Sunbeam?…

My coffee education continues…

After much thought and deliberation we have upgraded our coffee making implements from a great little second hand stovetop and $15.00 Coles grinder to a Sunbeam EM6910 and a matching grinder EM0480. It was a big call as we have been very happy with the coffee from the stovetop, but recently we began pondering whether – as developing connoisseurs – we should consider spending a bit more on a good machine. If it were $600.00 for machine and $200.00 for grinder I doubt we would have bothered. It just seems like a looottt of money for coffee!

However while away in Denmark I spotted a Sunbeam EM 6910 Espresso machine for sale in the Quokka for $250.00 – used once and forgotten about – so I rang Grendel free who am i movie download and dispatched him in the direction of the machine to make a purchase! These sell for around $400.00 on ebay so it seemed like a decent buy.

They have been rated the pick of the crop among lower end machines and after 2 weeks of using it I have to say I am very impressed indeed. Admittedly it was clogged with mould when Grendel picked it up and he did give it a very serious clean, but it is now working brilliantly.

After getting the machine I went out and got a burr grinder from K Mart…

The next day I took it back.

It was also a Sunbeam, but a cheap model ($55.00) and couldn’t grind fine enough for espresso. On that first night we all had dodgy coffees and I wondered if we had wasted money. It was time to push on and find a better grinder. This is where the EM 0480 came into play.

I had often heard people say ‘a good grinder is more important than a good machine’, but I hadn’t realised what they meant. Basically, as I understand it, if you can’t get the grind right then you’re stuffed. You won’t be able to get the best out of your machine.

So we got the grind right and started getting coffee that looked like it was supposed to (fresh beans are never a problem) so the next hurdle was texturing milk. I had no idea how to use a steam wand. I figured you stick it in and let it rip… not so. After a few visits to youtube I began to understand the concept and about 10 coffees later was doing a creditable job.

Now 10 days later I reckon I can compete with anyone when it comes to knocking out a great coffee.

Today we had Darryn & Corry Altclass for lunch and we had some brilliant coffee. The real problem with producing great coffee at home is that you are almost always disappointed when you go out for dinner.

A few months ago we went out for dinner with Geoff and Sherry at the Coffee Deck, a local cafe at the Mindarie Marina. The food was excellent, but I told the guys very confidently that we ‘shouldn’t have a coffee here as we can do much better at home’.

As I finished my announcement I looked around to see the cafe manageress standing behind me… I don’t know who felt more awkward!

However the reality is that unless your baristas really know what they are doing that is a true statement.

I am becoming such a snob…

As far as the negatives go for both machines

Whoops I didn’t finish this post!

I haven’t found many negatives, but then I don’t have much to compare to. I wonder if the build quality of the EM6910 will be sturdy enough… but so far it seems fine. Grendel reckons the steam power isn’t huge, but again I have found it more than adequate. The grinder seems to have plenty of settings and my only gripe is that it sprays grinds everywhere, but then I think that’s just par for the course with coffee!

It seems dreams run hot when you are young and free – when there is no one else to think of and when you can re-orient your whole life in an afternoon.

But… get married, have kids, ‘settle down’ and slowly those crazy youthful dreams seem to become ‘unrealistic’ or ‘impractical’. Once you have a mortgage life takes on a whole new shape again. Now you are completely buggered because so much of life becomes about making sure the payments are made on time.

I do think its important to get some balance between stability and spontaneity, but I also tend to think that middle class living boots the spontaneity right out of us – and often we don’t even notice. The spirit of adventure gets completely screwed as we seek to achieve what we have called ‘financial security’.

I sometimes fear I have ‘settled down’.

As much as I sometimes loathe the predictability of the life I seem to live, at the same time I find comfort in its routines… Its a strange conundrum. There is both comfort and anxiety, peace and frustration. Lately I have enjoyed the routine and stability more than ever. Its a worry.

Today I was surfing ebay…

Occasionally I have dreamt about buying a bloody huge camperbus, taking a year off everything and just travelling around Oz with Danelle and the kids, stopping where we want to, doing the homeschool thing, living differently, just seeing what might happen… We might just have a great holiday. We might meet some interesting people. We might work in some different jobs. I reckon it would be a very cool adventure, just to pull up stumps for a year and hit the road with no agenda other than to see the country and figure it out as we go.

We have talked about it a little, occasionally given it a second look, but it really is a very impractical thing to do. It could well be construed as a waste of time and money, as a disruption to our kids schooling etc etc… It isn’t really what sensible people do… is it?

But… wouldn’t it be a hoot?!

I looked at a few of those motorhomes on ebay today and it kindled a spark…

It made me realise that 20 years ago I probably would have just hit ‘buy now’ and hardly given it a second thought, but now there are many reasons to think twice. Perhaps the most significant reason Danelle and I would hold back is because we felt God say ‘no’, for whatever reason. Other than that there’s probably no pressing reason not to just give it a crack.

