Where Have All the __________ gone?
Last night, I pulled up to our local Starbucks to buy a bag of coffee. The Tribute blend is out, and I must say, it is phenomenal. Cherry notes! Seriously good coffee. The thing is that I haven't had an out coffee (like a latte or Americano or cappuccino) in several weeks. For one reason, the last time I bought a cafe Americano, I watched as the coffee jerk...er "barista"...with the sniffles picked my cup up with his index finger and thumb, thus smearing the inside of my empty cup with whatever goddamned virus he was fighting off. I deposited my coffee, undrunk, untasted, in the nearest trash can and attempted to stay awake for the rest of the day.
Compared to the coffee I make at home, it wasn't much of a loss. Sure, $2, but I have paid $25 for a flu shot, which is the basic principle: paying someone to not get sick. I can do one better and just not eat out and I can avoid plague altogether. I save money, I don't gain weight, I eat healthier and better, and all I miss out on is stuffing food down my gob that will likely give me colon cancer by the time I'm 40. I can then afford to spend my money on better food. Veggies, decent meat. The only problem is having to make time to cook well.
Convenience is key in our society. It all began back in the 50's when the food industry took its cues from NASA, as well as a few of its cast-offs, and made cooking a tedious, tiresome affair. Why soak and boil beans when you can just throw a pre-made meal in the oven for 45 minutes? The TV dinner wasn't fast enough, however, so the microwave came into use. It could do in 7 minutes what it took your stove 30 minutes to do. And cleanup was easy! Just throw that shit in the trash! The problem is that all this processed food meant loading the "food" up with all sorts of stuff that isn't "food." Maybe it should have been called "Fuud." I'm not going to rant about how bad processed food is for you. There's enough stuff out there for you to have heard it already. In case you haven't, let me also tell you that cigarettes are bad for you too.
The more you know!
Everything in life is a balance. You exchange one thing for another in almost all aspects. One of the biggest commodities out there is time. You exchange flavor, healthfulness, and technique for the ability to do shit faster. Because someone convinced us in the 50's that cooking was such a chore, and a few slices of potroast in a tinfoil platter was just as good as roasting a hunk of beef in its own juices for a couple hours. Vegetables? Bah! Hitler was a vegetarian! Why should I eat my green beans? What am I a fascist?
Which brings me back to coffee.
When I placed my order, I asked for a pound of Tribute, ground for percolator.
The girl who took my order knows me by just by what I order. I'm a regular. The new guy at the window, not so much. I roll up to pay, and he asks me "What's a percolator?" I get so sick of this conversation.
Let me sum up here, in case you don't know. That way if/when you continue reading, you can join me in guffaws and gasps of horror at his ignorance. A percolator is possibly the greatest contribution of physics the world has ever known. Outside of spirit distillation. Some would argue that even. A percolator uses Boyles law, the Burnouli Principle, and all sorts of other LAWS OF PHYSICS to turn coarsely ground coffee beans into the ELIXIR OF THE GODS. It has three parts. The coffee pot, the pump, the basket. Water is heated in the pot, the hotter water rises up through the pump stem and them falls back into the grounds which are held in the basket. The grounds release the tears of fallen angles that have been inside, right back into the boiling water, which then goes back up the stem. So, unlike a drip coffee system, you are actually dripping the coffee with coffee. I like to perk my coffee until you can chew it. I sometimes percolate for upwards of 45 minutes. You should be able to hold a glass of properly percolated coffee up to the sun to see the corona of a solar eclipse if necessary. If you add cream, it might take a while to make it a mocha color.
Here's a video (not mine).
I actually own two of these pots. A five cup and a ten cup. I can't use either of them because I was washing the Pyrex pump stems by hand and dropped them in the sink like an asshole (not at the same time, mind you. It was two separate moments of DURRRRR a few months apart). They both shattered. It's like $30 to replace the stems if you can find them. My wife was lucky enough to pick up the percolators at an ARC for around $5 each. Spending $60 on $10 worth of coffee pots is not something I am willing (or able) to do. Shipping along on the stems can go as high as $20. Because apparently they break very easily. Who knew?
