13 posts tagged “coffee”
Reese Witherspoon returns to sunny L.A. after promoting her new movie "Rendition" at the Toronto Film Festival. She drops by Starbucks for a cold drink.
(Sep 2007, Yahoo! OMG)
Starbucks Rockwell with kids, Dec 2005
I gotta have a cup of Starbucks everyday. I mean, I just gotta. I know their products are outrageously priced, but that's one of the reasons I work so hard - so I can enjoy simple little pleasures like my double tall nonfat cafe mocha with raspberry, no whip.
Anyway, I don't drink, smoke, or gamble. My only vices are Starbucks and books. That's it. They have a fascinating way of complementing each other, by the way... have you ever tried curling up with a new novel on one of their sofas, drink beside you? It's an experience that calms and soothes and makes you take a step back to relax and renew your spirit.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz said that he envisioned their stores to be a "third place", apart from home and office, where one could go and receive a smile and a caring word along with your drink.
For me, it works. We could go into detail and analyze from a management perspective what makes Starbucks a successful business organization, but we won't do that here.
Naah. Here, we chill out. Cool down and let it all out. Reeelax. Savor that flavorful coffee (once you've gone gourmet, you'll hate the taste of 3-in-1). Rest. Attain a little bit of peace from the madness and stress of the real world. Escape to a place where the smells of coffee, cinnamon, and chocolate envelope you. One by one the tense knots in your body unravel as you relax in that other place, a place where you can be you for a little while.
MY FAVORITE STARBUCKS DRINKS:
- Hot Chocolate with Peppermint Syrup - peppermint syrup is available only during the Christmas holidays; it was my first drink, and still is my first love. It's a treat to slurp when the weather is nippy and you're warm and snug inside a favorite sweater at your Starbucks store of choice
- Mocha Valencia -has yummy orange syrup that add a flavorful surprise to every sip
- Caffe Mocha with Raspberry Syrup, Nonfat, No Whip - I've been rather addicted to this one lately. Maybe one every day for the last month? No kidding. On karera days, or days when I have to write stuff for various publications (and I need that extra caffeine kick), I have a double shot of espresso, plus one Equal to cut the bitterness of the coffee.
- Mocha Frappucino Light Blended Coffee, with Raspberry - sweet, especially when the barista has a heavy hand on the syrup pump.
- Chocolate Cream Frappucino - I have this when I want a change from the Mocha Frap. Sometimes I have a shot of espresso added for punch.
- Strawberry Cream Frappucino - A liquid dessert - really REALLY SWEET!
- Banana Mocha Frap - for the past couple of summers ('06 and'07) ...the US version has coconut
- White Hot Chocolate - another of my "first beloved" drinks. It's truly sweet, and has no coffee. Now it's Ik's fave
- Cinnamon Streusel Latte - another of those "limited edition" blends; it was offered here in Manila from January till May 2006.
I've tried all the syrups, from Hazelnut to Irish Creme to Sugarfree Vanilla, but I keep coming back to my triumvirate of choice - Raspberry, Peppermint, and Cinnamon.
I haven't always been a coffee connoisseur, you know. In fact, I used to dislike coffee. I never drank it, ever since someone told me when I was a kid that I would never EVER grow taller if I drank coffee. And since I was a really REALLY short kid and had to take hormone shots to add height and probably would not have reached my present four feet ten inches if I didn't have those shots, all the more I avoided coffee.
But the point became moot and academic when I was 34 and had to work late nights at Santa Ana Park covering the horse races for TV. By then I figured I wasn't going to get any taller whether I tanked up on caffeine or not; and I needed a way to stay awake during those long racing nights.
And a caffeine fiend was born. Mwahahaha. Although for now my addiction is confined to coffee ONLY. I don't get into all that energy drink jazz.
Just hand me my Tall Double Nonfat Caffee Mocha with Raspberry, One Equal, No Whip, and I'll be ready to face the world. Really.
It might not be the best or the tastiest or the greatest coffee in the world, but like I've said all along - they're selling the experience, not so much the coffee.
Though I think their coffee is just fine and what I crave when I need a hit of the mojo that makes me walk and talk - caffeine.
Yup, Starbucks is the best caffeine delivery system in the world!
Photo: If Bacchus were around today, he would ditch the wine for a quad venti mocha frapuccino light blended coffee with raspberry syrup. No, really, he would.
Image from gridskipper.com
...so this is why they say tomatoes are good for you...
www.engrish.com
Starbucks is not only my favorite caffeine delivery system, it is also my ideal global business. Its stock has risen 5,000% since 1992, and has hundreds of stores around the world.
Dr. Joseph Michelli attempts to explain in this book the reasons for this phenomenal success. He interviewed "partners" (employees) on how they deliver their own particular brand of customer delight that makes people come back for more and more.
My sister-in-law Dr Mitas Alcasid got me this copy for $14 (regular price was $22) at Walmart in Oswego, when we visited them last February.
Two of my favorite things, together - Starbucks and a quilt!
Textile artist julieb conducted a community workshop for the launch of the Preston, UK Starbucks store. She says in her blog, "Representatives of local community groups each stitched a 30cm square panel depicting their organization's work."
