Eight O'Clock Coffee, 100% Colombian Ground, 33-Ounce Bag

Eight O'Clock Coffee: A century and a half of expertise in every bag. Every time you brew a pot of Eight O'Clock Coffee you expect it to be great. And you are not disappointed - because we put a century and a half of expertise into every bag.

Eight O’Clock 100% Colombian ground coffee is the finest blend of award winning 100% Colombian coffee beans--medium roast with a lingering sweet finish. So rich and full-bodied, you will understand why Arabica beans from Columbia are so sought after. This is sold in a 33-ounce bag.
About Eight O’Clock
Eight O’Clock started as a store brand way back in 1859 when the Great Atlantic & Pacific Company opened its doors and the whole bean coffee that would later become Eight O’Clock was among its signature products. By the 1930s Eight O’Clock reigned supreme as the #1 coffee brand in the US. During this time, one out of every four cups of coffee consumed was Eight O’Clock. Today this remains as America’s best-selling whole bean coffee and is the fourth largest national coffee brand in terms of volume.
Every time you brew a pot of Eight O’Clock coffee, you expect it to be great. And, you are not disappointed--because they put a century and a half of expertise into every bag.

More on my meat, 'cause I know all you carnivorous perverts can't help wondering: Benton's 12-18 month aged country ham. It's not terribly smokey, compared to their bacon (which a number of foodies have called the best in the country). It's cheap: 15lbs for something like $65, which is 1/4 the price of decent Iberico or Prosciutto. Do you see all that fat? "The Other White Meat" this is not. I've never seen a cut of meat with this much fat on it, even from the good local butchers. Free range, heirloom pigs, fed on peanuts or acorns is the standard stuff for American country hams. Allegedly higher in omega-3 fatty acids and whatnot, so theoretically healthier. While they don't (aren't allowed to?) market this ham as something you can eat raw, the process is essentially identical to how they cure hams in Spain or Italy, so that's how I eat it. It's a little drier and saltier, but also much more flavorful than the $20/lb stuff at the local fancy foods places. Very pork-y tasting and a little funky smelling (in a good way). It keeps for 10 weeks at room temperature once you cut into it, or pretty much forever in the fridge if you keep the cut side covered in plastic wrap and/or some olive oil to prevent it from drying out. What to do with it? So far: Fried burgers in the fat. The fat is good stuff...melts in your hand and tastes like an animal, but not in a bad way. Added a cup or so of chopped ham into split pea soup...enough for four meals for the two of us. It made the whole thing smell like a campfire and taste delicious. Soaked big slices in water for a few hours to remove some salt, then fried them for breakfast. Add coffee to the drippings in the pan to make redeye gravy. Sliced it thin and wrapped it around asparagus. Top with cheese or bechamel. Added thin slivers to pasta with a couple of poached eggs with nice runny yolks, cheese and some herbs on top. Fed it to a baby and watched him smile. And so on. Only downside is that the skin is REALLY tough and is hell on knives and as you can see, my first attempts at cutting it were a little hack-y. I've gotten better. Hint: remove the skin around the area to be sliced first, then slice it as thin as your knife is sharp. Oh, and you need somewhere to put the thing. All in all, a pretty damn good deal, especially as imported cured meats get more expensive. Helps keep a totally old-school American industry alive, too. Damn, I am long winded in these descriptions sometimes. Sorry.

Cup of the Day #26 Green Palm by Gwyneth Leech, 2010 Colored India ink on white paper coffee cup I was walking home from the studio in the pouring rain the other day and passed one of my local deli-men. He was carrying an umbrella and wearing a black and white satchel over his shoulder - a 2010 Census satchel! He has embarked on a new, temporary career going door to door chasing up non-responders. I was in his shoes at the beginning of April, although it wasn't door-to-door then, but a matter of waiting outside soup kitchens and shelters for the intensive shelter-based enumeration at the start of the census period. We trained at Truro college in Lower Manhattan - hundreds of us all at once, spending long days in windowless rooms going methodically through handbooks. This was not a job to be taken lightly, even though our crew leader, Lisa Kaplan, a stand-up comedienne by profession, did her dry best to make it palatable. At the training our group of 30 or so included under-employed singers, actors, writers and artists, some of whom I already knew from around my neighborhood or from my choral singing job. Lunch breaks were a highlight of the training and Bean and Bean, at 71 Broadway, a pleasant discovery. They are an all-organic coffee bar and roast their beans right on the spot. You can see the Digital Roaster, the Pro 2500, sitting in shiny glory in a glass-walled room at the back of the shop. It made me feel quite confident about the expensive product I carried away with me. Once training was complete, the actual enumeration job involved traveling to multiple sites around the city, long waits, false starts, lots of paperwork and some heart ache, but all the information is confidential and I can't share any of the stories I heard on threat of imprisonment or fine. However, I can say that the wind blew, rain lashed down and enumeration forms turned to mush as we tried to fill them in while counting people outside several famous sites, such as the McAuley Water Street Mission, the Salvation Army on 14th Street and the Bowery Mission - which lives up to it's knock-about reputation despite the shiny presence of the New Museum literally two doors away. I saw a cluster of enumerators on a stoop up the block yesterday. I stopped to commiserate. How many times do they have to come back to any given apartment if they get no response? Six times. That's a lot of leg work! So give them a break - if you still haven't filled in that census form, do it now.