We had our 2nd annual neighborhood New Year’s Eve progressive cocktail party, with this year’s theme being “Pours and Passports”:
In a countdown to midnight, 4 Mordecai neighbors opened their homes for an hour each and offered drinks and snacks related to their stop’s country. We had ~50 people attending this year’s event, up from 28 in our inaugural year in 2024.
First Stop
The house, for Italian Indulgence
Our host, Marianne
Featured Italian cocktails:
• Aperol Spritz: Aperol, Prosecco, sparkling water, orange slice
• Negroni: gin, sweet vermouth, Campari, orange wedge
Featured Italian snacks:
• Two antipasto platters of cured meats, olives, cheeses, grapes
• Crackers & bread slices to complement the platters
• A variety of biscotti
• Marcona almonds
• Tiramisu (in honor of a guest’s birthday)
At this first stop, we asked everyone to create a name tag comprising their name and how long they’ve lived in Mordecai.
I pulled an Emeril Lagasse on Bob’s and my name tags and kicked them up a notch (Bam!) with a picture of our house on it.
Also at this stop, people made good use of the selfie station provided by Marianne & Jen!
Click on first image to bring up the gallery to flip through.
Marianne, Vance, Jen
Bob, Jen, John
Bob & John
Vance & Jen
Tom & Claire
Tom & Chris
David & Shelley
Sam, Neal, Claire, Amy
Sam, Neal, Claire, Amy
Marianne & Jen
Beth, Kim, Jen, Amy
Michael Ann & Candy
Jen & Kim
Jen, Margaret, Katie
John, Beth Jen, Amy, Margaret
Beth & Jen
Jen & Shelley
Marianne & Jen
Kim & Jason
Second Stop
The house, for French Fusion
Our hosts, Brian & Jeff
Featured French cocktails:
• Cognac French 75: cognac, champagne, simple syrup, lemon juice
• Minuit a Paris: vodka, St-Germain, cranberry juice, simple syrup, lemon slice
Featured French snacks:
• Spinach & cheddar quiche
• Baguette slices with ham, Gruyère cheese, French butter, & cornichon
• Gougère cheese puffs with Parmesan and Pecorino cheeses
• Macarons
Some people shots at this stop:
Third Stop
The house, for Irish Imbibements
Our hosts, John & Mary Beth
Featured Irish beverages:
• Irish coffee with a jigger of Jameson Irish Whiskey and Nana Casey’s secret recipe for sweetness, topped with a dollop of whipped cream
• Guinness beer
• Black Bush Irish Whiskey
• Writers’ Tears Irish Whiskey
Artifacts
• Statue of St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland
• A piece of crochet from Mary Beth’s grandma
• Photos in remembrance of family now gone: both sets of parents; John’s brother, Tom; John’s great-grandmother, Nana Casey (of the secret-Irish-Coffee-sweetness-recipe fame)
• Books related to Ireland, among other items
Some people shots at this stop:
Fourth Stop
The house, for Mexican Mixers
Our host, Amy
Amy’s co-host, Neal, provided the food
Featured Mexican cocktails:
• Palomas: tequila, grapefruit juice, sparking water, lime juice, coarse sea salt
• Champagne for the midnight toast (full disclosure: not Mexican)
Featured Mexican snacks:
• Crema de garbanzo con cilantro y jalapeños asado acompañado de zanahorias, apio y pimientos morrones
• Rugelach de chocolate mexicano y nuez pacana & Rugelach de queso fresco ahumado y jalapeño asado
• Pastel de tres leches
Sheets of paper were available to write on with “Sh*t you don’t want to take into 2026” and burn in the fire pit before midnight. Some example sh*t people wanted to jettison:
The accumulation of liquid courage across 4 hours and 4 homes brought the socializing to a peak during this final hour of 2025!
Ending up with the countdown on TV and a champagne toast at midnight.
And if there was any doubt that fun was had by all, a look at Amy’s kitchen at the end of the night!
Thanks to all who hosted our four stops this year and your enthusiastic and generous hospitality!
After this second one of these neighborhood progressive cocktail parties, it’s obvious it’s a great way to spend New Year’s Eve. In fact, I recently wrote three 50-word stories about some advantages of spending New Year’s Eve this way:
Our friends Dana and Finley have been hosting zombie-themed Halloween parties for almost 2 decades! Their invitation said: “If you don’t have a zombie costume, it’s easy to ‘zombify’ a costume you do have.”
