Monday, January 02, 2006


rainy winter day

so i spent this afternoon sipping americanos made from andrew b's ecco prize-winning super-premium brazil, the fazenda esperanca. yummy.

and i whiled away the time watching a few episodes of paul bassett's tv show, living coffee, on dvd. while some envious detractors (in oz they have a saying about this -- tall poppy syndrome -- but paul doesn't deserve it, imvho, since in my experience he's not arrogant about where his hard work has taken him) tried to assure me that there wasn't anything to this show, i actually liked it quite a bit, for 3 reasons.

one, i love those wacky signature beverages -- the mixtures of liqueur, cookies, espresso, chocolate, etc. -- that baristi invent but which are rarely if ever served in the cafes where they work, and which paul demonstrates with fairly clear instructions in the episodes. two, in the 3 episodes i watched, i knew soooo many of the people in them!

that was surprising -- it was like old friends' week there. "hey," i said to myself, "that's oregon barista goddess sherri johns!" and "look, it's sammy of caffe artigiano!"

and three, of course, having come from sydney still quite recently, i was pleased to see so many cafe locations that i recognized from my travels there. this dvd is in the pal format, which meant alas i couldn't watch it on my tv's dvd player -- but the trusty old g4 mac played it back great.

i'm looking forward to a couple of more icky weather days to finish the series out. and i just might make that specialty beverage based in tiramisu with the amaretti cookies. . . that looked decadent!

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