what I’m talking about before I keep talking shit. So I tried a pumpkin spice latte. And that shit is delicious! It’s dessert in a cup, but you’re allowed to have it for breakfast because coffee.
I absolutely love pumpkin spice – in a pie. I prefer my coffee to be, well, coffee flavored.
It’s okay to enjoy pumpkin spice as long as you do it ironically.
Here’s what came up for me:
https://youtu.be/mcMpJlYynBw?si=6zP-9nRd7T4jeh9A
Lady Di hair (gal 1): What’s this coffee remind you of?
Big 80s hair (gal 2): Mmm…tastes like vanilla.
1: Senior trip?
2: Paris! That café!
1: Yes!
2: I love this coffee.
1: I loved that waiter!
Both: Jean Luc!
Ugh. Hadn’t thought of that one in a long time.
In the 80s, I brought a Schwarzwälder Schinken (Black Forest Ham) back in my checked luggage. I was in my 20s, never thought about importation regs and all that sort of thing. I also didn’t declare it and waltzed through.
Customs expects Americans to smell like ham.
Did something very similar last year, bringing chorizo back from Portugal. At one point, I was waiting for my checked bag in San Francisco with the meat products in my carry-on backpack next to me. I felt something brush against my back and there was a very nice looking beagle, taking a sniff at my pack. Without thinking, I said something like, “Hi pup!”, but he just sniffed one more time and walked away. Hooray for vacuum packaging!
Ugh, jealous. I forgot about a landjäger in my carry-on once and I end up getting searched more often now. No idea if that’s related, but it sucks.
A long time after my Germany adventure, I worked for the US gov’t and had a notation that whisked me right through US customs on return. I don’t know if it’s still on there, but I hope it is!
Wow smuggling powder, legal, but powder did you get a cavity search?
And as far as England goes Lord Lucas is the lord of darkness. Especially for cars because the worst electric set ups ever.
Rumor has it Adrian got a taste for the stuff after cleaning some white powder out of the Mondial left by the previous owner.
With his nose.
Corporate american coffee is pretty trash and I’m a pourover aficionado, but my second favorite coffee is 7/11 or gas station coffee with those little cups of hazelnut, vanilla, and Irish creme whitener.
Glad they let him through with it and he didn’t have to resort to using any balloons.
If one of those balloons had burst that would have resulted in some interesting hazelnut-scented gastric complications.
Adrian, the prince of darkness, doesn’t take his coffee black… I don’t know what to believe in anymore. The world no longer makes sense.
I drink the occasional espresso black. I’m not a complete monster.
Just wearing black socks makes you the Demon Overlord.
https://www.thesistersofmercy.com/gen/vnettext/vnettext.htm
At least you own your gothness.
He’s such an insufferable prick.
That’s all part of The Eldritch One’s charm. He purposely plays This Corrosion off key to piss off his fans.
The last time I saw them live (and I certainly wouldn’t have paid money to see them on their own) was when they headlined Mera Luna a couple of years ago. Not as bad a couple of year previous to that when they headlined and people were walking away from the stage, but still pretty terrible. Fuck him.
Do we need a bean exchange? Because HEB’s Shiner borracho beans are pretty good. Shiner’s kind of syrupy meh as a beer nowadays, but it works really well cooked into beans.
There’s also the Jalapeño Ranch Style Beans that I drank out of a shoe to sneak Spec 944 take-off suspension bits past Lemons tech. That worked, and then my car broke. Anyway, those are really good beans, too.
I still need to try beans on toast. I think I need a Bread Friend to split good loaves with, though, because I either get burnt out on sandwiches before I’m done with it, or half the damn loaf goes bad before I’m done with it. Grumble.
Ranch Style beans are proof of the divine as far as I’m concerned.
You can actually freeze bread for a month or two and it’ll be fine. Anything more than two months and you might get some freezer burn. Ranch-style beans are awesome, not sure about the shoe part though.
I was going to mention that freezing bread is really handy.
Top tip: slice it before it goes into the freezer, then you can take it out and put it directly into the toaster instead of waiting for it to thaw.
The Autopian: Come for the car content, stay for the helpful consumer advice!
This is a full-service organization. 🙂
Freezing bread is good, however refrigerating bread is not good. Just cooling instead of freezing increases the rate of the going stale process.