That’s “Peg” with us — a $5 find at the Dollar Tree — and the inspiration for our make-up.
And two fun foods at the party:
Putting the finger in finger food
Feet loaf!
Epilogue:FTR, this stuff was an absolute bitch to remove:
With the white and black smearing together into a bluish-gray color during removal, we’d’ve been a hit joining other blue hairs at K&W for a 4:30 dinner. A lot of this, with a multiple applications, was involved in the removal:
“When a banana is bruised, cut, or peeled, enzymes trigger a chemical cascade that ends in melanin, the same pigment that colors human hair. Those brown patches are technically harmless, but they’re responsible for throwing away nearly one-third of all bananas grown worldwide — roughly 5 billion bananas in the U.S. alone every year.”Read the entire article.
On the surface this seems like good news, but I rely on those black spots to inform me about how tasty a banana is. And when it comes to that, I’m a “13 kind of guy.” My husband is a “7 or 8 kind of guy.” What about you?
And I can’t think of that without remembering February 21, 2016, when I was still working and my husband made my lunch every day.
He knows how I like my bananas, but we didn’t have any ripe ones so he DIYed one up and put it in my lunch bag. Imagine my surprise when I opened it:
Next weekend, we embark on the New England & Canada BearCruise:
and Bob and I hosted a meet and greet for the Raleigh guys going on the trip.
(from l-r): Bob, Steve, Chad, Ben, Al, John, Brent, Ken, & Cronin. We also invited our neighbors Jeff & Brian (not pictured) who are considering a future BearCruise.
Bob decorated the walls for the event!
Brent bought everyone a door magnet that says, “Warning. We bought the drink package,” and Bob and I bought a bear paw with our names on it — before we learned that NCL doesn’t allow door decorations per item 36.
Long-time friends:
And the meet and greet hosts (yours trulies):
I wish my eyes squinted even more when I smile or laugh. NOT.
The potluck food:
Food included: 7-layer taco dip w/Tostito Scoops, pasta salad, chicken wings, ham-delight sandwiches, deviled eggs, castrated church brownies (no nuts & no weed), and chocolate chip walnut cookies.
Complete, but important aside: See that little line of tinfoil toward the front end of the taco dip? The portion closest to the camera is for me. It’s actually a 6-layer taco salad that Bob makes for me, because I don’t like beans! (Can you say, “Princess?” I know I’m spoiled!)
The open bar flowed and after dinner, all of us sat out on our deck to continue our cocktails and conversations while enjoying the beautiful weather.
Every other month or so, Bob & I (in Raleigh) have a Zoom-call happy hour with Bob’s brother Jimmy and his wife Cindy (in Scottsdale), just to catch up.
For it, we each make an “agenda” to keep the meeting moving and to cover everything that’s on our collective minds.
We were texting recently and the subject of scallops came up, and Cindy requested that we add that to the agenda.
We buy Patagonian scallops from Publix whenever they’re BOGO, which means we get one $19.50 bag like this one for free.
In preparation for our call, I did a search on “scallops” in all of our meal menus since January 1, 2024, to refresh our memories of all ways we’ve cooked them — and by “we,” I mean Bob, because I don’t cook. This is what we found:
I know some of you have been wondering what’s currently in our freezers to inform our weekly dinner menu planning and our weekly grocery shopping list.
Our dear (and generous) friend got us a gift card to Sullivan’s Steakhouse for Christmas, and we used it tonight for cocktails and appetizers at their bar. [Click photos to enlarge.]
Savor, a company in Batavia, Illinois, makes butter from carbon and hydrogen with no agriculture whatsoever. The butter looks, smells, and tastes like real butter but without the farmland, fertilizer, or emissions tied to the typical process.
The company expects its products to be available on shelves for the average consumer by around 2027. Savor is backed by billionaire Bill Gates, who says lab-made fats and oils have an immense potential to significantly reduce humans’ carbon footprint.
In between finishing Danube riverboat cruise blog posts (me) and catching up on the laundry and mowing (Bob), we’re getting “back in the saddle” after someone else having meal planned and cook for us for 11 days. I know Bob appreciated the break.
Thanks to him for preparing next week’s menus. We are good to go for the week!
Excursion description: Architecture from across the centuries shines a light on the history of the Hungarian capital. Originally two separate cities, Buda to the west and Pest to the east offer incredibly different views on the culture of one of the liveliest cities in Eastern Europe. Today, you’ll have the opportunity to explore the city during a guided tour, including Heroes’ Square and the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Andrássy Avenue and Buda Castle District.
