Got some Starbuck’s Via Ready Brew for Christmas – the Starbuck’s venture into instant coffee that boasts a flavor as good as regular coffee.  Cost comes to $1 per 8 oz cup, or roughly the same cost of their regular drip coffee.  So, is it really as good as they boast?

Not so much.

It has a distinct difference both in taste as well as in body.  The flavor itself is just as strong as Starbuck drip, along with the overcooked bean taste that defines Starbucks in general, but with a stale “instant” taste.  The body is thin and more like water than the full body of a decent cup of coffee.

Now I haven’t had much instant coffee (ok, this is my first instant coffee), but I can say that this is the “best instant coffee” that I’ve ever tried.  Will I switch to it over regular coffee?  No.  Will I carry it around for a quick Starbucks fix?  No.  Might I keep it around to help doctor up bad church coffee once in a while?  Maybe.

Overall, I’ll stick with the brew and leave the powder for tiramasu.

One of the great things about living near the Gulf is having access to quality seafood.  This is both a blessing and a curse because if you have never had good seafood then you never really know what you’re missing.  But if you’re like me and you’ve had it, then you just can’t go back to subpar seafood again.

So, where can you go for good seafood in Friendswood?  Haven’t found that place yet, but just up the road in Pearland you find Floyd’s, which is well worth the stop.  Everything that I have had from Floyd’s Cajun Seafood has been wonderful.  There food is well prepared and well seasoned and served in overly generous portions.  Yet, despite the large portions, the pricing and atmosphere make Floyd’s a great place for a family to enjoy a great meal.

The menu is typical Cajun fare along with the traditional fried seafood platters that have been clogging arteries for decades.  As I said before, everything that I have tried has been great and I look forward to eating my way through the menu.  The crab stuffed jalapenos are an excellent starter, stuffed full of moist and tender crabmeat.  The gumbo, which I consider to be  the true measuring point of cajun cuisine, is well prepared and filled with seafood or chicken and sausage – take your pick!  A bowl of gumbo at $5.99 makes a filling and affordable lunch.  The seafood in the gumbo is cooked perfectly, with no hint of rubberiness that comes with overcooking.  I ordered the jambalaya once and was served enough to feed my entire family – and I’m a big eater!

The only challenges I see with Floyd’s is there website, which leaves some to be desired (it doesn’t even list their Pearland location), and their service, which can sometimes be slow.  Neither of these are enough to keep me from returning again and again.

Floyd’s Cajun Seafood

1300 Broadway St in Pearland, next to the Pearland Skate Center (They have another location at 528 & I-45, I have not dined there and cannot attest to the quality of their food)

Price:  About $8 for lunch

Food Quality:  *****

Service:  ***

Ambience:  ****

Notes:  Go hungry and leave full!  Make sure to try the crabmeat stuffed jalapenos!

I love good coffee. There is a lot to making a good cup of coffee. You have to have the right method – french press is my favorite. You have to have a fresh grind – grinding yourself makes a big difference. And you have to have good beans – beans from a great source and freshly roasted. Up to now, I’ve been able to achieve most everything except the freshly roasted part. Sure, those beans you see in the bins at your favorite coffee store are fresh compared to that dusty can of Folgers in the back of your pantry, but not nearly as fresh as buying from a roaster. In Katy, that wasn’t much of a problem because I could go to Dunn Bros Coffee and buy beans that were roasted the day before. But as far as I can tell there isn’t a source for good, fresh roasted coffee in the Bay area.

My solution? Roast the beans myself.

When I was in Hawaii earlier this summer, I picked up a bag of green (unroasted) beans from Greenwell Farms. I bought them because the grower suggested that a possible easy method for roasting the beans is an air popcorn popper. I figured this was an inexpensive way to give it a try, so why not?

Good decision on my part. Today, as I am writing this, I am enjoying the fruits of my easy labor – smooth, fresh, nicely roasted Kona coffee – roasted just last night in my chefmate air popper. I followed the instructions from Sweet Maria’s. I also used their pictorial guide as reference. Here are pictures from my experience.

Here are the coffee beans in their "green" unroasted state.

Beans after 5 minutes of roasting - now a "full city" or medium roast

Beans in the "roaster." The air keeps them moving so none of them burn.