While Sam was groomed the other day in preparation for our stint at hospital and hospice, the title of this post doesn’t refer to that kind of hair. What I am referring to is another kind of ‘hair of the dog.’ And while it’s not an over-indulgence of alcohol which is typically associated with the etymological definition, I’m actually referring to S.T.R.O.N.G. put-hair-on-your-chest kind of coffee.
I know there are a lot of you out there who prefer tea or even a caffeine-ladden soda to start our your day but bear with me as someone who needs/wants coffee. A couple of days ago, I accidentally broke my coffee carafe, much to my chagrin. I had that coffee maker for close to 15 years, so long in fact, that the manufacturer no longer stocks replacement carafes for it. Color me sad. So off I frantically went in search of a suitable replacement.
Without coffee, no one, and I do mean no one, would want to be around me. Coffee makes me human. Little did I know there are so many options these days when it comes to coffee makers with some staggering price points and way too many features. All this just to replace a simple coffee pot? I wasn’t interested in it having a clock (one more thing to have to reset after a power cut) and am refuse to accept the notion of water that’s been sitting overnight waiting for the magic hour to brew when I get up. I don’t need to modulate the brew strength of the life elixir or do any of the other myriad features now programmed on coffee makers. While I love a good cuppa Joe as much as anyone, why and how did it get so complicated, not to mention expensive? And I especially don’t need a ring tone to tell me when it’s done, another blue light (showing the time and waiting to be changed next month upon the arrival of Daylight Savings Time) or a temperature gauge for the burner. I just want a cup of damn coffee. Is that too much to ask?
Oh sure, I could make ‘cowboy coffee‘ in an old fashioned stove-top percolator but haven’t seen a pot like this in the housewares department for ages and I didn’t want to run around to camping supply outlets to find an overpriced, cutesy pot but just wanted a simple cup of coffee from an electric drip coffeemaker to keep me human. Is that too much to ask?
For the record, that first pot was strong, the kind of strong that requires a six-pack of beer to come down from the caffeine high. Looks like I need to practice a while on getting the perfect recipe figured out on my new complicated, expensive appliance.
Beside your pooch, what else makes you human in the morning?
Live, love, bark! <3
I started quite late with coffee in my twenties but have become quite passionate about it 😉
Funny you mention prefering tea when sick – I never drink coffee when I feel poorly.
ROFWL!!! Oh Monika you wrote a funny blog!! And I agree about buying a simple coffeemaker is like a NASA mission….a costly one at that! (Due to my stomach trouble I use instant coffee now), but I remember the days of trying to find a simple coffeemaker.
My own suggestion is trying 2nd hand stores perhaps? Do you have the store Valu Village there? We have them in Canada & it is AMAZING the things that are donated there…..
(((hugs))) Sherri-Ellen 🙂
I’ll scour some of the second hand stores here and see if I can find a carafe. Just in case the NASA model goes in the toilet. LOL
**crackling static**
“Houston we have a problem…..”
Hehehehee……
I actually thought about starting a “serious coffee addicts” blog some time ago 😉 I make mine using a porcelain filter I inherited from my grandmother 😄 But I also love tea! Anything caffeinated is good for me 😉
I totally love the taste of coffee. And while I think tea is lovely, I tend to associate tea more with feeling sick where it’s usually perfect. Cheers ☕️
I started quite late with coffee in my twenties but have become quite passionate about it 😉
Funny you mention prefering tea when sick – I never drink coffee when I feel poorly.
Exactly! It’s what my mum gave me when my tummy was upset. Along with dry toast. Coffee is the elixir of gods in my books!
I couldn’t agree more!
I just happen to like the taste of coffee in the morning…doesn’t matter if it’s regular or decaf…so I don’t need the caffeine itself (most days). Unless I had a very short night and really need to wake up fast. I waited a long time before getting my first Keurig coffee maker; but now I love having it cuz I can make a fresh mugful every time. I hate the taste of coffee that’s been sitting in the pot too long.
PS. My mom used – first – a stove-top percolator, then switched to an electric one. When the Mr. Coffee coffee makers came out, she switched to it. That was back in the days when the best quality anything was made right here in the good ol’ USA. As a kid I used to love watching the coffee bubble up to the top of the percolator, and drip back down again.
You know I’m not a coffee drinker, love the smell, despise the taste, but even I have a French Press for visiting guests. Why don’t you get one of those as your back up and ditch the attempts to find a replacement carafe for your old coffee maker?
I cannot seem to make through my morning without my Chai. I blame you for getting me hooked!