These brilliant devices were provided in our cabins, which you use during the walking tours to be able to hear your guides without everyone having to crowd around them.
We loved our tour guide — “You can call me Charlotte,” she said. She’s in the purple dress in the last picture in this set. A few of my favorite things of this outing:
The Hilton Budapest was built with the assistance of Zsa Zsa Gabor, who convinced the communist dictator to allow the Hilton company to build the first Hilton in the Eastern Bloc.
Our tour guide said she checked on where the most expensive bottle of champagne in Budapest can be bought, and it was in the restaurant of this Hilton – a $3,000 bottle.
Us with scary-customed man at the Buda Castle
Our tour guide called the lady who collects your payment to use these toilets “The Dragon Lady”
Late afternoon, we had a “Captain’s Reception” and then our “Port Talk,” which is when they tell you about the next port and everything going on there.
During the captain’s reception, we enjoyed champagne with an amuse bouche, and I treated myself with a change from bourbon and sodas to a treat from the Vodka Cocktail Collection. We had the most expensive, so all-inclusive drink package, so why not?
We had a most delightful dinner, sharing a table with new friends, Daniel & Michael. They’re from Seattle and they’re the first people we’ve met who create a list of dinner menus for the week like we do.
Each night for dinner, there is the full menu, along with a “chef’s recommendation” menu:
Bob and I both chose the chef’s recommendation this evening:
Mushroom & vegetable tartar
Lobster bisque
Passion fruit sorbet
Slow-roasted pork tenderloin & mushroom espuma
Glazed chocolate dome & amarena cherries
After dinner there was a “Name That Tune” game that I didn’t participate in, but Bob did. There were 3 parts to the game with the emcee playing a clip of music each time.
First round: You had to identify the song title and the artist (or band). Second round: You had to identify a song that was being played backward. Third round: You had to say if the song played sold more or fewer than 10 million records.
Bob’s team won, and they were presented a free bottle of spirits and some chocolate.
Today’s the day when our pre-cruise stay ended and we boarded the Emerald Star riverboat. We boarded just before 11
and had to wait until 12:30 for our embarkation lunch.
Our cabins were projected to be ready around 2, but were ready earlier. We have a Panoramic Balcony Suite whose highlight is a floor-to-ceiling window that slides down opening it up to the outside. Home sweet home for the next 7 days.
Our cabin (the top half of the window slides down)
Our cabin
Our cabin
After the captain’s welcome, we had dinner. Typically we get 2 menus, one is the full menu and the other one contains the “captain’s recommendation” from the full choices. I forgot to grab a copy of the full menu, but here’s the captain’s recommendation one, which both Bob and I had.
After dinner, we were treated to a Hungarian Folklore Music & Dancing show. Of course, for our group of about 40 gay men, most eyes were on the male dancers.
and we ended the evening with our riverboat staying in Budapest and cruising around the Danube, which was stunning at night.
7 of us from Raleigh — Al, Ken, Susan, Peyton, Kayo, Bob and I — met for happy hour at a nearby pub called Belgian Brasseire,
which had an incredible (meaning pages and pages) of beer selections.
We had 3 or 4 (or 5 or 6) rounds of spirits. Bob and I drank Maker’s Mark on the rocks, and the rest of the group had beer.
We went our separate ways for dinner, and Bob and I ate at a place called Corvin Gastropub, which we thoroughly enjoyed
Corvin burger menu
Corvin bourbon menu
and we had the Corvin burger, which came with fries, and which was delicious.
Corvin burger and fries
If you’ve traveled in Europe you probably know how hard it is to get some ice in drinks without asking for it, and asking for a lot of it. So imagine our surprise when this cute little bucket of ice with giant-sized ice cubes was delivered with our high balls!
Bourbon and ice!
In my defense, I did say to our server (who was great) that, “We’re Americans so you know we like a lot of ice.” Bless her.
Corvin Coffee & Bistro
Corvin Heritage House
Corvin Square
As we ate, I noticed that the businesses around the gastropub all had Corvin in their names, and I asked our server if one person (named Corvin?) owned all of these businesses, to which she laughed and said, “No it’s the name of the square here and he was a king.”
