Live La Dolce Caffe Vita with the NESCAFE Dolce Gusto

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Nestle Dolce Gusto. All opinions are 100% mine.

I love coffee, no matter what. Even if my usual cup is full of instant, I am glad it is there. But once a week we go out for café lattes, and this is an amazing treat. Also expensive. Also full of the kind of caffeine that keeps me up all night, googly-eyed and cranky (such a great combination!). So we’ve been looking for a home coffee machine, my dear spouse and I. One that can make us special coffees, caffeine-calibrated and delicious. Ones that don’t get cold when you drive them home to drink on the back porch. Well, now I know just what I want. If you love coffeehouse coffee or cocoa on a cold crisp autumn day like today – or iced cappuccinos in the summer (I know I do) – I know just what we both need: the NESCAFE Dolce Gusto.

 

The NESCAFE Dolce Gusto is a one-cup coffee machine that makes everything from Caffe Lungo (espresso with twice as much water as a regular espresso) to Latte Macchiato (espresso with milk) to Mochas and Chococino (otherwise known as frothy, amazing hot chocolate). You use special capsules of 100% Arabica coffee and you can adjust the froth levels, temperature and strength of your drink. I would always go for maximum froth to make a lovely crema layer. The Dolce Gusto’s 15 bar pressure pump will create this with no trouble. The 15 bar pump is crucial because a regular coffee machine only has 1 or 2 bars of pressure. And the temperature can be as hot or icy as you like. It is the only coffee machine around that will make hot or iced drinks, so you can enjoy it all year round.

Wikipedia

Best of all, your coffee can be exactly as you like. This is perfect for me with regards to caffeine – as I said earlier, it affects me a lot. I would be able to enjoy fabulous lattes any time of day, yet still get to sleep at night. And I would want to try every coffee variant you can make with the Dolce Gusto, because I have only ever had lattes. What can I say, I find Starbucks et al very confusing. But I’d love to experiment at home and become a real expert.

The Dolce Gusto is sleek and modern looking, too – an asset to any kitchen counter. It comes in four designer colors: red, white, black and titanium (which is silvery). I’m thinking white or titanium would look best in our kitchen which is mostly white with wooden counters. I can dream, can’t I, as I slurp my instant and write this?

You can be your own professional barista with the NESCAFE Dolce Gusto. I know that I want to be. If you go check out some of the reviews at Divine.ca, you will see that I am not alone in this. So the NESCAFE Dolce Gusto is truly at the top of my wish list for the holiday season. And if I get one before Christmas, I promise to make Santa a nice big decaf cappuccino with a lovely Christmas tree drawn in the foam, and a homemade biscotti on the side. He won’t even have to leave a tip in my barista tip jar.

A Stunning Improvement

Sue: Come in, Jeannie, come right in! Let me take your – no, wait. Before I take your hat and coat – no, don’t sit down! I must show you my bathroom.

Jeannie: Actually I only came over to ask if I could possibly borrow a cup of sugar. I really need to get going to pick up little Jimmy at school and -

Sue: It’s right down the hall. Come on! You simply must see what I’ve done in here.

Jeannie: Err…oh, I really had rather not…

Sue: Don’t be silly, I’ve redecorated! Look! Green. Everything is green. I’ve even got a green dress on to celebrate, see?

Jeannie: Well, yes. It is green all right.

Sue: Tell me that isn’t a stunning improvement!

Jeannie: Oh, err…yes. It is! What a stunning improvement. Now I really must be -

Sue: See the rug, and the green wallpaper and the little green jars. And the toilet seat cover, look at that! It’s called a Pearl Seat, apparently.

Jeannie: Goodness me. Yes. Never mind about the sugar. I’ll – I’ll see you later.

Sue: I can’t stop peeking in. Oh – bye dear. If you run into anyone we know – just send them right over, all right?

[This 1947 ad is from the cornucopia of ephemeral wonder that is  LiveJournal Vintage Ads.]

The Tin Can Shopping Cart

Yes, the “little feminine member of the family” is going to enjoy a taste of her future adult life – pushing around a shopping cart made out of a tin can.  Do you think anyone ever made this? And if they did, would a kid actually take it to the store? You’d be laughed out of the Piggly Wiggly for that.

