Category Archives: coffee

On getting another cup of coffee

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I sure wish I had another cup of coffee this morning. My head hurts, I’m sleepy, my tongue feels like sandpaper, and my stomach is making noises. I’d like to be drinking another cup of coffee, but I don’t have one, so I can only imagine drinking that other cup of coffee. I’m in the middle of a conference session with thirty other people, and if I get up and walk out, everyone will notice. Sometimes you just get into a situation where you can’t change the parameters, so you just suck it up and wait. The difference between what you have and what you want is often huge, but unless you set the world on its head, you can’t really change anything. The balance between happiness and having that other cup of coffee and making people happy by not doing anything, is too often an imbalance that you cannot rectify without upsetting the apple cart and upsetting others. So you don’t to anything, let you stomach rumble a bit, and you get along without that other coffee. You see, that other cup of coffee is not necessary at all. It is pure caprice. Another cup of coffee would be a huge solace, especially either very early in the morning or very late at night, but life goes on just the same, with or without the coffee. You have to balance your desires against the realities of the possible. Sometimes getting up and walking out of the room for another cup of coffee is just rude, and people might not understand the thirst driving your desire. You can tolerate thirst. It need not be slaked always or immediately.

On getting another cup of coffee

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I sure wish I had another cup of coffee this morning. My head hurts, I’m sleepy, my tongue feels like sandpaper, and my stomach is making noises. I’d like to be drinking another cup of coffee, but I don’t have one, so I can only imagine drinking that other cup of coffee. I’m in the middle of a conference session with thirty other people, and if I get up and walk out, everyone will notice. Sometimes you just get into a situation where you can’t change the parameters, so you just suck it up and wait. The difference between what you have and what you want is often huge, but unless you set the world on its head, you can’t really change anything. The balance between happiness and having that other cup of coffee and making people happy by not doing anything, is too often an imbalance that you cannot rectify without upsetting the apple cart and upsetting others. So you don’t to anything, let you stomach rumble a bit, and you get along without that other coffee. You see, that other cup of coffee is not necessary at all. It is pure caprice. Another cup of coffee would be a huge solace, especially either very early in the morning or very late at night, but life goes on just the same, with or without the coffee. You have to balance your desires against the realities of the possible. Sometimes getting up and walking out of the room for another cup of coffee is just rude, and people might not understand the thirst driving your desire. You can tolerate thirst. It need not be slaked always or immediately.

On the perfect cup of coffee, or the best cortado

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I do believe that if you take care to make a great cup of coffee, you don’t need to flavor it with anything else. Leave the vanilla for the ice cream, the hazel nut for chocolate spread, pumpkin for the pie. Yet the reality of most brewed coffee, especially if it has been pre-staled by one of the major coffee companies, is really pretty sad. Most brewed coffee is pretty bad–a weak, watery concoction that tastes more like umbrella juice than coffee. Recently roasted and freshly ground coffee, whether drip or espresso, is a pungent, fragrant, bitter array of robust flavors that have nothing to do with the coffee you buy at the local supermarket that comes ground in a can. Why Americans insist on dressing up their coffee with chocolate, caramel, pumpkin spice, vanilla, hazel nut, cinnamon and a bunch of other flavors is really easy to understand–they are drinking a stale, weak brew that doesn’t taste like anything at all. First, they never use enough coffee, so what they brew is as thin as water and isn’t opaque enough to obscure the bottom of the cup, much less taste like anything more than dirty water. Pre-ground coffee is also already stale, the vast majority of its flavor greatness lost with the passage of time as the bean’s essential oils are allowed to change and turn bitter with time, disappearing and losing any potency it once had. Never buy pre-ground coffee; pre-ground coffee is but a ghost of its whole-bean self. Even freshly roasted coffee has a shelf-life that is really very short. If you cannot roast your own, find a local roaster that roasts on a regular basis and buy into their production, buying small quantities so that your supply never gets very old before it is replenished. Old coffee is bad coffee, no question about it.