At the Monastery Boutique Hotel in Budapest, where we’re staying for two nights before we board the Emerald Star for our Danube riverboat cruise, we grabbed an hour-or-so nap upon arrival, and then we had a most delicious dinner in Umo, one of the two restaurants associated with the hotel.
John, Al, Ken, & Bob at dinner
Carlos, who was just adorable, was our server, and when we asked him where he was from he said, “A small city near Mexico City.”
And when we asked him what brought him from Mexico to Budapest, he said, “I came over with a person.” Since any straight guy would have said something like, “I followed my girlfriend here,” we assumed he was on “our team.” And then he added, “But we’re no longer together,” which drew a collective, “Awww” from all of us.
This place had fantastic food.
The menu:
Arepa menu
Starters
Entrees
Bob’s and my choices:
Arepita de chicharron
Shrimps, bananas: Layered bananas & parmesan cheese topped with shrimp
At Costco this morning, a man had a cart with 10 25-lbs of fine granulated sugar and 6 18-packs of bottled water.
Of course, the wheels in my head started immediately spinning to answer the question: “Is there anything you can make with just sugar and water?” So I took it to ChatGPT:
With just sugar and water, you can create a few things, including:
Simple Syrup: This is made by dissolving equal parts sugar and water, typically by heating the water and stirring in the sugar until completely dissolved. It’s a versatile liquid sweetener used in:
Cocktails
Sweetening coffees or teas
Making lemonades or other fruit beverages
Moistening cakes or pastries
Creating sorbets or granitas
Rock Candy: You can grow rock candy crystals by creating a supersaturated sugar solution (dissolving more sugar in water than it can usually hold at room temperature by heating it), then letting the solution cool. As it cools, the sugar molecules will crystallize onto a string or stick placed in the solution.
Hard Candy: By boiling a sugar and water mixture to a high temperature (hard crack stage), then pouring it into molds or onto a prepared surface, you can create hard candy. Note that some recipes for hard candy may include additional ingredients like corn syrup.
Science Experiments: Sugar and water can be used for interesting science experiments, such as demonstrating density. By creating solutions with varying amounts of sugar, you can layer them in a glass to create a colorful “rainbow” effect.
My friend sent me this image saying, “7’s for me. Is it 12 or 13 for you?”
She’s not wrong:
She’s a lot like Bob (my husband); he picked #8.
To me, 12, 13 & 14 are great.
13 looks perfect to slice and put atop some cereal that could use a little natural sweetener.
14 would be good mixed in some vanilla ice cream.
And 15 is approaching one that we’d put in the freezer for when Bob makes my annual Best. Ever. Banana. Cake.
This reminds me, Bob knows me so well that one time when I was still working, I wanted a banana for lunch, but he knew the ones we had weren’t ripe enough for me, so he doctored one up with a Sharpie and packed it in my lunch.
We got a bad watermelon at Publix yesterday, and I took a picture of it, along with its receipt, back to get a replacement one.
When I showed the picture to the customer service attendant, she said, “Ewwww! That’s nasty! Go get another one right now.”
When I brought the replacement one up to her, she said, “I’m sorry you had to run back here for this. I know when I open some fresh fruit, I want it to look good — not like that!”
I said, “Well, you had no way of knowing what the inside looked like, either, and I appreciate being able to exchange it for another one.”
Recently, “The Flintstone’s purple pet” was a clue in one of the crossword puzzles I do. I hadn’t thought of Dino in a good long while.
Then lo and behold, yesterday at the grocery store, I saw these chunks of chicken.
So many questions… not the least of which is: “Why is that dinosaur on the package green, and are they purple on the inside at least?” And just in terms of making them at all: “Why??? It seems very, very arbitrary to me.”
Why yes, we do keep an inventory of what’s in our freezers, which informs our weekly menus and helps prevent waste. You know you want a snapshot of what’s in each of them at the moment.
In my recent reading of The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars, I learned that before there were machines to produce Hershey’s Kisses, the line-people (almost always women) in the factory had to lay that little strip of paper (the “plume”) down on the foil, put the chocolate on it, and then wrap it.
But sometimes the plume blew away before they could set the chocolate on it and wrap it. Because it happened enough, and because there was a lot of pressure to maximize their productivity, the women sometimes licked the chocolate and stuck the plume to it to keep it from blowing away before they could wrap it.
Reading that caused me to muse about, realistically, how important that plume is to the consumer. Please take this brief survey to let us know.