They make the BEST percolated coffee. Now I have to wait for some old person to die, who had excellent taste in coffee and clueless children who don't know what the hell a percolator is to drop these things off at the ARC, but thanks to that goddamned Macklemore song, I can't hardly get into a thrift shop anymore to find one!
So, that is a percolator.
The barista was at least in his mid-20's and had no idea what a percolator was. I tried my best to explain in the 10 seconds it took to pay for my coffee and go. He's gonna have to Google this one, I'm afraid. The thing is I can't imagine how someone who works at a coffee shop doesn't know what a percolator is? Only three of the baristas know what I'm talking about, not including the girl who knows me by what I order. She has never seen one, but knows how I need the beans ground. That's all I care about. I mean, this is the same kid who one night was professing the tenets of microwave beefaroni. She's hardly a foodie. Of these three that do know, and DO percolate, one woman is slightly older than me. She should know (and does!) The other two give me hope for humanity. They are in their 20's. I shared with them the secret of chicory.
Coffee is fine and all, but if you percolate coffee, add just a little bit of roasted chicory root to the basket. It smells like pepper, but tastes like pecan pie. Amazing. Transcendant.
Why am I complaining? Why should I be any more surprised that someone doesn't know what a percolator is when there is a whole generation that doesn't know what a cassette tape is? Because unlike the cassette tape, the percolator was a good thing. (Oh come on, before I get hate mail, did you really thing CD's and MP3s were a step down from cassettes?). Freeze dried coffee, French press, and that piss colored swill that you drink at work from the automatic drip is DEFINITELY a step down from percolated coffee. Percolated coffee is light a lighter, drinkable espresso. It's the way it should be done, but now it's facing extinction because apparently nobody likes to taste their coffee anymore, they just fill it and go. Might as well just pop caffeine pills if that's where you are headed.
Maybe once people take time to appreciate good things like food, coffee, books, sex, books, open roads, the smell of rain, etc, rather than the instant gratification we all think we have a right to, we can make the world a better place. Bake a loaf of bread, make a soup from scratch, make a bechamel and mix it with cheddar instead of lusting after boxed Mac and Cheeze, percolate some goddamned coffee! You'll see that what we convince ourselves how life is supposed to be, is just a sham thought up to sell a product. If it costs you some TV time, you are probably better off.
Albums sound better than MP3s, books are better than movies, and nothing beats a great cup of coffee.
Boom!
*Mic drop*
Compared to the coffee I make at home, it wasn't much of a loss. Sure, $2, but I have paid $25 for a flu shot, which is the basic principle: paying someone to not get sick. I can do one better and just not eat out and I can avoid plague altogether. I save money, I don't gain weight, I eat healthier and better, and all I miss out on is stuffing food down my gob that will likely give me colon cancer by the time I'm 40. I can then afford to spend my money on better food. Veggies, decent meat. The only problem is having to make time to cook well.
Convenience is key in our society. It all began back in the 50's when the food industry took its cues from NASA, as well as a few of its cast-offs, and made cooking a tedious, tiresome affair. Why soak and boil beans when you can just throw a pre-made meal in the oven for 45 minutes? The TV dinner wasn't fast enough, however, so the microwave came into use. It could do in 7 minutes what it took your stove 30 minutes to do. And cleanup was easy! Just throw that shit in the trash! The problem is that all this processed food meant loading the "food" up with all sorts of stuff that isn't "food." Maybe it should have been called "Fuud." I'm not going to rant about how bad processed food is for you. There's enough stuff out there for you to have heard it already. In case you haven't, let me also tell you that cigarettes are bad for you too.
The more you know!
Everything in life is a balance. You exchange one thing for another in almost all aspects. One of the biggest commodities out there is time. You exchange flavor, healthfulness, and technique for the ability to do shit faster. Because someone convinced us in the 50's that cooking was such a chore, and a few slices of potroast in a tinfoil platter was just as good as roasting a hunk of beef in its own juices for a couple hours. Vegetables? Bah! Hitler was a vegetarian! Why should I eat my green beans? What am I a fascist?
Which brings me back to coffee.
When I placed my order, I asked for a pound of Tribute, ground for percolator.
