Java News

Drinking excessive amounts of coffee has never been a vice for me.  I’ve battled other food addictions, but have not been plundered and taken over by The Roasted Bean like some people. In fact, java and I have kept our distance for the most part, like strangers who share the same space in public places and even make eye contact, but don’t physically touch or exchange verbal greetings.  Sugar or butter or anything made of grains might be different story.  I easily befriend and sidle up to THOSE. But right now we’re talking about coffee.

When I was a child, my parents’ brewed coffee smelled heavenly and tasted like burned cardboard with a heaping dose of metallic flavoring added.  It originated in their slurp-burping percolator, a slender silver pitcher with a skinny, curved-worm for a spout - “8 O’Clock” brand coffee, or else whatever was on sale at the time.  My mother was amazingly thrifty, and purchased discounted food in bent cans, unlabeled cans, and torn packaging.  Sometimes she brought home a ripped bag of coffee (always ground, I never saw a whole bean until I was an adult) that had been patched with miles of masking tape by some overzealous shelf stocker - wrapped and wrapped and cinched tight like Scarlett O’Hara.  

I thought the coffee from that percolator tasted, for lack of a better word, burned.  Bitter.  Surely the stained, perforated aluminum basket holding the grounds had something to do with it.  Between brewing episodes, if you happened to be the one dumping the grounds, the basket smelled like the coffee tasted.  Scorched and tinny.  Even when clean.

Then there was instant coffee.  The folks used this at the lake cottage sometimes – for convenience, I suppose.  Little crunchy granules.  Stir them in hot water, and voila: mud.  In my opinion, instant coffee was horrible as well.  Even worse than the brewed stuff. 

Not surprisingly, I rarely drank coffee when I got older - but when I did, I watered it down, thinking it to be more tolerable that way.  And black please, don’t complicate things with cream or sugar. I convinced myself I preferred plain weak coffee, and for some odd reason, wasn’t tempted to try higher-class varieties, say, at a coffee house.  First of all, there weren’t any Starbucks businesses around when I was a young adult, and secondly, I wasn’t the kind to meet a friend for coffee anyway.  It would have been too expensive, and I’d inherited my mother’s thrifty ideals. I occasionally ordered a cup of decaf to sip with dessert at a restaurant after dinner, but that was all.  I don’t know why I was so almost totally hands-off except that perhaps a subliminal precautionary gene knew about my addictive predisposition and decided to protect me from another reason to overindulge in something.

But all of this discussion is preliminary, and brings me to the point for today.  Last Christmas I gave my hubby a Keurig coffee maker – one of those snazzy machines that invites you to choose a little cartridge of a particular coffee of your liking, and then brews just one cup in seconds.  A very cool toy.  But again, his toy.  I didn’t suddenly become interested in drinking coffee all the time.

However, this past week I’ve been tempted to try some of the Keurig cups that stock our coffee station.  Why not?  There they are.  Cute little round K-cup cartridges.  Different flavors.  Quick. Enticing.  And the brew method is supposed to be outstandingly awesome. The first time I heard a review for Keurig coffee, the individual said, “That’s the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had.”

Discovery #1: I very much enjoy both light- or dark-roasted coffees when iced and served with a touch of stevia.

Discovery #2: I particularly enjoy the darkest of the dark roasted varieties (shocking news for this weak coffee drinker) when piping hot and served with a touch of stevia.

Discobery #3: Both of the above are beyond amazing with a shot of crème de cocoa added.

So all-of-a-sudden, I’ve gone coffee crazy, and yet overindulgence will not be a problem as long as cream isn’t in the house.  Add cream to #3 and I could be enslaved forever.