But maybe not. Maybe her poor mother is out there dragging a cart made out of an old oil drum or something.

That girl is definitely gritting her teeth, though. Can’t say I blame her, do you?

[From Popular Mechanics, February 1945.]

Once Upon A Cowbell

Fake books with title-free covers? Check. Lighting fixtures that are in danger of plonking right onto the froofy headboards? Check. A big pretend yawn for the camera which has wandered into the bedroom? Oh, yes, check!

Also: why do these people have cows on their night table?Or horses, maybe they are horses. But still. Why?

And why does he have a bell on his side? When he rings, is she supposed to jump up and get him some bedtime milk and cookies? Answer: Probably. This is why she’s pretending to yawn: soon she will be pretending to be so fast asleep that she cannot hear that cow bell (insert “needs less cowbell” joke right here).

So maybe the little man inside the mattress can go get it the milk and cookies. He doesn’t seem to be doing anything much except pointing.

From Life, October 31 1949; bigger version here.

Important: Please Read! And Update Too

A kind reader has just let me know that when he visited Kitchen Retro recently there was some malware on one of the widgets. I am trying to fix this as quickly as I can and I really hope that no one else has has this problem. I am taking some of the widgets off the blog and am going to try to clean things up and find out what’s going on. My apologies to anyone who has had to deal with this and I’ll keep you as updated as possible…

UPDATE: I have just taken Statcounter off my sites, because I just ran a virus check on my computer and boy, was there a lot of malware coming from Statcounter – which I only just put on my sites a couple of weeks ago. Never again! Am going to keep checking but – fingers crossed – this may well have been the problem.

I’ve also cleaned my own computer of some malware stuff and put various ad and flash block add-ons onto Firefox. I will do more of this as I go, but am cleaned up as far as I can go, for now.

I am also thinking that maybe the malware came via an Entrecard blog. That is totally possible, as many people have had this problem in the past. Therefore, I will be limiting my EC drops in future (there’s a time element there, too, as you EC people know!) – I realize that this won’t necessarily solve the problem but should make things safer all around. I was returning everyone’s drops (as much as I could) but in the light of this issue that is not a good idea. If anyone on EC has advice on dealing with malware I’d be grateful to hear it. Am going to continue to monitor things and if you do have a problem please let me know (and apologies, as I’ve said, in advance).

ANOTHER UPDATE: I’ve put the Ad Block, Flash Block and No Script add-ons on and also something Firefox has called Web of Trust (WOT). Been on a bunch of news sites and blogs, everything checked out with the little WOT icon. BUT when I went to Entrecard it was yellow and rated it “Unsatisfactory”!! So I got off of there. I would like to e mail them but do not want to get back on the site. Just want to let people know – I mean, I never heard of WOT before today but it did not like the EC dashboard at all. Anyone have any experience with this?

Everyone’s Present Accounted For

Around the Christmas tree today
These costumed people like to stay
They’re looking for a gift that’s great
I hope they all like Papermate!

Cousin Al thinks he’s a Spanish Dancer
Stomping and olé-ing is his answer
To every tricky situation
And nothing jogs his concentration;

And then there’s Cousin Mary Jean
Her mom calls her The Teenage Queen
She’s hoping for a lot of things
More fancy than our Santa brings;

And please, Aunt Millie, do not sing
We’d rather you do anything
Than prove you are a great Soprano -
Just have another Mint Milano!

Dear Uncle Bob, though no Tycoon
Will tell another story soon
About his clever business dealing
Blind to the doldrums we are feeling;

Dad’s not a Riveter at all
He got that hat down at the mall;
He does not long to hammer and build
Or even mop up drinks he’s spilled.

Grandmother is a tad askew
She hasn’t got enough to do,
So points out everyone’s mistakes
And pokes at all the Christmas cakes.

Some Little Gentleman is Chad!
He quite delights in being bad;
So mind the turkey and the tree
Do not fall subject to his glee.

And here’s a Beatnik in the crowd
He’s bearded but not very loud
Reciting from Jack Kerouac
Hovering somewhere in the back

He might be someone’s boyfriend or
Perhaps just wandered through the door
Reciting his poem “Beat Heebie-Jeebies,”
Fresh from a run at CBGB’s.

