Life is good, I have my coffee

So a couple of weekends ago I decided that it was about time I went espresso machine shopping. I had been doing a bit of research on the interweb and found that it was now actually cheaper buying the machine I wanted in Canada than in the US, and also found that there was a local retailer selling it at a very nice price. So off I went on what I expected to be a 1 1/2 hour round trip to Richmond to EsprossoTec. Unfortunately I wasn't counting on the bus service in Richmond being so infrequent on a Saturday afternoon and so the trip ended up taking about 1 1/2 hours just to get to the store so I had to pay for a second bus ticket to get home again. Still I guess $1.90 won't hurt too much.


The store was rather impressive, with a wide range of shiny chrome espresso machines of varying sizes and price points. The machine I had decided on was a La Pavoni Europiccola and I even decided to settle on the cheaper black based model rather than the slightly cooler looking chrome based model. I figured the extra $100 could be better used elsewhere, like on a Reg Barber tamper. I had been looking to get one of these tampers for several years and now that I have one I can totally see why people rave about them so much on coffeegeek.


So anyway on to the first few days with my new toy. On arriving home I unpacked the machine and followed all the manufacturers directions for first use, requiring a clean with the espresso machine cleaning stuff. No problem there, it was all nice and easy to set up and before long I was all ready to pull my first shot. Of course I had to set up the grinder first, it had been being used as a french press grinder, requiring a much coarser grind so I had to pull it apart, clean it and get it set up for espresso. So once that was all done I ground some coffee in to the portafilter and tamped it down just like I did on my machine in NZ and locked it in to the grouphead. Now for the moment I had been waiting for. I lifted the lever up (the la pavoni is a lever machine that uses a piston rather than a pump to push the water at pressure through the coffee beans). After about 5 seconds I could see coffee start dripping out the bottom of the portafilter, just like the user manual said should happen and then I pulled down on the lever and watched for the beautiful crema to start flowing in to my cup. Oh the disappointment. The coffee had absolutely no crema and looked more like a drip coffee than an espresso. I took a tiny sip and decided that it would be better off being discarded. So I tried again, this time tamping extra hard, applying as much pressure to the coffee as I could. This time there was the thinnest layer of super pale crema on top of the coffee and yet again it tasted pretty bad. I noticed that the coffee wasn't ground particularly fine and was beginning to wonder whether the grinder was simply not capable of achieving a grind fine enough for espresso. My other thought was that maybe the beans were getting a little stale, and also they were a very light roast (I had bought them for french press and I prefer a lighter roast for french press) and I know from experience that lighter roasts are not as well suited to espresso.
So the next day I went for a walk to 49th Parallel and bought an espresso blend hoping that this would achieve better results. I also decided to have another go at doing the grinder adjustment. After making the grinder adjustment I found the grind could go much finer and so I had high hopes for this next shot. I ground, tamped and loaded once again and started pulling the shot. This time no coffee started dripping out and I was able to keep it raised for the full 10 seconds I had read on coffeegeek was optimum. Then I started pressing down on the lever and found for the first time that I actually had to push down pretty hard, obviously the beans were providing more resistance than previously and after a few seconds I saw the beautiful golden streams of crema laden coffee start falling from the spouts of the portafilter. Success! That first sip of espresso was superb. I was so happy, the grinder is capable after all.


Two weeks have now passed and I can say that I am regularly pulling wonderful shots and the lattes I have made have easily matched anything I have bought from my favourite Vancouver cafes since my return here in February. I am still getting used to the milk steaming, it is pretty quick and although I have had some very nicely steamed milk I have not yet reached the level I was achieving in New Zealand on my E61 Rocket (ECM Giotto Premium) or on my Rancilio Silvia before that. Well I will let you all know how I progress over the coming months.

Oh and yesterday I bought a replacement for my camera that was stolen, so now I can add photos to my blog postings again. Yay.