Is it just me or do other people have similar crazy dreams that get sidelined by the demands of a suburban life?

Do you reckon we ought to play a little harder?…

I guess you know what I am thinking!

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As I sit here two annoying sticky flies have been hopping around my study occasionally sitting on me for moment until I can be bothered swooshing them away.

Fly spray has been banned in the Hamilton household as Envirogirl has recently become quite the master of the fly swat. If you’re a winged insect in our kitchen then watch out! The only problem is that she has been away for 3 days and the flies have been cavorting like teenage rabbits.

So now the little buggers are everywhere and I have just one small plastic implement to get rid of them…

I think I might need to go and buy my own private (and secret) can of fly spray just for moments like these. If I get found out though…

Following on from my last post on Tim Winton, Daniel left a comment advising that The Turning was about to hit the theatre in Feb/March – see here, so I have promptly booked two tickets to go and see it.

Danelle and I went to see Cloudstreet when it was playing probably 8 years ago now and it was wonderful. Despite its ‘darkness’ – or maybe because of it, The Turning is another book I loved so I am really looking forward to seeing the production!

Nathan also left a few tips for novels worth reading, one of which is ‘Atonement’ by Ian McEwan. I read this a few years back and am looking forward to going to see the movie some time soon – screening now in the city.

Unfortunatly my crappy memory means I have forgotten the plot-line altogether, but it did leave me with a positive impression, so hopefully the movie won’t disappoint. It seems the imagination is always more powerful than any cinema director so it can be hard to ‘beat’ a decent book with a movie.

On Winton stories, I actually really enjoyed the movie of That Eye The Sky, despite being told I ‘shouldn’t have’ by several people. I couldn’t see what was wrong with it, but then maybe I am just a man with no sense of boundaries….

Today I ventured up to the nearby coastal town of Lancelin, about an hour north of where we live, a favourite place of mine as a teenager, but not somewhere I go often these days.

I managed to leave quite early because our next door neighbours woke me up at 5am. They hadn’t gone to sleep at that point and were a tad merry and oblivious to the volume of their voices! They’re great people and enjoy a harmless party now and then so no drama.

However the plan for today was to get a surf in at Lancelin nice and early then go back to Moore River where Danelle & her family are for a delayed ‘Christmas lunch’. Moore River is 70kms up the coast and Lancelin 100 a pretty easy drive.

I set off with surfboard on the roof hoping to score some decent waves, but I could tell even then that Huey wasn’t going to do us any favours. There was a howling easterly blowing and the skies were grey. Today was predicted to be 38 degrees, but ‘unsettled’ would be the best word to describe the day. I doubt it got close to that in Lancelin.

As a teenager I had many a trip to Lancelin with mates in search of surf. The old Mark 1 Cortina used to get us there, usually after 4 stops along the way to refill the radiator. We would leave at 4.30am and manage to squeeze 3 surfs in before driving home in the mid afternoon, sunburnt, weary and usually very satisfied. I don’t know how many times I nearly fell asleep at the wheel on the drive home, but I can still remember the ‘drift’ as everyone else nodded off and I was left to man the steering wheel on a hot summer’s afternoon.

Lancelin is actually known as the windsurfing capital of the world as it so unbelievably windy. As a surfer you should really only go there when the winds are light because in Lancelin they are always stronger. The easterly is stronger and the sea breeze howls like a mad dog when it comes in – usually quite early.

As I got there I drove past ‘backbeach’ where I intended to surf and went to the jetty – the take off point for ‘hole in the wall’, the premier surf break in the area. It is a 45 minute paddle to a piece of reef in the middle of the ocean, but when its on, its a great wave. (I once paddled out there on my own and had it all to myself for 4 hours with light offshores and 3-4 ft swell!) I didn’t plan on heading out there, but just wanted to get my bearings on what the swell was doing.

As I poked my head out of the car I was greeted with that familiar smell of salt and weed that has been washed up on shore. Its funny how smells can be like music and can take you back to a time and place. I ‘returned’ to my teen years and remembered those times – paddling out behind the island in search of surf, but rarely finding it – trying to scam rides out to ‘hole in the wall’ with crayfishermen – or even more importantly trying to scam rides back in after 3 hours in the water – tucking muesli bars up the sleeves of our wetsuit so we could have lunch out there and surf longer – getting feet cut to ribbons as we tried to get thru the surf at Edward Island – dreaming of boat ownership and how good it would be not to have to paddle like paupers – sleeping in half built houses so we could save on tent site costs…

Those teen years were great days of adventure and fun and a fair bit of foolishness.

Today I drove round to ‘back beach’ only to see it blown to pieces by the wind and with lousy banks. As much as I was hanging for a surf I just wasn’t desperate enough to launch the mal into the chop.

So I headed back around and sat at Edward Island where I watched a small group of dolphins feeding and playing close to shore, before heading back to Moore River for the family lunch.

One day soon I reckon!…house on the edge of the park the divx movie online