New Largest House in the World

Back in March 08, I addressed the subject of the World's Largest House. Bizarrely, this post became the most popular on my blog, and has stayed in the top 3 most frequently hit pages every day since then. At the time, I noted that the Biltmore House built by the Vanderbilt family was most likely the largest private home in the world.

However, it appears that an India business man has taken umbrage at this post and decided to claim the crown of the owner of the world's biggest home. He is none other than Mukesh Ambani, and he is building a 400,000 square foot home in Mumbai, India. Now, I did a quick conversion and that works out at over 37,000 square metres of home sweet home (conversion tool online here).

Apparently, this is to be spread across 27 stories and will include 3 helicopter pads, the hanging gardens of Mumbai, a yoga studio and a private ice palace. It will also have a staff of over 600. Mukesh Ambani is listed on Wikipedia as being the world's 5th richest man, and he made his money (US$43 billion and counting) in petro-chemicals, according to Forbes.

So there you have it. The new biggest house in the world. Videos of the biggest house here.

Steaming Trick for Awesome Milk

I haven't written many posts on coffee or recently, so thought I would rectify that with this brief post. Given I am still developing my "milk steaming skillz" (I'm a level 6 Milk Steamer with a +3 Jug of Steaming ;), I need all the help I can to get that velvety smooth texture that one wants on ones milk. One snag I often find is that I am still mucking about trying to stretch and texture the milk by the point it gets hot, and figuring that burnt milk is worse than poorly textured milk, I usually give up at that point. I know I have already mentioned this, but its worth mentioning again ... to give myself a bit more time, not only do I make sure that the milk is cold to start with, but I keep the jug in the freezer till needed. I reckon that using a frozen jug gives me an extra 5 seconds or so texturing the milk. Give it a try and let me know if it helps.