Spring in Vancouver

I love spring in Vancouver. It is lovely walking around the city and seeing all the blossoming trees. And with spring comes opportunity for other fun outdoors activities like tennis. Today I had a game of tennis booked in to play with Reuben, well actually a game of either tennis or squash just in case it rained. When I got up in the morning it looked like a nice day for tennis, there was a bit of cloud around but it didn't look too threatening. Anyway, as I was talking with Tiffany - as I often do - I looked out my window and noticed it was raining a bit, then I looked a bit more carefully and decided it was hailing. Bother I thought, I guess that probably means tennis is off today. When it came time to leave to meet Reuben I had another look outside, it was still raining a bit but I thought maybe it was just an isolated shower and maybe over Stanley park way it might be sunny, so I took both my tennis and squash racquets with me just to be safe. When I made it outside I realised that the hail was still falling a little, not big chunks of ice but just little ones mixed in with the rain. At this stage I pretty much realised it wasn't going to be a tennis day. As I walked on I noticed a few cars that had a lot of small hail pieces on them, then as I continued I noticed the pavement had a lot of slushy melting hail on it. Then a few blocks later and I realised that what I thought was hail was actually snow, very wet snow, but definitely snow. Snow in downtown Vancouver in late March, that is kind of crazy. By the time I got to Burrard Street I discovered that the slushy snow was quickly finding its way inside my shoes and my socks were getting decidedly damp. A few blocks later and they were totally soaked. The snow was getting deeper and deeper the further I went until by the time I approached Roz and Reuben's apartment it was a pretty decent layer of snow on the ground. By this stage I had decided that my shoes were so wet that it was not going to be such a great idea playing squash either. All in all not a very nice spring day really. But walking through the slush was kind of a nice change I guess, hopefully my shoes dry out in time for my next scheduled tennis or squash game.
For those of you wondering when some more photos will start appearing on this blog you will have to wait a bit longer. As you may recall my camera was stolen in PNG and I haven't replaced it yet. It is on my list of things to get in April.

Sorry another long overdue blog

Well, with any luck a couple of you will still be reading this blog and this won't be a total waste of time. There have been a few reasons for the long gap between postings. Firstly I have moved countries again and so have been somewhat busy finding work, finding a place to live, finding furniture and other stuff like that that you have to do when you move half way around the world with just a suitcase and 2 guitars. Actually finding a job didn't take all that long, I had a job within a week of getting here so that was very nice. I also managed to find an apartment within a week too so maybe that isn't such a great excuse for not blogging either. Just today I managed to find myself a couch so that excuse won't last much longer either, I go and pick it up tomorrow. I guess the main reason I haven't been blogging so much is that I find it much more interesting chatting with Tiffany in the evenings rather than writing blogs to whoever may happen to read it. Another reason which I find to be a perfectly valid reason for not writing is that I haven't really thought of much to write about, so any blog that I do write is likely to just be a lot of rambling on about nothing in particular, much like this one is turning out to be. I will try and think of a few things I have been doing to actually write about.

I guess for starters maybe I should update you all on the state of coffee in Vancouver. I have found a few changes in the 7 months or so that I have been gone. Firstly there is a new JJBean store now. Previously I would pretty much just go to the Granville Island branch and get a takeout small latte after getting whatever food I was cooking that night. Every now and again I would take the trip out to Main St and have a latte or americano there, it is a nice store out there, but is often very busy and hard to find a seat in the weekend. So anyway this new branch is in Yaletown, very conveniently just down the road from my apartment, I guess it was one of the contributing factors in deciding where to live this year. I have been there a handful of times so far and each time have been served a very nice coffee indeed. Good work JJBean. Another change is the opening of 49th Parallel's store on 4th Ave. 49th Parallel roast a lot of beans that are used by good cafes like the Elysian Room, but until recently did not have a retail outlet. So anyway I was strolling down 4th ave the other day looking for coffee cups (I had just bought a french press and realised I had nothing to drink the coffee in). As it turned out I had left my shopping expedition a smidgen late as the kitchenware shops were closed. However as I was walking down the road I noticed 49th Parallel was still open so decided to stop in to sample their coffee. As I walked in I spied some rather cool coffee cups for sale and decided that they would work wonderfully for my morning coffee and would make a fine addition to my coffee cup collection when I get back to NZ. So I bought a couple of cups and a small latte. Unfortunately the latte was not all that good, in fact it was pretty bad. I think I may still go back again some time though to give them a second chance, maybe I just got the bad barista or something and they are normally much better. I know they have good beans and a fine looking espresso machine, a mistral which is a reskinned La Marzocco, so the potential is there for a great coffee if the barista does their part right.

