Coffee

We had this amazingly cool night last night - it was 43 when I awoke. So my first plan of action was to put on a pot of coffee, wear pants and a sweater and totally enjoy the cool morning air. It's been a wicked summer for most of us and the heat and humidity have totally messed up my system. Yesterday, with a high of 75 I found myself shivering when the sun would go behind a cloud--PATHETIC.

So after my first sip (and I only drink decaf, so there really is no caffeine rush, just the taste is enough to wake me up), I realized that giving up coffee completely would be a major challenge. It led me to wonder how many people drink coffee for the pick-me-up over just the taste?

I live in Vermont, obviously, so Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is a local product and commonly consumed in my household. (Special mention goes to my neighbor who happens to work there and keeps us well stocked with coffee. -- around here if you work at GMCR or Ben & Jerry's an employee perk is free take home items--so coffee for GMCR employees and ice cream pints for B&J employees.) But I am an experimenter, my second favorite place to find coffee comes from TJ Maxx. Their variety of decaf coffee is amazing. At the moment, I am totally hooked on some companies Kahlua & Cream coffee. I can't think of the brand (an Italian company) but their coffee is amazing. I don't have the issues with flavored coffee that some people do. And if I am showing a sign of a cold, you can bet that I'm grabbing a bottle of Jamesons and putting in a couple tablespoons to ward off becoming really sick. For some reason a hot cup of coffee with Jamesons in it knocks the virus out of me within a couple days. I'm not sure why, but maybe there is some logic to that somewhere...

But I digress, my main point today is how many of us can't survive without that morning coffee- and is it for the caffeine or is it the taste that wakes you up?