The results are in
After the conducting of a blind taste test and one marathon sweets-tasting session here at the firm, the following edible gifts will be yours, should you be lucky enough to be one of our clients or business-partners:
• One pound San Francisco Coffee “holiday blend”
• A large quantity of drippy, messy, honey-drenched baklava from the International Bakery
• Mexican wedding cookies and tiny Linzer tortes from same.
It was a hard job. Drinking all those cups of coffee. Eating all those different kinds of cookies. (There were like 15 kinds to try). I’m still full. But now, as a result, I’m also initiated into the ranks of coffee-snobbery. I’m telling you - i’ve gone, in just a few short months, from someone who could hardly tell regular from decaf to a person who argues with her boss about how much like charcoal briquettes a certain coffeehouse’s brew tastes. I feel kind of like I’ve joined a secret club. Like people who sniff corks with intense concentration and chat about the subtle, oaky undertones in wine.
But I’ve got the coffee thing down. And it’s probably genetic.
Growing up, my parents were two-pot-a-day drinkers. At the least. Granted, they drank two drip-through pots of tasteless, watery sluice, but hey - there was no such thing as a “coffeehouse” in dearborn county Indiana in the 80s. When Singles came out in theaters and the Friends started hanging out at their little coffee bar, I was in the middle of nowhere dreaming about what a cappucino might actually taste like. We just had no clue. So, you can’t blame my folks for buying folger’s and swilling it down like cheap wine on a sunday. At least it wasn’t Sanka. Which I think my mother considered something akin to the antichrist.
For a very long time, I hated coffee. And my mother always applauded me with shaky hands, hanging her head like so many of the addicted before her to tell me it was “just better that I didn’t like coffee.” Then she’d tell me about how it’s an ‘acquired taste’ and that my grandfather started her drinking it with lots of milk when she was, oh, i don’t know, 4. Or 18 months. Or in the womb. Eyes averted like she was ratting out her hookup. The poor man probably never knew what his good-natured “lets give the baby some coffee…look! she likes it!” had wrought.
Anyway, somewhere along the way both of them cut out the obsessive drinking, switched to decaf and started visiting the local Borders instead for frequent ‘pick me ups’. So, I’ve taken their place in the caffiene-jittery lineage. My brother won’t touch the stuff - someone had to do it.
Last week, I surrendered my 10-cup GE drip-master for a little french press and a pound of deep, black beans so shiny they looked like they’d been polished with wesson oil.
I opened the bag and sniffed it. Deeply.
It had oaky undertones.