It has been great catching up with people here again. I enjoyed the couple of weeks I spent staying with Roz and Reuben when I arrived. It is a big help having somewhere to stay on arriving in a new country, especially when you don't know how long it will take to find a job. They have just bought an apartment in the Westend, a nice spot, very handy to squash courts and tennis courts and not too far from the badminton place either. Reuben has started playing badminton on Thursdays and I plan on joining him there. Writing that has actually just reminded me that it is Thursday and I have just missed badminton again, bother. It has been a long time since I have played badminton properly so when I went and joined him a few weeks back I found I was somewhat rusty. Hopefully it won't take too long to get back in to the swing of things. I have enjoyed getting involved again in the bible study I was attending last year, they are a great bunch of people, as are lots of the nice folk at University Chapel. This last Sunday I was pleased to be back playing bass at church again with a great bunch of musicians too which is always nice.

I had intended on going up to Grouse Mountain a few times this week for some evening snowboarding. Unfortunately I came down with a miserable cold on Monday so have been trying not to do too much to aggravate it. It is not so nice snowboarding when your nose is constantly dripping. The snow report has been pretty good this week too, with several nights where a good 12 cm of new snow has accumulated. The cold seems to be getting better now so maybe I will find time over the weekend to head up. I decided to get myself a Y2Play pass this year, it gives me access to Grouse for the rest of this season and all of next season for a very reasonable price.

I am really missing having a camera at the moment. Early Spring is a beautiful time of year in Vancouver with all the flowers starting to bloom. I have been very self controlled so far and not gone out and bought a replacement camera. As I was researching them a month ago I found that a new model in the Canon Rebel series is due to be released in April. I am not planning on upgrading to that model, but hopefully it will help drop the price of the XTi a bit. So sorry you will just have to wait a bit longer to see photos of my latest culinary adventures, or other things I may take photos of.

The much anticipated next blog entry

Well it has been far too long since I updated this blog. I guess my computer time has been taken up with chatting with Tiffany this last month and I have been neglecting all you other people. Sorry about that. So I guess this blog will be a bit of a mish mash of all the things I can think about to write about from the last month and a half.





First off I realise that a number of you readers haven't seen a picture yet of the most wonderful woman in the world. So here she is.

So now what else have I been up to? Unfortunately I don't have a camera at the moment so haven't been able to keep a photo log of my recent activities. One activity that I am particularly disappointed about not having photos of is my kayaking trip to Rangitoto Island in the Auckland harbour. There were 7 of us that went on that trip. It involved a nice little 6km paddle across the harbour to Mt Rangitoto, a dormant volcano. We had a pretty favourable wind and tide so the kayaking was pretty easy work and we got there in around 45 minutes. We then set off on a leasurely stroll to the top of the mountain (it isn't all that big and only took 40 minutes). We reached the summit just in time to see the sunsetting over Auckland city. It was a really clear evening and the view was quite something. It helped remind me just how beautiful New Zealand is, I think I forget that sometimes. We then walked back down and paddled back to Auckland again under the stars.

Last Saturday my family all got together for a meal. We actually have done this quite a bit since I have been back in NZ, but this time the meal was particularly good and worth a mention here I think. While living in Vancouver I bought a rather nice cookbook called "Tyler's Ultimate" by Tyler Florence. My sister'n'law Sharon has been eyeing a few of the recipes in it for a while and suggested maybe we could have an Ultimate Meal using a bunch of recipes from the cookbook. So we picked 6 recipes, 2 appetisers, 1 soup, 2 main courses and a dessert.

The first appetiser was one I had made for my lunch about a year ago, a caramelised onion toast. It was super good, with the anchovies adding a nice saltyness without overpowering the soft onions. This was served at the same time as the second appetiser, herbed goat cheese bites. They were little slices of toasted baguette with some herbed soft goat cheese and sundried tomato. I love goat cheese so these little things I thougth were jolly good.

