TouchNGo E-wallet Promo: Family Mart RM 0.99 Ice Cream!

 TouchNGo E-Wallet always has some nice promotions and this month they have Family Mart's Sofuto @RM0.99 again! Yay!

Do remember to reload your TouchNGo E-wallet and head down to your nearest Family Mart to enjoy the 'coolness' of the Matcha or Choclate ice cream. 😛😍

The Starbucks Buy 1 Get 1 Free Promo!

Something for the weekend and not so heavy, especially for the chilly Sunday morning.

Starbucks is one of the coffee chain here in Malaysi which managed to capture the middle-to-upper class market pretty well, as opposed to Coffee Beans. In my previous article, I mentioned that Starbucks is great with their drinks but not so much with their individual coffee (what I mean here is espresso or americano). If you're are still unable to understand what they mean, you can read it up here for a quick guide and for Sunday past time activities.

Now, back to our original topic, Starbucks is offering Buy 1 get 1 Free promo since Oct 2020 and they have extended the offer till end-Dec 2020. If you miss their drinks, do drive down to the nearest Starbucks every weekend from 10am to 12pm. However, a note of caution is there is quite a queue at a few of the starbucks that I went to. Be sure to be there early to enjoy the promo.

Some photos to 'quench your coffee thirst' for the time being.

Oh did I mention that their staff now have the cool green colour face masks?

What's in your Coffee?

So you're drinking Starbucks coffee on a regular basis, or even addicted to it. But wait.. do you know that coffee is not just coffee (like most of Asians think)? 

Starbucks at Kyoto, Japan

To lighten up your day, I remember my father went to Italy and he ordered a Espresso (thinking of all coffees are the same) and 1 shot of Espresso is the cheapest at 1 Euros. When he got his drink, he stared at that cup and wondered if he has ordered the wrong thing. 

So, to avoid my father's mistake, I am going to show you different names of the types of coffee (that is commonly available at major coffee outlets). The common coffee that customers orders are as below. I bet you come across this at cafes, restaurants or hotels. 

1. Espresso - produced via espresso machine were steamed (>10 barg pressure) were forced through the ground coffee (grinded coffee beans). Typically about 30ml only per shot.

2. Americano - Espresso diluted with hot water (layman's term it's Espresso + hot water)

3. Cappuccino - 1 part of Espresso, Steamed Milk and foam (all same proportion)

4. Latte - Espresso, Steamed Milk and thin foam

5. Mocha - Espresso, Steamed Milk, Chocolate and thin foam (aka Latte + Chocolate)

6. Macchiato - Espresso + Foam Milk

This should give you a good overview of what the common types of coffee drinks contains.

An image taken at one of the local cafe.

Oh yes, if you haven't tried Affogato, you can do so by putting a scoop of vanilla ice cream into a single or double shot espresso (now you know what espresso means). But the caveat is you will have to own an espresso machine. I had lots of Affogato during my MCO days where we were all locked down at home.

Unboxing of Delonghi Coffee Grinder KG49

For a coffee drinker, I have reached a level where I needed Lavazza or Illy to satisfy my taste bud. Due to the COVID19 pandemic, I have decided to get myself a coffee grinder than relying on the ones outside (i.e. IKEA provides free coffee grinder at their stores) for very clear reasons.

I am not going to write a lot of will let the photos speak for itself.

Just opened the top of the box

The top of the box, you can see one brush and another plug point, all wrapped up in plastic

I took the content out from the box before opening up the plastics, it's in 2 pieces - 1 coffee grinder and 1 brush

Now I have taken out the plastics that's covering them

The diagrams in the top section of the coffee grinder shows you how to use it

And here's how it looks like from the top when you open up the lid

I will show you how it operates when I start to grind my own coffee beans with the machine. Stay tuned.

Update: I have finally tried my first home grinded coffee today. I bought Lavazza Rossa in coffee beans (red bag) and grinded it with Delonghi KG49. The coffee taste less bitter and bolder than the same ground coffee (Rossa) which I bought from Lavazza. 

I know not many of you can differentiate it (I have many friends who can't even see the difference between Lavazza vs Illy vs Nescafe!) but for those who can, this is a worthwhile investment to go for. I do not know how many levels of coffee drinking we have but this should be the highest tier minus 1 or 2. ;-)