On the perfect cup of coffee, or the best cortado

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I do believe that if you take care to make a great cup of coffee, you don’t need to flavor it with anything else. Leave the vanilla for the ice cream, the hazel nut for chocolate spread, pumpkin for the pie. Yet the reality of most brewed coffee, especially if it has been pre-staled by one of the major coffee companies, is really pretty sad. Most brewed coffee is pretty bad–a weak, watery concoction that tastes more like umbrella juice than coffee. Recently roasted and freshly ground coffee, whether drip or espresso, is a pungent, fragrant, bitter array of robust flavors that have nothing to do with the coffee you buy at the local supermarket that comes ground in a can. Why Americans insist on dressing up their coffee with chocolate, caramel, pumpkin spice, vanilla, hazel nut, cinnamon and a bunch of other flavors is really easy to understand–they are drinking a stale, weak brew that doesn’t taste like anything at all. First, they never use enough coffee, so what they brew is as thin as water and isn’t opaque enough to obscure the bottom of the cup, much less taste like anything more than dirty water. Pre-ground coffee is also already stale, the vast majority of its flavor greatness lost with the passage of time as the bean’s essential oils are allowed to change and turn bitter with time, disappearing and losing any potency it once had. Never buy pre-ground coffee; pre-ground coffee is but a ghost of its whole-bean self. Even freshly roasted coffee has a shelf-life that is really very short. If you cannot roast your own, find a local roaster that roasts on a regular basis and buy into their production, buying small quantities so that your supply never gets very old before it is replenished. Old coffee is bad coffee, no question about it.

On complicated coffee

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I think that coffee is already a flavor that needs no changing or improving. It doesn’t need any pumpkin or spice, no caramel or cinnamon, no vanilla or hazel nut. There is no reason anyone needs a quadruple trifecta macchiato with extra cinammon, caramel, and whipped cream with sprinkles. Perhaps a little milk, maybe a little sugar to bring up the flavors, but I don’t need other flavors to make my coffee experience a good one. This time of year, when it’s still hot, I like my coffee cold and bitter like a nasty January day on the Midwestern plains. Some folks like to dress up their coffee with strange Italian syrups, mountains of whipped cream, extra sprinkles, but isn’t that like putting a sweater on a dog? Dogs already come with the sweater attached last time I checked. All I want is a couple of shots of espresso and a little peace and quiet–maybe a quiet conversation with some friends, maybe a rowdy discussion of manners by Minnesotans. I think those ladies in the basement of the Lutheran church in which I grew up knew something about black bitter coffee as they continually brewed a pot to be served with the doughnuts on Sunday morning. Those wise women knew that coffee was a flavor all by itself and needed no improvement or variations. They often scoffed if you put cream in your cup, or at least looked on in disapproval. Coffee is simple, so why do we insist on screwing it up? Coffee, for better or worse, is an experience unto itself, love it or hate it. So the next time you go for coffee, think about how you can simplify your order. Think about coffee as if it were a metaphor for the life well-lived, simple, strong, and uncomplicated.

On complicated coffee

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I think that coffee is already a flavor that needs no changing or improving. It doesn’t need any pumpkin or spice, no caramel or cinnamon, no vanilla or hazel nut. There is no reason anyone needs a quadruple trifecta macchiato with extra cinammon, caramel, and whipped cream with sprinkles. Perhaps a little milk, maybe a little sugar to bring up the flavors, but I don’t need other flavors to make my coffee experience a good one. This time of year, when it’s still hot, I like my coffee cold and bitter like a nasty January day on the Midwestern plains. Some folks like to dress up their coffee with strange Italian syrups, mountains of whipped cream, extra sprinkles, but isn’t that like putting a sweater on a dog? Dogs already come with the sweater attached last time I checked. All I want is a couple of shots of espresso and a little peace and quiet–maybe a quiet conversation with some friends, maybe a rowdy discussion of manners by Minnesotans. I think those ladies in the basement of the Lutheran church in which I grew up knew something about black bitter coffee as they continually brewed a pot to be served with the doughnuts on Sunday morning. Those wise women knew that coffee was a flavor all by itself and needed no improvement or variations. They often scoffed if you put cream in your cup, or at least looked on in disapproval. Coffee is simple, so why do we insist on screwing it up? Coffee, for better or worse, is an experience unto itself, love it or hate it. So the next time you go for coffee, think about how you can simplify your order. Think about coffee as if it were a metaphor for the life well-lived, simple, strong, and uncomplicated.