Now that we’re all trytophan sedated
I wonder how we’re all related?
We gave them all cheap ballpoint pens.
Thank goodness they look so dazed and dense.

******
Hope you are all having a lovely day! My coffeecake exploded in the tube pan yesterday, it was exactly like Lucy Ricardo baking that enormous loaf of bread in “Pioneer Women.” I really ought to know better, I’ve seen that episode a few million times. But I think we managed to save it – I dumped it onto a baking tray and now it looks like a free form sort of pie thing. Edible, though. And icing is helpful – especially if you think of it as makeup for baked goods. I know I do.

******
The Papermate ad is from Graphic Design -TJS Labs, Life, December 14, 1959.

http://www.youtube.com/v/gLdf8WwkMWw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1

Hold Your Hat, Bermuda Is Charming!

I was just looking through The Complete Letter Writer, from 1957 – which is full of examples of letters you can write to people who have moved away from your home town and miss the gossip, or to someone who is about to give you a job (you hope!) or thanking them for that swell orange Banlon sweater. They suggest that you begin a “newsy letter” with a peppy opening like “Bermuda is charming!” (which only works if you are in fact in Bermuda) or “Hold your hat! I have news for you!”

Well, hold your hat! I have a blog post for you! And it isn’t about Bermuda, though I have no doubt that that is a charming place. I’m sure I wouldn’t mind sitting on a beach somewhere like that, in a chaise longue, with a cold pina-colada type drink and a really good book and…well, and so on. But I’m not and you’re not. So what have we got? A book from 1957 about letter-writing etiquette, that’s what.

One of the practice letters is to a child at summer camp. It’s full of the usual sorts of things: mind the poison ivy, you forgot your baseball mitt, Mom says wear your long underwear. That is, until the Dad who is writing it says that Sis is telling riddles all the time, and did she get this idea from the camping child? Dad includes the latest one and says he wrote the answer on the back of the letter.

The riddle is: What begins with P, ends with E, and has a thousand letters in it?*

That’s it, I thought to myself. I have riddles for the Doubletake today! That’s newsy, isn’t it? I guess it will do. Since I’m not in Bermuda or anything. I even have a bonus riddle for you, on the Victorian picture card: What is it which a Cat has but no other animal?*

I’m not doing Halloween-themed posts over here, because there are plenty on Kitchen Retro and I will do one at least for Virtual Dime Museum. But over here, we’ve got riddles. And shameless links to my other blogs, but you already knew that.

And next time we’ll have the answers plus a 1950s Jell-O idea that will perhaps tax the limits of your imagination (and digestion)…

The Bermuda postcard from Cartophilia. I won’t tell you where the cat card is from, yet, because the answer is over there, too.

Square Brown Cup Not Included

Of course if he is stressed out and under pressure, you know who’s got to get in there fast as a bunny and fix things – right?

Yes, ladies, that is correct. Please add this to your to-do list.

It shows in his eyes, the hunch of his shoulders, the way he picks at his food.

Because “a wife can always tell” when a guy is “Under Pressure.”  Oh look – quotation marks. You know it’s time to be suspicious when you see those in an ad. Maybe it isn’t work that’s bugging this guy. Maybe he’s also a werewolf. Maybe he’s been moonlighting a lot. Maybe  – oh, just maybe – he just drinks too much coffee. Mr. Caffein Nerves knows all about this sort of thing.*

Or it could be a combination of things. Maybe he’s a werewolf who drinks twelve cups of coffee a day with a wildebeest for a boss and he’s also seeing the cheetah (hah!) in the typing pool on the side. Oh, he’s stressed out all right. Poor thing. 

But have you given any thought to his hot mealtime drink? Gee, you know what, I hadn’t. I thought he could decide about that by himself. Oh, silly me. So help him out with tea!  Come on sister, move it! Brew that tea! And when you have a moment, you ought to pick the peas out of the mixed vegetables for him, too. I mean, have you given any thought to his mixed vegetable needs? He really gets upset about those peas. You know that. 

