Posts by Stephen Judd
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its like turning up to a wine tasting with Marque Vue.
Kind of. But if you really like Marque Vue, and those poor saps are paying $100 a bottle, who's getting value for money?
I am a ferocious coffee snob but I freely acknowledge I'm taking it past reasonable levels. Also, if you give me a nice cup by your standards, I will take it happily. Only rude people turn their nose up at what they're offered.
It's not a question of inadequacy. It's about whether you get a kick out of your investment. I like the taste of my home-roasted beans, I am confident that the kit I use to brew gets the best out of them, and the savings over cafe coffee please me, but if you really like Nescafe Gold, I'm sure I do you no favour convincing you otherwise.
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Rachel: it's hard to say. Realistically, you can't get a great shot from the uneven grind of a blade grinder. On the other hand, ground coffee loses aroma in minutes. I reckon you'd probably get more consistent shots with pre-ground. But in any event, if you are a dedicated coffee snob, with your current setup you will never be able to get espresso as good as what a cafe can make.
But... Since I gave up wine snobbery, I've been quite happy buying cheap plonk. If you like hot bitter drinks with caffeine and milk, what you are making now may be more than satisfactory. I don't mean that jokingly either. Cultivating connoisseurship beyond what you already like is making a rod for your own back.
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The cost of one or two espressos per day at cafe prices easily pays for a nice machine + grinder over a couple of years...
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Seriously. Get out more. That's scary.
But Kyle, once you've got the best coffee ever happening at home, why would you want to?
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it's sad for the media when truth gets in the way of a good story
Yeah, I thought the editorial spin in the DomPost was a bit off too.
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Apropos grinders: the "Mini Macho" that L'Affare sells is a rebadged La Pavoni and probably the cheapest acceptable burr grinder for espresso out there at around $300. But you can spend two or three times that for a noticeable improvement.
If you're making plunger or filter coffee the sub $100 low-end burr grinders are perfectly ok. But it makes no sense if you have a quality espresso machine to put uneven grounds in the basket. Espresso machines are very, very fussy.
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The only shoes I own which have persistently drawn favourable comment are Camper pelota shoes. I love them because they have no heel and very flexible soles (good for your back and your gait), and soft leather uppers (leather = acceptably formal, soft = stretches to fit feet). They also look quite nice in a non-descript sort of way. I am on to my second pair and intend to buy replacements as long as they are available.
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Argh, the perennial uniform debate.
My secondary school, Fairfield College in Hamilton, did not have uniform. It wasn't quite as idyllic as the situation Dyan describes -- I remember someone being sent home for wearing the Young Ones tshirt that had the slogan "never mind the Sex Pistols, here's our bollocks", disputes over mohawks and jewellery -- but it was certainly a reasonable environment. If you wanted to wear a zippered, safety-pinned, tornup punk costume, you could. There was bullying, as I suspect there is everywhere, but it never reached the depths I've seen recounted in this thread.
I do recall a clique of girls who took upon themselves to catalogue and rate people based on what brands of clothing they wore, but I don't doubt that in a uniformed school, they would have found some other way to exercise queen-bee cruelty, and anyway, the punk/alt crowd didn't care about them.
As it was by 14 or 15 I developed a taste for loud shirts and army surplus and gave not a fig for fashion, and found this cheap and satisfying. One guy a year ahead of me earned great fame for his purple suit (I think his mum helped him sew it). I remember another winklepickered dandy (it was the 80s) bemoaning that fact that girls had all the best shoes... and he was liked and respected.
My daughter's primary school had a uniform. It was a pain in the arse. We were always running out of clean uniform clothes. The uniform was not a nice colour, and the quality of the manufacture left much to be desired. I would far have preferred mufti. I personally regard uniform as a relic of imperial militarism that we should be shot of. I reckon it causes more strife than it prevents.
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The last time I brought this up with some Americans they told me it was a consequence of the lack of whipping in Congress. Instead of the stick (whipping) you have the carrot (stuffing the legislator's favourite thing into an unrelated bill).
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One of the things that struck my mother when she emigrated here in 1950 was that children went barefoot everywhere, unlike in England. This horrified my maternal grandmother: as far as she was concerned, shoelessness could only mean you were too poor to afford shoes.
Luckily she got over it by the 70s so we did in fact go barefoot most of the summer. I clearly remember that we wore roman sandals to school but took them off at the first opportunity. Lost shoes were a perennial problem.
I'd quite like a pair of roman sandals for this summer, which I will wear in ironic hipster homage to my intermediate school uniform...