My wife has recently taken to iced coffee. She has come a long way from the girl I first met. After many years of constant exposure and my chipping away at her walls, she finally succumbed to Juan Valdez and his ilk. I was thrilled.
But I didn't think this through very well. Whenever someone accepts something into their lives, they change it, make it part of themselves, mold it into their being. We see this every so often where some
commercial product gets used in ways other than what was intended. My wife took coffee and started molding halfway through the first cup.
I grew up in Miami. Espresso is practically a religion there. You stop at a gas station in North Miami and get a coffee, you are essentially getting a sextuple espresso in a twelve ounce cup. Maybe this is why people in Miami are crazy. I have never really understood espresso but I have always accepted its place in the coffee kingdom. I suspect the smell of it was wafting through the maternity ward when I was born, drifting off the lips of the nurses, swishing around the belly of my childhood doctor whose thick Spanish accent was only made more incomprehensible by the speed with which he spoke. Was there a drought in South America forcing the indigenous populations to use less aqua? Were their cups too small? Its like vodka to Russians but instead of getting slower you get faster and talk like you are about to be shot . . . which in Miami might actually be the case. It would be an interesting study -
Of the Relationship Between Espresso Consumption and Violence. Could explain a-lot about our cousins to the south.
But I digress. Since we have established coffee and espresso have something in common, namely coffee, lets discuss what else they have in common. THEY ARE BOTH FUCKING HOT!!! The first time my wife and I ordered coffee together at one of the innumerable Dunkin' Donuts near our home, and she told me to order an iced latte with cream, a calm silence came over me. A cage crept open inside of the vast untraveled regions of my being and something shot out. It was the equivalence of the
destruction of Alderan to a Jedi, a great disturbance in the force. Now I am no Jedi but I know
'iced latte with cream' is a god damned abomination.
The Cremora appeared on our shopping list. For those of you who have never read the
ingredients of this 'non dairy creamer' let me illuminate you; dairy is the least of your worries. The reason it tastes so good is because it is the equivalent of
antifreeze to pets. Of the eleven ingredients, I can only properly pronounce four of them. I caved. In marriage you carefully pick your battles. But the medium sized canister was not enough, no, she was piling this stuff into her mug by the mug full. We graduated to the tub sized version, the full gallon equivalent of a gallon of milk.
Don't get me wrong, there are exceptional circumstances where iced coffee is palatable. In the south there is no such thing as naturally cold coffee, maybe in the desert at night, but in Florida it just never naturally happens. You might drink it at room temperature like when you are running late, get in the car, and the only option is yesterdays Star Bucks cup in the holder. But in Florida it never gets cold enough to drink an accidentally cold cup of coffee. Which raises an interesting question, why don't people in hot climates drink cold coffee as a rule? If you go to Arabia do they offer you an iced Latte? Fuck No! In mexico do they offer you cool cappuccino? I think not. I know why people living in both the hottest and coldest places on earth drink hot coffee . . . because that's the way it's supposed to be consumed!
Will coffee brew in a cold pot? Probably not. Can you dump instant coffee into cold water and watch it separate? Nope. When you go to Pizza Hut, do you order cold pizza? Uncooked pizza? Do they charge a premium for cooking the pizza then freezing it? THE WHY THE HELL DO WE PAY MORE FOR HOT BEVERAGES SERVED COLD?
I bought one of those Contigo cups for my wife this Christmas to replace the one she lost. Her first cup of coffee, 'This shit will not cool down, it's too hot to drink.' Now I have a nice new
Contigo cup. Forget the not spilling aspect of the device, or the 'get run over by a tank and not break' feature, or, most importantly, the 'keep shit hot' component! To her it keeps the coffee too hot. And then this morning, she poured fresh, steaming coffee from my brand new
Stainless Steel Double Wall French Coffee Press into an old plastic cup (that aint
BPA free baby) and placed it into the snow on our patio.
I now understand the plight of the Templars, walking off into mythology, building small churches in Scotland branded with gibberish. I feel the fear of the hermit, rereading the lost books of the bible and burying them in the sand. The world is a meat grinder. That steak - just ground beef, that prime rib - ground beef now. That sapphire - dust. I am so sorry Juan Valdez, I had no idea.
From now on when my wife requests iced coffee, I will no longer respond. She must ask for Juan's Tears and I will happily comply.
