Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2002-03-31 - 10:47 a.m.

Subtle Differences

I finally found my little espresso maker, just the one-shot kind, at a thrift store. It always works; if I'm meant to have it, it will show up somewhere along the line, with "3.00" written on it in grease pencil. So now I can have mochas whenever I want them, whenever I'm dog tired and deserving. I can just make my own in my own big cup.

But it doesn't work.

Oh, no, not the espresso maker. It works just fine, although either it or I seem to have a problem steaming milk. It's the homemade mochas.

They're not the same.

I suppose I should have known, the same way that I know that if I buy a fresh sourdough roll and some deli roast beef and go home and put it all together with lettuce and onions and pickles and mustard and hot peppers, it will not taste the way a deli sandwich tastes, not even if I cut in two on a kind of diagonal or make an effort to stack all the roast beef right smack in the middle so I have to take the sandwich apart before eating and even the whole thing out. It's just...different.

Coke is not the same at home, either. I can buy a liter of it, I've tried this, and I can put it in a big plastic glass with ice and stick a straw in it and by God, it is NOT the same as the Jumbo Coke I can get at the drive-through window, it just isn't.

I don't know exactly why this is true. I have wondered if it is the act of having someone else prepare something for me and put it, finished, in my hands. I haven't gotten to test this because I live with two children who will whine, "Mommmmmmmmm, this is just the good part of the movie..." when simply asked to pick up their own dirty socks; I just can't see asking them to make me a roast beef sandwich, no mayo double peppers easy on the mustard. So that could be the secret.

(To be perfectly fair, they DO make me breakfast on Mother's Day. But I can't find out from that either; I know what it tastes like at home, but I can't find out if it tastes better out because I don't know a restaurant that serves lukewarm coffee with mini-marshmallows in it.)

So tonight I bought myself a mocha at the grocery store coffee bar. I did it even though I have my little espresso machine sitting all thrifty and virtuous on the kitchen counter. I watched the barista pour the same kind of chocolate syrup I have at home in it, and top it with the same kind of whipped cream I have in the refrigerator. Maybe it's just the indulgence of it. It tasted wonderful.

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