When Fuzzy and I got married, one of the best gifts we received was a Bialetti Aluminum Stovetop Espresso Pot from our friends Becky and Andy. We didn't register for it, so we didn't know what to do with it at first. Becky and Andy were visionaries--they knew we would love it before we did--and now we use it all the time. I will most always choose espresso over regular coffee, so our Bialetti has been through the ringer over the years. Especially when we got our milk frothing methods down to a science.
The pot we have is I think a 4 cup pot or something, and we all know how a "cup" in coffee terms is something teeny-tiny like 6 oz. And if you are someone like me, you always want a LOT of coffee, so we were finding that we were making multiple pots of coffee on the weekends. We decided that it was time to upgrade and get a larger pot.
One night, after a meal at the Clybourn Goose Island and working on our MBAs (Masters of Beer Appreciation--you drink a certain number of beers, you get your name on a plaque. I can't WAIT to get my name on that plaque.), we found ourselves a little too inebriated to drive home. So we did the only logical thing--we went shopping at the Patagonia and Bed Bath and Beyond that share a parking lot with the brewery!!! As we were standing in the coffee pot aisle, we were looking at the different size pots, and I was opening the boxes to see how big each one was. The cup sizes (sexy) aren't listed on the sides of the boxes, so we were going on looks only. I picked out a nice size pot, but Fuzzy said it looked too big and that we would probably end up wasting a lot of coffee (though I wouldn't throw it out--I would put the leftover espresso in the fridge for homemade iced lattes.) He picked out one that we thought looked like a 6 cup pot--not too much more, but a little wider, so it would satisfy our need for "just a little more coffee." We agreed that I would take the smaller pot to work with me, so to guarantee the quality of my morning coffees.
That weekend, we excitedly put the pot to work. I made a lot of milk foam for the cappuccinos, and when we drank it, it just tasted more milky. We had such high expectations, and we were just a little...not impressed. We made lots of "Huh" and "Hrmm" sounds. We tried again the next day....and we still didn't have enough coffee. We were like "well, one cup extra each is a negligible difference." We were determined to be excited by our newest kitchen addition.
One weekend morning, while I was lolling about in the tub, which is one of my favorite activities on the planet, my amazing darling husband came in with a cappuccino for me (sidenote: I cannot tell you how amazing this is....sometimes while I am in my "hot water room", Fuzzy will bring me coffee or beer or wine to enjoy. It's just about the closest thing to Heaven on Earth that I can imagine....Ok, well, maybe if the bathtub was full of kittens, it would be MORE like Heaven to me.). Settling the coffee on the sink basin he says "That new coffee pot we bought? Yeah, it's the same size as the other one. It's just a lot shinier."
Same size, just shinier.
Here is proof:
What's the moral here? Don't drink and shop? Trust your wife's instincts when she picks something out? Drink less coffee? Who knows. But the last time I made coffee at home, I made it in both pots, and put the leftover coffee in the fridge and had a kickass iced latte a few days later.
(Originally posted on EricaReid.com)
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