futoncam journals - Chris
Adventures in Coffee Making - 1/3/2004 1:45 PM
Christmas was excellent, good times with family, and new luggage, new moveies, new books and a new coffee maker!
Managed to get it all home in my luggage somehow, got my new coffee maker all setup and discovered...that I don't own any coffee. Black & Decker somehow neglected to include a free sample as well. So on my way home from work the next day, I stopped at Starbucks.
Big mistake. They have a LOT of different flavors of coffee. And not even recognizable flavors like "vanilla" or "hazelnut". They have flavors named after countries and continents and crap. I thought coffee was coffee! Does "Africa" really taste different than "India" and if so...why? And how? And how am I supposed to make this decision? So I asked the lady at the front counter for a recommendation. After a couple minutes of prodding I got her to recommend something. I don't know what...Arabian Java Delight or something, I don't remember. So she asks me, what kind of filters does your coffee make take? Now this nifty-cool new coffee maker advertises in big letters on the outside of the box "NO PAPER FILTERS REQUIRED"...so I'm like...ummm...it has a metal filter. She looks at me funny and says "Is it a basket or a cone?" I think really hard...and say "basket" cause it definitely didn't look cone shaped. The guy who was gonna grind me coffee says "I've never heard of a metal basket filter before, but OK." This of course, instills a lot of confidence in me and I'm afraid my coffee maker is going to explode when I get home.
I make it home, re-read the coffee maker instructions and commence making coffee. I bust out my tablespoon, open up my newly purchased coffee...and discover that there is NO WAY my little tablespoon is going to make it down the 12 inches of empty space at the top of this bag to get down to the coffee ground and DAMN does this coffee smell nasty. Like...compost. Almost exactly like compost. It also looks like compost. This is not helping.
So I chop the top of the bag off with my handy-dandy scissors and scoop out 4 heaping tablespoons of the nasty compost-scented black loam. I fill up the carafe to the 8 cup line and pour it in to the coffee maker. I then hit the on button and wait.
A few minutes later, I now have a carafe of steaming compost-scented coffee. I pour it into my favorite mug (Ziggy) and take a sip. And burn my mouth. But it tastes good! Not like compost! Hurray for coffee making.
I then go to put my coffee away. And discover that the neat little metal tabs that were previously holding it closed...are now sitting uselessly at the top of the bag that I chopped off so I could get to the coffee. Thankfully I have a handy-dandy chip clip sitting around and that does the trick. I'm now enjoying yummy coffee. Hurray for the triumph of man.