My New Favorite Quilt: "Mummy Without Coffee Take 2" by Mathea Daunheimer

"Mummy Without Coffee Take 2" by Mathea Daunheimer, 2016 

Apparently I am NOT the only mommy who wakes up every morning in the guise of a fire-breathing dragon, requiring several shots of espresso in order to regain human form!  Am I even sure that I AM a human, suffering from a curse that turns me into a raging dragon every morning?  What if I really am an honest-to-goodness dragon, magically transformed into a human each day through the sorcery of my skim milk and espresso elixirs?  And if so, at what level can I blame my wretched teenagers for all of this?  These are questions we may never be able to answer...  But in any case, this is officially my new favorite quilt and I just had to share it with you.

Detail of "Mummy Without Coffee Take 2," photo by Luana Rubin

"Mummy Without Coffee Take 2" is a 40" x 36" painted whole cloth quilt made by New Zealand quilter Mathea Daunheimer of Esparta Fiber Arts in 2016.  This quilt was exhibited in the 2017 New Zealand Quilt Symposium, and Luana Rubin shared it in her eQuilter newsletter this morning so I discovered this loveliness early this morning when I sat down at my computer to check email...  with my freshly-brewed latte.  :-)

"Mummy Without Coffee" in Process, photo by Mathea Daunheimer

Daunheimer starts with plain white fabric, quilts the picture into the layered quilt sandwich with heavy black thread on her domestic sewing machine, and then colors it with textile paints, referring to her process as "coloring book quilting."  How cool is that?!  Daunheimer's fabulous dragon patterns are available for sale here.  

Today, this espresso-tamed dragon mama will not be doing any quilting.  Instead, I'll be waging war against the fleas that have infested my dogs and home, sewing myself a Halloween costume, and hopefully meeting with my husband's cardiologists as soon as Bernie gets back from a business trip.  And I'm gonna handle it all with aplomb, like a perfectly sane human... thanks to the magic of coffee.  

Lovely Latte Art by Rush Espresso at Ballantyne Village, Where Everyone Knows My Name

I think that Rush Espresso should try to purchase this art quilt for display in their cafe, because I'm pretty sure I'm not the only mommy in Ballantyne who can relate to it.  

Happy Thursday, everyone!

Espresso Machine in Stable Condition Following Amateur Surgery, Awaiting Transplant

Espresso Machine, Just Out of Warranty, On the Operating Table

Out of nowhere, my Expobar Office Lever Plus espresso machine suffered a massive heart attack on Saturday evening.  It was plugged in and turned on, as it always is, heated up and ready to service coffee making whims at a moment's notice, when all of a sudden, the fuse blew.  We flipped the breaker, and it instantly blew again.  "Something has a short," Bernie declared, and he set about sleuthing to uncover the culprit.  Eventually he determined that my darling espresso machine was to blame, since everything was fine if he reset the fuse with my machine turned off, but the fuse blew immediately when he switched the espresso machine back on. 

At first, I begged him not to touch it.  Visions of, well, what you see pictured above, tormented my imagination, and the machine's manual warned us in big, bold type: THIS MACHINE CONTAINS NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS.  I had a vague fear that Bernie would come up with some kind of MacGyver solution involving duct tape and a plyers hanging out of the side of the machine.  However, preliminary research uncovered the stark and ugly facts: This espresso machine was manufactured in Australia, and sold to me by an internet company out of Rochester, NY.  It weighs as much as Anders.  It is no longer under warranty, I did not save the original shipping carton, and even if I had, it would cost a fortune just in shipping to send my espresso machine to wherever the nearest authorized service center might be located, and it would take a small eternity to get it back again.  Reluctantly, worn down by caffeine deprivation and despair, I conceded and authorized Bernie to commence amateur exploratory surgery yesterday afternoon. 

My husband ripped off the sides of the machine, poked around in its mechanical guts, and determined that the heating element had gone bad.  He read through Internet espresso fanatic forums frequented by hard core coffee afficionados, and informed me that my machine's problem was "pretty common."  He briefly considered scouting around for something "that might work" from Lowe's or Home Depot, but when the smoke started pouring out of my ears and my eyeballs burned fiery red he reconsidered and promised to find actual espresso machine parts.

So here we are, Monday morning, and Bernie just got off the phone with the tech support department at Whole Latte Love, where I purchased my machine.  The good news is that it is possible to order a $75 replacement part to make my machine whole again.  The bad news is that the part is backordered until the end of the month.  Seriously?!  No lattes until April?  I'll be driving to Starbucks in my nightgown and bathrobe every morning at the break of dawn, before waking up the kids.  Don't you dare judge me, either -- that's why they have a drive-through!

