Tassimo brewer by Braun

Like millions of people around the world, I start my day off with at least one cup of coffee.  For years, I used a typical ground coffee brewer, but was never truly happy with it.  After seeing a friend’s Tassimo, and hearing his and his wife’s glowing review of it, I decided to get one myself and give it a try.  That was a few years ago, and I think I’m finally ready to give it a proper review.

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The “Nutjob” Part

One of the stocking stuffers that my father gave my mother for the holidays this year was some Mint Chocolate M&M’s.  During lunch, they came up in discussion, so I took out my iPhone and pulled up my review of Mint Crip M&M’s from May.  Since my parents really don’t know how to use the iPhone, I had to zoom in on it so they could read it.

This zooming hid the fact that it was my review that I showed them.

During the discussion, the question of “who reviews M&M’s?” was asked, and was quickly answered by my father as, “some nutjob with too much time on his hands.”  After pointing out that the “nutjob” in question was me, my father quickly backtracked as best he could, but the damage was done.

My shrink loves my parents, by the way.

The Milk Chocolate M&M’s Review Part

Mint Chocolate M&M’s are quite delicious.  They are chocolaty and minty, and that’s what you want in a mint chocolate candy.  As you can see by the photo, there is a large white chocolate center that is infused with mint flavor surrounded by a decent amount of dark chocolate, which gives the candy a more minty flavoring whereas I prefer a nice balance of the two.  On the taste factor alone, I would be apt to give it a 7.5/10, but I’m reviewing an M&M here, not your standard run-of-the-mill after dinner mint.

Mint Chocolate M&M’s are part of their Premiums line.  The outer coating of a Mint Chocolate M&M is a mottled, dark green coating and, unlike normal M&M’s, is made out of wax.  There’s no hard candy shell that has made sure that M&M’s “melt in your mouth, not in your hand” for decades.  These will melt anywhere, especially your hand, and probably at the most inopportune time.

The hard candy shell is what sets M&M’s apart from other bite size chocolate candies.  It’s the hard candy shell that has made M&M’s one of the most widely recognized candies in the world.  Just because you create a bite sized chocolate candy and stamp an “M” on it (in some cases a “W”, a “3”, or an “E”) does not mean that you’ve made an M&M.  These are nothing more than every other mint chocolate candies in a slightly fancy package.

Rating: 4/10

An outlier, according to the dictionary, is “a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample”, in other words, a statistical anomaly.  In his newest book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell attempts to examine why a few people succeed beyond the norm, and what made them outliers.

Along the way, he examines youth hockey players in Canada and how when they were born is more important than any inherit skill they may have; Bill Gates and The Beatles and how practice allows you to be ready for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; Jewish lawyers and how cultural prejudices may prepare you for an opportunity later in life; and several others.  The book attempts to debunk the myth that a successful person can be “self-made”, and shows that luck, cultural heritage, and the opportunities of your predecessors may have more to do with being present at the right moment in time, with the right set of skills, to take advantage of an opportunity.

I have always enjoyed Gladwell’s writings, in both The New Yorker and his other books.  I enjoyed this one as well.  However, compared to his first two books, this one doesn’t hit the same chord.  It is interesting to look a little deeper at some outliers and how they may have gotten where they did, but it isn’t fascinating; and that’s the difference between The Tipping Point/Blink, and Outliers.

Rating: 7.5/10

I don’t have a muffin pan because I don’t make muffins that often, and with a Manhattan apartment kitchen, storage is at a premium so every device in there needs to be used often or have multiple purposes (or just be easy to store).  In the past few weeks I came across several muffin recipes that I would love to try out and during this time I was made aware of silicone muffin/cupcake baking cups that you just place on a baking sheet (which I have).  They were $8, so I decided to pick them up and give a few muffin recipes a try.

There are few things I like more than bacon.  Chocolate is one, and banana flavored things is another. For some reason, I’m not a huge fan of bananas, but I love banana flavored things. If you combine those two flavors in a muffin, you can bet I’ll be all over it. Last night, I gave them a try.

As you can see from the pics above they didn’t come out looking all that great, but boy did they taste incredible.  The woman I marry will need to make these and, in fact, should bring samples to the interview.

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In the run-up to any big summer blockbuster, there are usually any number of tie-in products hoping to take advantage of the cross-promotion possibilities.  With ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ right around the corner, M&M’s has introduced a new variety, Mint Crisp.

I picked up a pack to give them a try, not really knowing what to expect.  Upon opening, I was greeted by M&M’s that were colored with the three generic mint related colors of white, light green, and mint green.  I was also treated to a slight minty aroma.  The candies themselves were about the same size as the standard crispy M&M’s, but their shells were less uniform in shape. In keeping with the tie-in to Indiana Jones theme, some of the M&M’s have an additional symbol printed on the side with the ‘m’. Upon biting one in half, I could see there was the standard candy shell, a layer of mint, chocolate, and the crispy rice center.

As for the most important characteristic of the new variety, taste…they tasted exactly like a crispy Andes mint would.  Since Andes are the gold standard of drug-store chocolate-mint candies, this is not a bad thing at all. Would I have them again?  Yes, absolutely.