I have a French Press but we drink way too much coffee to use it full time. I’ll check 2nd hand stores or eBay for a backup and if I can’t easily find something will just write the whole thing off as a loss to get over. 😑
Oh and there are worse things to be addicted to worse things than chai 😇
While I love my caffeine in the form of soda, I’ve never used caffeine as a means of “waking up.” Most days, my “morning” starts at 8 PM, and it’s ice water with my dinner/breakfast. The soda is saved, ironically enough, for after work when I’m a few hours away from going to bed!
We clearly have different bio-rhythms! 🙂
I usually don’t drink coffee but need my latte or cappuccino.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me!
Mom loves her coffee! She’s a Keurig person. Also, she’s a morning person, so she wakes up human. Sometimes, TOO human. I am less of a morning doggie….
Love and licks,
Cupcake
We think you’re an adorable dog, morning, noon and night, Cupcake!
I’m the same as you with my coffee! No one wants to be near me until I have a cup. My Dad gave me an espresso maker about a decade ago. I think it costed a fortune but it has worked every morning for all that time. I’m afraid that I’m hooked – and I’ll have to always have an espresso maker… The only downside is how long it takes to make my morning brew. I have a billionaire friend (I seriously do – and he shares his photography equipment with me), and he told me all about the automatic espresso-latte maker that he has that has his latte ready when he walks into the kitchen every morning. I looked it up – the price tag is over $20,000. I think that I’ll stick with my manual one 🙂
Good plan. 🙂 Happy that your friend shares his photog equipment. What a stroke of sheer good fortune.
We have an electric coffee percolator which I set up in the morning, take Benji for his walk, come back – he gets his treat I get my coffee. I’m not really a very fussy person but I prefer Blue Mountain Coffee, which I get when I go to the Coffee Shop at the Central Market in Adelaide.
Tink found this post after you visited him in Bacon’s spotlight (thanks, btw, he was thrilled). He immediately knew that this one was for ME. You and I are coffee-twins separated at birth. Life without pots of good strong coffee is a coma.
I switched to the Melita pour through cone-filter system decades ago, and swear by it. Simple, cheap, NO bells, no whistles, zero internet involvement. All you need is a the original cone (buy the 6 or 12 cup one if you can find it), a way to boil water, a carafe to catch the coffee and the biggest cone-filters you can find anymore. My quick boil electric pot recently gave up the ghost, and I could still boil water for coffee in a pot on the stove. The world is grateful. (After the Water Board shut off the water for a day, I now even keep back up *water*, should that horror ever happen again!).
You pick the strength by the amount and type of coffee you put into the filter, and the grind. If you’re nimble, you can pour off the first – strongest – cup while you’re pouring the pot. Can’t get much easier or quicker than that. I use half “regular” and half espresso in my personal mix – and my idea of a cup is larger than a soup mug, btw.
All the stores seem to stock 2 and 4 cup filters only anymore (and they must mean demitasse cups – are you KIDDING me?) After being forced to deal with the itty-bitties when I ran out of filters ONCE, I now order the brown (no clorox) 6-cup size on Amazon – practically by the crate – and pour through twice, keeping the coffee warm in my thermos carafes.
EVEN if you don’t care for the Melita approach, it is the ONLY way to go for a back-up system, IMHO. Tell you hubby and I’ll bet he’ll buy it FOR you.
xx,
mgh
(Madelyn Griffith-Haynie – ADDandSoMuchMORE dot com)
ADD Coach Training Field founder; ADD Coaching co-founder
“It takes a village to educate a world!”
I’m not a coffee-a-holic and am coffee maker challenged. So for a previous office I found a pretty red one on Amazon for $20 that had an on/off switch. I mean, that’s it! It was perfect for me. What gets me going in the morning? A good night’s sleep… 🙂
Now there’s a concept! Sadly, I suffer from insomnia most nights. Sigh. At least when I finally do get to sleep I’m not too deprived when I get up. Must be lack of sugar, huh? Bwahaha!
You could have a chronorhythm disorder (sleep timing) – often MISdiagnosed as insomnia because most people – even docs – know little about this type of sleep disorder. Chronos tell our bodies when it’s “night” and time to sleep – and many are skewed later than the norm – sometimes MUCH later.
I challenge *anyone* to be able to fall asleep before their body says it’s time. NOT the same as insomnia. And don’t buy into the nonsense about coffee. That is most likely a compensatory mechanism on your part and NOT what’s going on with your chronos!)
Tink sort-of explained it in his November N-24 post “Sleeping with the Enemy” (but N-24 is only one type of chrono-disruption – there are others). DSPS norms – Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, now upgraded to DSPD “disorder” – in folks who don’t have to get up for morning-Nazi schedules, are 4AM to noon, btw.
xx,
mgh.
Ah, maybe too much coffee??? (no sugar – way to go!)
Only a couple cups in the morning, never afterwards. 🙂
I totally agree with you on this here subject!
