Reinaldo's blog

Once upon a time I thought that the more toppings a pizza had, the better it was. I still enjoy most of the toppings that go in a supreme pizza but now I’d rather have a good simple pizza than an all-you-can-eat meal on an average quality dough.

I used to pack a pizza with mushrooms, capsicum, tomato, ham, salami, cheese, tomato pizza sauce, onion, olives, and pineapple (if available). Since then I’ve learned that in Italy (Naples specifically), authentic pizzas can only have dough, tomato sauce, cheese and basil leaves.

I think many of us in the Western countries have been side-tracked about what’s important in a pizza. I think it’s the dough. The Naples regulations require the dough to be cooked in a woodfire oven for 60-90 seconds. While the toppings are very important also, the make-or-brake aspect of the pizza is definitely in the dough. Many consumers of average grade pizzas will probably make the mistake of thinking that more toppings equals more value for money and that quantity of ingredients adds to the taste.

A similar thing happens to Italy’s espresso style coffee. While we should be more concerned with the espresso shot, we get distracted by all the things we can disguise the taste of the espresso with. The short black, ristretto, double ristretto is the essence of what coffee is however, we add milk to this, sugar, and some people go as far as creating a peppermint mocha (heaven knows what goes into that).

In summary, we should go back to basics with cooking and hot beverages. Find out where they came from, how they evolved and try to capture the integrity with which these meals first came into creation. If there’s no appreciation for the food’s history, preparation and original authenticity then how can you really enjoy it?

I’ve changed the wordpress theme as I felt it needed a new look and feel. The photo on the front of the page is of Valparaiso, my birthplace.

It’s been 8 months since I’ve started using wordpress and my only regret is not having used it earlier. I never thought a web page could be done so nicely without the use of Adobe Dreamweaver. I originally doubted using blogging software to manage a website but it has been so useful.

With wordpress, the software doesn’t get in the way of the blogging. I just have to focus on my writing and wordpress practically takes care of itself.

If you are thinking about starting a blog for personal use or groupwork, then you should try out a free blog from wordpress.com
If you need something more scalable and the ability to customise, then you should register a domain name and pay for web hosting. You then download the wordpress.org software and install it into your database on your website. From then on all you need is your username and password and an internet connection to be able to publish from anywhere in the world.

It’s as easy as writing an email to a friend.

More content coming soon.

Thank heavens for Mozilla Firefox and than heavens for this blog post: http://rossniemi.wordpress.com/2007/01/31/recovering-deleted-posts-using-wordpress/

I had accidentally deleted a long blog post about Starbucks and the Australian coffee market. I had almost given up when I came across this solution.

I accidentally deleted a draft post in wordpress that I was trying to publish at the time. I don’t know what happened but in the micro seconds that flashed before my eyes I understood that I had deleted that very post for good. I tried to find the cached google page of my post but it was too late.

What worked in the was to switch firefox to work offline and then retrieve the post by browsing the history of the web browser.

I hope this never happens to me (or anyone) again. So I leave the link to the post that saved my Sunday’s afternoon work and I leave my gratitude to the person that created that post.

home made flat white made by me

Starbucks entered the Australian market in July 2000. At its peak, it had a total of 81 stores nation wide. Now it’s stores have been reduced to just 23 and out of the 4 outlets in Canberra, there is not one store left for the Canberra population.

I have read John Simmon’s book: My Sister’s a Barista: How they made Starbucks a home away from home and from reading it, you get the impression that Starbucks could do no wrong; their business model is almost flawless and can only grow from strength to strength.

The book was published in 2005 and a lot has happened since then. There is no doubt that Starbucks is an incredible story of innovation, niche markets and successful chain operations.

Something happened in Australia though. I didn’t quite work out. Read the rest of this entry »