Cup of Joe

Simple breakfast. Would've been perfect if I had some yogurt, but it was pretty good nonetheless. The Melitta Ready Set Joe coffee maker (I'll try to keep product placement to a minimum except where it makes a difference. Here it does.) is great, for one cup of coffee. This is a bit of a well traveled meal, in stark contrast to most of the posts here. Even the olive oil from the last pasta post was only from California (All things being equal, I prefer the Spanish stuff.). Here, the coffee is from Columbia, by way of Arabica, a Cleveland area coffee chain, sold vacuum packed.

A word on the coffee, particularly when brewing this way, but I imagine it's always relevant. These beans were fine. They were a gift, and anything given is always good . . . usually. And I am partial to Colombian coffee, partially because I had a good friend from Columbia and I'm sentimental, being a Cancer and all. That being said, I ground the coffee beans in a blade grinder, wet about three tablespoons of roughly ground coffee in the Melitta #2 filter with hot water from a tea kettle, and then filled the filter up with more of the hot water and let it do its thing. It was fine in the mug, particularly so with a bit of cream (that was local and organic) and some sugar (organic by way of Paraguay). But, there's a place in the West Side Market, and I'm sure there are equivalent places just about everywhere, that gets great traffic and a quick turnaround on their product. Using those beans on a different occasion, during the initial wetting of the beans a thick foam develops and there's lots of bubbling. Same, but to a lesser extent, when the additional water is added. The smell was stronger and the taste superior. The beans were from the same place of origin and I had used the same technique. Maybe the coffee boutique roasts their beans differently, but I believe the difference is in the freshness alone. Coffee at my local Aribica (it's an individually owned and operated franchise) is great, same at the West Side Market boutique shop. But if I'm buying the beans, it's worth a trip to the Market. Plus, they sell by weight, so you can buy less and keep your stock fresh.

Back to breakfast. Some good Oatnut bread (Pennsylvania I think), raspberry jam (organic from California), and a banana (organic, Ecuador). As noted above, some good yogurt mixed with some grains or nuts would have made it the perfect meal, but despite my waxing on about the omission, they really weren't missed. At the very least it was a nice break from eggs or muesli, especially since I was out of eggs and milk.