Category: Coffee!

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It’s All Lagniappe

Given my youth (what the ‘rents and sibs never knew didn’t hurt ’em *heh*), I had no expectations of reaching 40, and once I did, I had NO idea what I’d do with the extra years. . . Everything—all the decades since—past then has been a gift.

Then I awoke to the reality: it’s ALL been a gift. All of it. I wake every day knowing I have not deserved or earned the blessing of life I now have. At my current age, paying the physical price of some of my youthful, *urm-cough*, misadventures, mishaps, and outright “oopsies” is a daily thing, but a price well worth paying if only for a cuddle with my Wonder Woman.

It’s 0830 and I’m still waiting, Holy Brew in hand, for my joints to wake up, though I have gotten a wee bit of yard work in anyway. Small price the aches, pains, and [innumerable other] just to be able to sit a few minutes and be blessed by The Holy Brew.

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#gag-spew

Keurig “coffee.” *meh* If I wanted instant coffee, I’d probably just drink Folgers. *shudder*

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I Like Coffee. So What?

*shrugs* I’m not exactly a coffee purist. Oh, I like a nice strong cuppa joe all by its lonesome, but I also like the texture (the “mouth” as it were) that heavy cream adds, and sometimes, after seriously frothing up that cream in my coffee (with a wee battery-powered immersion blender), even a touch of vanilla, or a sprinkle of cinnamon, or a bit of ghost pepper along with a scant teaspoon of cocoa powder. But mostly, it’s the texture of added heavy cream that I like to add.

Coffee “creamer”? Oh, please. That stuff–all brands, powder and liquid–is just ghastly. *sipping through the froth of my third mug (two of them nicely “creamed”)* Ah! Already looking forward to another cup as reward for progress on chores selected for today (this mug’s a bit of reward for progress already made).

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More Blessings from The Holy Brew

While coffee may have an adverse effect for folks who have Type II Diabetes, folks who might otherwise be at risk, but who have not yet developed this form of diabetes, are likely to find moderate (*meh* ~4 8-oz cups of coffee–NOT some Starbuckian monster drink loosely based on coffee) to be beneficial.

With the growing incidence of Type II Diabetes in the US, one might wonder just how much worse the “epidemic” might be w/o coffee.

Then, of course, there are some other well-known (to coffee aficionados, at least) benefits referenced at the link above: amelioration of the effects of Parkinson’s, protection from liver cancer and cirrhosis of the liver, cardiovascular benefits, etc.

Do note, that for optimum health in otherwise normal, healthy individuals, 48-oz. of coffee/day is right about the upper limit. Strangely, that seems to be about the upper limit for optimum health effects from beer consumption, too. . . (though that would be consumption over time, with meals)

Moderation.

Lastly, of course,

O Blessed Holy Caffeine Tree

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Changing Tastes

It’s been a relatively long journey getting to the point where I enjoy my coffee with a little sweetener of some kind. I think it just brightens it a wee bit and aids some of the high notes, but I could just be fooling myself.

The thing is, I have also come to dislike sucrose. So, what to do.

Honey won’t do. It adds a flavor I find doesn’t agree with my coffee preferences.

“Stevia”? Oh, please-ia, no. It’s sort of OK in cold things, but coffee? Nuh-uh.

Aspartame? Emphatically no! That stuff’s just nasty!

Saccharin? In its calcium and potassium salts formulations, it’s not half bad. Sort of almost OK. Will do in a pinch, though it seems to add a slightly bitter aftertaste, in my mouth.

Sucralose? The recent Italian study that found a “high” incidence of leukemia in cancer-prone mice when they were fed “varying” (read, “varying excessively high”) doses of sucralose from birth doesn’t concern me. IMO, from what I could see from the abstract and what little other material from the study was freely available, the “researchers” should be flogged, tarred, feathered and run out of whatever town they seek to dwell in. JMO, of course. YMMV. But as to its use in coffee (an anti-carcinogenic beverage :-)), it is just about right, IMO. It’s sweet in hot stuff, doesn’t actually do anything to cancel out the lovely acidic nip of coffee, and has a “mouth” that approximates sucrose without the offensive stickiness. High/flowery notes in the coffee seem more pronounced with its use. Sucralose wins the race.

When I want to be really fancy-schmancy, I add some heavy cream (NO “CREAMER” EVER!!! *gagamaggot*), sprinkle a bit of ground cinnamon on top (or use a cinnamon “stick” as a stirer), froth it with a whisk, and drink up.

Lovely.

