Wednesday 17 November 2010

Coffee

I've been doing a little bit of a clean up in the kitchen this morning. The oven and the coffee maker are now clean - such annoying but necessary jobs.

I also dug out our coffee percolator which we have largely ignored since we went down the coffee appliance track a few years ago. The only time we use it now is when we go camping or holiday in a self-contained apartment.


I'm going to try to use it more, especially when we have dinner guests or when a crowd drops in.

Anyway, coffee is an extremely important part of our morning ritual, especially when we are woken up by the little one at 5am each morning. Ahh...the coffee hit makes everything seem more optimistic at that hour.

We are not hard-core coffee aficionados, as our coffee machine is basic and we no longer grind our own beans since I gave my old Moulinex grinder away during the great purge of 2009 when we moved house. (I seriously don't know what I was thinking!)

Door Sixteen did a great post on their coffee set-up in their city apartment, so this post is very much inspired by that. I thought it was really interesting to see how other people do coffee at home.


This is our coffee set-up. The old illy tin actually contains Lavazza which is our coffee staple of choice.

I grew up drinking Lavazza - my Italian father used to grind the beans religiously every morning for our morning coffee. We've flirted with other coffee brands - cheaper and more expensive - but always go back to familiar favourites.

The machine is a basic 15 BAR pump variety which produces a nice crema on an espresso and also has a steam nozzle to heat or froth our milk. We also use filtered water to minimise the scale build up in the machine. It's a cleaner taste.

We drink from glass, because they fit well under the machine and are the perfect size for morning latte. Jason takes raw sugar in his coffee, which is contained in a small Georg Jensen sugar bowl.

And my most favourite thing is the set of Robert Welch teaspoons which was given to us as a gift last Christmas.



This particular pattern of cutlery won a Design Council Award in 1965 and is featured in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The people who gave us this gift had no idea of the pedigree of the spoons. They were stunned at my elation and then flattered for having such good taste.

Now tell me, how do you do your coffee, if you drink coffee? Or is tea your brew? I'd love to know.

P.S We are not elitist because we also have a jar of instant in the pantry...caffeine hits are welcomed in any form.

15 comments:

  1. I usually have instant, but I'll have a percolated brew whenever the mood hits me. As I sell heaps of vintage kitchenalia, it'd be remiss of me not to use my Finel pot occasionally!
    www.KittysVintageKitsch.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brismod, we love a good hit of coffee...

    At work I put on an electric drip filter contraption that I fill early and then switch on at 6.30. I love the feel of that hit of cafeine first thing in the morning.

    At home it's a Bialetti stove top percolator that gets a run every Saturday and Sunday.
    MONT has his black, mine's with skim milk and half a teaspoon of raw sugar.

    As for coffee brands and blends, well I buy whatever takes my fancy in the supermarklet or coffee shop...and yep, we have instant in the cupboard too.

    Those teaspoons are seriously nice.!!

    Not sure what's happening today with comments, this is my third attempt to post one...bug in the system I think, or maybe I'm just holding my mouth wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Definitely two cups of plunged Merlo coffee a day. We buy a big bag from the Merlo drive-through at Paddington ... they give you a free coffee at the same time! Cheap, I am.

    I'd love a machine-contraption-thing but I'm the only one who drinks coffee, or tea for that matter, in the house ... so a dinky 80s plunger is the best I can get!

    And tea ... Twinings 'Simply Tea'.

    I wonder when you started drinking coffee? I suspect in European families, drinking tea and coffee begins at a comparatively early age ...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Love, love, love a good coffee (although I'm not so good at frothing the milk). We've got a Sunbeam machine which has served us very well over the past six or so years but I think it's coming to the end of its life. Will hang out, though, till it does truly die.

    ReplyDelete
  5. the apartment i had in paris last year had a nespresso, and i loved it. bought one when we got home. being the only coffee person in the house its great to just hit one button and get a good strong shot in the arm each morning! xx

    ReplyDelete
  6. There's nothing like the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafting through a house!! Love it!! I will have the occasional coffee but am not a huge drinker or it even though I love the smell :) Those teaspoons are lovely.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm a three cup of English Breakfast a day girl. Any tea really. I buy it in boxes of 100. Congrats on the oven clean. I agree it's a job on the serious procrastination list for me.

    ReplyDelete
  8. My kick-start is 2 large cups of good coffee too - filtered. Your pot is a handsome one, and it looks like it was made for the cooker. I wouldn't like to be standing next to your espresso machine if it went off - 15 bar?!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Tea for me! My Mon-Fri morning ritual involves making myself a cup of very strong Yorkshire tea while I make a carafe of coffee for Hubs in our American style drip filter thingy. On the weekends, though, I love a coffee while sitting on the deck with the paper...or with the laptop so I can read blogs!

    Enjoy your morning brew!

    Best wishes,
    Natasha.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I am a 5 am Latte girl. Always a white cup. No deviation on that front.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Though I love the smell of coffee, Ive never been able to acquire a taste for it. I get my morning caffiene in carbonated form - bad, I know.

    ReplyDelete
  12. i have to admit, my espresso machine was THE only thing, other than personal and work stuff, that made the journey to PEI.
    i like organic fair trade beans, medium or dark roast and sometimes a blend of black & tan. grind usually enough for a few days..... vanilla soy milk in the frother...fresh ground cinnamon on top
    o yeah. im in love
    your machine is awesome. you just cant beat a perfect crema!!
    cheers
    ~laura

    ReplyDelete
  13. It surprises me how different our caffeine preferences are!
    MmMC - we were fairly young. I don't remember never having coffee at breakfast time, but it was weak, sweet and milky.
    Tom - I used to be paranoid about it exploding. So far so good though.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Whilst I love the smell of coffee, I am a tea drinker, always have been. Two in the morning and then a few more throughout the day. I drink about 3 coffees a year! Always at a cafe and always with a friend. I don't go to cafe's very often!! I love your teaspoons :)

    ReplyDelete
  15. I wish I liked coffee, but no. I love the idea of it, the smell of it, the ritual of it, but not the taste. This has prevented me from Getting Ahead In Life.

    Your spoons are perfect.

    ReplyDelete

Love to read your comments

Related Posts with Thumbnails