Saturday Latte

Saturday Latte
Originally uploaded by thegreatplotnik.

The Great Plotnik opens his eyes on Saturday morning: it's raining again. This is more good news for the cymbidiums and bearded iris and more bad news for Plotnik. Rain on Saturday morning means a rainy plotzketball court, AGAIN, and no plotzketball game, AGAIN. There is only one thing that can get Plotnik out of bed on a rainy non-Plotzketball Saturday morning with Ducknik in Guatemala: latte.

He mopes upstairs, takes out his favorite cup and pours a few inches of nonfat milk into it, then fills the aluminum water carafe with Brita-water (does anyone have any proof that Brita filters work? Plot doubts it), opens the bag of French roast ground for espresso, takes a satisfying sniff, removes two large scoops of coffee and puts them in the filter holder and tamps them down, then fits the filter holder tightly into the coffee machine body.

He unscrews the water/pressure holder lid and pours in the carafe of water, then screws the the water/pressure holder lid back and places the carafe under the coffee spout. With a smile he pushes ON.

He thinks: Did The Great Plotzer in the Sky push the RAIN? WHY NOT button with the same smile this morning?

No bike ride. No ball. But here comes the coffee. As soon as the first drips emerge from the spout, The Great Plotnik takes his cup and places it under the frother, turns the ON button one stop to FROTH. Well, the button doesn't say ON or FROTH anymore, because long ago the cheap writing on the knob steamed off, but TGP knows where ON is and where FROTH is, even though all the stops are counter-intuitively placed, so that OFF is somewhere in the middle, which has resulted in some badly scalded empty carafes, but this is another story.

Perhaps Frau Braun herself, when designing this little machine, said to herself "So! Das Plotniks af dis wurld vit dis OFF svitch ve gonna mess vit dere little brainz Ho Ho Ho!"

Now the frother begins to, well, to froth. Steam shoots out of the nozzle while Plotnik positions his cup to wait for the milk to turn into the nice white foam in the picture. In thirty seconds or so, it does. As soon as the cup has a nice head of milk up to the brim, TGP turns the switch back to ON and the froth stops and the coffee finishes brewing.

Mmmmmm, espresso! When it has finished dripping into the carafe, all that's left to do is pour the coffee into the frothy milk, check to make sure there is no more pressure in the machine, then turn it to OFF (Ha HA! Gotcha AGAIN Frau Braun!), remove the filter holder, tamp the coffee grounds into the trash can, wash out the empty carafe, place them upside down in the sink and head downstairs to...wait! A photo! TGP needs to take a photo for FLICKR to add to his blogsite!

Photo done. Entry posted. NOW it's a very nice Saturday. Plotnik looks outside. Rain. No biggie.