On morning

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Normally, if anything is indeed “normal,” my mornings are about rushing around, showering, slurping a bit of coffee, the martyrdom of shaving, toast (I like toast), and joining the crazy rush on the highways that lead to work. Sometimes I buy gas to break up the routine, but usually morning is pretty routine and crazy stuff. This morning, Saturday, was not about any of that. I am now enjoying my third cup of coffee, I’ve enjoyed home-made pancakes with the family, I’ve stalked around on facebook a bit, looking at new baby pictures, a wounded (he’s okay) cat and the fleur-de-lis on the helmets of my hometown football team. The town of St. Peter, Minnesota was founded by French Bourbons in the eighteenth century, ergo their colors are blue and white and their emblem is the fleur-de-lis. Funny how we never really escape our pasts no matter how hard we try. This morning, a Saturday morning, is both relaxing and contemplative because I don’t have to chase off to be somewhere on time. I often wonder about how much damage we do to ourselves by trying to meet deadlines, getting to work “on-time,” or by just rushing off in a general and haphazard fashion. Nothing about a Monday through Friday morning is either relaxing or positive. Perpetually late, myself, sometimes I wonder if I was born five minutes late and I’ve never been able to make up that time. Most mornings remind me of a perpetual chase for some totally undefined goal or fuzzy mirages, amorphous shapes of desire and envy. When I wake up I am not in any kind of shape to do anything important, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. Sometimes people go to bed late, or they sleep poorly, have nightmares, toss and turn. Getting up to an alarm is a form of legal torture that, after a number of years or decades, leaves an indelible scar–you end up a retired person who can’t sleep anymore after six a.m. So, ironically, when you have mornings on which you don’t have to get up, you can’t sleep anyway. The chaotic mornings of contemporary life cannot be a healthy way of starting the day. Sleep experts keep reminding us all that most people don’t ever get enough sleep and are permanently sleep-deprived, short-tempered, cranky, and irked. Road rage cannot be far behind. Not this morning, however. With a certain amount of glee, I turned off the alarm last night as I went to bed, and got up this morning when I felt like it. The coffee tastes better if you can sip it. The anxiety of facing crazy commuter morning traffic is gone, and I can unload the dishwasher and clean up the kitchen in peace. All of the negativity of a normal, work-a-day, morning is just not there. No kids to wake up and chase off to school, no stop and go traffic jam to deal with at the school, no speeders trying desperately to make it to work on time because they got up late. Overdosing your brain on locally produced cortisol only leads to more stress, which is bad for your whole body, leaving you feeling empty and hungover, cranky. Perhaps the lesson of Saturday morning is bigger and broader than it initially seems: maybe all mornings should be a bit more like Saturday and a lot less like Monday.

