Iced coffee (p. 32), Iced coffee Viennese (p. 33), and Microwaved bacon (p. 509)

Rachel pointed out that it would be a good time to make some coffee drinks. I don't drink coffee. I truly think am the only person in the world who doesn't know how to make a decent cup of coffee. I would much rather have a nice can of Coke first thing in the morning or a nice unsweetened iced tea than coffee. I do have a coffee pot but it is 100% operated by People Who Like Coffee.

We started with Iced coffee (p. 32). Rachel made the coffee, which we sweetened with a little sugar syrup (I really recommend making sugar syrup and keeping it in the refrigerator--it mixes much, much easier into cold drinks than sugar). She added some cream and ice and there it was:



Good if you like cold coffee. Repulsive if you do not. We took one of the iced coffees and turned it in to Iced coffee Viennese (p. 33). Essentially we added some rum to the coffee and topped it with whipped cream:



Now there is a decent cup of coffee! That's very possibly my opinion because I don't actually like coffee, so I add a gallon of cream and a pound of sugar to it on the odd occasion I drink it--and the alcohol is definitely an improvement--so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Rachel does like coffee and she liked both drinks.

I seriously don't like microwaved bacon. In fact, I would rather not eat bacon than have microwaved bacon (well, that's not totally true, but I won't eat the volume I would normally eat of bacon cooked other methods). Regardless, I had to make TJOC's Microwaved bacon (p. 509)

We laid our bacon on a whole pile of napkins:



We covered it so it didn't splatter all over and microwaved the bacon:



Eventually it was done.



Microwaved bacon never gets acceptably crisp for me. I like crisp bacon. It's probably fine if you don't or if you are going to crumble it in other dishes, but I find that making it's bed of napkins and checking it constantly annoying. I would rather just pop it in the oven.

Random fun facts:

• In the US, bacon refers to cured and smoked pork belly. This can vary in other parts of the world (personal knowledge)
• Bacon has moved from a breakfast food to a condiment in the last fifteen years. The belly is now often the most valuable cut of a pig (personal knowledge)
• The inventor of the decaffeination process, Ludwig Roselius, was convinced excessive caffeine intake killed his father (The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, p. 137)