Question of the Day

I was at a friend's house a couple of weeks ago, and she handed me a cup of coffee that was part decaf and part regular. I know that some people regularly mix the two, and I wondered what the reasons were.

Decaf Straight Up Latte, Please

This is really sad: I decided the other day that, after fifteen years or more, I was pretty much going to have to give up drinking regular (i.e. caffeinated) coffee. I don't mean to totally give it up. If I'm at my parents, or a friends, house and they're serving regular coffee before noon, I probably will still drink it, but I'm probably going to have to stop making it at home.

I've found that drinking caffeinated coffee makes me feel a little ill. It's been a long, drawn out, accidental weaning process.

In college I was disdainful of decaf and was able to drink regular coffee at any time of the evening without it interfering with my ability to sleep. Several years ago (post-college) I went through about a week where I didn't sleep at all (this wasn't at all voluntary), and ever since then I have had to avoid caffeine after, let's say, 5:00.

Before Michael and I were engaged I used to drink coca-cola many times a day. At some point in our courtship he decided that the carbonation was a possible health risk (I still have my doubts), but when he asked me to start limiting myself to one coca-cola a day I willingly agreed. I still love Coca-cola, but these days I rarely buy it and so I commonly go months without drinking soda of any kind.

Then while I was pregnant with Parker, I gave caffeine up (almost) entirely because I didn't want to take a chance on its effecting the baby.

I'll still drink tea; I'll still drink coke, but the caffeinated coffee will have to be put on hold. Decaf isn't that bad, is it?

Baking Disaster/Baking Triumph, Part II

So many of these things seem to be common sense, but obviously, when it comes to cooking, I've been a slow starter. Virtually every time I step into the kitchen it is an alien experiment, which is funny considering I do it every day.

Here's how I saved the day as far as Sunday School was concerned. Last week when I went grocery shopping, I went ahead and picked up a special ingredient so I could make scones to take to church just in case the Overnight Bubble Bread (see previous post) didn't work. I'm really glad I did.

I have a really simple recipe for scones using Bisquick. I've made these many times on a whim for breakfast, or in anticipation of a morning visit from a friend, but I had never made the glaze to go over the scones because, while the main recipe allows milk as a substitution for heavy cream, the glaze recipe does not. The scones as I normally make them (with whole milk) are more dry than my husband prefers. Since I had actually planned this in advance, however, I already had heavy cream in the refrigerator waiting to go.

The cream made all the difference.

The glaze only called for half a cup of confectioner's sugar and one tablespoon of heavy cream, but when I mixed the cream in with a spoon I wound up with a mound of sugar with a little bit of sludge floating in the middle. So I added another tablespoon of cream and that particular problem was solved. The glaze still looked more like a paste than a glaze, so I put it on top of the oven to warm while the dough baked.

The dough mixed up fairly well with the appropriate addition of cream, but some of the dry ingredients didn't want to incorporate, so I formed the dough into a ball and poured some additional cream over the top. I worked the rest of the dough together with my hands and then flattened the whole thing on a greased baking sheet. Usually you would cut the dough into eight pieces before baking, but I did more since I would be feeding lots of people.

Coming out of the oven, the scones seemed a little underdone in the middle. I couldn't just drizzle the glaze over the top because it was too thick, but I did what I could under the circumstances, and it turned out quite all right. The glaze melted as it hit the hot bread, making it a little bit easier to spread. By the time I got the plate to church the goopier pieces had become more solid. By the time Sunday School started it was perfect!

These scones were much more moist than those I had made before. The flavor was terrific, and the glaze really did make a difference to the taste. I may have just discovered a new item to add to my list of refrigerator staples: heavy cream.

While I'm talking about cream, I'd just like to mention that I've been using dried nonfat milk in my coffee the last couple of weeks, and it seems to work just as well if not better than commercial dry creamers. I haven't looked into the price differential yet, but my idea is that if I keep dry milk around the house to use in my coffee, I'll at least have some recourse in a cooking emergency requiring milk.

Coffee Means?

I've been meaning to post something on the philosophical implications of coffee for some time now, but I can't seem to wrap my brain around any concrete thoughts on the subject.

I started the conversation with Anna Grace a couple of weeks ago.

"Why do you drink coffee?" I asked her.

I would try to paraphrase her answer, but I didn't get her permission (which is just an excuse because really, I'm not very good at paraphrasing). Basically, she started drinking coffee on a trip in Costa Rica. The coffee smelled so good, and really was so delicious that she enjoyed drinking it for the first time ever. In Costa Rica, it seems, they drink it very strong, and very sweet. Her further answers are her own, so I'll leave those to her in the comments section of this post, where I hope I can get a conversation going. (Anna, you can direct any complaints concerning the violation of your privacy to my self-publishing compliancy officer, in other words, email me.)

I drink coffee because I like the way it tastes, but also because it seems to have some sort of symbolic meaning.

I tried to explain to Anna that the drinking of coffee is a social act even when its social aspect is removed, except that doesn't really make any sense. All I know is that I drink a cup of coffee in the morning, not because I'm addicted to the caffeine, but because there is something I like about the act of drinking coffee.

Is it a club, like my sister suggested? Does the way you take your coffee confer any particular status? I like coffee because I like it, but I also seem to like some image of myself drinking coffee.

Does anyone out there know what I'm trying to say better than I do?

Coffee Questions

How would one make coffee out of burnt toast (See Dillard post below)?

On Little House on the Prairie Caroline often offers to make coffee for Charles. What do you imagine this is that Charles drinks every night after supper? What I'm really asking is how was coffee prepared in the years immediately following the Civil War.

While I'm asking questions, do you think it would traumatize Parker if his mother got a shorter haircut after 15 months of seeing it long?

Right now I'd rather be reading or catching up on Lost while the first three seasons are posted on the network's website. Not very conducive to writing projects, I'm afraid. Meanwhile I have another project that I'm working on, so don't be surprised if you don't hear anything out of me for several days.

Dillard Writes Such Beautiful Sentences About Plain Things

I have gotten Annie Dillard's novel The Living from the library exactly twice. Both times I have attempted to read it, and both times my attempts have failed. This last time I said to Michael, "I really want to read this book but I just can't. Her sentences are beautiful. She's a wonderful writer, but she goes into these high levels of detail about things that just aren't interesting to me. I scan through the pages looking for dialogue and there is very little." Michael suggested that if I really wanted to read it perhaps I should treat it like a technical exercise. Read to discover how she composes and punctuates such wonderful sentences.

I'll give you the example I gave Michael a few nights ago. You might need to read this sentence out loud to notice how wonderfully balanced it is:

"One November night after a supper of dried salmon and potatoes, the Fishburns sat in the Rushes' dark cabin drinking coffee made from burnt toast."

There is a short story appearing in The Annie Dillard Reader, the events occur at some point in the novel. I enjoyed the short story very much, even though it isn't the sort of fiction I would typically read. I think that if I really were a serious reader I would persist through all the detail of the novel, but alas, I am not really a serious reader. Maybe next time I take the book out of the library I will make even more headway.