Something Silly I Realized About Myself

As most people know, I am not a big coffee aficionado.  I liken coffee to vanilla.  Coffee, like vanilla, can be a good flavor enhancer for desserts (but is not a good standalone flavor such as in vanilla ice cream - BORING), but a straight up cup of the stuff can be a bit unpleasant tasting, just as drinking vanilla extract or eating the contents of a vanilla bean isn't an enjoyable experience. A plain cup of mere coffee is a foul tasting cup of mud.  

More importantly, I have never wanted to be the kind of person who is dependent on coffee to get through the day.  I see too many people caught up in the endless cycle of needing that constant jolt to the nervous system to avoid crashing.  I know it's harmless, but to me that's no way to live your life.  I don’t want to live from cup to cup.  

It's funny how when I tell people that, they wonder how I function.  Do I drink tea instead?  Am I a soda junkie?  I must get my energy from somewhere.  It's amazing how our society seems to think caffeine addiction is a natural part of human biology rather than something we inflict upon ourselves.

I won't say I don't drink coffee at all.  I drink one cup a day (with lots of milk to mitigate the bitterness and acidity) as a ritual to start my day. Sometimes I need it as a preventative before long drives to keep me from nodding off behind the wheel.  Most of the time I can go without it and not suffer any ill effects.  

As a way to save money, and to avoid going out too much during the pandemic, I decided to make more coffee at home.  I liked the ritual of going out for coffee when I was at work, but these are strange times.  If I'm home all day and have the time to make my own coffee, why not save some money and do so?

I own a large electric drip coffee maker that serves me well when I need to make several cups of coffee for dinner parties and holidays, but it's overkill when all I want is one cup.  I bought a French press so I could make one cup at a time with no fuss.  I was also told coffee brewed this way is much less acidic than drip coffee.  I do what it takes to make coffee more palatable.

Then I learned conventional coffee grounds don't work will with French presses because they are too fine and can bleed through the mesh in the plunger.  A French press requires a coarse grind.  The supermarket brands only have finely ground coffee or whole beans.  I tried ordering coarse ground coffee online, but I wondered if I was still saving money if I was paying shipping on top of the cost of the coffee.  

I decided the only thing to do was buy whole beans and grind them myself.  That gave me the added advantage of being able to buy locally-roasted, fair trade coffee at the farmers' market (there is a vendor at the Larchmont market who sells one of the more palatable varieties).  This meant I also had to buy a grinder.

For the record, I purchased a French press, specialty beans, and an electric coffee grinder all so I could make a single cup of coffee every day.*  

Let that sink in.

I would end this post there, but last week while chatting with my coffee bean vendor, I got the real ending to this story.  

Due to popular demand, he began selling a French press grind.

*I also put an enormous amount of work into creating this one cup of coffee, precisely measuring my grounds and water, using a timer for steeping, and even measuring how much milk I use.  Pretty amusing for someone who doesn't like coffee.