Food

At the end of last year we got ourselves a new coffee maker: the Philips LatteGo 5500. This is a lovely machine. It’s a super-automatic espresso maker that grinds beans, pulls espresso shots, and steams milk all on its own. If you fill it with good beans, it can make delicious coffee drinks at home with little effort.

The 5500 can make a lot of drinks. I couldn’t find a description of what the differences are, so I made my own list. It took months for me to try every drink. This was partially because I prefer iced drinks in hot weather, but also because I didn’t want to waste good coffee.

There are few things more refreshing than a cold glass of good iced tea. I’ve tried iced tea from a lot of places, but the best I’ve had to this day is my own recipe. It’s so easy that I can’t in good conscience keep it secret. It’s also far cheaper than anything you can buy in a can or bottle, and a lot healthier because it doesn’t require any kind of sweetener. The only down side is that it takes a few hours to cool.

When I was a child, I drank tea because my parents wouldn’t let me drink coffee. I would soak a tea bag in hot water until it made a dark, bitter liquid, then dump in milk and sugar until it was overly sweet, and mostly flavourless. I would sip it to fit in with adults, but I wouldn’t say that it was something I enjoyed.

As a young adult, I tried loose tea on the advice of a friend. It was a totally different drink. Black tea tasted rich and warming. Earl grey had a wonderfully soothing aroma. Green tea had a nourishing earthy taste that made me feel good when I drank it. More importantly, there was very little bitterness, so I could skip the milk and sugar, and enjoy the flavours even more.

We did one of our monthly releases at work this week. Releases can be stressful and frustrating, and take a lot of methodical preparation to get right. It can be thankless work too; the only time a user notices a release is when it goes badly. We do our releases early on a week day to minimize impact, so if anything does go wrong, there’s not many bodies around to help out. It’s not much fun, but it’s important work that needs to be done.