Thumbs

I hate it when I'm not smart enough to figure out the inanimate objects.  All day long, I've been working furiously to get my kitchen cleaned up with the idea that my reward would be a green tea latte from my new coffee maker.  It came today courtesy of UPS (or the devils in the enticing brown van, as Roux refers to them), and when I took the box into the kitchen, I realized that practically every surface was covered up with crap from the school year.  Not only that, but last summer, I didn't get a chance to do a full-scale cleanup because of the knee.  Today, then, became the day of sort, file, throw away, and organize.  It took me about five hours to go through all the piles of stuff I foolishly saved for later, to do all the little projects I laid aside during the school year, and to go through my pantry and throw out all the things that were no longer useful. 

I have two large trashbags full of refuse plus a huge cardboard box full of other tiny cardboard boxes now, so I feel good about bringing some cleanliness to the space.  I don't have to walk through with my mental blinders on saying "I'll get to that later," or be embarrassed when family or the bug guy comes in.  It looks like somebody who cares might actually live here instead of it being a teenage crashpad.  I hate the way the house gets when the school year gets going, but it's an annual part of my life.  I just try to catch up in the breaks.  It's probably just as well that I'm not married.  I'd hate to foist this way of living on somebody else.

Anyway, I got everything in the kitchen pretty much squared away, set up the coffee maker, mixed my matcha and milk together, ran the first water through the boiler, and tried my darndest to steam some milk to make the latte.  Nada.  Zip.  Very few bubbles.  It did seem as though it would make a very fine cup of coffee, I grant you.  However, for my purposes, although I tried every configuration I can find, I don't think this thing is going to be useful to me at all.  It didn't even heat the milk.  I don't know what to do.  The reviewers on amazon (lots of them, not just a couple of plants from the company) said they could use this to do what I want.  I guess I'm just thumbs.

I mixed my matcha and milk, added half a shot glass of vanilla syrup to it (no idea how much is an appropriate amount, but that tasted right), and frothed it all with a Japanese tea ceremony whisk.  It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was pretty close.  I just wish I knew how to make the machine work.  Sigh.....