Anyway, you are supposed to give him tea at every meal for seven days and see if that makes him less stressed out. Serve it in big cups and little mugs and even in square brown cups. You’d better run out to the store right now and get some if you don’t have any square brown cups.

And please – give more thought to his chinaware needs from now on. It’ll be on your conscience otherwise.

[This is from Life magazine, November 13, 1950 and the full-size version is here.]


* I know, I know! I can’t believe I haven’t got all my old posts over here yet, either…Speaking of to-do lists.

Doubletake, Take Two

If you do a double take a second time – that probably makes four. But, as they say, who’s counting? Since I am not planning any mathematical posts, we’ll just call it even.

So welcome to my third blog, which hopefully is not like a third wheel. I write about popular history over at The Virtual Dime Museum, and make fun of retro ads over at Kitchen Retro. And this is the place where everything else goes – the ragbag. The Dagwood closet (that is, a stuffed-full-of-things closet, which gets its name from a character in the old comic strip Blondie).

The Doubletake actually began about two years ago as a place for me to write about current weird news, and I was so new to blogging that:

(a) I typed out all the links because I didn’t know how to cut and paste and,

(b) I didn’t know anything about blog promotion.

And when I say nothing I mean nothing! My history blog existed for a whole year with no visitors except me because – well, you get the point. I have moved on from that, of course. So Doubletake Take Two will get the full launch in a few weeks.

It isn’t just about weird news, though I do want to do that. There’s just so much stuff I’d love to write about that isn’t covered in my other two blogs, which are niche blogs I guess. The Blogs Who Say Niche!

What you can expect to find here are things ranging from book reviews, urban legends, slang and word history, movies, celebrity gossip (old and new), and stuff about being a writer and having also to do the occasional (by which I mean daily) thing (or twelve) around the house. And maybe memes, sometimes (they are hard to do on a niche blog, let me tell you). Oh, and a few recipes so easy (yet healthy) that you can go right back to blogging plus everyone will eat it and say yay. Or something close to yay.

After they swallow first, of course.

In other words, a whole lotta salmagundi. Whatever I think is cool, or interesting, or weird – or all three. Giddyup!

So This Is Matrimony

You got that right, sister. This is what it’s all about – in your case, anyway. Oh, it doesn’t have to be. But I think you walked right into this one, with all that talk of how much fun it would be to keep things shining clean.

Fun? What in tarnation is fun about that, I’d like to know. That was the wedding-reception champagne talking.

And who put up that twee little sign that says “Model Kitchen,” I wonder. Maybe he did that. That’s her first test – see if she picks it up off the floor! That’s clutter, is what it is. And then for full marks, she has to scrub the sign. After all, it’s been on the floor, right?

The honeymoon period lasted about two seconds, judging from the next scene. He’s turned into the Great Dictator, she’s scrubbing all day to no avail.

Having said all that, she’s probably just using spit on a dishrag – since the Old Dutch surprises her so much. “Do you mean there’s a difference in cleansers?” Yup, and in brainpower too!

To wit: instead of getting down to getting that layer of grime off the floor, our heroine conducts a test “that proves that Old Dutch is better” – with a plate and a coin and whatnot (to show that it isn’t gritty – you get the idea). Like she has time for that!

Like any of us have time for those shenanigans. Hell, I have some magazines to read and naps to take – I can’t be doing science-fair experiments with the cleaning products.

But anyway. Yeah, happy ending – thanks to that fabulous Seismotite (you may recall this amazing stuff from earlier posts – I’ll put in the link when I transfer the post over here, which should be in the next day or so).

Cue the condescending comment from the man in the last scene – and doesn’t he look like a real twit and a half. I’d like to see him scrub a few floors (or possibly scrub a few floors with him).

Lady – you might be smarter about cleansers. Maybe. But about everything else – not so much.

And check out the creepy promotional ad at the bottom of this tragic-comic tale – you know, the old send in fifty thousand labels and get a little piece of junk by return mail sort of thing. It’s for silverware, which is OK – but who the hell is handing her the flatware, Beezlebub’s PA? What is the backstory here? Maybe I had it all wrong…Maybe this lady is just biding her time with Mr. Clean – waiting for the right moment to transform into her evil other self!