Acceptable Behaviour

If you ever ride the C-Train (Calgary’s light rail), you might have noticed posters that are part of a campaign to enhance civility- telling riders to turn down music, not put feet on seats, not block entrances, that sort of thing. Two things have irked me about the posters: First, the drawings are… weird. Every person featured has this bizarre sort of smile that seems to indicate that all CT riders have conduct disorder or just had face lifts, even little kids. Second, and I ranted about this in one or two of my courses last year, the posters were (WERE) rife with American spellings: “ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR,” with an illustration of, among other things, the sign to “City Center.” Trivial? Well, in point of fact, signage is all properly Canadian (every platform indicating the direction to “CITY CENTRE,” thanks very much), and really, one of the more interesting and challenging things about emigrating from the US was, in my case, being diligent about learning and using Canadian spelling, nomenclature (as with “in university” instead of “in college,” among many others) and even pronunciation (”COMP-uh-zit” instead of “com-PAH-zit,” and “shed” in “schedule”). I LIKE that my name has a “zed” in it. So in light of all this effort and care, it pissed me off, more than a little, to see these signs.

Well, I’m happy to report that, despite my not having complained officially (that I can recall; I complain a lot) about these spelling snafus, the signs have been corrected- “ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOUR” and “City Centre,” big as day.

Sometimes little pleasures are enough. I’m going to write CT and thank them.

You’re never too much of a snob not to like iced coffee when the humidex is 38.

As I write this, thunderstorms are popping around Calgary and it’s cooled off, a lot, but today was miserable. “Humidex” is something we don’t orient to here, but today- sheesh. It got up to about 30, which isn’t that uncommon here, but the dewpoint was 19 for much of the afternoon, maybe peaking to 20. A dewpoint of 20 is the threshold of “oppressive” humidity, and it’s never been this swampy since I’ve lived here. So the humidex topped off at 38. Incredible.

I used to love iced espresso-based things, all sweet and slippery, but since I’ve graduated to coffee geekdom I’ve become an insufferable purist. No “lattes,” thank you very much; my repertoire is now shrunk to comprise the holy trinity of cappuccino-espresso-macchiato. I have a slew of 8-oz cappo cups that I will no longer use since I got traditional 5-oz ones. Insufferable, I know. But it was so uncomfortable today and yesterday. So I bit the bullet and experimented with a couple of iced drinks.

First up was an iced “cappuccino” and I followed the technique demonstrated in this youtube vid. I pulled a shot into a little bell pitcher for espresso (normally I pull right into a demitasse), and took a 12-oz rocks glass, filled it with ice, and then steamed a tiny bit of milk. I didn’t worry about overstretching, because this was just a little stiff-ish foam for “garnish.” Then I poured some cold milk over the ice until the glass was about half full, spooned the foam onto the iced milk, and THEN added the espresso. The result? A layered iced cappo just as in the video. It was good, and since I was using a fairly small glass and not a lot of milk (maybe 4 oz given all that ice), it wasn’t the calorie party that these drinks can be at places like Starbucks.

Today was, again, hellish, so I tried a little twist. I spooned out about a teaspoon of Nutella into the same rocks glass, and pulled a double espresso onto it. Stirred them together to (sort of ) melt the Nutella, and then poured cold milk on that, and then added a few ice cubes. The result was akin to the “iced mochas” I used to love (in fact one of the drinks that got me interested in “specialty coffee” way back when), but hmmmm…. Nutella doesn’t melt so well. Back to the drawing board there.

This, by the way, is what a rather slow shot made with my Elektra Microcasa a Leva can look like. I packed the portafilter a bit too much (wanted a nice shot for the camera and overdid it), so it took longer than one would normally want, but it was a tasty shot made with Hines espresso blend: