Upsetting the Apple Cart!

I am a coffee drinker and have been since an early age but it is only in recent years that I have come to fully appreciate a cup of coffee in its purest stage, black coffee. When I was much, much younger my primary association with black coffee was when I’d go hunting with my father. He’d bring along a thermos filled with black swill that he called coffee and if you were cold, and trust me you would be, you would drink some of this “coffee” so that your innards wouldn’t freeze like your nose, toes and fingers were. It was a vile brew as he would percolate a huge church sized pot of coffee as soon as we arrived at our cabin (real cabin…not a house, lodge or cottage…a cabin), then he would keep it hot all day and reheat it every morning while we were there. Ahem, this stuff got stout after a day or so, yes indeed.

As this was my introduction to black coffee, it is no wonder that for years I turned my coffee into a confection by adding a great deal of sugar and creamer to my cup. I wanted the “taste” of coffee but I didn’t want it to reach out and choke the life out of me the way some of that hunting era coffee tried to do. I still on occasion enjoy coffee heavy on the creamer and sugar and prefer to make my instant hot cocoa with fresh brewed coffee. It makes an easy quick mocha.

I realize that by admitting that I still enjoy coffee with “additives” beyond some Irish Whiskey that I am destroying my “street cred” as a writer about coffee but I do not profess to be a coffee tasting professional nor even a connoisseur of the bean. I am just a woman who likes coffee and who sometimes gussies it up even if this does upset the apple cart among the die hard coffee drinkers who read my column.

I proudly brandish my slightly whitened coffee (evaporated milk don’t you know) and smile as I drink my adulterated brew with impunity.

Ciao!

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass.