My Retail Therapy WED

Remember last Wednesday, I went out with the ladies to the yummy, yummy Chapeau!, and kicked off my new mid-week tradition of doing something special to enjoy the weekdays too? And how cleverly, I called these Wednesday Epicurean Debauchery (WED)? I just think that's such Alice-humor, I had to say it again. Anyway, I managed to squeeze some debaucherizing in this week too, but this time in a more Paris Hilton-ish way...except I was at Target instead of in Louis Vuitton... Louis Vuitton doesn't have any kitchen gadgets, which would, of course, be the _only_ reason why I was at Target instead... Ha, I'm so funny this morning...

I'd been procrastinating on buying a coffee grinder for about a year now. I'm predominantly a tea drinker, and I only drink coffee on a few occasions, namely when I am working long stationary hours at the computer for my day job as a scientist. Since I am going to be writing a fairly substantial grant proposal for a new scientific research program, due April 11th, I figured it was time for me to invest in a grinder! Perfect WED splurge! Turns out at Target, these things are hardly a splurge, so I ended up supplementing my shopping spree with a mountain of $7 shirts and an electric kettle (I have to do a post on these too. I'd never seen one before I went to Australia in 2003, but they are GREAT!) for my office at work.

Here's the never-to-be-seen-again pure, clean, virginal blades of my WED purchase...
I got the medium-priced grinder from Hamilton Beach because it had multiple settings, but boy, was I naive!! Sometimes, it's amazing how my mind plays tricks on me and I convince myself of certain things... This is a perfect example of my symptoms - I saw the setting marks on the side, which had three major settings (percolator/coarse, auto drip/medium, espresso/fine) with four minor settings for each major setting (4, 8, 12, 15). I thought this meant that there were a total of 12 different gradations in the coarse to fine grind scale. Well, it turns out that the minor settings indicate the number of scoops of beans you add into the machine, and it really only has three coarse to fine settings... In retrospect, it seems obvious that the number settings are scoop sizes - who would use multiples of four as units of finer control??? Silly me...

But then it occurred to me - with a single blade, the only 'control' the grinder has to change coarseness is the duration of the grinding process. So, I could probably use 4 scoops of beans in the 12 scoop Fine setting for a Super-fine grind! Or, I could use 12 scoops in the 4 scoop Medium setting for a medium-coarse grind!! This is the perfect opportunity for hypotheses-driven research!!!! My experimentalist nature is yearning for empirical evidence!

But alas, I have yet to microscopically examine the coffee granules, and in the mean time, I am just enjoying the fragrance of freshly ground coffee on a rainy Saturday morning...