I can go for weeks without alcohol, years without sugar, but my morning coffee is essential to my well-being. For years, it has been delivered from an espresso machine using ground Lavazza Qualita d'Oro. However, since December 2022 and a trip to Szczecin, where I received a packet of locally roasted artisan coffee beans, I have changed my coffee routine. Those beans meant I needed to buy myself a grinder, which I use in conjunction with a Bialetti pot. This is fine in everyday use, although it is limited by its size; its basket holds around 18g of ground coffee. Yes, I'll add hot water to the mug to make an Americano, but it's not strong enough. There are mornings when a double-double espresso coffee is needed, especially weekend mornings.
Mulling over how nice it would be to have a larger Bialetti, I somehow never got round to it, despite there being an excellent kitchen-equipment shop round the corner from my office (Voltimex, ulica Świętokrzyska 30). And then one day while doing my weekly shop at Lidl in Warka, I chanced upon a cheap (49zł/£10) Bialetti knock-off, under Lidl's Ernesto own brand. This was advertised as a nine-cup pot (my own Bialetti being a three-cup pot). Nonsense! A single portion is 18g, not 6g! Anyway, with this, I can grind a full 36 grams of coffee bean and fill the basket and water container and make a strong coffee that fits perfectly into a small mug.
Not for everyday consumption, though. During the working week, the small Bialetti is fine; it makes about a third of a small mug of intensely strong coffee, the product of 115 krenches of the handle on my manual coffee grinder. To get through the entire contents of the grinder is in excess of 230 krenches – a lot of work. The big coffee pot is for weekends. I grind the beans and boil the kettle. Boiled water goes into the water container at the bottom of the pot (cuts the amount of gas used to get the steam to express through the grinds, and cuts the time too). I also warm my coffee mug with boiled water to keep the coffee hot for longer.
Call it what it is: Okęcie
Three stations in need of repair
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Late evening, Śródmieście
This time 13 years ago:
Ranking a better life
This time 15 years ago:
Paysages de Varsovie
This time 16 years ago:
Spring walk, twilight time
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