Meet the Hood that Could Suck a Small Child Out of the House

Ah, yes, there it is, looking so innocuous in its partially cut-away shipping box.  This is the Viking range hood that required replacing the 7" diameter ductwork with 10" diameter.  It looks a lot like the stainless steel GE Monogram range hood that was there before, but I decided to replace the hood for two very important reasons. 

Number One: The old range hood had a big 8" scratch across the front of it that was there when we moved in.  Ding-a-ling (Bernie's loving pet name for the previous homeowner who was apparently not as "handy" as he fancied himself to be) probably scratched the hood when he installed it himself.  Bernie knows Ding-a-ling installed the previous range hood himself because he used the wrong kind of screws that weren't threaded all the way, so instead of it taking a few minutes to remove the old hood, Bernie had to fight with it for about an hour.  We already knew from the gas company that Ding-a-ling ran the gas line to the GE cooktop he put in all by himself, too, without getting it inspected.  The stove was leaking gas when we moved in and so little gas was actually getting to the burners that it took 40 minutes to bring a pot of water to a boil.  I am so grateful to the nice man from Piedmont Natural Gas for saving our house from blowing up!  We replaced the cooktop, refrigerator and wall ovens when the local Home Depot Exp closed and we were able to purchase brand-new Viking appliances out of one of their kitchen displays at a huge discount.  Anyway, I digress: Reason number one for replacing the range hood was that the scratch on the front of the old hood got under my skin and bothered me.


Bernie getting ready to install the new range hood

Reason Two: The old range hood sounded like a 747 was about to take off in my kitchen.  It was so loud that I couldn't have a conversation with someone standing three feet away from me if the hood was turned on.  What good is it to have an open floorplan so everyone can hang out with the cook if no one can have a conversation while you're cooking?  The new range hood has a 900 CFM in-line ventilation kit -- the 900 CFM part means "Uff da, that's a powerful fan!" and the in-line part means that the motor that sucks all of this air out of the kitchen is going to be nowhere near the kitchen.  Instead, the motor is at the other end of the ductwork, in the crawl space under my house, right before it vents through the exterior wall.  That alone should cut down on the noise significantly.  However, the motor for this fan is going to be a lot more powerful that the previous one, and the vaulted ceilings in my kitchen tend to amplify sound.  I have a low tolerance for appliance noises anyway; even the noise from the fan in our bathroom makes me irritable (we'll address that one of these days when we get back to the Master Bathroom project).  All of the appliances I've selected after taking sound ratings into consideration (the Miele laundry machines, Bosch dish washer, even the new Insinkerator garbage disposal) have been significantly quieter than their predecessors, and worth every penny to me for the peace and calm they bestow upon my home.  With two little blond hooligans running around howling most of the time, we need all the peace and calm we can get.  So when I found out that Viking sells a Vibration Silencer Kit for our hood model that will further reduce the noise by 50%, I had to have it. 

Here's Bernie right after he installed the range hood in the kitchen and connected the power.  He says it was a lot easier to install than he expected.  At this point, he hasn't yet installed the in-line ventilation kit (the motor that will suck small children out through the 10" duct) because he's waiting for the Vibration Silencer kit that hasn't been delivered yet.

...But the hood is connected to the power, so the lights work.  Hallelujah!  I missed having light over the stove!  I'm enjoying the undercabinet lights, too -- we put them on a dimmer switch and they are dimmed in this picture.

Today the Vibration Silencer came; it's that thing that looks like a giant Pringles can.  Bernie seems to find something funny about this contraption.  Oh, and sorry for the vampire eyes -- for some reason the Red Eye Correction tool only wanted to let me fix ONE of Bernie's eyeballs, and I decided that one blue eye and one red one is way creepier than two red eyeballs. 

I don't know when Bernie will get a chance to finish the installation of the ventilation system.  We've been having an Espresso Crisis of Epic Proportions -- ever since my commercial grinder and espresso machine were relocated to their new home in the butler's pantry, with a special sink and all new plumbing added just to accommodate and pamper said espresso machine -- the lattes have had a strong, intensely unpleasant plasticky chemical taste.  I have run the water, I have cleaned and backflushed the machine, and I have investigated online.  Bernie used the same pex pipes that are everywhere else in our home, yes he used the kind for potable water with the NSF endorsement, and no he didn't buy the cheapest stuff he could find, but apparently this gross taste is not harmful to my health (snort!) and will dissipate over time.  So now I have gone to all this trouble and expense only to go from sublime lattes made in my kitchen, to rotten lousy poisonous lattes made in the butler's pantry.  I am so desperate, I could almost -- almost -- drink the coffee at the gas station!

