Choosing a coffee machine is not just matching the specifications and budget to your requirements. It's much more important to match your personality to the coffee machines available.
The first thing I recommend to a friend buying a coffee machine is that it needs to look good. Yep, The Most Important Thing about a coffee machine is how it looks. Every day you're going to walk up to this machine and make a coffee. Think about how you'll feel when you use it, will you appreciate the slim design? Do you prefer a machine with lots of dials and buttons? Do you prefer large or small? A machine that looks "wrong" to you won't be a pleasure to use.
The second big question is automatic or manual. An automatic coffee machine contains a grinder that grinds the beans and dispenses an espresso or long black for you. Some automatic coffee machines also froth your milk for you. There's several advantages to having an automatic coffee machine; firstly, the coffee is always the same, get the grind setting and temperature right and you're guaranteed the same coffee each time. Secondly it's quicker, press a button and the coffee is made, your time is spent chatting, preparing a meal or reading the paper, not messing about with the coffee machine. Thirdly there's no mess, you're not filling the filter handle (and spilling it) with ground coffee and you're not dealing with the wet "puck" that gets produced, everything is held neatly inside the coffee machine. Lastly, if there's an auto frothing attachment, you're not messing about with milk jugs trying to get a nice silky foam on your milk, it's all done for you.
Does this sound perfect? For many coffee connoisseurs this is a terrible travesty!! Automatic, never!! Their inner barista needs to be free!
Manual coffee machines allow you to play with more settings. How hard you tamp the ground coffee allows for subtly different flavours. Different grind settings on the separate grinder allow you to tweak your flow rates. You can froth for cappuccino or latte. You can make three different coffees with three different bags of ground coffee. The choices (and the time you spend) are endless. Many coffee fanatics would be outraged to go near an automatic coffee machine. These coffee experts are happy to spend many hours researching beans, roasters and machines in search of the perfect coffee.
The automatic vs manual coffee machine debate comes down to one simple question, are you a coffee drinker or a coffee maker?
And me? Well I have a manual and an automatic coffee machine on my bench at home. I sell coffee machines for a living so why not try them all? Sadly the manual doesn't get used any more, if I want a coffee it's because I want a coffee and now! I personally find that the freshly ground beans in the automatic make up for the slight lack of "tweaks" that I can so on the manual coffee machine. I'm also able to make 6 cappuccinos for friends in about 3 minutes, and they taste great.
When I walk up to my Saeco Royal Cappuccino it looks good and it's easy to use. The quick, simple and great tasting white coffees reflect my inner soul - I'm a coffee drinker not a coffee maker!


Campfire Breadsticks
An easy and fun way to cook bread over coals or a fire is making breadsticks with bread on a stick. They may be cooked while other food is cooking so that they are ready at the same time.
The basic method uses dough rolled into a long thin rope that is wrapped around a stick. The stick is held over coals and rotated until brown on all sides. It requires a little patience to get the inside done at the same time as the outside.
To start, take some type of bread dough and roll it between your hands, forming a long piece (like making a snake or rope out of clay). Don't leave it too thick, which will make it harder to cook all the way through.
Next, select a stick to cook with. This should be heavy enough to support the dough. Take the dough and wind it around the stick in a spiral, pressing the ends to the dough so that it does not fall off.
Place the stick over the coals. It is much easier to cook breadsticks using coals than fire, since they give off a better heat. It may be helpful to prop the stick up over the coals with a couple of rocks, or pile a couple of rocks on either side and lay the stick across the coals so you don't have to hold it the entire time. Occasionally rotate the stick so that the bread gets brown on all sides. Patience is helpful here, to ensure that the bread is cooked through.
You can use a thicker, longer stick laid horizontally above the coals to make several at one time. This will save time if you need to cook for several.
A variety of dough can be used—try various kinds to see which one you like best. The easiest is tube biscuits, which come in a number of types and prices. Take one or more biscuits and roll it between your hands to form the rope of dough to be wrapped on the stick. Other possibilities include Bisquick (don't make the dough too wet), bread dough (if frozen, let it thaw and rise a little), and scone dough (sometimes available at the bakery or deli in your local supermarket).
After cooking, serve with butter, jams, jellies, or honey. This is sure to be a family or group favorite!

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Scott Carey has many hobbies and interests, including outdoor cooking.
Find more outdoor cooking tips and recipes at Outdoor Cooking Magic.
Look for information on some of his other interests, such
as computers, eBay, and gardening at InfoTesoro.
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Gourmet Hot Sauce – Hot As You Like
If people are what they eat then we have a lot of hot people in the United States. People have been eating peppers for thousands of years but in recent years people have been looking to get a little more adventurous with their food and Gourmet hot sauces are quite the hot item. The number of hot sauce aficionados continues to grow and is quickly becoming a part of American mainstream.
The National Fiery Foods and Barbecue Show, started in 1989, is the Woodstock of hot sauces in the United States. An instant success, it spawned a widespread interest in gourmet hot sauce, which are hot for hot's sake. Dave's insanity sauce from Dave's gourmet was the first hot sauce to be banned from the fiery food show for being too hot. Its heat content stood at 50,000 Scoville units. However, that was way back. Nowadays, sauces are doing the catfight for the hottest title and the Scoville units are blowing sky high with 500,000 to 10,000,000 units becoming the norm. It has become common for a gourmet hot sauce container to carry the statutory warning: "must be diluted before use," or "use as an ingredient only," or "for use as an additive, not for direct consumption.". Are hot sauces leaving the dining table and going to the display cabinet, to be flaunted as a collector's item, is the question.
Collecting hot sauces has become a trend only in the past several years. Like stamp collecting there are literally thousands of hot sauces to choose from whether you only want to collect the hottest of all sauces, funny hot sauces, limited edition hot sauces or all of the above.
Mad Dog hot sauce from Ashley Foods however is a nice departure. Probably, because Mad Dog gives equal weightage to heat and flavor. Coming in many varieties- mild, medium, hot and extreme, Mad Dog hot sauces are equally suitable for the spiky youngster, looking for spice and the calmer palate of the older crowd. If you choose to venture on the extreme side of the Scoville scale I recommend Mad Dog 357 hot sauce. This sauce is an excellent selection. This sauce will literally blast your sinuses away. On the other hand the Mad Dog Teriyaki hot sauce is ideal for dipping your food. An all-rounder gourmet hot sauce, in every sense, it is great as a marinade or as a grilling sauce.
Some of the hottest gourmet hot sauce are-Ass in Antartica Hot Sauce, Ass in Hell Hot Sauce, Assplosion Hot Sauce, Blair's After Death and Blair's Megadeath Hot Sauce. Dave's Gourmet, is of course in a class by itself. Dave's Commemorative Insanity, Dave's Total Insanity, Dave's Ultimate Insanity-it has virtually become a stud farm for hot sauces.
Chris McCarthy is the owner of InsaneChicken's Hot Sauce and BBQ Sauce Catalog. Check out the large selection of hot sauces on www.InsaneChicken.com.