I was about to say—this bread in the fridge bit sounds like BREAD CRIMES.
Need to ship them some charro beans
And a char-cuchi-cuchi-cuchi-erie board
Sorry – you said charro, not Charo
Good man you are of a certain vintage if you remember Charo! I was born in 71 and she was everywhere in the 70’s! Couldn’t take my eyes off her but didn’t know why at the time lol. Actually she was a tremendous musician. Loved the reference going to watch her on YouTube now!
Was there any TV show in the 70’s that she did not guest star on?
I remember her mostly from the Love Boat, Carson, and Hollywood Squares. But it seemed like she’d pop up in a lot of random stuff too.
She’s still touring.
Yeah, let’s go with “vintage” 😀
Although to be fair (to be faaaaaaaair) she was everywhere for a good portion of the 80s as well. And she was definitely an amazing guitarist – flamenco in particular, IIRC.
HEB’s charro and borracho beans are the BEST! They are an order of magnitude better than the jalapeno Ranch Style.
I can see Adrian as a perfect replacement for David Tennant in Good Omens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77eFqX8aRws
Crowley would take his coffee black, though.
Although he would have been the one to INVENT Coffee Mate, since the cumulative psychic damage of making the coffee of millions of people just a little worse is just his style.
Aleister Crowley takes his coffee with White Stains,
My mom once brought me a five kilo wheel of Stilton via Heathrow to JFK in her suitcase. There was an amusing story involving dogs and customs but every time she told it it would digress into details unrelated to cheese. The dry cleaners were of the opinion that someone may have died in the clothes however.
Ok, now I’m imagining your mother recounting the Stilton Cheese Incident in the style of Jim Blaine telling of his grandfather’s old ram 🙂
My son is a Tortilla mule for me. His bag gets checked every time for the 20 dozen he brings me and him twice a year. I can’t stand the stuff they call tortillas in the stores around me.
Good son.
Sounds like it’s time to get the 20 lbs. bag of masa flour and a tortilla press and start making your own.
My parents moved from England to the US 40 years ago. Unable to find custard powder here, my dad asked his mom to send some. She put the white powder in unlabeled baggies and shipped it across the Atlantic. How it didn’t get stopped and checked for cocaine, we’ll never know.
LPT:
We have quite a few common English food stuffs up here in Canada. Custard powder included.
The recipe for Nanaimo bars are on the package.
But they must come from the Nanaimo region of Canada, otherwise they’re sparkling custard/coconut/chocolate dessert bars.
Nanaimo bars … sofa king good
Oh, it’s easy enough to get Bird’s Custard in the US now, this was 1982.
The image of Uncle Adrian huddled in a corner of his kitchen spooning the last of his treasured Hazelnut Coffee Mate into a cup with trembling hands while waiting for Matt the Mule to show up with his re-up is simultaneously delightful and terrifying.
“My PRECIOUS!! Needs it, we do. Have it, we must. Filthy Americanses…”
Wow. Our beloved grumpy uncle Adrian has impossibly sophisticated taste in design, and the most dreadfully basic and awful taste in coffee creamer. You’re right, I did not see that coming!
Scene: Matt and Adrian are in a London pub:
Matt: “I’ll have a tankard of craft brewed, small batch, ridiculously named bullshit”
Adrian: “Give me a cold pint of domestic swill”.
A cold pint? Cold?!? Are you even English?
Lucas no longer makes refrigerators.
In my heart I’m half American, half mainland European.
Cider and lager are both served cold, and lager is way more popular over here than ale.
Sounds about right!
Your domestic swill is our exotic import. Boggles the mind.
And vice-versa.
Franks Red Hot. That is what I imported when I lived abroad.
I put that shit on everything!
I wondered if it might be peanut butter.
I’ve always chuckled at the seemingly performative dislike of it among non-Americans, but every one I know who’s tried it loves it. As they well should; it’s both tasty and not the worst-thing-in-spreadable-form for you.
“it’s both tasty and not the worst-thing-in-spreadable-form for you.”
Unless you’re allergic to peanuts. Then it’s right up there with fresh liposuction fat.
Plenty of British people like peanut butter, at least, they sell a lot of it in UK supermarkets.
The go-to high-calorie nutrition-bomb hunger-banisher for this British person is a peanut butter and banana sandwich on wholemeal bread with plenty of real butter for extra lubrication.
