Stove, Coffee

As a little windfall from Mike and Lois' move to a new house, we get a "new" stove out of the deal. Mike swapped the flat-top electric that came with the house for his old gas stove, and traded that for our minimal coil-top electric stove which he's putting in the in-law suite.

It's white, and goes quite nicely in our kitchen.



Don't know if you noticed, but if you look you'll see a glass, silex vaccum coffee pot just to the left of it. Just got that. It makes real good coffee. Mom and dad had a stainless steel one when I was growing up.



Apparently that was one of the best ways ever to make coffee. The water in the bottom chamber boils, and the steam pressure forces the hot water to the top chamber where the coffee grounds are. By the time it gets up there, the water is at 200-205 degrees -- perfect for brewing coffee. What's better about this than percolation is that no brewed coffee ever boils. Perfect extraction temperature + no boiling the end product = real good coffee. Plus, since it doesn't use paper filters, it leaves the aromatic and flavorful oils that the paper filters out. I've got the grind right. And it's great. A little extra work, but not much, really.

Mike brought the stove up when he came into town monday night for a couple of meetings here in Columbia this week. We put it in Monday night. And we've had fun the last couple of nights talking and playing guitars.

My new MP3 player should come today. It's a Creative Labs Zen Xtra 40GB player. I'm kinda psyched.

Went to St. Charles over the weekend and visited Joel and Dawn. We went down to Old St. Charles and went to one of the wineries and had lunch outside. It was Scottish Fest down there, so we had good seats for the noon parade of kilts and bagpipes. Did a little walking down the river and went back to their place for dinner. Tom and Betty came over, and we had a good time. Spent the night and came back home.

Aunt Pat's kidney removal apparently went well. Ed said she might even be home today. Hope she recovers quickly.