Tuesday, September 8, 2009

"You might be a coffee snob if..."

It all started in 1986, our coffee obsession that is. Our son Jordan was just a baby and we were having dinner with our friends Brad & Sue. Following a delicious meal, Brad pulled out a small appliance that neither Allen nor I were familiar with: Eureka, it was a Krups or Braun brand coffee grinder!! At that time in our marriage and being the parents of a newborn baby, we bought Eight O' Clock coffee, but had it ground at our local grocery store. I'm sure there are those of you who can remember the tantalizing smell of Eight O' Clock from your childhood Kroger or A & P. The cashier or bagger would grind your coffee beans on the percolator setting and you took the red bag home and scooped out your own freshly ground Joe.
Once we found out that a decent coffee grinder could be purchased for less than $10, we were hooked. I'm waxing philosophic here, but really that grinder changed our lives~We were still perking our own coffee every day, sometimes twice a day when the mood struck. But now we were coffee junkies.
Sometime in the 90's my husband stumbled across Baltimore Coffee & Tea, a coffee roaster located in a business area he frequented. He came home one day with bags of freshly roasted Baltimore Blend. The folks at Baltimore Coffee were beyond savvy. They had slapped labels on each bag that read, "Freshly ground on July 18th for Karl Ziegler. Pure marketing genius! We were now coffee connoisseurs.
To this day my husband cannot buy regular ground coffee unless I drag him kicking and screaming into the coffee isle. We have a coffee situation on our hands and it's not likely to change any time soon. Now the Ziegler family mostly purchases fair trade extravagant coffees like Ethiopian Harrar, Tanzanian Peabody or our longtime favorite Baltimore Blend. NO Folgers, Maxwell House, Chock Full of Nuts in this house. And definitely, none of that half-caffeine crap some drink and call it real good. Yep, we are coffee snobs here and proud of it.
P.S. As a side note, my husband rants a lot about Starbucks but...we do occasionally support them to keep Bethany & Erin happy... And we are currently only on our 2nd grinder in 25 years of marriage. No other appliance has survived as long. I wonder if we should read more into this curious fact. Perhaps over that morning cup of coffee.

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