Anyway, Bernie changed out the rubber-lined flexible braided steel hose that runs from my water filter directly to my espresso machine, reasoning that if the chemical taste was originating in the pex tubing it would be removed by the filter before it got to my machine.  We're flushing out the boiler tank on the espresso machine right now and tomorrow morning we'll see if there's any improvement.  Wish me luck!

Woo Hoo -- Kitchen Granite Installs Tomorrow!

Look how busy my sweetie has been!  The new sheet rock is up and ready for the backsplash tile, light rail molding has been installed on the bottoms of the existing cabinetry, and the back of the kitchen island has a coat of the elusive Burnt Umber stain that the builder used on the original cabinetry.  It still needs brown glaze and a satin finish oil-based varnish or polyurethane, but I'm very pleased with how well the new carpentry blends in with the old.  As much as this remodeling project has spiraled out of control, at least we were able to keep the existing cabinetry!  Well, mostly we kept the existing cabinetry...

After ordering the new wine fridge (and 50+ bottles of wine to fill it up with), we discovered that the base cabinetry in the butler's pantry was only 20" deep rather than the standard 24" depth that our wine fridge was designed for.  So Bernie spent the better part of a day ripping out the old cabinet, removing the door casing, and building this new 24" deep cabinet that will accommodate the wine fridge on the left, and the copper bar sink on the right.  I need to order a new drawer front and pair of cabinet doors in the same profile as the existing cabinetry, but we don't need to have those before the granite can install.  Tile Collection graciously sent a guy back out to redo the template for this area.  I'm lucky they hadn't cut the stone yet!  Bernie and I were both saying we should have known better.  I think our subconscious wino selves knew the cabinet wasn't deep enough, but suppressed that knowledge in order to get the wine fridge anyway.  I know all about that psychology stuff because I used to watch Frasier before it was cancelled. 

There it is, all stained up with the wine fridge installed.  Bernie had to run water over to this area for the sink as well as for my plumbed espresso machine (the filter is for my espresso machine, too), and I finally convinced him to move an outlet and a light switch so I wouldn't have to reach behind the coffee machines to turn on the undercabinet lighting, and so the machine cords will be as inconspicuous as possible, plugging in directly behind where the machines will sit.  So this "how about we put the coffee machines in the butler's pantry" idea ended up being pretty involved.

Oh, and one more thing: Up until a few days ago, this ugly plastic utility sink lived in my laundry room.  My husband liked to use it for cleaning paint brushes, muddy boots, watering cans, etc.  I never knew what might be splattered in this sink, so I never dared to use it for soaking stains out of the laundry -- this sink probably would have done more harm than good because it was always dirtier than the laundry I wanted to soak in it.  Bernie should really have a work sink out in his garage, and I should have a clean, attractive sink in the laundry room that can safely be used for laundry.  This laundry room is off the kitchen and the door is usually opened, and it has wall cabinets above the machines that match the kitchen cabinetry.  There's no reason the laundry room can't be an attractive extension of the kitchen, especially since there's enough leftover CD Volcano granite from our slabs to do this little countertop in the laundry room, and the not-so-old existing Venetian Bronze kitchen faucet can be reinstalled for the new laundry sink, too.  We're even going to be able to reuse one of the drawer fronts and cabinet doors that came off the dismantled former butler's pantry cabinet.  The only thing I needed to buy was a sink...

Didn't Bernie build me a beautiful laundry cabinet?  Now they can template for the counter top, but the new sink probably won't be here for several weeks because I had to custom order a RED ONE!  :-)

The granite installers are supposed to be here first thing in the morning, and we're finally ready for them!  By this time tomorrow, all of the Baltic Barf countertops will be gone and the CD Volcano will be in its place, hopefully looking as amazing as I have envisioned.  I can't wait!

The Slippery, Sliding, Treacherous Slope of a Mini Kitchen Remodel

Can you believe this was an IMPULSE project?  It started with the innocent selection of wallpaper for the boys' bathrooms, then the realization that it was now-or-never if I wanted to change out their cultured marble vanities for scrap granite pieces...  Then I had to go to the granite fabrication facility to select my scraps, where my single-minded focus crumbled in the face of slab after slab of seductive stone, each one more beautiful than the next, and ALL of them more attractive than the Baltic Barf that is splattered throughout my own kitchen.  I got a quote on upgrading my kitchen countertops to a mid-range granite and decided it was worthwhile, but then when I went to the granite importer's warehouse to select my stone, I wandered in circles for hours and kept coming back to the same ultra rare, dramatic and risqué CD Volcano granite.  I know this stone is outrageous.  I know it has no place in my neighborhood, and that I'll never get the money back when I sell my home.  Blah, blah, blah!  It's unique, it's exquisite, I've never seen anything like it anywhere else, and my whole family is as excited about it as I am.


