We are blessed to live in an area surrounded by cafes, however, most of the time I end up at the *extremely* convenient Starbucks down the street. Don’t judge me, it’s fast and portable. The french really love their coffee. They drink it in the morning, after lunch, during work, after drinks at the bar, before bed, etc. It can become an expensive habit. I noticed my coffee consumption ticking up slowly from the usual one I had on Sunday mornings, to two-three times a week, sometimes more. I know that Starbucks coffee has TERRIBLE calories hidden in them, but I am very aware of that and only choose reasonable things. Ex: Tall Cafe Latte with Soy milk or Skim milk. But, it adds up! Even less evil coffee at the cafes are around 3.50 Euro a pop, which is completely fair, but if I drink them as much as some of my French friends do, that’s quite a bit. Alas, the solution has presented itself! We had an electric kettle in our flat when we moved in, but since it looked gross, we banished it to the closet. I have collected all kinds of tea through the past few months and it often sits forgotten in the cabinet, until I remembered the dilapidated kettle. Yes, I know that you can throw water in a mug and put it in the microwave, but I hate doing that. The tea never tastes right. I pulled the thing from its cave and soaked it with vinegar and lemon until it sparkled like….. something sparkly. It was completely transformed from the sad dingy thing it was, into a proper useable kettle. I pulled down my new favorite ( Nina’s Marie Antoinette Thé with hints of apple and rose from Versailles) and filled the pot. *Snap*. It is NOT supposed to make that noise when you push the button. Nor is the button supposed to wiggle all over. All that hard work, and I had successfully cleaned a broken kettle. CURSES. Since I was the one that made the discovery, and not the apartment owner upon the move out of the last tenant, we had to replace it. Those suckers are not cheap! I mean, they are, but I’m cheap! I looked at several of them and nothing was under 29.00 euro. They were also all way too big for what we needed. Luckily, there is an amazingly useful junk shop down the street that had a smaller one for only 15 euro! (Hooray!).
Now I have something sitting on my counter to remind me that I have tea and it takes less than a minute to get properly hot water for it. I can start working on depleting my current tea stash down to a much smaller size. Do you hear that Geep? I’M DRINKING IT. I am on my third cup today.
Fezzik In Paris 