life events

So the other day I bought my first coffee maker. Finish reading before sending me emails saying, "But you could have had my coffee maker!" because I know I have scads of dads who are probably eager to give me their coffee makers as an excuse to buy a brand new one that they've had their eyes on for a while. I KNOW I can probably take my pick of the second-hand coffee makers and I still may. I bought a simple French-press, which is the coffee equivalent of a tea strainer.

I figure that if I'm going to turn into my dad, I might as well commit to it. I've been a candy-coffee (cafe mocha) drinker for years. I hadn't quite been able to get used to the oily bitterness of water-straight-off-the-bean coffee. As I get older and my palate becomes both more finely tuned and (oddly) more forgiving, I find the previously mentioned bitter water to be less offensive, in fact, possibly enjoyable with the right additives. I think i am sliding down the slippery slope that Starbucks convinced so many to perch upon when they made coffee saturated with chocolate and whipped cream available to the masses. Consuming the mochas, mint mochas, turtle mochas, and white chocolate mochas, one creeps ever closer to diabetic coma sugar saturation. So you start to scale back your additives. Whipped cream is slowly replaced with lots and lots of half&half, chocale syrup with plain sugar from packets. And as the amount of these additives is reduced, you must switch from espresso to regular coffee as the base liquid because, on its own, espresso is terribly horrid stuff (please send hatemail to startbucks@starbucks.com). Next thing you know, you're ordering a tall dark roast that you add one cream and two sugars to. Then, one day, maybe out of curiosity or out of a coffee condiment shortage induced desperation, you take it black. And it doesn't kill you. And maybe you do it again the next day. Next thing you know, you are proud to say, "No thanks, I take it black" in the same way you might say "No thanks, I prefer to walk."

So, I've started to slide down to slope. This change is also ushered in by Felix and the need to get caffeine at home. Soft drinks, diet or otherwise, are looked down upon in our household because of their ill effect on teeth. Tea is #1 and coffee is viewed as equally acceptable. Since I'm just not a huge of most tea (I drink tea I just don't prefer it, for some reason) I decided to dive into the coffee world. Here I am.

And its not half-bad.
The thing about a french press is that you need to use coarsely ground coffee. At the grocery store you can buy whole bean coffee and ground coffee prepackaged. The ground coffee that is prepackaged is rather finely ground for use in drip coffee makers. If you use this kind of coffee in a french press, beware! That is akin to accidentally putting rocket fuel into your car when you thought you were using regular unleaded.

So now I need to either get myself my own grinder or do that thing at the coffee store where you grind your own beans there. Anyway, so now I am having a morning cup'o'joe every morning sans mocha. It gets me going. Eventually I may move up to an automatic coffee maker, but that's really something you do when you are either a) too jittery to operate a manual piece of machinery such as the prehistoric lever at the heart of the french press or b) you need to make a lot of coffee, and fast (which frequently leads to case A).

Also realize that when your french press exclaims on the packaging "8-cup coffee maker" they are talking about your basic 4oz measuring cup, not 8 big-bad american mugs. Take note when measuring out your finely ground jetfuel beans...