Coffee Pots

My family has had a long relationship with coffee. My earliest memories of coffee revolve around my mother's aluminum percolator that sat on the stove and recycled the dark liquid for hours. I was no more than 5 or 6 when I made the connection that when mom was no longer fixing coffee, she was pregnant. She was always surprised when I told her I knew before she told me. The old aluminum percolated did get a lot of use.

Sometime in the early 70's espresso became a part of our lives. Mom had one of those aluminum, put on the stove, sometimes it blew up, kind of makers. While in the San Francisco area she became a true addict. Each and every time we went to "The City" the second stop was for espresso after the HumBow shop. The coffee exploration covered many, many countries. Dutch coffee, French Roast Coffee. The move to Switzerland cinched it all.

Mom had a love hate relationship with Switzerland. She had had her hand slapped the first day she went shopping and touched a tomato. She found ways to get back at the Swiss. She confounded the bankers by having two ATM cards. She upset the neighbors by not recylcing the yogurt jars and she found Migrows.

Migrows was a grocery store on one floor and a hardware/department store on another. They had a food court that had an automatic espresso machine. My mother would take a regular size cup, hit the espresso button twice and the cashier would assume it was one cup of regular coffee and not two shots of espresso. Neither spoke the other's language and Mom just agreed with what ever they said. I am sure they asked if it was regular or espresso and she would say "YA". It was her silent protest against the mean streak that the Swiss hid with their neat and tidy ways.

While in Switzerland she bought about a half dozen different coffee makers. When we returned to the US she had a 220 plug installed by the stove to run them. I expect the Smithsonian to appear and ask for her comprehensive collection. They come from several countries and are in many colors.

She is truly a coffee snob. She makes father drink coffee out of old Farber Ware percolators and claims he does not know the difference. She brought a little automatic espresso to my house because she did not like the coffee pot I had.

She has hated my Krupps coffee maker for a long time. It was a bit big but it seems to work for me. I could program it and the coffee in the pot was hot for a couple of hours. I purchased it after I almost burned the house down heating water for a cone. During the last visit, Mom threw the pot away. The bottom of the caraf had been warped and did not fit as it once had. I was going to buy a replacement but Mom hated the pot. I came home from work to find no coffee pot. She told me there was room in the neighbor's garbage and it had to go. Oh, well, it went.

Mom and Dad left and I had no coffee pot. I went to the Bon and found nothing and then decided I would live with one cup each morning from her little maker. I just prayed that it would not blow up. Mom fretted about her hasty action but told me I could just buck up. This from a women that consumes more coffee before noon than the entire population of a small diner.

Well the "No Coffee Pot" crisis has been resolved. My wonderful cousin delivered a new coffee maker and a pound of good coffee to the house yesterday. He showed M-E how to run it and season it and I had two wonderful cups of hot and easily brewed coffee this morning. I had a few problems with things like pouring the coffee from the caraff but I am sure there are pages of explanation in the directions. I may even get to that someday but it does not seem too important right now.

One thing I have learned during the last few months is flexibility and acceptance of the less than perfect. There is more focus on the getting it done, rather than the process. "Identify the need and solve the problem." I used to feel that we were getting our lives derailed all the time. Now I realize that the rails are just an illusion. There are just faint paths and open fields and lots of ways to travel to a destination. Mom has taught us a lot with her search for good coffee. Even when you find something that fits the bill, you can keep your options open and be ready to make a change if need be. Granted it is much easier if you have a couple of good cups of coffee under your belt.