🙂 No clue why coffee makers have to be so complicated. I felt like I was back in the 90’s trying to that cotton-picking flashing blue light off the VCR! LOL
Our pawrents love their Keurig but were just saying how expensive coffee is lately! Enjoy your machine!
Your Pals,
Murphy & Stanley
I hope you guys use the refillable pods. It helps on the cost per cup. I thought about a Keurig but with as much coffee as we drink, nixed that idea.
I must have my coffee too- 3 cups before I leave the house. I have broken many carafes so now I have a thermal stainless one. And like someone wrote above, I also have a spare coffee pot too.
I’m keeping my original one and will start looking at Goodwill for a spare carafe…just in case. 😉 LOL
So…is it weird that I have a “back up” coffee pot ;-). I use a Keurig for my day to day drinking…but keep a Mr. Coffee in my pantry…Just in Case!!
Nothing weird in my books with that preparation!
I keep a French press handy besides my electric coffee pot. It has a few of those bells and whistles but I never set the time. But I do like my coffee beans and grinder. ☕️
Yup, there’s nothing quite like freshly ground beans!
I’m the same, I prefer to buy beans and grind them myself – in the grinder, which is kept aside for that purpose.
Morning is not the same without coffee. I once had to give it up for health reasons and I missed it more than anything else I had to give up. Thankfully I didn’t have to do that for long. I don’t like it super strong, but it has to be black.
Nothing is simple anymore, and the features they put in can be so silly. We bought a new range and it has a phone app so I can turn the oven on when I’m not home. Like I would do that – WHY?? 🙂
Wait, what??!! A phone app to turn an oven on? Oy-how crazy is that?!
Oh I laughed because I CANNOT live without my coffee!!! When our pot broke that I had forever I sent Lenny out in a raging snowstorm to get another! Like you, I hate the ones with clocks and all (which I am sorry to say I have, because when Lenny went out only TJ Maxx was close by and they had ONE left and it was late). Give me a good old fashioned Mr.Coffee pot ANY DAY!! I do have an attraction for the “cowboy” pot though lol
They are so pretty but making a good cup in them is no easy feat! Being in the outdoors with wilderness smells really camouflages how most of the time, it tastes like swill! LOL
P.S. Lenny is a saint and an angel! 😇
I totally share your appreciation for good coffee! I grew up in an Italian American household where espresso was a part of life…long before it became trendy. As a little kid at family dinners, I’d look forward to that little demitasse cup with espresso and lots of sugar…with an Italian pastry of course!
And that divine smell filling your senses! Ahhhh
Me, human in the morning?
My peeps won’t buy anything that purports to tell the time that doesn’t set itself by the atomic clock (which is near you).
Yes, I have one of those in my kitchen too. Best clock ever!
My Dad loves his coffee and most all coffee! Thanks for joining the Thankful Thursday Blog Hop!
Thank YOU for hosting and for swinging by the Ranch! ☕️
No one speaks to me before I have a Starbucks mocha latte!
A woman after my own ❤︎!
I’m with you on not needing an overload of special features–for anything.
But I can’t relate to the coffee thing. I’m 51 years old and I’ve never drunk a cup of coffee in my life. In truth, I wonder what I’m missing when I read a post like yours. But I can’t force myself past that bitter taste.
Oh Pamela, my deepest sympathies. LOL Actually I completely understand, my own daughter despises coffee so know these things are as individual as each one of us. Still I can’t help but think they switched babies on me in the hospital. 😉
These machines today drive me wild..all bells and whistles to go wrong!
Do I want my washing machine to play music when it the cycle finishes? No.
We start the day on tea….and no machine can make a cup of tea worth the name.
Exactly! Here’s to a ‘wagnificent’ cup of tea!
oh yes, coffee please. I’m having my first cup now, really strong french roast, half caf/half decaf, brown with milk. Love. Ahhhhhh. Yessss that’s good. I know what you mean. Too much thinking going on with appliances. Same with washers. Just wash the blankety blank clothes. Don’t do a song and dance too. Just the coffee… thanks… no I don’t need to record the brewing and send it to instagram. Just coffee. And make it quickly.
Bwahaha…send to Instagram indeed! Love it.
I’m going to have to steal that meme! I start my day with espresso….black! Strong enough to make a spoon stand up straight in the cup, if one used a spoon that is. I’ve got a “manual” mocha pot that sits on the stove (it’s red and bold!)…a Nespresso machine on the counter and a Keurig too. But my go-to is the puts-hair-on-your-chest stove top method. :-). Good morning bliss.
Ahhhh…sounds even better than Calgon taking me away! 🙂
that’s like a nuclear meltdown…a cup of coffe in the morning is iron law….
Supreme. And not to be trifled with! Stupid blue light.