Re: Personal Finance worksheet

I didn't know these were non-essential items. I don't have a weekly expenditure as such. Coffee is supplied in bulk, unroasted. What I require for the day I roast myself in a wok, usually a selection of 2 or 3 different Ethiopian varieties, which I then grind using a mortar and pestle. Purists will note I use African stone for this; invoices arrive quarterly.

Similarly for shoes. The people I use have a last for my feet and can supply what I need from that.

I can't believe the next two aren't essential. What are we supposed to do? Hang up shrunken heads and grow dreadlocks?

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What a wonderful contribution to our forum, Dr. Toole. Perhaps some men in Landover Baptist should be appointed to a committee, yourself as Chair of course, to supervise the spending of wives. If a husband is having difficulty supervising his wife's spending he could bring the wife before the committee for some training.

In my experience, so often when a husband tries to bring his wife's spending in line with where it should be the wife will mention his gun collection or hunting trips. It is not good for a marriage when a wife does this.

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Ma'am, respectable people like yourself and myself have no need for this type of worksheet. This was a (tax deductible) gift for the types of people out protesting from a very successful person to say I recognize your struggle and years of menial service. I see you.

Now get my pizza. If lazy poor people would just work harder, take public transport and stop complaining, they might amount to something more important in life, like you or I. We deserve every privilege the world owes us.

Mr. Mayor - yes, 100% true. Most women don't know the difference between spending and investing. There's a crucial difference. When a man invests in a gun collection, it brings years of immense joy but when a wife spends your money on frivolous shopping trips it is annoying and causes arguments.

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Oh, I see (I think) – I'm not familiar with most of the other items and am not in the habit of buying things which break.

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Thank you for the clarification, Brother Dr. Toole, Sir.

Given the target audience for your worksheet, I assume that by "coffee" you mean that poisonous greyish-beige liquid that comes in cardboard cups and is bought by the sort of people who seem unable to walk down the street without one in their hands?

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I showed this to my husband and he smacked me across the face yelling, "Don't you ever ask about my work again!"



Once I picked myself up off the floor, I knew better than to bring it up again. He does give me an allowance to purchase food, but I also keep a garden and some chickens so there's not much food needing to be purchased.

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I'm not sure it's grey but in other respects accurate. Oftentimes there's whip cream and 3-4 "pumps" involved, which I have no idea what they are in respect to coffee. It probably deserves its own line item but frappaccino is a big frappano-no.

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Speaking of that suspicious liquid, sometimes on long drives I run out of my organic, hand picked, small batch roasted, freshly ground Peruvian coffee and have no choice but buy that stuff.

They always ask if I want any flavors. I look at them as if they were from Mars and patiently explain that I want coffee flavor in my coffee. Otherwise I'd be shopping for something else, wouldn't I?

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The last time I went into a Starbucks, a woman customer and the women behind the counter had a long conversation that went something like this.

"That flavor of the day, how is its bouquet?"

"It's floral, just a bit earthy."

"Ok, and what about the flavor?"

"Some customers say it's bright. Others say it's a touch buttery with a little earthy thrown in."

"Could I have a taste."

"Sure. Just a minute."

This conversation was still going on as I left.

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How do you roast it? A wok with a tight fitting lid is good, jiggle it around over heat so that the coffee beans don't burn and are in fact mainly airborne. I found a good wok with straight sides and already had a lid the same size (wok lids are too loose) the taste is very good. Not all the beans roast the same amount, some remaining very pale, but they grind up well in a rough stone mortar. You can just do enough for one cup and grind them hot or do a batch each morning. It only takes 10 minutes or so. I've prepared a diagram simply follow the arrows.


Out in Africa the natives use old beans tins with a stem from a tree screwed in and a handful of coffee (closing down the lid if it's still there but that's unimportant) jiggled over a fire until it smells right then crushed up somehow and boiled in a small cauldron. Served without milk, I never wanted to see how they crushed the roasted beans. The inspiration for my wok method is shown in the following diagram.


Rich and complex on the palate, substantial nutty finish and by adjusting how many almost unroasted green coffee beans survive in the tin (or wok) a much more precise outcome can be achieved than by adding essences. "Ew," I thought reading an earlier post. "Is there really an essence of earthiness?" Something similar is introduced when grinding in Africa but not in essence form. They never seemed to worry about personal finance worksheets.

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I roast exclusively in a callana vessel - like this (please excuse the vulgar Latin dialect, the best way to avoid it is to play the video on mute):

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Mr. Mayor I'm sad to tell you that you have now heard the wild mating call of the lesbiotic. I hope this wasn't in Freehold. I'm going to the prayer closet for a few minutes.

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Thank you that heads-up, Dr. Toole. I had no idea that's what was going on.

Thinking back to the incident, I realize now I need to be more aware of coded language. Strange adjectives may be the sign of sin.

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That is very interesting. I never use metal in food preparation, apart from the wok as described, so will look out for one of those. It was surprising to see a metal spinning thing in the y/t as my preferred method is stone mortar. Of course the stone and the wood both come from Ethiopia as does the coffee. For Asian spices I use Asian wood and terracotta. Where does the callana come from and should I only use coffee from the same region when using it?