The soup was probably the most interesting or unusual of the courses. Being summer here I thought a cold soup would go down well, so I made the watermelon gazpacho with chile and feta cheese. Basically it is tomato and watermelon blended up with a few chiles, then some finely chopped cucumber and onion is folded through it and finally it is topped with crumbed feta cheese. Although some people had reservations about this dish, wondering why anyone would put watermelon in a tomato soup, it seemed to be well received and there were lots of positive comments about it. I think I will make it again some time, I really liked it.

The first main course was a simple grilled salmon with smashed potatoes. This was a very, very simple dish but I thought it was really nice. I love salmon so as long as it is not overcooked I will normally enjoy it. I never had any fish in Ukarumpa, so I have really enjoyed being able to eat lots of fish since being back home.

Next up was my favourite course, grilled leg of lamb with lemon chickpea puree and greens. The lamb was marinated in a vinaigrette that was also used on the salad greens. Then the lamb was grilled on the BBQ. It was cooked just how I like it, medium rare and was oh so tasty. I have come to really love chickpeas over the last 6 months too, so the accompanying chickpea puree was just delightful.

The dessert was jolly nice too, lemon ricotta crepes with blueberries. It was supposed to have bananas too but we forgot to buy them. The simple blueberry sauce was particularly good.

All up a very nice meal with family.

Well that is about all I have to write about from the last month. I have enjoyed spending a bit of time here in NZ with friends and family and am looking forward to getting back to Vancouver now. Hopefully I will be there by the end of next week, I haven't booked any flights yet but am planning on flying on the 22nd Feb.

Sorry ladies, I'm taken

Well my time in PNG has now come to an end. The last 5 months have been some of the most memorable and enjoyable months of my life. I can not speak highly enough of the friends I have made in such a short period of time. There was one person in particular that I have gotten to know particularly well over the last few months. If you look back at previous posting of the last few months Tiffany's name pops up every now and again, but to my surprise these mentions didn't even trigger a comment from any family members. It seems Daryl's comment on Shannon while I was in Vancouver has made him a little reluctant to try and hassle me in such a public forum. Any way I was rather excited when Tiffany (also known as T) suggested that she would like to come and spend a week in New Zealand over the Christmas period. T was able to get a seat on the same flight as me from Cairns to Auckland, resulting in the potentially awkward situation of being greeted at the airport by my parents, brothers and nephews and nieces. Being the somewhat cautious person that I am, my family had heard nothing of T other than the few mentions on my blog. My nephew Jordan quickly decided that he wanted to find out a bit more about T so proceeded to ask a bunch of questions, getting sillier and sillier as he went.

The next day we spent looking around Auckland a little. We went and had lunch at a cafe in town before jumping on the ferry over to Devonport where we walked around NorthHead and Mt Victoria. The weather treated us very kindly, not a drop of rain. Yep a December day in Auckland without any rain, what a pleasant change. After returning to the city we stopped in at the Domain to try and see the gardens but they were already closed so we had to settle for a little walk around the duck ponds. We tried getting some photos of the ducklings but they kept moving so none of them turned out all that good.

The next day we took a trip down to Waitomo and went black water rafting. It was great fun. Black water rafting involves floating down a river in a cave in inner tubes. There are a few small waterfalls that you have to jump off which was good fun. You get to see the glow worms too so all in all it is a pretty cool little trip. After Waitomo we went to Rotorua, taking a somewhat scenic route that wises maps recommended. Some of the directions were not particularly accurate, like when it said to go straight instead of left. Fortunately my impeccable sense of direction didn't get us lost and we made it to Rotorua. The next day we went up the Gondola and raced each other on the Luge. You sit on these 3 wheel trolley things and go down a windy concrete track, ranging in length from 2km for the scenic track to 1km for the advanced track. If you are ever in Rotorua then it is well worth a visit.

In the afternoon we took a trip to Mt Maunganui to see the beach and have a spot of dinner on the way back up to Auckland.

On Sunday we went to my church where it was nice to be able to catch up with everyone again, then we had lunch with Kris and Amy, followed by a trip to Piha beach to show T what black sand looks like. Then it was off to the carols in the park where we met up with the family for a picnic. Jiggles the clown was there too and he kept the kids amused.

Monday was largely taken up with last minute Christmas shopping followed by a family dinner so that everyone could get to know T a bit better.

