Friday, June 27, 2008

Fresh Ground Coffee

Hmmm, coffee beans or ground coffee? What a decision, what a choice, this requires some quick thinking, quick acting, what do we do, huh, huh, what do we do? We grabbed the coffee beans. I was thinking, it will taste fresher, it’s cheaper, we can buy the big bag. This will be a good thing. Yum, fresh ground coffee, every morning. This will be good.

The thing is, you have to grind coffee beans. This requires a coffee grinder. Do you have a coffee grinder? We didn’t. We do now. Those things are messy. And we got a small grinder, so we can only grind so much at once, so it takes several whirs, whirs, and more whirs until we have enough to drip, drip, drip into the pot, pot, pot.

We are very accustomed to Starbucks. Good ole Starbucks. Strong coffee that Starbucks is. The coffee beans we bought were Kirkland’s House Blend, roasted by Starbucks. Kirkland’s House Blend is like drinking water compared to the industrial strength of Starbucks. Of course, Peete’s still wins the show with their nuclear strength coffee, but that’s for another time.

So, we got our beans, we got our grinder, we put in our six scoops for two big cups of coffee and what do we get? We get see-through, caramel-colored coffee. I drank two cups and was looking for more. So, what do we do? We gotta grind, grind, grind some more. This is so much fun—grind, grind, grind—till you just can’t grind no more.

That was yesterday. Today we did eight scoops of freshly ground coffee and things were back to normal. Except now we’re stuck cleaning our coffee grinder, along with the coffee pot, the coffee cups, not to mention all the rest of the stuff we have to clean: two baby faces, four baby hands, two baby trays, all the food two babies throw on the floor, two breakfast dishes, and the frying pan used to fry the eggs, and the spatula used to flip the eggs, and the forks… well, you got the picture about four items ago. It’s a wonder we ever leave the house at all.

Next time we buy our coffee beans, we’re grinding them at the store, just like the store employee suggested, just like I wanted to do, just like my wife’s friend suggested. Sometimes you just have to learn the hard way.

And yes, fresh ground coffee is very tasty.