Elvis lives…in the UK apparently!
Once again I agree with Adrian’s predilections – the hazelnut creamer is the only way to go.
Judging by both the label and the first store’s stock, looks like many agree.
(I keep the plain version as strictly emergency coffee whitener if the half and half runs out)
I’m not going to lie, I am absolutely going to steal “coffee whitener” from you, because it is fantastic.
That’s a pretty standard term, but it’s the same as “non-dairy creamer”.
Related, every now and again, I buy real, full-on cream and wow it’s great. I know it’s pretty common outside of North America, but in part probably because coffee there doesn’t come in gigantic cups like we like it/it’s not consumed all day long.
I do the same. Normally the coffee gets fat-free half+half, but sometimes there will be heavy cream left over from a recipe and wow, the difference is substantial. And very tasty.
My local Publix was out of fat-free half and half so I “splurged” on the real thing. Now I can’t bring myself to go back.
It’s not one I’ve heard before, but I do like it better than the “non-dairy creamer” I have always heard. I’ll admit I’m a tea guy more than coffee, so that probably has something to do with it.
“Coffee Ruiner” works too.
If you start with bad enough coffee, that crap makes it borderline palatable.
Somehow, coffee like this tastes just a tiny bit less bad in styrofoam than in paper. (Reusable cup, in this context? GTFO.)
That’s generally what it’s referred to as in the UK.
We use heavy whipping cream in our house. If that runs out (which is rare), I drink it black. I can’t stand the flavored crap. I like my coffee to taste like … coffee.
Baileys rules, but if you don’t want the booze, Ice cream is way better, and less expensive than fancy flavored creamers.
Sadly, ice cream is a no-go thanks to being lactose intolerant, so non-dairy creamers are my only option.
Bailey’s in coffee is my after dinner treat every night.
Pistachio ice cream is pretty great in coffee.
There’s no alcohol in that.
For those RARE occasions when it is best to not imbibe.
Have you SEEN the week I’ve just had?
Much ado about nothing IMO
Joke em, if they can’t take a
That is easily remedied
Oh come on, not one mention of Frangelico and coffee? Now that’s hazelnut with a kick…
‘Tis a good day for a Nutty Irishman!
I’ll pass on putting cream (dairy or otherwise) in my coffee — used to drink it straight black. I’ve softened in my old age; now I put some sugar in it. So hazelnut-flavored coffee it is, black with sugar.
I worked with a guy who considered anything other than straight, bitter black as heresy. The guy was a savage because he would pull the coffee filter out and squeeze it into his mug because it “had all the good stuff”. He chewed tobacco too, and we all joked that it wasn’t tobacco in his mouth but the leftover coffee grinds so he could really savor the flavor.
To be fair, that’s pretty much what a French press does — squeezes every last bit out of the grounds. And you’ll inevitably wind up with some fine grounds at the end of the pour… Some say that’s the part that has the real kick to it…
I did have another coworker who used a French press every day. He was the most foodie-foodie I’ve ever met, and his coffee was always some expensive imported stuff that always had some story with it that intrigued him and disgusted me (I remember he had the bat guano coffee that made the news 10+ years ago). He did comment that the fine grounds at the end were his favorite part.
Nah. If you’re using a French press, you’re straining it rather than squeezing it. Grind it a bit coarser than you would for drip coffe (burr grinders are best at a uniform grind), and you don’t end up with much in the way of fines left in your cup.
Turkish coffee, on the other hand, leaves sludge behind.
Did you know that you can actually light that shit on fire? That, and the stuff they make it out of freaked my wife out. Now I have to go and buy fresh milk all the friggin’ time.
But I don’t have to worry about any pyrotechnic situations, usually.
Common sugar can be combined with potassium nitrate and used as rocket fuel.
Oh, yeah: Mythbusters’ Coffee Creamer Cannon.
Epic
He could totally cosplay as Wez from The Road Warrior.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWkSyF7tNgQ
????
You don’t see the resemblance? Adrian is tall and imposing, like Wez, has a somewhat similar face, and that mohawk really adds to the aesthetic similarities.
accidentally replied to your post, wouldn’t let me delete it, so i replaced it with a thumbs up emoji, and of course it got posted as a bunch of ????. Think a mad max photo shoot with the staff would be hilarious, but how could they choose which vehicle?