Christmas day was not quite so good weather wise, with a few showers here and there but we did still manage to get a quick game of badminton in after dinner to try and burn off a few calories.

And that pretty much wraps up the week that T was here in NZ. It was far too short a visit really.

Mt Wilhelm

As mentioned in my last post, last weekend I went on a hike up the highest mountain in PNG, Mt Wilhelm. There were 6 of us that went, and it was a very fun bunch of people to go with. In order to get to the hut before dark we needed to leave Ukarumpa bright and early, so we met at 6am and loaded the Hilux and by 6:30 we were on our way. Thankfully, we had no holdups and had a very smooth trip for the first 4 hours, we didn't even hit too many potholes. Then the fun started. Once we turned off the Highlands Highway at Kundiawa the road became much more interesting. This road was not sealed at all and was full of large bumps and mud puddles, not the kind of road you would go down without 4WD. Chris seemed to enjoy driving down this road. After about 2 hours of driving down this windy, steep, rocky, at times muddy road we made it to Keglsugl where we found parked the hilux and started the hike to the hut.

The hike up to the hut was a relatively simple hike, much like a lot of the bush walks around New Zealand. It took around 3 1/2 hours, including a few stops to re-hydrate and to admire the view. Most of the hike was through bush, very similar looking to the Waitakare Ranges in Auckland at points, with lots of ferns around. Near the end of the hike the trail went through a meadow with just a few ferns dotted around, it looked very much like something out of Jurassic Park. At the end of this meadow kind of thing was a pretty cool waterfall, then a little further on was the hut, nestled in at the base of a hill, a minutes walk away from the beautiful lake.

At this point I experienced being cold for the first time in PNG, sure I had felt slightly nippy a couple of times in Ukarumpa before, but nothing I would really classify as cold. This was cold, so cold in fact that I decided that it was cold enough to wear socks on my hands. Still it wasn't quite cold enough to change out of shorts.

We decided to explore our surroundings a little before it got dark, so we went on a little walk down to the lake. The lake was almost perfectly still, and a very good mirror reflection could be seen of the hills behind the lake. It was really quite a magnificent site. It would almost be worth doing the hike just to the hut to see the view there, although once you factor in the hours of driving to get to the start of the hike I think the cost/benefit ratio would not be looking all that favourable. So I guess what I am saying is if you happen to be driving past Keglsugl it would be well worth stopping and hiking up to the hut. The odds of you just so happening to be driving past are not all that high though so I guess most of this paragraph is kind of useless.

After admiring the lake we went back to the hut to eat dinner. We decided to go for the good old PNG staple of rice with instant noodles and tuna. Not exactly a gourmet meal, but it tasted just fine to us. Then after dinner we took an early night to try and get at least a couple of hours of shut-eye before starting the hike to the summit.

At 12am we all reluctantly stumbled out of bed in the freezing cold and got ourselves organised for the hike. We had prepared some breakfast bars a few days before so we all chowed in to them. They tasted pretty good, although a little on the sweet side for my liking. At 12:30 we were all ready for the hike so set off following our guides for the 5-6 hour hike to the highest point in PNG.

After about 1/2 an hour it became apparent that the breakfast bars were not sitting favourably for most of us, and the realisation was made that we didn't bring enough toilet paper to adequately deal with the aftermath of the breakfast bars. At around about that stage Lisa decided to turn back to the hut, hiking at that altitude can be tough and she was finding it really difficult. We sent one of the guides back with her, instructing him to catch us up and to bring extra toilet paper with him. Unfortunately that guide was also not feeling all that well and we suspect he decided to sleep for a couple of hours before heading back up the mountain. We caught up with him again about a quarter of the way back down again.

I don't really have much to say about the next 4 hours or so. The hike wasn't really all that difficult, although it was pretty tiring, especially as I had my pack on my back with a big bottle of water, a bunch of clothes that I had taken off after I warmed up a little, some chocolate and as I found after returning to the hut a loaf of banana bread. Hiking in the dark is not the most pleasant of experiences either, you don't get to enjoy the view so much and you don't really see much of where you are heading. Only having 3 hours sleep (and interrupted sleep at that) didn't help much either.