The girl who took my order knows me by just by what I order. I'm a regular. The new guy at the window, not so much. I roll up to pay, and he asks me "What's a percolator?" I get so sick of this conversation.
Let me sum up here, in case you don't know. That way if/when you continue reading, you can join me in guffaws and gasps of horror at his ignorance. A percolator is possibly the greatest contribution of physics the world has ever known. Outside of spirit distillation. Some would argue that even. A percolator uses Boyles law, the Burnouli Principle, and all sorts of other LAWS OF PHYSICS to turn coarsely ground coffee beans into the ELIXIR OF THE GODS. It has three parts. The coffee pot, the pump, the basket. Water is heated in the pot, the hotter water rises up through the pump stem and them falls back into the grounds which are held in the basket. The grounds release the tears of fallen angles that have been inside, right back into the boiling water, which then goes back up the stem. So, unlike a drip coffee system, you are actually dripping the coffee with coffee. I like to perk my coffee until you can chew it. I sometimes percolate for upwards of 45 minutes. You should be able to hold a glass of properly percolated coffee up to the sun to see the corona of a solar eclipse if necessary. If you add cream, it might take a while to make it a mocha color.
Here's a video (not mine).
Click to viewI actually own two of these pots. A five cup and a ten cup. I can't use either of them because I was washing the Pyrex pump stems by hand and dropped them in the sink like an asshole (not at the same time, mind you. It was two separate moments of DURRRRR a few months apart). They both shattered. It's like $30 to replace the stems if you can find them. My wife was lucky enough to pick up the percolators at an ARC for around $5 each. Spending $60 on $10 worth of coffee pots is not something I am willing (or able) to do. Shipping along on the stems can go as high as $20. Because apparently they break very easily. Who knew?
They make the BEST percolated coffee. Now I have to wait for some old person to die, who had excellent taste in coffee and clueless children who don't know what the hell a percolator is to drop these things off at the ARC, but thanks to that goddamned Macklemore song, I can't hardly get into a thrift shop anymore to find one!
So, that is a percolator.
The barista was at least in his mid-20's and had no idea what a percolator was. I tried my best to explain in the 10 seconds it took to pay for my coffee and go. He's gonna have to Google this one, I'm afraid. The thing is I can't imagine how someone who works at a coffee shop doesn't know what a percolator is? Only three of the baristas know what I'm talking about, not including the girl who knows me by what I order. She has never seen one, but knows how I need the beans ground. That's all I care about. I mean, this is the same kid who one night was professing the tenets of microwave beefaroni. She's hardly a foodie. Of these three that do know, and DO percolate, one woman is slightly older than me. She should know (and does!) The other two give me hope for humanity. They are in their 20's. I shared with them the secret of chicory.
Coffee is fine and all, but if you percolate coffee, add just a little bit of roasted chicory root to the basket. It smells like pepper, but tastes like pecan pie. Amazing. Transcendant.
Why am I complaining? Why should I be any more surprised that someone doesn't know what a percolator is when there is a whole generation that doesn't know what a cassette tape is? Because unlike the cassette tape, the percolator was a good thing. (Oh come on, before I get hate mail, did you really thing CD's and MP3s were a step down from cassettes?). Freeze dried coffee, French press, and that piss colored swill that you drink at work from the automatic drip is DEFINITELY a step down from percolated coffee. Percolated coffee is light a lighter, drinkable espresso. It's the way it should be done, but now it's facing extinction because apparently nobody likes to taste their coffee anymore, they just fill it and go. Might as well just pop caffeine pills if that's where you are headed.
Maybe once people take time to appreciate good things like food, coffee, books, sex, books, open roads, the smell of rain, etc, rather than the instant gratification we all think we have a right to, we can make the world a better place. Bake a loaf of bread, make a soup from scratch, make a bechamel and mix it with cheddar instead of lusting after boxed Mac and Cheeze, percolate some goddamned coffee! You'll see that what we convince ourselves how life is supposed to be, is just a sham thought up to sell a product. If it costs you some TV time, you are probably better off.
Albums sound better than MP3s, books are better than movies, and nothing beats a great cup of coffee.
Boom!
*Mic drop*