On morning

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Normally, if anything is indeed “normal,” my mornings are about rushing around, showering, slurping a bit of coffee, the martyrdom of shaving, toast (I like toast), and joining the crazy rush on the highways that lead to work. Sometimes I buy gas to break up the routine, but usually morning is pretty routine and crazy stuff. This morning, Saturday, was not about any of that. I am now enjoying my third cup of coffee, I’ve enjoyed home-made pancakes with the family, I’ve stalked around on facebook a bit, looking at new baby pictures, a wounded (he’s okay) cat and the fleur-de-lis on the helmets of my hometown football team. The town of St. Peter, Minnesota was founded by French Bourbons in the eighteenth century, ergo their colors are blue and white and their emblem is the fleur-de-lis. Funny how we never really escape our pasts no matter how hard we try. This morning, a Saturday morning, is both relaxing and contemplative because I don’t have to chase off to be somewhere on time. I often wonder about how much damage we do to ourselves by trying to meet deadlines, getting to work “on-time,” or by just rushing off in a general and haphazard fashion. Nothing about a Monday through Friday morning is either relaxing or positive. Perpetually late, myself, sometimes I wonder if I was born five minutes late and I’ve never been able to make up that time. Most mornings remind me of a perpetual chase for some totally undefined goal or fuzzy mirages, amorphous shapes of desire and envy. When I wake up I am not in any kind of shape to do anything important, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. Sometimes people go to bed late, or they sleep poorly, have nightmares, toss and turn. Getting up to an alarm is a form of legal torture that, after a number of years or decades, leaves an indelible scar–you end up a retired person who can’t sleep anymore after six a.m. So, ironically, when you have mornings on which you don’t have to get up, you can’t sleep anyway. The chaotic mornings of contemporary life cannot be a healthy way of starting the day. Sleep experts keep reminding us all that most people don’t ever get enough sleep and are permanently sleep-deprived, short-tempered, cranky, and irked. Road rage cannot be far behind. Not this morning, however. With a certain amount of glee, I turned off the alarm last night as I went to bed, and got up this morning when I felt like it. The coffee tastes better if you can sip it. The anxiety of facing crazy commuter morning traffic is gone, and I can unload the dishwasher and clean up the kitchen in peace. All of the negativity of a normal, work-a-day, morning is just not there. No kids to wake up and chase off to school, no stop and go traffic jam to deal with at the school, no speeders trying desperately to make it to work on time because they got up late. Overdosing your brain on locally produced cortisol only leads to more stress, which is bad for your whole body, leaving you feeling empty and hungover, cranky. Perhaps the lesson of Saturday morning is bigger and broader than it initially seems: maybe all mornings should be a bit more like Saturday and a lot less like Monday.

On cinnamon toast

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I was reminded of this midwestern delicacy the other day when Garrison Keillor mentioned it in one of his status updates. Not that Garrison and I are great friends or anything, but being brought up in Minnesota during roughly the same period–he has a year or two on me–we share certain experiences in common, and cinnamon toast is one of those experiences. The recipe is simple: one hungry child, two slices of bread, a little sugar, a little cinnamon, a pat of butter, and a toaster. You swirl all of that around and you end up with a happy child with butter and cinnamon breath who now will stop whining. Perhaps what I like most about cinnamon toast is that it is a simple pleasure that never stops pleasing. You can serve cinnamon toast whenever you want to, but I find that as a snack, just after school was always the best. Although, as an adult, I find that just after midnight with a glass of fresh milk is the best time. You don’t have to be a genius to make it, and it’s hard to mess up unless you get the cinnamon and some other brown spice confused in which case it’s easy to mess up. Not too much butter, not too much sugar, and not too much cinnamon seem to be the best way to describe perfect cinnamon toast. Plain toast with butter is fine, but a little cinnamon and a little sugar go a long way in jazzing up a fairly bland experience. Crying children can be made quiet by cinnamon toast. An unhappy baby will find endless hours of fun playing with cinnamon toast bits. I’m not really sure why the butter-sugar-cinnamon combination is so appealing. I get the sugar and butter–energy–but the spicy element, the cinnamon, that’s the mystery. But maybe it’s a little mystery we all crave in Minnesota, on the tundra, in the middle of January–a warm slice of cinnamon toast that has been prepared for us by someone who love us. Just surviving the Minnesota winter is enough for most of us–we understand the relative value of even the small things in life. So when making cinnamon toast, don’t worry if the little can of cinnamon is a few years old, it’ll still work. What I like is when you sprinkle the cinnamon on the butter and it turns from light brown to dark brown–the cinnamon is active. You don’t have to grind your own special for the cinnamon toast to be very good. What you want is a little flavor, not to be overwhelmed by it. Cinnamon toast, in lieu of fancier desserts, is one of life’s great pleasures that needs to excuses or explanations. Recently I had cinnamon toast and a nice cup of Spanish café con leche, and the combination was very nice–two simple pleasures mixing together in the midst of a chaotic, fractured, non-linear sort of day. Cinnamon toast is as much about nostalgia for a simpler life as it is about smell, taste, and texture as it explodes in your mouth. Yet, it is also easy to forget if you are an adult. When was the last time you sprinkled a little cinnamon and sugar on your toast? Did you ever even learn how to spell the word, “cinnamon”? Two n’s, one m? So tonight, when it’s about have past late, and my stomach is on the prowl for something good, I’m going to go back in time and make myself a couple of pieces of cinnamon toast.