Rating: 8/10

Skittles advertises that you should, “Taste the rainbow”.  I always thought that rainbows were bright and colorful, but tonight I found out that they can be dark and monochromatic.  They can also taste pretty good.

For whatever reason, I had a craving for chocolate tonight.  I tried to fight it, but it was too strong, so at 10pm I found myself on my way to the corner newsstand to get a Hershey bar.  What I found there was something surprising…a package of Chocolate Mix Skittles.  Since I had a craving for chocolate, and since I like Skittles, I decided to give it a try.

It’s a normal sized pack and claims to have five flavors: S’mores, Vanilla, Chocolate Caramel, Chocolate Pudding, and Brownie Batter.  First off, if it’s a Chocolate Mix pack…so what exactly is Vanilla doing in there?  What does Vanilla have to do with Chocolate, other than being it’s arch nemesis?  That aside, I found the taste of Brownie Batter and Chocolate Pudding to be quite good.  Chocolate Caramel tasted just like the caramel square candies, but I couldn’t detect any chocolate in it.  Vanilla tasted like a bland vanilla, not the sharp vanilla that I love.  As for S’mores…I really can’t comment on it because I don’t know what real s’mores taste like, but it was nice nonetheless.  Their consistency is that of a regular pack of Skittles, and the flavors are released almost immediately upon bitting into them.  They are not even close to the amazing taste experience that can be found in a pack of Jelly Belly’s, but in their defense, I don’t think they’re trying to compete with them.

Did they satisfy my chocolate craving?  Nope, and that’s why I thoroughly enjoyed the Hershey bar.  Would I buy them again?  Possibly.  The problem I have is that when I bite into a Skittle I expect to be greeted by a rainbow of fruit flavor, and these are quite different; and that’s most likely its true weakness.

Rating: 5.5/10

Your garden variety deli bag

Straight out of the “How Did They Land A Man On The Moon Before They Did That” Department comes Doritos Collisions, where some genius took two complimentary flavored Doritos and threw them in one bag.  As soon as I saw a bag, I had to grab it to experience the thrilling evolution of Doritos. The flavors I grabbed were Hot Wings and Blue Cheese, and I’m glad I tried them.

You can easily tell the difference between the two flavors because the Hot Wings flavored ones look much redder than the Blue Cheese ones, which look just like the Cool Ranch flavor.  If you eat a Hot Wings flavored Dorito (is that the correct term for a single chip?), it tastes just like you took a nacho and dipped it in hot wings sauce.  Same for the Blue Cheese variety.  If you eat one of each at the same time, it tastes just like you’d expect…a nacho chip dipped in hot wings sauce then dipped in blue cheese.  In other words, not bad at all.

Will I get them next time I want Doritos?  I’m not sure because it depends on the mood I’m in, but they definitely do not suck.

Overall rating: 7/10.

FM3a body with 50mm lens

Picture it, late Saturday night, a smokey bar in the quiet part of town. An FM2n is sitting at the bar nursing her third martini. Up saunters a rather smooth talking FE2. He shows off his TTL flash control. The FM2n is unimpressed. He shows off his aperture-priority stepless shutter. She mutters something about only working with batteries. He responds that he has mechanical control at 1/125 sec. She says that all speeds are important, depending on the mood. The FE2 boasts that he has a 93% viewfinder coverage. She mutters that size doesn’t matter, especially since her viewfinder is the same size. He points out that their focusing screens are compatible, along with the diopter adjusters. The FM2n says that they are also compatible with the FA. He says that the FA is too stuck up with her AMP metering and PASM exposure modes. He also mentions that FA is probably too “high maintenance” for him. Apparently that struck the right tone with the FM2n, and she allowed him to buy her a drink.

That was 1987. Since then FM2n and FE2 have had a wonderful relationship. They were married in 1992. In 1996, they decided it was time to have a child (her “biological clock” was ticking). In 2001, the world was introduced to FM3a (according to Dr. Benjamin Pepper—yes, his name really is Dr. Pepper—a 5 year incubation period is not uncommon, especially for manual focus cameras).

And it was shortly after it’s birth that I bought one, and review it here.

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This is one small lens! It looks small in pictures, but when I went to the store to check it out, I did a double-take and looked in the box for the rest of it. There wasn’t any.

When you mount it on a camera, the first thing you notice is that you will have to adjust your fingers since the focusing ring is so much closer to the body. Using ADR is a pleasure since the numbers show up sharp and clear even in very little light. It has been reported that you can not put rabbit ears on this lens since the aperture ring is too small. Comparing the aperture ring width to other MF lenses with rabbit ears shows that rabbit ears would fit on this lens, but you would need to cover the f/4, f/5.6 and f/8 spots, which would make it difficult to use. It only has one aperture scale and it is the size and position of the ADR scale on other lenses.

The aperture blades are actually backwards. When it is stopped down, the blades "flower" towards the front of the lens.

It comes with a clear ND silver-ring-color protective filter, a silver colored lens shade, and silver colored front and read lens caps.

At this time, I can not report on it’s performance since the only rolls I have taken with it were on ISO 400 film and I don’t want the features of the faster film to interfere with my opinion of the lens.

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