Recipe Thursday - Quest for a Cup of Coffee

Are you one of those people that can't start his or her  morning till you've had a cup of coffee.  I try not to be, but every now and then the caffine urge gets the better of me.  I prefer to wait till everyone else has left the house, for a time when I can drink/sip/slurp in peace.  I have found that coffee has slowly been over taking my kitchen.

I would imagine that my coffee making supplies should only occupy one small piece of counter top and a can's worth of space in the cupboard.  Yeah right. 

At present there are two coffee machines on the counter.  The first is a Tassimo that makes individual cups.  Each morning I make myself a cappuccino.  That's my treat or possibly bribe to get myself moving.  I tend to wait till I have to time to sit quietly and sip at leisure.  I dug the espresso machine out for my niece to use, she worked in a coffee bar for years, but she doesn't really drink much of the brew, so it sits mostly unused.  On the weekends I usually make up a full pot and pour out 5 cappuccinos as a treat for the family.

At times I feel the urge to be a purist and I make espresso using the Italian method.

The two pots on the left were gifts from my best friend Julie-Ann.  The left-most one makes two to four cups and the middle one makes about six or eight depending on size of cup.  The right hand pot is from Bialetti, called a Mukka Express.  It brews the expresso and froths the milk all in one step.  Here's a video of how it works (it's in Italian with english subtitles):

What good is coffee without drinking vessels.  We have an assortment of cups from traditional espresso size up to large travel mugs.   With five people in the house, that's a lot of cups.   At the upper left show the manual filter cone that gets frequent use as well, specially by son.  It's sitting on a wonderful coffee mug that I received as a gift from Hawaii.

Along with all these basic items, there are all the coffee extras.  The actual coffee including: caf coffee, decaf coffee, caf espresso, decaf espresso, a variety of flavoured coffees and then there are the many coffee pods that are used in the Tassimo.  Don't forget to add in the measuring scoops, coffee grinder, milk frother, kettle, etc.

After all this talking about coffee it makes me want to brew myself a fresh cup but then I'd be up all night.  I guess if you send me your coffee comments I could stay up reading them and responding....  Imagine if I were to get started on tea.  eeks!

On Saturday join with "Weekend Cooking" which is hosted by Candace at Beth Fish Reads.  All readers are welcome to join in this meme and link their food related post.