On cinnamon toast

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I was reminded of this midwestern delicacy the other day when Garrison Keillor mentioned it in one of his status updates. Not that Garrison and I are great friends or anything, but being brought up in Minnesota during roughly the same period–he has a year or two on me–we share certain experiences in common, and cinnamon toast is one of those experiences. The recipe is simple: one hungry child, two slices of bread, a little sugar, a little cinnamon, a pat of butter, and a toaster. You swirl all of that around and you end up with a happy child with butter and cinnamon breath who now will stop whining. Perhaps what I like most about cinnamon toast is that it is a simple pleasure that never stops pleasing. You can serve cinnamon toast whenever you want to, but I find that as a snack, just after school was always the best. Although, as an adult, I find that just after midnight with a glass of fresh milk is the best time. You don’t have to be a genius to make it, and it’s hard to mess up unless you get the cinnamon and some other brown spice confused in which case it’s easy to mess up. Not too much butter, not too much sugar, and not too much cinnamon seem to be the best way to describe perfect cinnamon toast. Plain toast with butter is fine, but a little cinnamon and a little sugar go a long way in jazzing up a fairly bland experience. Crying children can be made quiet by cinnamon toast. An unhappy baby will find endless hours of fun playing with cinnamon toast bits. I’m not really sure why the butter-sugar-cinnamon combination is so appealing. I get the sugar and butter–energy–but the spicy element, the cinnamon, that’s the mystery. But maybe it’s a little mystery we all crave in Minnesota, on the tundra, in the middle of January–a warm slice of cinnamon toast that has been prepared for us by someone who love us. Just surviving the Minnesota winter is enough for most of us–we understand the relative value of even the small things in life. So when making cinnamon toast, don’t worry if the little can of cinnamon is a few years old, it’ll still work. What I like is when you sprinkle the cinnamon on the butter and it turns from light brown to dark brown–the cinnamon is active. You don’t have to grind your own special for the cinnamon toast to be very good. What you want is a little flavor, not to be overwhelmed by it. Cinnamon toast, in lieu of fancier desserts, is one of life’s great pleasures that needs to excuses or explanations. Recently I had cinnamon toast and a nice cup of Spanish café con leche, and the combination was very nice–two simple pleasures mixing together in the midst of a chaotic, fractured, non-linear sort of day. Cinnamon toast is as much about nostalgia for a simpler life as it is about smell, taste, and texture as it explodes in your mouth. Yet, it is also easy to forget if you are an adult. When was the last time you sprinkled a little cinnamon and sugar on your toast? Did you ever even learn how to spell the word, “cinnamon”? Two n’s, one m? So tonight, when it’s about have past late, and my stomach is on the prowl for something good, I’m going to go back in time and make myself a couple of pieces of cinnamon toast.