Tropicalsenior

Yes, that is the one that I buy. If you go to Presto by Nestle you will see that it is from Nicaragua. I don't care for instant coffee as a beverage, but this one is excellent for baked goods and as a flavoring agent. I have found out that I need to use it up quickly or keep it in the refrigerator because it will clump and go hard.

If you are really curious about the Starbucks drinks, you can find recipes for every one of them on the Internet and you can whip them up in your own kitchen for less than a tenth of what you would pay for them at Starbucks.

In case anyone is interested, here is the original Thread about olive oil in Starbucks coffee

Instant coffee has always been considered a quick cheap way of getting your coffee fix. People that actually liked instant coffee were considered to be not refined enough to appreciate the real thing. There are very few brands of good instant coffee. I believe that one of the reasons that a lot of Latin American countries drink instant coffee is because of primitive cooking situations. They may not always have a means to make coffee but they always have a way to make hot water. My Nicaraguan housemate says that his grandmother used to make coffee in a big open pot on her wood fire. She used to put river rocks in the bottom of the pot and two or three eggshells in with the coffee grounds and then boil the heck out of it. The coffee grounds settled into the rocks and the eggshells kept it from getting bitter. I'm rather thankful that she's no longer around to invite me to coffee.

Well, you are partly right. I have been in some coffee producing countries and they do drink instant coffee predominantly. Not Nescafe but instant coffee produced in their own country. Nicaragua makes a killer instant coffee. If you ever see it it is called Presto. It is what most of the people there drink. I always have a jar on hand for baking even though I don't drink it myself. Costa Rica is different. They are very proud of their coffee and their coffee heritage and everybody drinks the real stuff. I don't know about most companies but some years ago we did a tour of a small coffee plantation and the owner took us on the tour. When we got to the coffee sorting machine he explained that the larger coffee beans go to the US and the European prefer the smaller coffee beans. These are shipped green and whole. The broken coffee beans were the ones that they kept for local consumption and those they roasted and packaged for sale. He said that he preferred the broken beans because they presented more surface area for roasting and never got bitter. Our major coffee producer here is Cafe Britt. It's gone kind of along the lines of Starbucks and at times it gets a little bitter. I think I've tried just about every brand that they have here and I keep going back to one favorite, Montaña. When my grandson comes down, he always takes about 30 lb of coffee back with him. He goes to the Central Market and buys one of the brands that is probably the oldest in the country, Volio. He watches them roast it, grind it, and pack it in paper bags. He takes some back as gifts and keeps the rest in the refrigerator for himself and when it is gone, it is time to come back down. I just wanted to say that picking coffee is one of the hardest jobs in the whole country. When my grandson was down here as a student, he had some time off and decided to try coffee picking. He lasted only 2 days and wound up making a total of about $2. He says it makes him appreciate his coffee even more.

My housemate's girlfriend returned from Florida this week and brought me these. Just at random, she happened to choose my very favorite candy bar. They were a tiny bit melty but popping them in the refrigerator took care of that and as you see I already sampled them and they were wonderful. This may seem a bit trivial to most of you but when you haven't had something in 15 years it is a little bit of Heaven.

You're not missing anything and you're not missing the big bucks that they charge you.

I also prefer the darker roast. I freely admit that I am not a coffee connoisseur and I can drink coffee anywhere from dark roast to coffee flavored water. I think I've tried every brand of coffee that they sell in Costa Rica (except the Starbucks). I've had hundreds of cups of coffee in restaurants and nowhere do they have the burnt, bitter flavor that you get in Starbucks coffee. It's all in the roast. A lot of the coffee that Starbucks uses comes from Costa Rica. Within 10 miles of me there are huge farms that have signs proclaiming that their coffee is destined for Starbucks. Something happens between the field and the cup and it's not the fault of the coffee beans.

When I saw that earlier this year I Googled and found that supposedly this is a big thing in Italy. It's supposed to mellow out the bitterness. Seems like they would save a lot of time and money just by not burning the beans.

In fact it was on the very first page of this topic but it is certainly worth repeating.

Okay, I bow to your Superior and cultural wisdom. But as @MaryIsobel said on another recent thread, I taste with my mind and I just could not wrap my head around all that sweet sauce on meat. However I did not put lettuce on them. Do I get points for that?