Sidebar:

A bonus? I like the fact that sucralose was discovered/invented by a guy who was trying to create a new insecticide. He noticed that while the bugs fed sucralose were dying, it was taking a really, really long time. More research. Nope. The insects were not being poisoned. They were dying of starvation, because they ate the super-sweet sucralose preferentially, avoiding other, nutritious, foods.

As a result, I also use sucralose in my own “insect powder” devised of sucralose, a very wee tad of cornstarch and boric acid, whirred together in a food processor. Kills crawling insects effectively and is much, much safer to use than most commercial preparations.

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The Holy Brew, “French Rite”

When I cracked the carafe on the very nice Bodun French Press that Estimable Son-in-Law gave me, “French Rite Holy Brew” went by the wayside for a while. I’ve since replaced the device with a cheap, Mr. Coffee version that nevertheless works just about as well (just has an even more fragile carafe and insubstantial holder for the carafe. *shrugs* At least it does work).

mr-coffee-french-press

But still. . . getting the water to juuuust the right temp. . . Ah! Finally, the light breaks! Heating water to correct brewing temp? Silly puppy. Our (rather nice) Cuisinart drip coffee machine does that quite well.

Coffee’s on!

O Blessed Holy Caffeine Tree!

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I Like a Lil Change-up Now and Then

For a latte-like foam on coffee without the crappy taste of milk in coffee, I just use a whisk in (real, heavy) cream-laced coffee. Foamy, great texture and tastes like COFFEE, not milk with coffee flavoring. The only real difference is, as I said, texture. Makes a nice treat. Oh, heck, add a dash of cinnamon if you’re a certified Olde Pharte. Tastes OK, doesn’t overwhelm the coffee (if you add juuuust a dash) and is supposed to have a beneficial effect on memory. With the proven memory boost coffee gives, it’s probably not needed, but whio knows? Maybe it will help.

What was that? No, I have no idea what I just wrote. I’m shy a cuppa joe or two. . .

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Preparing for TEOTWAWKI

Yeh, the dreaded “TEOTWAWKI“. *meh* It could be as simple an ending as NO MORE COFFEE!!!

While that may seem a simple thing, it’s really much, much worse than a Zombie Apocalypse or Nuclear Winter, either of which can be handily survived with the application of enough COFFEE!! (Well, and beer, but I’m not going there right now.)

So, several BIG freezers paired with an adequate power generation method is a must. Oh, and loads and loads and loads (and LOADS) of coffee beans in vacuum sealed bags (with oxygen absorbers included).

But. Unless one really likes “cowboy coffee” or its equivalent, or has a nice French press, coffee filters will be a Very Good Thing to have on hand. In truckloads. Yeh, yeh, I know all about those metal mesh filters. Fuggetaboutit. Just not good enough. Besides, coffee filters are useful for tons of things, so having as much coffee filter stock as toilet paper stock (oh, wait–you are hoarding toilet paper, aren’t you? Why, after TEOTWAWKI, it’ll be the new “gold standard” in “money”. Think about it) when TEOTWAWKI hits might be a Very Good Idea.

Of course, then one would need a vault of some kind to store these riches against the slavering hoards of coffeeheads who’ve been turned into zombies by caffeine deprivation. And then there’re the alligators in the moat and the guard cheetahs to remember to stock feed for and the pillboxes with computer-run 7.62 mm GAU-17/A gatling guns and the…

Nothing’s too much in protecting one’s coffee supplies.

 

 

 

 

TEOTWAWKI: The end of the world as we know it

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Not Quite That Ambitious

I saw an article on building a Linux-controlled “Corretto” coffee roaster and thought, “Cool, but where would I put everything in our kitchen? I’d have to build on an addition!”

*heh*

Still, one of the things that gives Henry Ward Beecher a claim to historical immortality that rival’s his sister’s is his appreciation of good coffee:

“A cup of coffee – real coffee – home-browned, home ground, home made, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to a golden bronze as you temper it with cream that never cheated, but was real cream from its birth, thick, tenderly yellow, perfectly sweet, neither lumpy nor frothing on the Java: such a cup of coffee is a match for twenty blue devils and will exorcise them all.” – Henry Ward Beecher

And, after reading the above paean to a good cuppa joe and singing a few verses of O Blessed Holy Caffeine Tree i9n appreciation of The Holy Brew (#1) myself, almost the article cited above persuadeth me to do a “Linux Coffee Roaster” build of my own… Almost. I’d still need to build that addition onto the house.