XRobotics’ countertop robot, xPizza Cube, can make up to 100 pizzas an hour. Roughly the size of a stackable washing machine, the xPizza Cube can be retrofitted to work with pies of different sizes and styles.
A unit can be leased for $1,300 a month for three years. XRobotics recently raised a $2.5 million seed round – it will use the capital to produce more units and install more robots for customers.
I was cleaning out some of my dad’s papers — he died coming up on 10 years ago — and I found 8 copies of this recipe, about which Bob quipped, “Looks like he couldn’t give them away.”
Bob toiled making The Best Million Dollar Spaghetti recipe from allrecipes.com, which caught my attention because it made me think of my favorite dish from K&W Cafeteria, when it was open at The Village District (née Cameron Village), and where we used to have dinner a couple of times a month. (Bob’s favorite dish there was their liver and onions.)
There is no way this dish couldn’t be out of this world with its “cottage cheese, cream cheese, and sour cream mixture for a decadent, cream spaghetti sauce.” Oh yeah, there’s a ½ cup of butter in it, too!
We had Portuguese rolls for a crusty bread with it and Bob’s homemade fruit salad as a dessert.
“Lab-grown chocolate could rival traditional chocolate in several ways. The process can grow cells that multiply swiftly and mature within a week, as opposed to the six to eight months usually required for a conventional cocoa crop. The resulting product can also contain higher levels of health-promoting chemicals and fewer contaminants such as heavy metals or pesticides. The price of cocoa is skyrocketing as the industry deals with drought and other problems.” Source: TLDR. (2025, April 23). TLDR Newsletter.
On Saturday morning, I set out on an 8-day drive. Oh sorry, did I say 8-day? I meant 8-hour.
After about 2 hours, making my first stop — at the Welcome to Virginia rest stop — I took a minute to lay out the “snacks and lunch” my husband packed for me, which included two most delicious homemade sausage biscuits.
We feel very blessed to be able to eat the purported delicious Hooters’ wings without being subjected to the “flesh flash.” And bonus, these were BOGO at Publix.
We had dinner with our friends Sherry and Fred at Baby Kay’s Cajun Kitchen in Mesa, AZ. John and Sherry met on an ambassadorial trip in October of 2008 to Beijing, Guilin, and Shanghai. We don’t see each other #IRL often, but like this time, it’s always a great visit.
My husband’s brother, Tommy, celebrated his 75th birthday, and we flew in to attend a surprise party for him. His brother Jimmy and his wife Cindy hosted the gala, and I met a nephew for the first time who also flew in for the occasion. Bob made the birthday cake.
We met grade-school friends of my husband for lunch one day. I was Facebook friends with one of them, so it was great to meet her in person. Bob and I enjoyed a bruschetta board, which was fantastic — second only to the company we enjoyed dining al fresco at Postino’s.
(Tommy’s 75th surprise birthday party @ Cindy & Jimmy’s in Scottsdale)
• Catered sandwich platters (roast beef, turkey, & ham on white bread and tuna on croissants)
• Cindy-made salads: one curried sweet potatoes & other veggies, one broccoli & other veggies)
• Bob’s Best. Ever. Banana. Cake. (among other desserts like brownies & lemon bars)
Our neighborhood has an annual chili party that’s been going on for more than 25 years. It has a theme each year, and medals are awarded for 1st, 2nd, & 3rd place in each category of meat and vegetarian. They also added a category for cornbread this year!
This year’s theme was Dune: The Spice Must Flow, and Bob made an Irish chili, and named it “Howya Dune?” And he won 3rd place in the meat category!
This is his third 3rd place medal in 15 years:
And noticing that they’re in 5-year intervals, he wrote this haiku about the feat:
Third place chili thrice
They were each 5 years apart
Twenty-thirty next
Capturing for posterity:
The 2015 theme was “Eat Local Chili” and Bob’s chili was named: “Bob’s Beanless Batch.” (Context: I don’t like beans, so Bob made the bold choice to make his entry this year without them.)
The 2020 theme was “Passport to Chili” and Bob’s chili was named: “PORCH-uguese Chile.” (Context: The chili entries in crockpots are set up on tables on the Watkins’ wraparound porch, and John is half Portuguese.)
The 2025 theme was “Dune: The Spice Must Flow” and Bob’s chili was named “Howya Dune?” (Context: Bob is part Irish and “Howya?” is how Irish people say “How are you?” and “Dune” of course is intimating “doing.”)
