Friday Drinks #19: Jed’s Bean Bags. Other Discoveries.


There are those days when life gets in the way of a good coffee.  For me, it’s usually Wednesday because I have to do drop off, work with the traffic, will my staff parking card to work this time, find a park and then get to work for a meeting that starts at half seven.  There have been many, many Wednesdays when the lure of a good coffee as a reward for surviving the above has seen me arrive even later for the meeting as I clutch my keep cup of McCafe.  I’m serious, by the way, McCafe does a mean skinny cap even by the local standard of all the cafes up the road on King Street.

This week, however, I went over to the dark side of coffee bags or Bean Bags as New Zealand’s Jed’s Coffee Co call them.  It’s just one of those things about coffee, isn’t it?  We’re all a bit precious about it.  Instant is beyond the pale, coffee pods are an invention many choose to ignore and many of us in Australia do not got that drip filtered stuff sold in American takeaway shops.  And then there’s the hierarchy of cafes with the chains (often rightly so, I have to admit) being at the bottom of the pecking order.
Coffee bags have been around for ages but don’t seem to have divided public opinion as much as the others.  It may be that they’re just not as popular with consumers judging by the fact that there were only two brands for sale at Woolies last week (Jed’s and good old Robert Timms whose black packaging hasn’t changed in the 8 years since I last bought them).  
The idea of coffee in a bag messes with everything I’ve ever known about hot drinks made from bags.  Tea is the only thing I associate with teabags.

Jed’s Bean Bags have changed all that.  From the clever quips on each foil wrapped bag to the price ($6 for a carton of ten) and most importantly, the taste – I’m a convert to the convenience of coffee bags.  Now all I need to do on Wednesday mornings once I get to work is make a quick detour to the kitchen, open a Bean Bag, dunk it in my Keep Cup of hot water from the Zip hot water thing on the wall (wish I had one at home), add milk and sugar, put the lid on and stride onwards to my meeting a mere 15 minutes late.

More about the taste.  Just like a barista’s only in a bag.  Not quite, but close.  There’s definitely more character and freshness than instant coffee and more complexity of taste than the competition (Robert Timms though the Timms work out cheaper as you get 20 bags for around $10).  It makes a pretty impressive long black with a dash of cold skim milk which is just the thing I need mid week.  Instagram tells me that you can make a DIY cold brew coffee with these bags too.  At least I think that’s what they’re called.  It’s basically a cold long black usually made in a more elaborate way than simply letting a hot cup of coffee go cold.

In shopping news, temptation just got even more dangerous with the news that Zara will soon be launching online shopping in Australia.  I often get put off shopping in Zara locally because I’m time pressed and can’t wait patiently in the queue for the fitting rooms.  I’ll be interested to see if the whole range makes it online because stock arrives so frequently in store.
Am I the only person who’s Maccas run is a stash of McDonaldland cookies?  Probably.  Anyway, I finally got around to replenishing my stash this week.  I always keep a bag of them in my work handbag.  You never know when they’ll be called upon to help out either yourself or an acquaintance who hasn’t had the time to eat since the very early hours of the morning.

As luck would have it, Uniqlo restocked their navy ladies wear Mickey Stands sweater in my size so I took that as a sign to place my order pronto.  Master SSG has his own in a navy stripe.
It’s Mardi Gras weekend and Cher is in town to perform at it.  While I didn’t manage to spot Cher on my travels this week, I did find this custom pained Range Rover at my local Westfield.  It even made rainbow coloured tyre tracks on the tiling.

While back at SSG Manor 2.0, the play mat boasts this $15 Target race track alongside our wooden train set.  There’s an art to getting your car to race along the figure 8 without flipping of the track.  

Wishing you a wonderful first weekend of autumn whatever you may be doing.


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