So, at that point, we were going to change out the countertops and backsplash tile, and that's it.  Ha ha ha ha ha (that's my Maniacal Laughter, by the way).

That's what the back of my boomerang-shaped kitchen island looked like up until New Year's Day.  It's just sheetrocked with a frame of white-painted 2x4 lumber holding up the Baltic Barf countertop.  That raised bar is only 12" deep, by the way, instead of the standard 18" depth, so it's not really enough space to actually sit and eat there.  I don't remember why there is a patched hole there, either -- it's one of those things that was all fixed except for painting it, but my darling husband forgot about the paint before he got around to doing it.  We won't be too hard on him, though, because he has been very busy over the past couple of weeks...

Bernie pried the first piece of Baltic Barf off and carried it out of the house on New Year's Day.  Normally, the granite company handles demolition of the old countertop and backsplash, but Bernie is going to be trimming out the back of the island in hardwood paneling with decorative corbels and staining it to match the rest of the cabinetry, so he took off that part of the countertop himself.  He's also going to remove all of the backsplash tile and replace the sheetrock himself, since I want undercabinet lighting and a pot filler installed and those will be easier to do with the sheetrock off, anyway.  I told you it's a slippery slope.

Ta da!  The ledge and the funky framework supporting it are gone by the end of the day.


So far, we have ordered new granite countertops and beveled marble brick backsplash tile, a pot filler, a new sink and a new faucet (because who wants to install the scratched up old sink and old faucet into a lovely new countertop?), as well as a new disposal unit that is supposed to be quieter than the one we have now.  And we're done, right?  Wrong!

On January second, Bernie moved my car out to the driveway and transformed the garage into a woodworking palace.  See how happy he is to see the table saw again?  After lamenting the absence of even MORE large tools that are still in his parents' garage in New Jersey, and improbably claiming that if only those tools were here, he could complete the entire project in ten minutes without spending any money, Bernie rolled up his sleeves and went into carpenter mode.

This is what the back of that same island looked like by the end of the day on January 4th.  Quite a difference, don't you think?  In designing the back of the island, I wanted to kick things up a bit, but I was careful not to go overboard so that when all this is finished, hopefully all of the trimwork in the kitchen will make sense together and look like it was all done at the same time.  I could have just ordered more raised panels like the cabinet doors, but I wanted to be a little bit more custom, so we did flat panels with quarter-round maple rope molding along the inside edge instead. 

Bernie told me what the tape was for, but I've forgotten.  It was temporary.  Maybe it had something to do with wood glue drying or something.  The acanthus leaf corbels are bringing in a new decorative motif to the existing trimwork, but the acanthus leaf is repeated on the light fixtures so it's not totally out of left field.  Also, smaller versions of these corbels will be incorporated into the design of the new fireplace mantel in the keeping room just off the kitchen.  Shh; don't tell my husband!  He hates it when he's in the middle of one project and I start hatching additional grand schemes that involve his labor and ingenuity.

On January 7th we went to the Tile Collection's fabrication facility and spent FOUR hours moving templates around on my three granite slabs until I got the layout the way I wanted it.  The template you see above is for the raised island bar.  I've added some curves to the outer edge that are not reflected on the template.  See how I got a balance of light and dark areas, and incorporated as much of the cool multicolored swirls as I could without necessitating a seam?  When I got there, they had this template taped on upside down so that most of my countertop was going to be black and white and neutral and tame, and most of the cool stuff would have ended up as someone else's scrap treasure.  That's why it's so important to be involved in the layout process when your stone has this much variation.  The little square you see below is for a tiny cubby where my purse lives near the door to the garage.

This piece is for the lower portion of the island countertop.  It's getting cut from a separate slab that is bookmarked (mirror image of the first slab) so that the movement of the granite will be somewhat continuous from the countertop, up the backsplash, and across the raised bar.  The section with a notch at the top is where my sink will get cut out.  Isn't it a sin? Again, my objective was to have as much of the complex, multicolored portions of the stone as possible, yet retain enough of the lighter areas to have the contrast and dramatic impact that I loved so much in the larger slabs.  Also, with a stone like this, if you're not careful you could end up with some countertop pieces looking mostly gold/green/black, and others looking mostly black/white -- there is so much variation in the stone that it might look like you used completely different granite from one countertop to the next.  So I tried to keep things as balanced as possible.  There's a long stretch of countertop to the left of my wall ovens, adjacent to the island, that will be cut from the area beneath the template in the photo above.

