espresso express

german A first told me about this amazing invention. having never heard of a stove top espresso maker before, i was naturally fascinated. and then at M's yesterday, R brewed some espresso and showed me how it's done the italian way. i'd seen a similar little gem tucked away in our communal cupboard before but never got down to finding out how to use it. after R's demonstration though, i was confident that brewing espresso wasn't exactly rocket science. the only problem, however, was that instead of looking like this: (i.e. sparkling and clean)

ours looked a little grotty. so i made it my personal project to clean our espresso maker and rid it off its blemishes. while watching me scrub and scrub, K commented that black doesn't necessarily mean its dirty. good point, especially because my cleaning attempt was, unsurprisingly, an epic failure. the steel looked the same after i cleaned it. so i comforted myself with the knowledge that the water would be boiled anyway, and whatever particulate matter it picked up from the dirty container would be, um, sterilised by the heat? here's hoping.

(at least the espresso container was clean!)

and, as with most things, i accidentally went overboard and brewed a quintiple shot because, well, i'm caffeine-tolerant. or so i thought. i can usually down a double shot at 2300h and be sound asleep 10 minutes later. but not this time. perhaps 250ml of espresso was a little excessive. because soon after i was bouncing off the walls. in a weird way, this caffeine injection was great for my room because i went on a tidying rampage, folding and colour coding my wardrobe, shoes, bedlinen, towels, packets of food mix, basically everything that could be rearranged was. and then i still had so much energy left over that i ran 4km in record (to me) time. and i think i drunk-dialled my dear friends back in singers with a suspiciously trippy sounding text. oops. well, lesson learnt: go easy on the espresso.