Red For A Day
Writing by treason on Tuesday, 21 of November , 2006 at 1:31 pm
There’s been a death in our family. I shouldn’t have been surprised: All the warning signs were there, so on some level I guess I was expecting it. Still, even when it was clear that there would be no recovery and the end was certain, the pain and confusion were palpable. After all these years, my all-white DeLonghi 12-cup drip coffee maker has given up the ghost.
I’d picked it up at Sam’s Club several years ago because I knew our coffee maker was getting ready to “let go.” I’d never owned a DeLonghi, but the price was right, it had a reusable filter system, and it was completely white. At the time, an all-white coffee maker was a rarity, so I scooped it up and placed it in the cart. “What the hell,” I’d thought, “even if it’s crap, it’s no big investment.”
But it’s also important to have a back-up method, because you don’t want to get up in the morning and discover that you have no way to produce a hot cup of coffee. It’s like my sister and her beloved Farberware percolator. Mother burned it to a crisp and my sister couldn’t find a replacement in the Bay Area. I found one here in Albuquerque (mine, still unused and in the original box), so I shipped it to her, averting catastrophe.
So one day I was out and I saw a marked down item that would not only be good for emergencies, but it wouldn’t take up a lot of storage space, either: a 6-cup French style coffee press made by a company called Progressive International Corp.
I picked it up and stared at it. Most of what was written on the box was in French: suddenly all those years in class — j’achète, tu achètes, elle achète, nous achetons, vous achetez — didn’t seem like such a terrible waste. I felt like I should be driving a Volvo and shopping at Whole Foods. Would I be required to buy a specially ground organic fair trade variety from Starbucks for this new press? And would I now have to re-register as a Democrat to vote?
So many questions, so few answers. I got home and put the press, still in its box, on the bottom shelf of the kitchen island behind the turkey platter. Where it sat, untouched, for several years until Saturday morning.
I mean, T and I are not like my mother and stepfather, who went through coffee makers the way some people go through socks. For my mother, coffee is heroin. I have to hand it to her - she gave it up when she was pregnant. (It’s no wonder she hated us.) But she and my stepfather, both serious addicts, finally invested in a restaurant coffee maker and always had two pots going at once. The thing was so enormous and generated so much heat that Heather, the gray and white dog-sized cat, made the top of it her home.
Frankly, I’ve been gradually cutting back on my coffee consumption over the years and recently have been drinking more tea again. A very nice Englishman gave me a gift tin from Harrod’s last year, so I’ve been working my way through that.
And T never drank coffee until he met me. So when he went online and announced that the best machine for us would be the Cuisinart 14-cup stainless steel and black monster I’d just seen in the Sunday ads, I was skeptical.
“We really need 14 cups?”
I’d scoured the ads earlier that morning and found the sale items, then looked them up online only to discover that they had a tendency to spontaneously combust and kill their owners or, worse, leak all over their kitchen counters.
So we went out to get the new coffee maker. I thought we were good to go. T picked up the box - the only one left on the shelf - and I stared at the display model. He saw the look on my face.
“Something wrong?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong. Let’s just get the thing and go.”
“Obviously there’s a problem. Is there one you like better?”
“This is fine. Let’s just get it and go.”
“I can tell there’s something wrong. Why don’t you tell me what the problem is?”
“There’s no problem.”
“Yes, there is.”
“No, there’s no problem. Let’s just get this one and go.”
“Okay, I’m going and you can get it. See ya.”
I stood there holding the box. I put it back on the shelf and left the store knowing that we would be going back to a house that has only a 6-cup coffee press in it.
Truth is, I’m an appliance racist. I can’t live with black appliances. Had the same problem with all that black lacquer furniture from the eighties. Don’t like black cars, either. Fact is, I can and do live with dog hair — but I don’t need to see it all over my black coffee maker first thing in the morning.
We probably should have just bought the damned thing right then and there, but instead we waited until T’s mother’s visit . It’s 10:00 P.M. and we still have no coffee maker. There is tension.
We agree that we don’t go out and get one; instead, I will get up and get one first thing in the morning. T’s mother and I end up at Target and I buy the Empire Red KitchenAid Java Studio. It matches the store perfectly. It’s more than I want to spend, but the trend now is black and stainless steel, so my options for color are limited. A Mr. Coffee is red and stainless, much cheaper, and is mucho attractive, but there are quality issues to consider.
The red KitchenAid is adorable. We do all the pre-use preparation according to the instructions and brew the first pot. I like my coffee thick - this pot was decidedly weak even though I used extra scoops. Brewed a second pot. As with the first, there was an overflow issue, and because I used even more coffee so that the liquid would actually taste like coffee, we ended up with a pot of grounds.
Hmmm. This leaks like a Mr. Coffee for two to three times the price. Sweet.
I tend not to believe everything I read in consumer reviews, but I went online and discovered that others had experienced the same problems. But how do you explain those who say it’s the greatest maker they’ve ever owned? (All I can figure is that they brew weak coffee in small batches.)
I absolutely hate to return items to the store. Once I buy something I feel committed to it - even if it’s a piece of sh*t. This, despite its good looks, is a piece of sh*t. For the price, it should not be leaking all over my counter and producing crunchy coffee.
T’s mother sensed the tension over the coffee maker and asked if everything was all right. Big things don’t destroy relationships, small things do. Trivial things like disagreeing over which appliance to buy. My mother and stepfather never fought, but the day one of them picked up the wrong jar of mayo, we thought they were headed for divorce court. For ten years, it remained a sticky subject to be avoided.
I must go out now and find another coffee maker. Do I go with that Cuisinart? Check back tomorrow for more of the continuing saga…
Wednesday’s episode: Find out if she takes a second mortgage on the house, and buys the Capresso!
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