There goes my granite, getting put away until it's time for cutting!  Granite installation is scheduled for January 24th, provided we (I use that "we" very loosely) get everything else done in the kitchen by then and we're ready for the countertops to go in.


Now, as much as I hated the Baltic Brown granite in my kitchen, I really thought it would look good in the little en suite bath off of Bernie's home office.  All the black in that stone gives off kind of a masculine vibe, the busy blotchy pattern would not be so overwhelming on a small vanity, and the brown and pinkish-brown tones complement the horrendous builder tile in the office bath shower that I have no intention of ever replacing (that shower is only used once a year).  I had originally arranged with the Tile Collection to recut one of my old countertops for this bathroom for $150 labor.  Maybe if I hadn't been calling it Baltic Barf for the past three years Bernie would have felt good about this plan, but alas...  He has been working so hard on the kitchen, and he looked so forlorn at the granite shop, looking at all of the other stone, so we selected this Madique granite remnant for his office bath instead:

Slip, sliding away... 


Lars's laser tag birthday party with his school friends was on Saturday the 8th, but we had snow days in Charlotte yesterday, today, and again tomorrow due to ice on the roads.  Bernie had to cancel a scheduled business trip, which was good news for the kitchen project!

Goodbye to the hated backsplash tile, once and for all!  Don't you love that hole in the wall behind the stove?  This part reminds me of the scene in The Money Pit when Tom Hanks comes home at the end of the day and says to his contractor, "They destroyed my house!" and the contractor smiles and says, "They sure did, didn't they?  I tell you, they're work ANIMALS!!"  We love that movie.

This is a very misleading picture that makes it seem as though I was actually helping with all of this.  Bernie left the last two tiles behind the range hood for me to remove, stuck his night time Harley Davidson glasses on me in case I sent shards of tile into my eyeball, and sent me up the step stool so I could feel involved.  Thanks, Lover!

Here we are at the end of today, with all of the tile and sheetrock removed and the range hood gone.  Apparently the range hood was installed by Dingaling the Previous Homeowner rather than by the builder, because he used the wrong screws and the hood that should have popped off fairly easily instead had to be wrestled with for quite some time.  We also found dangling live wires behind the range hood once the sheetrock was down.  Lovely!  We had originally planned to reinstall the same GE Monogram range hood we had before, but we ended up ordering a new one for several reasons.  First and foremost, Dingaling scratched the front of the range hood, either when he installed it or by cleaning it against the grain with something abrasive.  The scratch on the front of the hood has always bugged me.  Second, the thing was filthy through and through, and not just the parts that come out and that are easy to clean in the dishwasher.  But the main reason we ordered a new range hood is that the one we had before was so loud that even on the Low setting, you can't have a conversation with anyone in the kitchen when the fan is running.  The new fan is going to have in-line ventilation, which means the noisy fan part will be down in the crawlspace under my house where I don't have to listen to it.  Slippidy-doo-dah, slippidy-ay!

We also found some dangling live wires behind this wall, apparently for undercabinet lighting that never got installed.  This is so unbelievably dangerous!  Pardon what appears to be snow; I got sheetrock dust on my camera lens.

Also, yesterday Bernie was complaining that my commercial espresso machine and burr grinder duo are taking up too much of what little precious countertop workspace we have in the kitchen, and we had an epiphany.  We decided to move my in-house coffee bar to the butler's pantry area between the kitchen and dining room.  I am okay with this because right now we get in each other's way when he's trying to cook breakfast and I'm trying to make myself a latte.  Creating a separate beverage center outside of the main kitchen, yet adjacent to the fridge, is a perfect solution as long as we can make it look more elegant than utilitarian.  After all, you can see this butler's pantry through the dining room as soon as you walk in my front door.

This new twist to our plans requires running plumbing to the butler's pantry for the espresso machine, moving an outlet and a light switch, and adding a hammered copper bar sink and faucet.  Oh, and a refrigerated undercounter wine cellar, because I miss the one we put in our last house before we moved, and I won't be able to store my wine in racks on this countertop anymore now that the coffee machines and a sink are going in...

Here we have more sloppy electrical work.  A random hole and a bundle of exposed wires that we discovered at the back of the butler's pantry cabinet.  You have to get down on the floor to see it, and neither of us had any idea it was there as we're shoving metal cooling racks and baking pans into the cupboard.  It really makes me wonder what else is wrong with my house that I can't see!

What's next for this project?  Well, Bernie's still got to finish up with the plumbing and electrical, and then he'll put new sheetrock up in the backsplash areas.  The base cabinetry in the butler's pantry is going to have to be rebuilt to accommodate my 24" wine unit, and Bernie was able to find out exactly what brand and color of stain was used on our existing cabinetry so we're waiting on the stain to come in as well as the new bar sink and faucet, wine fridge, and range hood.  Oh, and did I mention that the in-line ventilation requires a 10" diameter duct, and what we have now is only 7"?  Yeah, the ductwork has got to be replaced now, too. 

I swear I'm not ordering anything else for this kitchen!!

Sliding Down the Slippery Slope: The Espresso Obsession Continues!

I ordered a new espresso machine.  Yes, I ordered a new one AGAIN, even though I just got a new one a couple of weeks ago...  In case you missed my earlier posts on the exciting topic of Latte Love, click here and here and then come on back to this post for my latest adventures in coffee obsession. 

So for the first week or so with my Expobar Office Pulser espresso machine, I was pulling consistently good espresso shots with a layer of crema on top.  The shots were running a little fast (ideally, it should take 20-25 seconds from the time I press the "go" button until the espresso is up to the little lines on the shot glasses.  If it takes longer for the shot glasses to fill, the shots taste bitter.  If they fill up faster, the espresso tastes weak and you don't get that caramelly crema on top).  The way you correct this problem is to adjust how finely the coffee is ground and/or how much pressure you're using to tamp (pack it down into the portofilter thing).  Not owning a coffee grinder, I always bought Starbucks' Espresso Roast a pound at a time and asked the store to grind it on #3 for my espresso machines.  But lately they keep screwing it up.  I wish I took pictures for you of what the espresso shots look like when you use coffee that is ground on #6 (particles the size of Folgers in a supermarket can for an automatic drip machine), but I was way too upset to think about getting the camera.  Anyway, after two separate Starbucks stores managed to screw up grinding my coffee beans three times in a row, I decided I'd had it with Starbucks and I needed to take the grind into my own hands! 

I headed back to my favorite online coffee store, Whole Latte Love, and read through numerous tutorials and reviews before selecting my grinder, the Mazzer Mini.  When I get my grinder, I will be able to grind just enough beans at a time to make one latte.  This means much better freshness, and it also means that I can make small adjustments to fine-tune the grind from one latte to the next until I get it exactly the way I want it.  I'm also not going to be limited to only Starbucks coffees anymore.  There are so many other beans out there, waiting to be discovered!  One key feature of this machine that appealed to me is that it's so quiet -- supposedly, when it's grinding beans, it's no louder than the interior sound level of a running BMW.  Since I have cathedral ceilings in my kitchen, sound ricochets off the walls and ceilings and amplifies considerably, so the last thing I wanted was a grinder that sounded like a jet plane taking off in my kitchen at 6 AM.

But wait, that's a grinder -- didn't I say I bought another espresso machine? 

Okay, so it turns out that when I was reading the manual for the Expobar Office Pulser machine and read the part about how the machine could be plumbed for a continuous water supply, I was reading about a different model, the Expobar Office Lever Plus.  It only costs $200 more than the machine I purchased, and when I made this discovery I was still within the return/exchange period.  Although I really enjoy the Office Pulser, the things I dislike about it are having to fill that water tank every day (which I can only manage with a funnel or else water splashes all over the place) and the fact that there's no way to tell how much water is left in the tank without removing the top of the machine.  There's a fabulous instant hot water dispenser on the machine that would be great for making hot tea or hot chocolate, except that it drains too much water out of the tank.  Plus, there's a little water softening filter thingy attached to the hose inside the water tank that I'm supposed to change every 300 lattes or so.  Who wants to remember to do that?  We're planning to change out the kitchen backsplash one of these days anyway, and Bernie wants to add a pot filler behind the stove, so adding a plumbing line for the espresso machine at the same time should not be a big huge deal.

This is the new EspressoBaby that's on its way, on some UPS truck somewhere between New York and North Carolina, carefully packaged and nestled in foam.  Isn't it beautiful?  I love how it's open at the top of the machine, too, for better visibility as well as aesthetics.  Plumbing the machine is optional, not required, so I can continue to fill the water tank with my funnel until we get around to replacing the backsplash tile.  I want to find some distressed terra cotta subway tiles, I think...  That will be another quest for another day.

From Zero to Latte in Five Minutes Flat!

In case you missed my earlier post about my new Expobar Office Pulser espresso machine, you can read that here.  I've had the machine up and running for about three weeks now, and wanted to report back about how much I love it!

