Coffee is the key to a good life, my good life anyway. It gets me up, it keeps me going, and I probably drink too much of it but I don’t let that worry me. I knit like its a compulsion. I spend too much on books. I drink lots of coffee. If these are my only flaws (and gee don’t I wish they were) I’m doing pretty good.

Some random thoughts on coffee

• I like mine with creamer and a little sugar. Real sugar please, not the pink stuff or the blue stuff or the yellow stuff or the whatever-they-got-now stuff. Sugar. Gimme the white death or nothing.

• The more chocolate and whipped cream Starbucks puts in your cup, then the less coffee there is in that cup. I’m just saying.

• The best coffee I ever had was from a greasy dinner in Mauii. It was just a local blend of Kona, and brewed in a regular way but oh my does fresh off the plantation make a difference.

• My everyday coffee is Cafe Caribe. Its says its an espresso but its not. Its just a smooth, very (very) dark, fine ground for a standard drip coffee maker. HEB sells it in some (only some) of the Austin stores for 20 cents an ounce and that’s cheaper that the cheapie mass market stuff. At that price I can buy lots of coffee.

The year: 1511. The place: Mecca. Coffee was banned by the governor because he believed it stimulated radical thinking and would unite opposition against him.

• Coffee is so dangerous and seductive that it has been outlawed in numerous countries in the past. The Pilots Bog has a nice rundown of the coffee-haters-in-history who tried to ban my favorite beverage.  Tried and failed! Ha!

• My favorite mug is a hand thrown, hand glazed piece straight from the Soto ceramic studio.

I know that Soto pieces are wildly expensive and I hope I never find out what my coffee mug is actually worth (it was a gift). I might stop using it if I did. That that would be terrible since it holds a third more coffee than any other mug I own.

• Lousia May Alcott in Little Women wrote

“I’d rather take coffee than compliments just now.”

Wouldn’t we all? I know I would.