Major Dickason’s Deliciousness

Major Dickason's Blend from Peets

In the October 2008 “Breakfast Issue” of Saveur Magazine, one of my favorites, dog eared and smudged with the syrupy remains of recipe attempts, are listed nine great coffees. Some of the roasts were well known to me, appearing on a “best of” list somewhere once a month, like Intelligentisa out of Chicago and Rome’s ultra popular Sant’Eustachio. The latter of which I kept thinking was St. Pistachio until I saw it spelled out. My Italian has never been that good.

A couple of choices came as pleasant, economical surprises, a Newman’s Own Blend and the one I’ve enjoyed three cups of this morning, Peet’s Coffee and Tea, Major Dickason’s Blend. I moved from the East Coast to LA a year and a half ago so I’m not really familiar with Peet’s although according to the Saveur article they’ve been in business since 1966. In fact, “when Starbucks started up, Peet’s supplied it with coffee and trained it’s staff”. Peet’s is out of Berkeley, California and the one pound price comes in at $12.95 but I bought mine at Von’s grocery for $9.00.

I really dig this coffee. For me, breakfast blends tend to be too mild but Major Dickason’s starts my morning off right, not bold or brassy, but smooth, well rounded with an earthiness to it, low acidity and very little aftertaste. I’m a fan of nutty coffees and this is defintiely one.

I’m a cream and sugar girl so that makes a difference in my tasting. Next time, I’ll taste black and then move to blonde and sweet. Here’s another review from a more experienced taster, Doug Cadmus who seems to have the same jones for the red beans that I do. Try this one! It’s yummy!

Free Lunch

Since that fateful day a few weeks ago when I awoke to a brand new world of cash and carry I’ve raised my fist to the heavens and cried “foul” at the mean and nasty banking conglomerate. How dare they raise my interest rates, charge me fees and lower my credit limit! But the truth of the matter is there’s no such thing as a free lunch or a free credit card for that matter.

As Michelle Singletary points out in her Washington Post article low interest, no annual fee, “free” credit cards have been subsidized for years by unsavory practices, exorbitant or hidden fees and double digit interest rates that usually effect lower to middle income borrowers. These same borrowers often fall behind on payments not because of frivolous spending but because they’re more likely to use cards for basic necessities or health expenditures. When I think of it like that it makes me more amenable to paying an annual fee or higher interest rate. After all, I am using someone else’s money.

So I’ve decided not to fight the matter with American Express. I did call and speak with a supervisor to demand they refund the annual fee they charged me two weeks before closing the account. She complied but advised me that I would need to call again to request the refund by check because it wouldn’t happen automatically unlike late fees and over the limit charges. I’m considering requesting that Citibank reopen my account based on the fact that they just sent me an offer in the mail touting a lower interest rate than the one they quoted me when I closed. I’m also writing a letter to the credit information company, Experian, to make sure they don’t lower my score based on American Express’ decision.

While the changes in the Truth in Lending Act will end the credit subsidy cycle and with it, the predatory lending and gouging practices banks have relied on for billions in profit, it won’t happen tomorrow. In fact, banks have nine months of “get out of jail free card” to keep working the system. But you, the borrower, have rights as well and here are a few good ideas about how to use them.

In the meantime, I’m going to reevaluate my credit and spending habits. The less time I spend with the snarky little banker, the better.

FYI: When Bank of America recently began charging me a monthly fee for my checking account I switched all my checking and saving accounts to Wachovia. They offered me free checking, and a nifty \”Way 2 Save\”savings account that automatically rounds up my card expenditures and deposits the spare change into the account at a whopping %5 interest. Wachovia then matches 5% of whatever you have in the account at the end of the year from when you started it. The catch is you have to make an automatic monthly deposit and it can’t be more than $100 a month but hey, where can you get 5% interest plus an end-of-the-year match? Maybe there’s a free lunch after all.

Cup ‘o Cheap Java

Review #1 Recessionista Coffee

So, let me preface my first coffee review with the caveat that I’m not a coffee expert. I love coffee though, love the way it smells, the comfort of my morning ritual, falling in love with an exotic new taste. I use a grind and brew coffee maker that’s timed to start just as I’m waking so the smell drifts into the bedroom before my feet hit the floor. Plus, if I’m lingering in sleepy town the super loud grind part of the process scares the hell out of me.

