Steamed Milk in Your Iced Latte

I've been openly critical about Baltimore Sun food critic Elizabeth Large. Even though I find her taste in cuisine to be vastly different than my own (and of a completely divergent agenda), I still take a moment now and then to read her blog - if only to practice the exercise of bashing my head against the wall in frustration.

In fact, I've been so openly critical of Liz Large that I've been effectively banned from posting comments to her blog. Long ago, she stopped "allowing" my comments because they tended to be highly critical of her position in the food chain - how anyone makes the claim that kale soup tastes too much of kale and retains credibility is beyond me.

In today's blog entry, she writes about iced coffee and how it's surpassing iced tea as a restaurant breakfast drink. Now, I don't know if that's true but consumption of iced coffee from the Brew Tower of Power at The Spro has been on a sharp rise. Anyway, the point is that she writes:

"My favorite version of iced coffee is an iced latte, but the milk has to be steamed first or it doesn't taste right. You can't just put espresso and cold milk together and call it an iced latte."

Which makes me go: "Hmmmm..."

Lots of places in Baltimore serve something resembling iced coffee or espresso with cold milk aka "iced latte" but no other shop that I know of steams their iced latte milk other than The Spro. Has the kale-handicapped Liz Large made clandestine visits to The Spro under the guise of a regular customer? Could I, God Forbid, have actually served the mysterious Lady Large myself? Maybe even treated her with our usual blend of friendly hospitality? I wonder.

I'm guessing that because of our history, she won't acknowledge this but I wanted to put out a message to Mrs. Large:

"Come visit and enjoy our iced lattes. We welcome all at The Spro."

Showoff

I enjoy reading Chef Shola Olunloyo's StudioKitchen blog. He's progressive and centered and not afraid to pronounce his opinions that may rankle the goats of others. The StudioKitchen blog is a fascinating journey of Shola's food and it's quite enjoyable to follow.

Recently, he's posted about Storing Spices
and Artist and Artisan
. Two posts where he shares images of a very sexy storage system for his spices crowned by the complete collection of Ferran Adria's Texturas line of food chemicals, or his pseudo-museum display of his equipment collection of Polyscience AntiGriddle, Polyscience Immersion Bath, PacoJet and Thermomixes. He shows us pictures because it's too sexy for words.

To Shola and his images, I say: "Showoff."

(but really, I'm just envious...)

StudioKitchen
: Read It.