Sunday, April 10, 2005


more girl-world essentials

of course, every skirt carries some things in her marc jacobs bag: lipstick, keys, a mini-hairbrush, a hair clip, a french wallet, a pen, a cell phone, a swiss army knife with tweezers and a wine screw, a silver cupping spoon, the basics of cupping coffee, and after friday, a tds meter.

i now greatly envy genevieve felix for her awesomely stylish black "coffee case," with thermometers, spoons, screwdrivers, little espresso machine wrenches, etc. but clearly she too needs a tds gadget!

unfortunately, these meters just don't seem to come in stylish versions, alas. still it's amazing what's become an urban necessity nowadays, just like your yoga mat.

but considerations of style fall away when we go back to the question of chocolate. last month's traveler had a fantastic article, disguised as a trip to venezuela, on one of my favorite chocolates, el rey, in which it proclaimed the line to be equal in quality to valrhona.

why isn't the march issue on their website yet? hmm?

this made my little heart quite glad, as i've long endured the japes of chocolate-snobs-come-lately who disdain anything but manjari or whatever happens to be the most expensive this week. not that i don't love manjari myself!

actually t&l also seems to have a big chocolate fix lately. . . here and here.

reading this little piece, just as i happened to be passing economy candy yesterday, determined that i would pop in and buy, oh, 2 boxes, one of the apamate, and another of the gran saman. . .

i think the spicy nutiness of the gran saman is a great match for andrew's ecco northern-italian espresso, now 13 days old, but still lovely -- long time readers know i very much enjoy walking along a coffee's lifecycle to see how it changes.

today the espresso seems very hazelnut in character, still low-toned, heavy, and sweet. it's still producing an astonishing amount of crema, with lots of roiling "guinness effect" in every shot.

oops! that's the timer -- gotta go fold the pizza dough and make some sauce. . .

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