My morning coffee

“Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.” ― Terry Pratchett, Thud!

I'm not sure I quite understand that quote, favourite writer of mine that he is. I think he's saying it's sort of wasting valuable time?

I'm not a morning person. Never have been and now I probably never shall be, which is not to say that I can't get up early if I have to. But if I don't have to then I don't. And without my morning cup of coffee (and a shower) I just don't get going at all. So I am extremely lucky to have a husband who does get up early and who brings me a cup of coffee to wake me up. And it has to be black - this is not the time for cappuccino.

There are a few things I could say about this early morning habit. First of all I'm not at all sure when it began. I didn't like coffee - well I wasn't offered it - when I was young - well I grew up in England and we drank tea (which I didn't like). Nobody I knew drank coffee. Then I went away to university and I was introduced to coffee - well instant coffee - but it wasn't a wake up drink - it was a social thing. And I had sugar in it then too - and very likely milk as well. Indeed if I ever drink instant coffee these days I do have it with milk. It's a different drink altogether it seems to me.

Then I remember working as an au pair in France in my last year at university and having a large cup of black coffee for breakfast in the morning - the French thought this mildly funny as they have sweet chocolate for breakfast, and they have it in very large wide cups.

And my last little anecdote is somewhat sadder - in hospital having just given birth and failing to breast feed, one of the nurses somewhat nastily told me off for drinking coffee first thing because it dried up the milk. How was I supposed to know that said I.

It is interesting though, is it not, how these days we don't drink instant coffee. I drank lots of it when I was at home looking after children - I have the jars (which make good storage jars) to prove it. But I gradually weaned myself off the sugar - nowadays sugar in coffee is revolting to me - so isn't it interesting how one's taste can change. Though I do like sweet things with coffee. And I think that, at work, I used to take in my own individual plunger and coffee.

And when did we start drinking 'real' coffee at home? Well actually a long time ago now that I think about it. First we had those glass percolators, then we had filtered coffee, then there were coffee plungers - all of these required ground coffee, though we actually ground our own coffee. Eventually we purchased an espresso machine which is what we now have - well no we have a coffee machine that does the whole thing from scratch - from the coffee beans. Sometimes the plunger is put to use, and if we are catering for crowds it's either the plunger or the dripolator.

And now we have the pod machines. I can't make up my mind whether these are the replacement for instant coffee or not. Probably not - the Nespresso machines and pods are not cheap. The Aldi ones are though. Not good for the environment but they do make good coffee. And yes all those different varieties do taste different - I've done taste tests on them. We have one in our guest house so it doesn't get used that much.

There's a whole lot of pretentious stuff talked about coffee - the crema, the aroma, the temperature, whether it's arabica or not. For me, in the morning I think it's just the caffeine really. But I can't do without it.