Are you someone who does not drink coffee? Avoids caffeine? Drinks yerba mate` or green tea and gets a buzz? Honestly, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you know about The Magic Elixir of Life? Post Sebastian, I valiantly attempted to wean myself down to one cup a day, but I’m waving the white flag – the Toddler Years are just not a good time for this. Besides, I love my coffee! Warm, creamy, sweet JOLT OF CAFFEINE TO MAKE ME NICE-ISH. And as my caffeine delivery system of choice, it’s included in my great experiment.
First, let us consider the humble coffee maker. Now I know some of ya’ll are pretty serious about your caffé’, what with the fancy gizmos and the mocha-choco-caramel-whippy-foamy-twirly-foofy coffees. For all that, I make a trip to Starbucks (I like mine extra twirly, and the guy with the faux-hawk usually gives me an extra espresso shot – I think he’s sweet on me… yeah, I still got it). In the morning, after I stumble into the kitchen, step on one of Sebastian’s stupid little plastic cars, and whack my head on the cabinet somebody left open, it’s all I can do to scoop some powder in the machine and slosh some water into the compartment (hell, who am I kidding – that’s all I can manage at most any time of day). So, I need a Very Simple Coffee Maker. Enter the kind folks at Gevalia Coffee who send you a FREE coffee maker if you buy some of their wares. Done and done.
 |
| A true New Yorker - fuggit the mug, gimme the bowl! |
Next, I ordered a reusable coffee filter from reuseit.com – an amazing site which aims to help the good folks of this country reuse more and toss less. I tried making one out of cloth… let’s just say it did NOT end well, and I’m glad my husband wasn’t around to witness it since I would never live it down. The filter will pay for itself in a few months, and I should be able to get many moons of good use out of it; in fact, we could pass it down from generation to generation, like a quirky heirloom – Great Great Grandma Witwer’s Golden Coffee Strainer. Bonus? The landfills will be spared the 365+ paper coffee filters we go through each year, and all the resources used to produce them can go towards other things, like manufacturing the sedatives I will need to get to sleep after all that lusciousness.
Speaking of being all Environmentally Obnoxious Conscious, we gotta talk about the beans. For a whole host of reasons I won’t go into in depth here (downer), we’re switching from the cheapie stuff we normally use to the very reasonably priced Trader Joe's Organic Fair Trade Shade Grown Ethiopian. The gist is that it’s best to buy shade grown, fair trade, organic java - it prevents deforestation, ensures the farmers get a fair wage for their beans, and isn't slathered in pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides (you can research this on your own if it's of interest). To foof it up, you can mix spices like cinnamon and cardamom in with the grounds, add some vanilla, a bit of cocoa powder, or a little shot of somethin’ to warm your bones (*wink*).
So there we are. Now, put on your jammies and slippers, grab the paper, and pad on up here to our house – we’ll have cawfee and tawk. You bring the prune Danish.
 |
| Sebastian pouring Dada a cuppa joe (right into his lap - thank heavens it's empty! The kid's gonna be a terrible waiter). |
No comments:
Post a Comment