Coffee Confessions: or How I Became A Coffee Goddess

A confession: Until very recently, I'd never made a cup of coffee on my own.

Horrifying, I know. When my mother-out-law (the woman responsible for the existence of the Human Vacuum) comes to town, she cannot comprehend that our otherwise perfectly normal kitchen lacks that most fundamental of appliances: the automatic coffeemaker. I honestly think she might be less shocked if we didn't have a refrigerator.

I do own some coffee, but I keep it around only for the rare occasions when I need to incorporate it into a baked good. What can I say? I'm part of the Starbucks generation--I can see one from my apartment window, and I walk by four on the way to work.

My woeful ignorance emerged at a recent neighborhood brunch, and my longest suffering grade-school friend (we'll call her "Goose") marched me over to the Hostess's coffee maker for a lesson. Goose is a serious coffee drinker herself, and knows of what she speaks. She was the first of the gang to master the art of drinking coffee black, a practice endorsed by Flaubert, who advises us to "take it without sugar--very swank: gives the impression you have lived in the East."

What Goose taught me was astounding: Making coffee is insanely easy. All these years I've been intimidated by the countless references in literature and film about the difficulty of getting a "decent cuppa joe." I was scared off by the harsh language of the 1674 Women's Petition Against Coffee: "Coffee leads men to trifle away their time, scald their chops, and spend their money, all for a little base, black, thick, nasty, bitter, stinking nauseous puddle water." Clearly they've never had the Starbucks Christmas Blend--or coffee made by yours truly.

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If my prose is insufficiently inspiring on this subject, read Honore de Balzac on The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee. Sample quote: "Many people claim coffee inspires them, but, as everybody knows, coffee only makes boring people even more boring."


Image stolen from Lileks's Institute of Official Cheer.