I don't know about @chromedome but I would certainly have to pass. I have made the Nova Scotia donairs, minus the condensed milk sauce, and they are real gut bombs.

I did indeed read that and I'm just saying that she has much more patience than I would have. And the amazing thing is that each plate is a feast for the eyes.

Yuck! The coffee is bad enough hot but when it starts to cool off it is totally vile.

I do have to admit to being a bit prejudiced because I just do not like the company. To me, they are overhyped and overpriced. And I don't like the way that they reinvented their history. Their first coffee shop was not in Pike Place Market. It was in Old Bellevue about a quarter of a mile from where I lived. I remember when they opened the Pike Place Market location. They now claim that it is the first one because that is in the tourist district. If their company image was the best in the world it would still be the last place that I would go for just a cup of coffee because it is terrible.

Recently @liuzhou mentioned the topic of Starbucks coffee and I found out that @kayb and I share an opinion about the quality of the coffee. I know, they have a lot of fancy concoctions and supposedly their pastries and cakes are good but their coffee, as coffee, sucks. It always tastes burnt and it leaves an aftertaste that is reminiscent of pencil shavings. I'm from Seattle and I would never ever go to Starbucks for coffee but it is shoved down your throat everywhere. To me there was nothing worse than having a fine meal and then to be served a cup of Starbucks. I live in Costa Rica now which is coffee country and about four or five years ago Starbucks arrived. It is failing miserably. Soon after they arrived they started putting their coffee on the supermarket shelves. It finally wound up in their sales bins and they couldn't even get rid of it at half off. So please tell me, if you are a Starbucks fan, is it just the mixed drinks that you like or do you actually drink their coffee?

You must have the patience of a saint. I'm afraid I would find myself standing in the middle of the floor screaming, "if I cook it you will eat".

That's easy, just drink it all.

Not by a long shot! Nope, compared to me, you're still a baby.

I have to admit that you stopped me in my tracks with that one. So I went back and reread Darienn's original post. At 84 years old, there isn't very much that I am doing new or for the first time but, about 5 years ago I joined a bunch of lovable nuts online and for the first time in my life I feel like I have found my people. People that seem to accept me as I am, a place where I feel like I can let it all hang out and not be treated like I'm totally crazy. All my life I've been a basically shy person and have had to force myself to interact with other people so this was a big first for me and I'm certainly glad I did it.

I think it's supposed to be food, but it doesn't look like any food that I would eat. I'm not sure that I would even feed that to my dog, if I had one.

I really can't remember anything that I would consider my first time making it because as early as I can remember, my mother had me helping in the kitchen and I learned to cook from her. My most significant first was the first time that I ever cooked in a restaurant. In the early seventies, I lived next door to a little greasy spoon that's seated about 35. They also did catering and as a customer with time on her hands, I used to help them out when they were particularly busy setting up for some party. The owner finally convinced me to come to work for him and I started on graveyard shift, 10:00 to 6:00. I started at 10:00 and the woman that was supposed to work with me that night decided to leave at 10:30. I didn't know the menu, and I had never cooked in a restaurant before. Oh, and did I mention that I was also to be waitress, cook, and dishwasher? I was the only one in the place. I just told everyone that if they told me what it was I was willing to cook it if they were willing to try and eat it. I made it through that night and I worked there for another 2 years. The woman that left me stranded got fired the next day. I learned a lot in that little greasy spoon and the biggest lesson was what you can do if you have to. It gave me the confidence to go on up from there.

The recipe just doesn't look good to me. Equal parts of wine and soft drink sound like it would water the wine down too much. And one slice of orange and one slice of lemon just don't do it for me. We used to make a pretty good sangria every Thanksgiving when we had about 30 people and that was the only alcoholic beverage that we served. We used one part good red wine, 1/2 part orange juice and 1/4 part lemon lime soda, like squirt or seven up. We also put in one whole sliced orange, one whole sliced lemon and one diced apple. You can add sweet vermouth or Rum to this, if you like, but we never did because we had some in our group that tended to overindulge. It's not overly sweet but people really seem to like it. With 30 people we would go through a few gallons of it.

I had to give this a sad rating because they still haven't given us a yuck emoji.

Okay, you've got me on this one. How do you get that beautiful char on those shrimp and still have them perfectly cooked and juicy?