Sprechen die Deutsch?
A friend has a thing for 1940's chrome electric percolators. She collects them and allows them to repose. she feels charmingly, throughout her house. Her china cabinet has a complement of chrome electric percolators. But they go beyond there, onto shelves, tabletops, wherever she wants that coffee charm to radiate.
We've never before known anybody that collects and swears by the taste from 1940's chrome electric percolators. But she isn't hurting anyone with her hobby, and we say more electric power to her.
Here, we like a similarly-old enameled metal percolator formerly owned by a German grandmother that we still use, on a gas range. It has a glass dome that shows the changing color of the brew as it percs. The beat of the perc is catching. The metal of our coffee maker is covered in some kind of light green finish that can be put directly on the burner and no harm done. The inner coffee basket is so finely peforated that no paper filter is used. [Some say those things are effete.]
"HI-yell," the old cowboy says. "In my day we boiled the grounds right in the water, with an egg shell if we had one!"
Old metal colanders of which we have three (collect them, sort of) are proffered in the same enameled way, and have charming areas where the enamel is chipped off and the rusty metal shows.
Bring us some bing cherries rinsed and served in one of those and a kitchenary dream is realized, or if not, close to the mark.
We wanted to show the highly-specialized collector friend a picture of our pot, and here it is. The camera was hand-held to catch the blue gas flame. The flash would have obliterated it. So the choice was a little jiggled lack of focus or no blue under the green pot. We could have hooked up the tripod, but this result is OK for Raccoon District esthetes, past and present.
1 comment:
Okay - I hope that you are reading my comments - That is one great picture - I would like to own a framed copy as a piece of art in my home. It seems that I might have enjoyed a cup or two from that pot - am I right? I appreciate the stove top perk too. In fact until I located the functional vintage perkers, I had forsaken the plastic drippers and bought a stainless steel stove topper. I had tried several current electric perkers but none of them lasted more than 2 yrs and they disappointed in that they stopped short of reaching the ideal level of temperature. I don't know if it's due to some sort of lawsuit avoidance or that whole energy star rating thing but the current day electric perkers fall short in terms of scald factor. A little while back we had a financial planner at our house one evening. I offered coffee, he said no thanks. A short time later, as the coffee started perking, he asked incredulously: "Are you actually making coffee on top of the stove?" (Sadly, I'm afraid that, like the margarine tubs, there is a whole generation that knows naught of coffee but that produced on the countertop by the drip makers, but I digress.)"Are you actually making coffee on top of the stove?" he asked incredulously. "Why yes I am." said I. "I think I would like to have some then." said he. I flashed the Mona Lisa smile.
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