I’m proud of what a great and dedicated cook Bob is, and I’m thrilled when he’s recognized by others for his efforts. Congratulations, Bob!
We got one of Costco’s 10-lb spiral ham when it was on sale for $10 off — marked down from $25 to $15.
Bob made some delicious ham salad from some of it, and for lunch today, he prepared some romaine lettuce to make ham salad lettuce wraps with. So good.
This is a snapshot of the current “freezers inventory,” which Bob uses to inform our menus for the upcoming week. We have a standalone upright freezer (denoted as ↓) and the regular freezer that’s part of our refrigerator (denoted as ↑).
It’s the 10-year anniversary of Bob making some kind of heart-shaped food on Valentine’s Day each year. He might have done it before 2015, but that’s the year I came into the picture and started documenting them.
~Friday~ On Tuesday, I qualified for today’s taste test at the NC State Sensory Service Center, and after indicating my top 3 choices for time and date, I was assigned today at 10:40.
If you want to get on their list to qualify for future taste tests—and get paid for them!—register at Become a Taster.
Ha. Just looked back at that sour cream one, and I’d forgotten about having to wear a mask and nose clip for one part of it!
Back to today’s coffee-tasting test…
As has been the case in the past, I over-think these things with too much consideration of the language used in the question, worrying that’s it not clear and concise enough to guarantee responses that will lead to reliable data from which to draw conclusions. I know, “Not my circus. Not my monkeys. Not my circus. Not my monkeys. Not my circus. Not my monkeys.”
When I checked in, the proctor said to me, “In the survey you filled out to qualify for today’s test, you indicated that you drink your coffee black, so please do that today.”
I took a seat and logged in on the iPad, brought up the first screen, and asked for coffee sample 382, the first of 3 coffees I’d taste in the next 20 minutes, before collecting my $20 Target gift card.
Here’s what the first one looked like when it arrived.
Here is the first page of the questionnaire:
The problem I have (and you know I have at least one) with these two questions is that having only read the first question, I based my answer solely on the color, since that’s what came to mind when I read “appearance.”
So, of course I’m taken aback when I get to the second question and it asks me what I think of the color. After answering it the same way I orginally answered the first question, I go back to the first one, and I think, “Hmmm. What else could they mean by ‘appearance’ other than the color? Do they mean the choice of a Styrofoam cup to serve it in? Or the amount they’ve poured in said cup? Or maybe I’m supposed to indicate how I feel about those little bubbles around the edge of the coffee against said cup?”
Why not define what they mean by appearance so that everyone is using the same criteria to answer the question? Just a thought.
After tapping “Next,” this screen comes up, which immediately elicits questions for me:
Of course, I’m totally not expecting this screen because of what the proctor said to me when she checked me in. My first thought is, “Oh, is it okay to put in additives now that I’ve answered those first two questions? Or am I supposed to ignore this screen (i.e., check “None”), because I said I drink it black?”
This seems like an easy thing to fix to preclude the “noise” that just went through my head, and probably will go through many of the testers’ heads during the course of this testing. Change the question to something like, “If you didn’t indicate you drink your coffee black, from the provided additives, What if any, did you add to your coffee?” Just a thought.
I have a couple of problems with these questions:
First of all, I’m pretty sure “mouthfeel” isn’t a real word. And although I get that it’s easy to deduce what it means, I would argue that the test administrators should provide a definition of the word to ensure that everyone is interpreting it the same way.
As for the bitterness questions, I find it unnerving that both questions are the exact same, with only the choices of answers differing between them.
That aside, this is what goes through my mind trying to answer that first one:
“Okay, I don’t think it’s bitter, so how should I answer this?”
“If I like bitter coffee, and this tastes bitter, then do I select one of the ‘Like..’ options? Does that make sense?”
“Or if I don’t like bitter coffee, and this tastes bitter, then do I select one of the ‘Dislike..’ options? Does that make sense?”
“Okay, I don’t like bitter coffee, and this doesn’t taste bitter, so how do I indicate that? Do I ‘Like’ it?
“I’m going to select, ‘Neither like nor dislike,’ but I’m not sure that that indicates how I actually feel about the nonexistent bitterness.”
There were only a few other questions, about which I don’t have any complaints. I know, right??? One of them was, “Did you notice any aftertaste after drinking this coffee?”
You get 30 seconds between samples to “clear your palate,” for which water and a saltine cracker is provided, along with a timer.
