kitchenmage

Feeling the doubletall love

Our Sam may be a star, but Sambuck's is not Starbucks's...and I doubt anyone would confuse the two. Well, anyone other than a corporate attorney, that is. Just down the road in Astoria, a hole-in-the-wall has fought the (strip)mall and the mall won. Sam Buck, the owner of Sambuck's Coffee House in Astoria just lost a court decision in which a federal judge ruled that she was willfully infringing on the coffee behemoth's trademark by naming her coffee shop after herself. Note that she did this in 2000 before there was a single coffeeBehemoth store in Astoria. Apparently when they arrived in town in 2002 they decided to care about Sam's little place and sue her.

Let me pause for just a moment to say that any business that names itself after a character in a classic book that was written long before they were incorporated and then claims that character's name as if they'd invented it needs to take a good look at itself. Whats next? No more Moby Dick readings because they say the word? I've hung in there with coffeeBehemoth through a lot of stupidity--even when they responded to criticism of their inclusive stance on coffee cup quotes by adding one that was anything but. (For some reason I thought that it might get a homophobe to think, "well, the coffee's good, maybe being gay is okay too" and lighten up. Silly me.)

I must admit that I haven't been into Sam's place yet, even though I get espresso everytime I go to Astoria, sometimes at coffeeBehemoth. Not anymore. Next time I will go to Sam's coffee house and I shall avoid coffeeBehemoth like the avian flu. Although I may stop by, cup of Sam's coffee in hand, to tell them why I am not shopping there anymore.

Odd that a company that claims to support small business in the form of farmer's overseas does its best to squish small business here at home. Fair trade, indeed.

Pretty, and you can drink it too!

My frst serious fall color, a staghorn sumac that's still in its pot and tucked away in a back corner of the yard. This was going to be just a pretty picture to celebrate the turning of the seasons, but then I found a recipe for Sumac wine!

Sumac wine? Who knew! (and why didn't they tell me?) I don't have a significant amount of berries this year, so I can't try it now, but I bet I can turn up enough to try this next year. There's the kind of project I can get behind--one with a deadline that's an entire year away.

WBW13: Like Chocolate Wine

I'll have to thank Clotilde for inspiring me to participate in my first Wine Blogging Wednesday, her oh-so-tempting theme of Like Wine for Chocolate has coaxed me out of my professed cluelessness about wine to play with the real winos...ooops, I meant, the true aficianados of all things grape. Which is really funny because my chosen wine doesn't have any grapes in it, nor did I eat chocolate as I sipped. Hey, I said I was participating, I didn't say I was a slave to conformity. (Amateur Gourmet, surely you will defend my laxness on the rules? At least there was no nutella involved!)

Wizards of Oz (the one with 'roos)

Saffron over at The Food Palate has the latest installment of Omnivoribus Australis up, and I have spent the last hour (or two...okay, maybe three) clicking and reading and planning what to make first. Omnivoribus Australis, for those of you who, like me, have missed it until now, showcases the writing and photography of Australian food blogs — and do they ever have things to showcase!

Apparently I have been wandering around with a delusion that Australian food ran the gamut from shrimp on the barbie to vegemite. Okay, flog me with wet noodles ouch for willful ignorance, I can only say I am making up for it.

Whining about wine

One of the things on my never-ending list of things I want to learn more about is wine. I really enjoy good wine, and I can usually find something reasonably decent if I read enough labels and reviews, but I feel truly clueless when it comes to anything much deeper than that. This glaring lack of knowledge is brought to mind today because I have to pick a bottle of wine for a special occasion later this week.

And not just any special event...