Photo shows the artist and Peter (store manager) with the finished artwork.
www.juliebtextiles.co.uk
Picked it up at Booksale for cheap (ain't Booksale just GREAT! they should give the owners a medal for bringing inexpensive literature to the masses). It's a biography of mother and daughter Alva and Consuelo Vanderbilt, of the American railway fortune - where the moral of the story is, riches can't always make you happy.
It was the late 1890s, when opulence and decadence were the hallmarks of the lifestyles of the rich, while frightful squalor and poverty afflicted the less fortunate. Fortified by great wealth, ensconced in her grand mansion called "Marble House", Alva did not have much to do in her cosseted life save to look after her milionaire husband William Kissam Vanderbilt and their children (Consuelo, William Jr., and Harold Stirling), and to seek dominance in upscale New York and Newport society, dominated at that time by Mrs Astor.
In her quest to become "Queen of Newport" during that fussy, protocol-laden era, the determined and bossy Alva married off Consuelo at 19 to the 9th Duke of Marlborough. Not only was the teenager tall, beautiful, and endowed with swan-like grace and high intelligence, she was also obscenely rich, with a dowry in the millions of dollars.
The Duke, called "Sunny" (from one of his hereditary titles, "Earl of Sunderland", and not because his nature was particularly bright), only wanted Consuelo's money to save his family's aged ruin of an ancestral palace, Blenheim Castle.
Though Consuelo was in love with another man (socialite Winthrop Rutherfurd), Alva railroaded the marriage through. Naturally, the marriage was not happy and did not last, ending later in divorce. Consuelo married again, to Lt. Col. Jacques Balsan, the love of her life, with whom she spent her twilight years.
Aside from being a window into the past, it is a brilliant story that reinforces an idea I've formed through the years - that many times, first marriages don't work out and it's the second one that brings wedded bliss and happiness.
I had seen them at Fully Booked (PowerPlant mall branch) early or middle of this year and thought they were lovely but way, way too expensive for a notebook. But I couldn't get them out of my head; over the months I'd go back to the store, look at the display, and wonder whether I should finally get one or not.
I'm talking about Moleskines, the hip hot notebook that almost every creative person in the know is carrying around. Moleskines are touted as the notebook used by literary and art stars - Hemingway, Chatwin, Picasso.
Actually, "moleskins" or notebooks with a cover of oilcloth-covered cardboard have been around for over a hundred years and were made in France by a few select stationers, until demand for the old-fashioned notebooks died. The last moleskin notebook maker, based in Tours, France, stopped making them in 1986.
In 1998, the Italian company Modo e Modo revived the old tradition and sold them under the trademark "Moleskine". And that is how they are known to aficionados - writers, artists, other creatives, the intelligentsia, academics, scientists, and wannabes. Writer Neil Gaiman always carries one.
I must profess my profound admiration for the Modo e Modo marketing machine - from 30,000 in sales early on to more than 3 million now, their hype is certainly effective. Consumers feel that with a Moleskine they can channel the creativity of the artists and writers of the past who used similar notebooks. Farfetched idea, but it's often observed in anthropology - "sympathetic magic".
Googling the 'Net, you'll see a lot of references to Moleskines. They are used as planners by IT people using "GTD" (Getting Things Done) and other time-management methods after applying "moleskine hacks" (modifications). They are also popular as art albums, scrapbooks, for writing stories in, and as journals and diaries. I've found out that some people actually use them to take notes!
Moleskines are also available at Powerbooks, but at present stocks are depleted everywhere. Wait till the first week of December to satisfy your Moleskine cravings.
They come in pocket and large sizes, with plain, ruled, squared, and watercolor paper (for the sketchbooks). There are also daily and weekly planners, as well as Japanese albums and memo pockets. The default color is black, but they issued a limited edition red planner for 2008, and not too long ago offered Shantung silk-covered variations in blue, red, green, and plum as part of their Van Gogh Museum collection. The colors do evoke the hues in the painter's works.
They are very expensive, but if you are an aesthete, one who loves paper and pen, then you must have one. Or more.
I plan to get two pocket notebooks - one plain and one ruled - and fill them in with words and drawings. Most likely my sketches will be of quilt blocks and quilt designs. The words, essays and other random ramblings.
I can't wait to curl up with a nice hot Double Tall Raspberry Mocha Five Pumps Nonfat No Whip One Splenda, a pack of gel pens, and those Moleskines I'm yearning for. Coffee, paper, and ink - with these tools I can create my own new world.
www.moleskine.com ->mother ship
www.moleskinerie.com -> 24/7 MoleskineCon
Here are more great and compelling reasons to drink coffee...as if I needed any!
From Reader's Digest, Sept 2006, UK edition:
Coffee: A Health Drink?
If you regard your caffeine habit as a vice, think again. Recent studies suggest moderate coffee consumption may be good for you.
* Research in The Journal of the American Medical Association found those drinking three cups a day were five times less likely to develop Parkinson's disease.
* A Harvard School of Public Health study found men who drank more than six cups daily reduced their risk for Type 2 diabetes by 50% and women by nearly 30%.
* Japan's Cancer Institute says 3-4 cups daily may halve the risk of liver cancer.
Coffee also makes you more mentally alert and capable of doing tasks that require concentration. As Pastor Steve of UCM said at our Baptism class last April 2007, "Anybody mind if I go get a Starbucks? That way I'll talk twice as fast and we'll be done in half the time!"