I must admit; I was a little intimidated when I first unpacked this beast.  It's MUCH bigger than the old machine, and the instructions weren't much help.  Thank goodness for the supplemental instruction sheet that the distributor, Whole Latte Love, packed with the machine or I would have been completely lost.  That's me, up on the counter, peering down into the innards of the espresso machine to try to figure out what's up with the filter thingy and the little hoses.

But really, all I had to do before I made my first latte was plug the machine in and fill the tank up with water.  After that, the machine works exactly like my old Barista machine from Starbucks.  Except that it does its magic in a third of the time the old machine took, with no down time, and the coffee tastes SO much better!  I'm in Espresso Nirvana!!

Do you see that beautiful foam on my steamed milk?  The old Barista machine took at least 5-6 minutes to steam milk, and it was very finicky about which milk it would steam.  It had to be the Harris Teeter skim milk, pulled from the very back of the store's refrigerator, and it had to be ice-cold.  I tried the organic milk, 1% milk, or skim milk from other grocery stores, and the foam would go flat and disappear within 30 seconds of making it.  The new machine will foam every milk I've tried to frothy, fabulous perfection in under two minutes every time.

After steaming milk on my old machine, I had to switch the machine from steaming to brewing mode and wait for the machine to cool off before I could pull any shots.  It is such a delight (and an enormous time-saver) to flip the brew switch and pull espresso shots immediately after steaming milk on this machine.

Trickle trickle trickle...

 ...And there you have it: beautiful, flavorful espresso shots with gorgeous, caramelly crema, ready to combine with the steamed milk into a vastly superior latte, in less than 5 minutes from start to finish.  You can't even brew coffee in an automatic drip machine that fast!

Isn't that beautiful?  I don't get foam like that on my lattes at Starbucks; they have been doing a weird steamed slushy milk thing lately.  They got new machines at my local Starbucks and the refrain I keep hearing when customers complain about lack of foam or burning their taste buds off with the first sip is "but it's all automatic."  If Starbucks can't make a decent latte anymore, they are in serious trouble.

So, you'd think that my espresso dreams would have all come true now that the snazzy new espresso machine is up and running and cranking out amazing lattes to satisfy my every whim, but you'd be wrong.  This Latte Lust has not yet run its course, I'm afraid.  I've been using Starbucks Espresso Roast beans at home for years, and I always had Starbucks grind the beans on #3 for my Barista machine.  I wanted to try a slightly finer grind with the new machine because the shots were pouring a bit fast (ideally, it should take 20-25 seconds from the time you push the brew button until the espresso reaches the white lines on the shot glasses.  If the shots pour much faster, your beans are probably ground too coarsely and/or you aren't tamping firmly enough, and you won't get much flavor from the shots.  If the shots pour more slowly, then you're grinding too fine or tamping too hard, and the shots will be bitter).  The inexpensive blade coffee grinders that you find at stores like Target and Bed Bath & Beyond grind too unevenly, and expose the beans to too much heat during the grinding process, to be suitable for those seeking espresso bliss.  Fresh ground coffee is of course preferred, but we go through coffee so fast in my house anyway that having Starbucks grind the beans for me a pound at a time seemed to be a good compromise solution.

Except that they keep screwing up the grind, and I don't realize it until the next morning, at about 7 AM, bleary-eyed, stumbling blindly around the kitchen, knowing I can handle any hitch the boys might throw my way as long as I have that nice, warm latte in my hand...  You can't make even a halfway decent latte with just any old grind.  Last week I went to Starbucks, actually went INSIDE Starbucks so I wouldn't hold up the drive-through line, and talked with a Barista about how I wanted my coffee ground.  I told her that I had always asked for #3 in the past, but that I wanted to try a slightly finer grind with my new commercial style espresso machine.  I asked her specifically to grind my beans on the same setting that they used for THEIR espresso machines.  And then, to my horror, when I opened the bag the next morning, I saw coffee particles the size of sand instead of powder.  It looked like Folgers from the grocery store; it was definitely an automatic drip machine grind setting.  I was desperate, so I tamped it into the little portofilter as best as I could and tried to get some shots out of it.  The resulting latte tasted like a cup of steamed milk, like I'd forgotten to put the shots in at all.  So, mystery solved -- all those times when I've ordered a latte and it tastes like there isn't any espresso in it, now I know that the shots were pouring way too fast and the grind was too coarse.  I tried adding two additional shots of this sad excuse for espresso, and now my latte tasted kind of like that instant cappuccino stuff from Taster's Choice, but with real foam.  Blech!  Now Starbucks cannot even be counted on to grind beans properly!