At around 5am Chris and Andrea decided they were feeling too sick to continue up the mountain. We stopped and discussed what we should do, whether we should split up, or whether we should all just turn back. A couple of minutes before this we had passed a plaque in memory of some chap who died on the mountain. He had twisted his ankle and remained behind while the rest of his group went to the summit. It is assumed that he must have tried finding his own way back down the mountain and fallen in to a ravine. This plaque made me more than just a little reluctant to leave Chris and Andrea to find their own way down in the dark. After 30 minutes of deliberation we decided to start heading back down the mountain again, we had failed. After hiking down for 5 or so minutes we stopped again and the deliberations started up again. By this time the first sign of sunrise could be seen and I was convinced by the others that it would now be safe enough for Chris and Andrea to find their own way back down the mountain. So Deb, Matt and I turned around and started to head back up. During the deliberation we were told that we still had a good 3 hours to go. Fortunately this was proven to be a bit of an exaggeration and we were able to make it to the summit by 7am.

The view from the top was breathtaking, or maybe that was the hike up the mountain. Either way I was breathing pretty hard by the time I reached the top. It was a gorgeous day, unusually clear for Mt Wilhelm that late in the morning. We could see all the way to Karkar island, and a bunch of other places a long way away. Some of the valleys had swirly clouds in them and looked really cool. We stayed up the top for 30 minutes or so before slowly starting our hike back down to the hut. We were all absolutely exhausted by this stage, so the walk down seemed to be a lot more difficult than the walk up was. On a couple of occasions I managed to sneak in a few minutes of sleep. Our guide was feeling pretty lousy by this stage, I think he had a really bad headache, and we found we were pretty much ahead of him for most of the trip down. At one point he fell asleep and Deb had quite a job trying to wake him up.

Finally we made it down to the hut by around 11am and had a spot of lunch, pasta with tomato pasta sauce. I then played Rook (a card game) for a while before taking a long nap.

I won't describe the rest of the trip in detail as it was nothing particularly noteworthy and this blog is long enough already and I have another blog entry I want to write after this one.

All in all the trip was well worthwhile and I enjoyed it. In saying that, I never want to do it again, it is definitely a once in a lifetime trip for me.

Lone Tree - training for Mt Wilhelm

Last Saturday a bunch of us went on a little hike up to the top of Lone Tree, the top of one of the ridges around the valley that Ukarumpa is nestled in. Lone Tree is a rather poor name for the hill that we were going up, as at the top of the hill is a forest, apparently it was named before the landowners planted the forest and I guess no-one has bothered to update the name yet.


The best time for hiking around these parts seems to be in the morning, as it usually starts raining in the afternoon. That fact in mind, it was decided that we would meet at 9 in the morning, a time of day I rarely see during the weekend. Still I managed to drag myself out of bed in time and even managed a spot of breakfast before heading off. It was a stunner of a day, nice and sunny but not too hot, perfect conditions really.


Just outside the gates of Ukarumpa we came across a river that we had to cross, so we all waded across, some finding better paths than others. Not far after the river we walked through a village, then through some gardens. Around about then some children from the village decided that we didn't know the way, so they became our guides, leading us all the way to the top and back down safely. Dan rewarded them with a bag of corn chips for their hard work.

All up the hike took around 4 hours going at a somewhat leisurely pace. A grand time was had by all, as far as I could tell.

For some of us there was a secondary reason for doing this hike (although I would have still gone anyway). Next weekend 6 of us are going to climb the highest peak in PNG, Mt Wilhelm. At a height of 4,509 metres it is around 1,000 metres higher than Mt Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain, so the altitude will certainly be making the hike somewhat more difficult than lone tree was. We leave Friday morning and drive for 5 or so hours before starting a 4 hour hike to a lake and a cabin where we can have a spot of dinner before trying to get a couple of hours sleep. Then at 1am we have to get up again and start the climb to the summit in order to arrive at around sunrise. Leaving it much later is not such a good idea as the mountain usually is clouded over an hour after sunrise, and we would really like to see the view from the top. Then we will descend back down to the cabin where we will spend the afternoon and night before going the back to the vehicle the next morning. Hopefully that will give us time to go to "The Bird" in Goroka for dinner on the way home. It should be a blast, the others I am going with are really fun people. I'll keep y'all posted on how the trip goes next week.