When I think of enthusiasm and food, I always go to Randy “the Machoman” Savage and his heartfelt enthusiasm for Slim Jims. I share Randy’s enthusiasm for food products, but I direct mine towards coffee, not salted animal purée, as you can see ( –>)

Yesterday I rediscovered instructions for making Iced Cold Press Coffee and decided to make some.  I love the stuff that Dunn Bros makes, but I don’t wanna pay $3.30 for a glass or $10 for a gallon.

The instructions that I found were kinda sparse (but more than adequate).  So, here is what I did with as many pictures as possible.

Step 1: Measure out the Coffee and Water

The recipe I read called for 1 cup of beans for 4.5 cups of water.  That will kill a horse.  I went with (and loved) 1 cup of beans for 6 cups of water.

Step 2: Mix’em

Grind up ‘dem beans and drop ‘em in the pitcher

Combine it with the water and you will get a whole heaping of horrid:

(Above: what I got when I googled “Twilight + Misogyny”)

Step 3: Chill for 12 hours

This is often the hardest part.  Most of the food I make is made on the fly and made because I get a hanker’n for it.  The idea of waiting 12 hours to get 6 cups of wonderfulness?  Now that is difficult.  But so is saying cool drinking coffee in the summer.

Step 4: Packaging

Ok, so maybe this is the hardest part.  You can, like I initially did, just strain it a cup at a time. (->)  But, I wanted to go a step further and package it up all nice like.

The folks at Dunn Bros have their Cold Press Ice Coffee all bottled up and fancy looking.  So, I got to looking around and came across some old Heartland Milk jugs. 

I grabbed a tall glass and a strainer and strained the coffee cup by cup.  This took a while, but my little boy is sick, so I just alternated holding him and straining the coffee.

The outcome was pretty snazzy:

Step 5: Enjoy

Once all of the above was done, I took Reed outside and enjoyed the fruits of my labor while reading a good book:

But, after 5 minutes, I noticed it was well above 90 degrees and it was still “the morning,” so Reed and I went inside where sitting was not sweating.

Meredith and I, after looking at our funds and schedule and the company, decided to hire a painting company that employs local refugees.  We figure the best thing we can do to help refugees is not only to give them the tools to succeed in the USA (teach them English, job skills, help with paperwork, etc) but to employ them when possible.  Anyway, here are some pics from the painting process:

Ali, a painter and truck drive from Iraq, painting the bedroom.  Some of you all from Parkade and the BSU might remember Ali from RIS.

The living room – yellow with a red wall.

My office – a burnt-reddish-orange

Hope to publish a referral review later.

We are home owners!  Pics and such to come.

Well, as of tomorrow it will be official – Meredith and I will be home owners.  We won’t own the home outright, you see we’ll have to take out a loan on the place, but we will be owners regardless.

All we’ll need is another kid and half and about six more cars and we will be living the American dream.

Funny thing?  We will actually be moving to the East side of town.

If you want to help us move, let me know – give me a call, email, or comment and we’ll put you to work. 

We have finally come to an agreement; one that is legally binding.  In about a month or so, Meredith and I will be moving into our new home and we couldn’t be happier.  If you want, come and join us at Rio Grande at 6:30 to celebrate.

For those of you wanting to know, they had recently dropped the price 5K, we offered 5K less than that, prompting them to offer 4K more than we did, resulting in us offering the same amount of Ks, but with them paying 2Ks worth of closing costs, which resulted in them adding another K on, agreeing to closing costs, and assenting to us keeping the washer and dryer (in the previous counter) which we agreed upon this afternoon.

And now we crash.

Thank you so much to those people who offered advice, moral support, a ear to be yabbered upon, everything.  We appreciate your familial and communal bonds more than you know.