The other thing to consider is that there are so many other espresso beans out there, waiting to be experienced, but I've been restricted to Starbucks beans since I have no way of grinding my own beans at home.  Whole Latte Love sent me a pound of interesting-looking espresso beans as a gift-with-purchase, and my father-in-law sent me a whole box full of different coffee beans from his recent trip to Costa Rica -- none of which I have been able to sample, since I have no way to grind the beans.  It seems obvious to me that the Universe wants me to take the next step towards Espresso Independence with the purchase of a commercial-style burr grinder to take its rightful place on the counter beside my espresso machine.  Even my husband, who is enjoying his homemade lattes now that I share, thinks I should buy a grinder.  So now the question is, which one?  I did lots of research and read through hundreds of reviews before selecting my espresso machine, and I know even less about the ins and outs of coffee grinders than I knew about espresso machines.  I'm going to head back over to Whole Latte Love and start my research.  I'll let you know what I come up with!

Hooray -- My Espresso Machine Died! Meet the Expobar Office Pulser I Just Ordered from Whole Latte Love

I firmly believe that God invented espresso just to give tired working mothers a fighting chance.  Everyone else in the family gets breakfast in the morning before they head out the door, but I'd rather drive the kids to school in my pajamas than skip my morning latte -- so why am I doing the happy dance about my broken espresso machine?  It's because I have had its replacement picked out for a year, but couldn't justify the cost as long as my old machine "still worked just fine."

My newly deceased machine was the second of two Starbucks Barista machines, made by Saeco.  The first one cost $300 and lasted three years after paying for itself about twenty times over ("That's $3.46.  I'll see you at the window...").  The machine that just died was a newer model of the same machine that lasted about three and a half years and cost about 20% more than the first one, if memory serves me well.  Yesterday morning the steam function just petered out in the midst of steaming my milk, kind of like the air being let out of a balloon, or a car running out of gas.  Briefly, I toyed with the idea of going to the drive-through Starbucks (in my pajamas) and trying to purchase another espresso machine through the window, because then I would get a new machine instantly.  Now is nicer than Later.

But awhile ago, I did some research at http://coffeegeek.com/ and decided that, next time I was in the market for a new machine, I would upgrade to a model with a heat exchanger that can steam milk and shoot espresso at the same time.  The new machine will be a manual, like my old one -- no fancy electronic controls, this is a hands-on machine but easy to use once you get the hang of it.  My Starbucks machines, like others in their price point, need time to cool off in between steaming the milk (which needs to be done first so the espresso shots don't get cold by the time the milk is ready) and pulling the espresso shots.  That means that it can take 15-20 minutes to make a single latte, and 30-40 minutes to make two lattes.  I would have to heat the machine to steam milk, steam a pitcher of milk for one latte, then wait for the machine to cool down, then pull the shots for the first drink, then heat it up to steam milk for the second drink, cool it down again for shots...  The steam wand on the Barista machine also wasn't long enough to work with a larger milk pitcher to steam milk for more than one drink at a time, unless you're drinking cute little baby lattes and restaurant-sized cappuccinos.  We supersize our coffee at my house -- I'm told it's a Lutheran Thing.  All of this adds up to a selfish Rebecca drinking lattes in front of other people and not offering to share (see photo above of me not sharing my latte in 2008 -- and no, that's not my natural haircolor, either), so I'm looking forward to the opportunity to make multiple drinks at once and rejoin the ranks of polite society.  My mother and husband should both appreciate that!

If you're in the market for your first espresso machine, check out this guide from Coffee Geek that covers all bases, How to Buy an Espresso Machine. The machine I selected is the Expobar Office Pulser, a Spanish machine that gets great reviews from every site I visited and seems to be the best balance between price tag and performance. It is annoying, however, to see that the price on this model has gone up several hundred dollars over the last couple of years. This is probably the inevitable result of so many elated coffee lovers blabbing all over the internet that the machine is worth twice what they paid -- of course the manufacturer is going to raise the price!  Where are Bill and Ted with their excellent phonebooth when I want to go back to 2003 to buy an espresso machine?

Overnight shipping would have been insanely expensive, and the machine cost enough on its own so I went with ground shipping.  I ordered my machine from Whole Latte Love, exlusive U.S. distributors for Expobar.  Their site contains a wealth of useful information on all things related to coffee, and they have a 30-day return period in case I turn out to be the first coffee lover who doesn't love this machine.  I'll let you know when it shows up, and if all goes well, maybe next time you come to my house I'll make you a latte!