I'll be offline for about a week. Will probably miss my internet access a lot.
This morning I made a double ristretto which poured nicely, but the taste was a bit bitter. I was really puzzled about that, and thought maybe the beans were beginning to stale. Turns out that I've been a while since I've popped out the filter basket. Tsk, tsk, and I'm supposed to be so thorough with my cleaning :)
I've begun learning Italian. Bought a "living language" 6 week course complete with coursebook, cds and dictionary. I figure I can use some of the espresso related motivation to learn a new language. It would be very cool to able to speak some italian next time I go Italy too. I've been there two times before and I got by quite well with my english, but I just recently read that Italians can find it rude if a foreigner starts a conversation in english. Just some easy conversational italian will help a lot. The words are very similar to their english conuterparts and the grammar doesn't seem to hard. Only negative about learning italian is that it isn't that useful outside of Italy :) 4/11/2003 03:43:00 PM