Having travelled quite a bit I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a few famous European cafes. In Miami, I loved starting my day with a strong Cuban coffee sweetened with pure cane syrup. Tiny cups of Turkish espresso kept me up for hours in Istanbul and silky, smooth Viennese lattes kept me warm in the Austrian winter.

All that being said, I’m home in Santa Monica, California and this is a recession. I’m all about the sale right now and Chock Full o Nuts was chock full o value at $3 a can. Ground. Shudder.

http://www.chockfullonuts.com/

Chock Full o Nuts comes with a lot of history.

“The chain was founded by William Black (1903-1983), a Russian immigrant who sold nuts in Times Square to theater-goers. In 1926, he opened a store on Broadway and 43rd Street, and began selling coffee and sandwiches. By the 1960s, the chain had approximately 80 restaurants in the New York City area. Their signature “nutted cheese” sandwich, made of cream cheese and chopped nuts on dark raisin bread, cost a nickel with a cup of coffee when the company was founded.”

I’m pretty sure it hasn’t changed much. It’s drinkable, however, smooth, nutty and medium bodied. Not diner coffee but not exactly Gevalia either. I’ll have to come up with some kind of rating system I think…let’s go with

If Folgers is a 1

and Kopi Luwak is a 10 (I’ve never had Kopi Luwak but it sounds tasty in an oddly fecal sort of way)

Kopi Luwak
Indonesia

$160 per pound

Luwak Coffee is made from coffee cherries that have been eaten by common palm civets, which use their keen sense of smell to select the choicest and ripest beans. The digestion process removes the flesh from the crimson Sumatran berry and the beans, supposedly sweeter as a result of having passed through the animal, are hand-collected from the jungle floor.

I’d put Chock Full o Nuts at a 41/2.

Charging Me Off

“There was a time when not having to use credit was a sign of strength. Now, not having a credit history makes you a pariah, unable to function in society or business.” – Anonymous, Woodbridge, VA

I found this quote in an online chat from the Washington Post and it really resonated with me. I’ve been doing some credit rating research today because I woke up this morning, for the first time since college, with 0 dollars in credit to my name. Considering the fact that I have a credit rating of 750 I find that a little surprising, not to mention scary. In fact, according to Experian only 30% of Americans have a credit rating above 757 so I should be doing ok, right?

Not so much. Here’s why…

“As they thin their ranks of risky cardholders to deal with an economic downturn, major banks including American Express, Citigroup, Bank of America and a long list of others have already begun to raise interest rates, and some have set their sights on consumers who pay their bills on time.”

NYT Article on Overhauling Credit Cards

It all started when Citibank sent me a letter to inform me that they intended to raise my percentage rate from 6% to 14% (13.99% to be exact). I’ve been a loyal customer with Citibank for years and enjoyed a 6% interest rate because, even while I carried a balance, I never failed to pay on time. The explanation I got from the Citibank representative I called to complain, “Due to the economic changes…”. Right. Could he possibly have meant the “economic changes” brought about by the banking and finance executives who managed, with a staggering mix of greed and stupidity, to cripple the credit market, burden the banking system with outrageous amounts of toxic assets and force the unemployment rate to over 8%? Some of whom probably work at Citicorp?

I said no to the interest rate increase and my account was closed after having been a member in good standing for ten years. Whatevs.

Now, Bank of Ohama, with whom I have a 0% interest balance that’s close to being paid off informs me that unless I use the card with it’s 14.99% interest rate for purchases they will close the account. I reply that I would be happier using the local loanshark.

Account closed.

What I didn’t realize at this point, as I nonchalantly scissored my defunct cards into the trash with a satisfied snip, is that the closed accounts would make it seem as though my credit was maxed out. Despite the fact that my Citibank card was nowhere near the max when I closed it, (I never really should have had access to that much credit given my income anyway, but that’s for the next post) it now seems as though I’m “maxed out”.

