All posts by Matthew Callan

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Gourmet Food Companies Are Reading My Mind!

This morning, I purchased some coffee from one of Brooklyn’s many breakfast carts. Upon first sip, the taste brought to mind bacon. Like, a lot.

Though I enjoy the (very) occasional strip of bacon on an egg sammich or a hamburger, I wouldn’t call myself a bacon enthusiast. However, I know America is full of bacon enthusiasts, if levels of obesity and heart disease are any indication. And I also know America loves to smash one food into another food. Peanut butter into chocolate. Mustard into mayonnaise. Sausages into pancakes, onto sticks.

So for a brief moment, I thought to myself, “I’ll start working on bacon-flavored coffee! It’s two great tastes that go great together! The public will flip for it! I’ll be a bazillionaire!”

Do I know the first thing about making coffee? Of course not. I think you broil the beans, and then shell them, or something, but that’s the limit of my knowledge. No matter. The awesomeness of my idea would trump piddling details like my total lack of expertise.

baconcoffee.jpgBut my dreams were quickly snuffed by Google. A search for “bacon coffee” yielded this result: a company called BocaJava that produces a flavored coffee called Maple Bacon Morning.

Reminiscent of a hearty Saturday morning breakfast around the table, this sweet, savory coffee delights the senses with the smell and taste of home! Maple Bacon Morning has a base that’s full-bodied and complex, and it’s a delicious way to rise when the rooster crows!

I should have known someone would beat me to the punch. Bacon-flavored coffee was too good an idea to go unexploited for so long. But at least it’s a small gourmet coffee company doing it, and not McDonalds unveiling a new breakfast sandwich. “It’s the new McSlammer! We took a McGriddle and squished it into a half-full cup of coffee!”

But I can still pursue a parallel idea: coffee-infused bacon! My plan is to inject slices of bacon with a freshly brewed Kona blend. So when you bite into a crunchy slab of bacon, it shoots a stream of java into your mouth. I’ll just have to some market research to see if the human tongue can withstand coffee once it’s been heated to bacon-frying temperatures.

1999 Project

1999 Project: Atlanta, Round 4

Click here for an intro/manifesto on The 1999 Project.

chipper2.jpgOn Monday, the Mets got a much needed off day and some more bad news. The surging Reds won yet again, which put them 1.5 games ahead of the Mets in the wild card lead. It also tied Cincinnati with idle Houston for the lead in the NL Central, thus throwing another wrinkle into the Mets’ playoff hopes.

The Mets now had not one, but two rivals for the wild card, which created a myriad of ways they could make the playoffs–or miss them entirely. No one needed to be reminded of the three-way wild card race of 1998 (a race that wouldn’t have happened if the Mets had managed to win two games down the stretch).

To begin their last homestand of the year, the Mets welcomed the same Braves team that had demolished them in Atlanta a week before. But it was also a Braves team that had already clinched the NL East (thanks to their sweep of Montreal while the Mets were being swept in Philly). The Mets could always hope the Braves’ sense of urgency had waned. Then again, they’d be throwing Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and Kevin Millwood, pitchers the Mets had scored a grand total of seven runs against all season.

Bobby Valentine hoped the off day would rejuvenate his team. “When I’m on the slopes, I say that fatigue makes cowards of all of us,” Valentine told The New York Times. “That’s what mental fatigue is. You can’t concentrate enough because you’re physically tired.”

Another manager agreed. Valentine spent his off-day shooting an airline commercial with Joe Torre at Newark Airport. In between takes, Torre cautioned Bobby V, noting that “My cancer was stress-related.”
Continue reading 1999 Project: Atlanta, Round 4 →

1999 Project

1999 Project: Games 154-156

Click here for an intro/manifesto on The 1999 Project.

Thumbnail image for vetstadiumseat.jpgSeptember 24, 1999: Phillies 3, Mets 2

After a damaging and occasionally embarrassing sweep in Atlanta, the Mets headed to Philadelphia. The Phillies had a miserable end to their year, going 4-24 in the month prior to this series. Just before the Mets took on the Braves, they’d taken two out of three from the Phillies at Shea. Curt Schilling and Scott Rolen were both shut down for the year, and the team had almost no other stars to speak of.

In other words, the Phillies should have been just what the doctor ordered.The Mets should have been able to right their ship with a series win against a lowly team and stop the whispers that they were doomed to choke away a playoff spot, just like last year’s team.

But that, they say, is why they play the games.

Despite venturing north, the Mets still seemed to have their heads in Atlanta. Several unnamed players suspected that Chipper Jones was tipped off to their pitch selection, thus explaining his four home runs in three games against the Mets. The fact that he was having a monster year, and hitting home runs against everyone, was not mentioned.

Bobby Valentine called Chipper’s ability to hit home runs off of his team “uncanny”, but neither he nor anyone else would go on record with the pitch-tipping accusations. It indicated the disturbing extent to which the Braves in general (and Chipper in particular) were in the Mets’ heads.

Continue reading 1999 Project: Games 154-156 →