around the house

Calendar from Little Canoe

While I don't think these pictures are particularly flattering to this little space in my apartment (I don't think there is a flattering way to capture the apartment, so that might just be a moot point) I did want to share a couple pictures of my new calendar!  I haven't had a calendar in years but when I saw this one in a post from the Skunkboy Blog I knew I actually wanted one!  Each month has these wonderful illustrations of vegetables that are in season.

Taking these pictures also forced me to clean up my little shrine to coffee.  I pared down the knick knacks on top of the shelf and cleaned up the ones that were staying.  That probably hasn't been done in about a year.  Oops! 

espresso explosion

The other morning the saddest thing happened.

There were a number of things that went into this catastrophe: We're in the process of moving, so we didn't have a coffee grinder. So we ground our coffee at the store when we got it, putting it on the espresso grind. Then we put it in the freezer when we got home. I'm pretty sure what happened was that it was ground too fine (take that espresso setting on the store grinder!) then frozen, so the too small grounds clogged the filter then expanded/made more steam when they got hot.


All that to say that there was an espresso explosion the other morning. I almost cried as I was cleaning it up, but only because it was first thing in the morning, all I wanted was coffee, and there I was sopping up coffee grounds.


Aaaand this is the entire scene. Can you see how far that thing flew? If not I drew an arrow in to make it really obvious.

Happily the espresso maker isn't broken! I apprehensively made a shot of espresso yesterday (using our new grinder) and it turned out fine. Then I poured the espresso over ice and made an iced americano. Delicious.

espressos, cappuccinos, americanos, lattes...

This is the newest addition to our household's coffee brewing devices: an espresso maker!

It's not quite as epic and sinister looking as I lead you to believe.

The past couple days I've been pretty consistently giddy, so it's probably not surprising (at least I'm not surprised) that I got so excited about finding an espresso maker at the Goodwill today. Me and (let's skip the whole initials thing and just call him by his name) Don were wandering around the Goodwill when we found not one, but two espresso makers for three dollars each. After finding a book about espresso making as well, and deliberating for a while on the knowledge gleaned from some quick reading, this is the one we chose. When we got home I immediately went town cleaning it up. It was pretty dingy looking before.

Now, neither of us has ever used an espresso maker.


So this is the first cup of espresso I've ever made! Slightly silty, but still tasty. However, I'm not sure if someone who knew what they were doing would agree with me. I think that I'm going to be over caffeinated for a while because all I want to do is make cup after cup to perfect the skill.

I'm also kind of afraid of the milk steamer. I want to learn how to use it but figure I'll learn how to make decent espresso first THEN try steaming milk. Let's not get carried away here.