Which gives American Express just the excuse they need. I discover that my American Express account is closed when my card is declined at Sephora. Seriously? I thought there was some mistake since the card was at a 0 balance and I was only using it because I knew that untapped accounts would be closed after a certain amount of time. They also charged me an annual fee about two weeks before they closed the account. Nice.

The representative from American Express informed me that I must have too many delinquincies on my credit report. Now I’m afraid that some sort of identity theft is going on. I went home, pulled up my credit report on the AAA credit monitoring service I use and…nothing. No delinquinicies, no charge offs, no late payments, no change in my credit score. Could the real problem have been that my interest rate with American Express was only 10%? Or that I had a zero balance for a number of months at a time?

Whatever the reason, I now have no access to a credit line for emergencies or to rent or car or anything else. I can’t even buy a drink on a United flight. Which leads me to wonder why I have to be in debt to someone in order to prove I’m fiscally responsible? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? How did we get here, in debt up to our elbows to the snarky little banker guy who should really be in jail, not at the receiving end of billions in TARP funds?

More to come in the next post. And it won’t cost you a thing;)

“What is it with these people?”

“That’s an appalling record,” Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America, said of the 20 criminal investigations. “In the midst of this crisis from which they are being bailed out, the same people who created this mess are apparently still breaking the law. What is it with these people?”

My thoughts exactly Barbara.

I read the Slate headlines this morning and yet again, I find myself disgusted with the blatant greed and avarice of the Wall Street bankers and auto company executives. Here’s a link to the story that got me going…

LA Times article

I’ve been told time and time again that the banking and auto industry need billions of dollars to stay afloat and that if they fail or are forced to restructure in bankruptcy court it will simply be the end of life as I know it. Yet, once Congress found a pair and demanded that incredibly large loans of taxpayer money only be lent to firms that agree to corporate executive pay restrictions suddenly they don’t need the money all that badly.

Seriously? Either the auto companies don’t need the money they’ve had their fat little paws out for over the past six months or their executives are so greedy and self serving that they’d rather see the company and the economy fail than limit their already exorbitant salaries and bonuses.

Plus, the TARP money already disbursed may be illegally lining the pockets of the greedy little pigs that got us into this predicament in the first place.

Honestly, I no longer believe the US government should move forward with it’s plan to buy up the toxic securities and bundled bad mortgages. It was a bad deal for the American taxpayers in the first place and seems to now be an opportunity for corrupt brokers and bankers to buy themselves another Lexus.

House Financial Services Committee member Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), a certified public accountant, said that under the plan, taxpayers would take virtually all the risk, get zero control and only 50% of the profits.

“That doesn’t sound like a good deal,” he said.

“I can’t imagine Warren Buffett signing something like that.”

Exactly.

Cities of the Underworld

Just a note about my favorite new show “Cities of the Underworld” on the History Channel,  Link to the homepage for Cities of the Underworld

It’s an hour long tour of the often unexplored spaces beneath cities across the world, from Las Vegas to Viet Nam to Edinburgh, Scotland. Host, Don Wildman, goes deep underground guiding us through the tunnels, mines and burial crypts that time forgot. Along the way he connects the underground spaces to the history and culture of the city above and squeezes into some claustrophobia inducing cracks and crevices that in some instances reveal gruesome surprises.

Wildman is fearless and charming with a great sense of humor, not to mention damn fine. Over the past few episodes he’s climbed nimbly to the topmost perch of a ninja’s secret attic and descended into the very bottom of the Hoover Dam. Just watching him, sweat beading his lip, hard hat securely tightened underneath 300 million tons of steel and concrete gave me the heebie jeebies. And I loved every minute of it.

I especially enjoyed the informative journey into the hand carved Vietnamese tunnel system that helped the Viet Cong defeat the US Armed Forces and the episode on the bombing of Hiroshima was incredibly compelling. Wildman interviews, for the first time on network television, the survivor that alerted the world to the event. Along with her first hand account and the show’s descriptive supporting graphics Wildman delivers an even handed and powerful account of the tragedy.

Tivo a show and check it out!

Underground Rome