Espresso machines

chrisk said:
The rat has surfaced ...........

100 bikes is fair, but, how many horses does a girl need ......... really.
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the thing I have learnt in my short 45 years on this planet, there is no rhyme or reason to understand a woman, Im happy Im allowed 100 bikes if I could afford them, which means a bigger shed and a whole host of extra toys and tools that would go with such an amount of bikes , but I think my wife works on a floating X scale of X ( x being the number of a particular item you have)  + what ever variable she feels like which normally starts at X + 30 for pairs of shoes, but could be as little as X-10 for enthusiasm in the kitchen. Horses I dont know , but I would hazard a guess at X + 10 at the minimum.
My day to day life is full of these calculations, at which I guess mostly, frequently Im wrong, but then I suppose we are all used to that. Im just lucky I can work toward the 100 bike mark without fear of divorce
 
The law of ( x + 1 ) I am sure applies to kitchen gadgets & appliances. We have friends whose kitchen looks like they are applying a law of ( x + 10 ) ; every time we go there it seems as if another couple of linear feet of counter space has been taken over by a new gadget / appliance.

BUT I am building a new garage for all things vehicular so the existing garage can be used to park " normal " cars so am readily applying ( x + 1 ).

The independent SAAB shop I used to use in San Francisco had a classic espresso machine ( pre Nespresso days by a couple of decades )  . I swear it made one of the best cups of coffee I have ever had. They moved when an Internet start up offered their landlord silly money for a lease ; I asked if I could inherit the espresso machine as a long standing customer but the son of one of the owners nabbed it.

My wife occasionally talks about us buying a roaster but that discussion has not come up for a while. She drinks one cup a day....
 
La San Marco made some of the coolest espresso machines, my favourite is the Disco Volante, however you guys may like this one, Its made by La San Marco, its nicknamed the Lollabrigida, its based on the famous actress's figure, she actually opened the first  shop that sold  , modern  Italian espresso  in London on Frith street in 1953.  The reason its based on her, are the curves of the machine , Im sure with little or no imagination especially in quarantine times, you can see a well endowed chest, waist and hips in the machine, they match her real life curves, it was made in 1955. One of the most sought after machines out there . The coffee is extracted by a piston forcing water through the ground coffee. You pull the lever down, the piston rises in its chamber and lest the correct amount of water into the chamber, as you ease the lever up, the piston lowers and forces the water through the coffee. The springs on these levers are quite fierce, normally its a larger spring about 18cm high, say with 6mm OD wire making the coil, and a smaller spring on the inside. If you aren't careful when you ease the lever up , you can break your teeth if your mouth is anywhere near the lever , and it has happened several times that I have seen. espresso machines typically sit on high benches, and when the lever is down on a lever machine, its just about chin height.
 

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sonomalaverda said:
The law of ( x + 1 ) I am sure applies to kitchen gadgets & appliances. We have friends whose kitchen looks like they are applying a law of ( x + 10 ) ; every time we go there it seems as if another couple of linear feet of counter space has been taken over by a new gadget / appliance.

BUT I am building a new garage for all things vehicular so the existing garage can be used to park " normal " cars so am readily applying ( x + 1 ).

The independent SAAB shop I used to use in San Francisco had a classic espresso machine ( pre Nespresso days by a couple of decades )  . I swear it made one of the best cups of coffee I have ever had. They moved when an Internet start up offered their landlord silly money for a lease ; I asked if I could inherit the espresso machine as a long standing customer but the son of one of the owners nabbed it.

My wife occasionally talks about us buying a roaster but that discussion has not come up for a while. She drinks one cup a day....
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Roasters are pretty expensive if you want to make money out of it, but you can get some cool " batch roasters" that we use for test roasting coffee beans, that don't look out of place in a home if you had the space. Theres a Turkish brand called Toper , who do a pretty neat little economical roaster you can get world wide, they do them in 220 volt and 110 volt.

Keep it up on the X- Variable, maybe see if you can get away with larger variable numbers !
 
I remember my Dad going into Soho when I was a kid.
Only place we found decent coffee in London in the 60s.
I when I say decent, that's a very relative statement.

Paul
 
Yogi said:
Do you offer any correspondence courses for wives to undertake - I?d like 100 bikes.


Yogi
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The secret is: if you can afford the 100 bikes without the wife (and the kids if they are young) "suffering" any shortage of shoes, handbags, vacation, foot, ATTENTION, you can have what ever you want.

Barely though you will find someone wealthy enough and still have the time to pay ATTENTION to the wife, to afford all that...

At least that is the compromize I did with my wife. Oh - and any time she asks me to sell one of my bikes, I ask back to sell one of hers... (she only has one, her Vespa PX80E which she ownes from new, never rides it but asks me to keep it in good shape, with T?V etc....).

Maybe we should open a threat: Wife's most common husbands toys related concerns - and how to deal with it...

could be either very short or one of the loooooongest threats ever...  :D
 
Paul Marx said:
I remeber my Dad going into Soho when I was a kid.
Only place we found decent coffee in London in the 60s.
I when I say decent, that's a very relative statement.

Paul
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There were times I remember where tea in London was stronger than coffey...
 
Laverdalothar said:
There were times I remember where tea in London was stronger than coffey...
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You should have gone to Soho.
You could have got coffee and gonorhea. Great times.

There is however only one country for coffee, that's Italy.
Even with an Italian coffe machine in foreign lands, it isn't good.

Paul
 
Bought French ground coffee is awful,second only to Greek, however french cafes somehow serve good coffee in the main. Tescos Italian ground is still the best option over here. Every now and then I go back to beans and regret it.
 
Tippie said:
"There is however only one country for coffee, that's Italy."
Used to be but not any more, the world has caught up, fortunately.
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I haven't found the world yet.

I live in a coffee country, the worlds first tourist destination, or it was, foreigners like the coffee served in France.

It's crap.

Not for nothing that Italians gauge the decree of civilisation of a society by its coffee tastes.

Paul

Paul
 
And I love the two little espresso cups branded " Cafe Paulista " ! Growing up in Italy as a kid I remember well their adverts and their jingles.

I think the main reason coffee and pasta taste better in Italy than anywhere else ( apart from " mood " ) is that the water is different. I have literally cooked pasta in Milan and taken the same pasta, tomatoes and parmigiano and oil and salt etc to London and cooked the same dish exactly the same way and it tastes different.

When show horses travel internationally, often hundreds of gallons of water goes with them....years ago I saw an interview with the Italian team competing in London and they explained this.
 
Apparently, the British in camper vans on the Continent also have water for tea.
I can say that even with the same tea, it doesn't taste the same over here as in the UK.

Paul
 
"Atomic machines are awesome.  Pity they don?t make them any more.  Although a young aussie fella developed a stainless version some years back. They run north of 600 dollars if you can get one  "

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Cuba-Atomic-Espresso-Coffee-Maker-Original-Stovetop-C1945-Sears-Roe/184257461436
 
LJ-2 said:
"Atomic machines are awesome.  Pity they don?t make them any more.  Although a young aussie fella developed a stainless version some years back. They run north of 600 dollars if you can get one  "

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Cuba-Atomic-Espresso-Coffee-Maker-Original-Stovetop-C1945-Sears-Roe/184257461436
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Brilliant !
 
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