Sunday, November 21, 2004


various small tasks and brian eno

today was a chilly day that constantly threatened to drizzle, leaving me with some time to catch up on various tasks -- calibrate the instant-read thermometer, polish the ice, make james' blue bottle 13-days-old-and-so-rather-elderly giant steps blend in the vac pot -- stuff like that.

calibrating the instant-read thermometer was kind of a hoot. even the little US$10 ones have a small nut under the dialface that allows you to adjust them. i'd noticed lately mine seemed off by a lot, maybe more than 10 degreees.

so i summoned mr. right who produced this strange assortment of wacky mini hex wrenchies, i mean tiny, like for some kind of doll mechanic's shop -- where do guys get this stuff? and further, where had he been hiding it in our bklyn apartment? -- and we began attempting to calibrate the thermometer by holding it in a large copper mauviel pot of roiling, boiling water.

yup, the thing was off by 15 degrees. so i'm holding the gizmo in the water with my hand in an oven mitt and mr. right is frantically attempting to make these little turns with his baby wrench as super-hot steam rises everywhere and keeps fogging the dial of the thermometer -- it was almost enough to make me demand a professional thermapen on the spot.

but at last mr. right was successful. and i dashed off to yoga, where we were having a brand-new substitute teacher, one julie, an om-style teacher.

at first i was dubious, but the music for the entire class could have come from my own collection: it was a blissful afternoon of all the brian eno/harold budd/john cale you would want to listen to while standing on your head. way good.

now as for the giant steps -- blue bottle barista steve in the comments of a couple of days ago noted that his bay area customers loved this as drip, which mystifies me. the cafetiére (a.k.a. french press) does a lot for this coffee by intensifying the body.

obviously, working from a cart at a farmer's market means james et. al. probably has to serve this from an airpot, so individual presses for customers are right out. i also personally found the vac pot overemphasized that black-pepper thing, which i'm not sure a lot of customers would find appealing. . .

but it's hard to say, since, as noted above, this coffee is on its last legs, age-wise. it's really not fair to judge its taste when it basically needs an aluminum walker.

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