Snow Melt

Coffee and Chocolate

Coffee and chocolate have played big parts in my life for most of the past 61 years. My first encounter with chocolate occurred during an Easter egg hunt. My grandparents lived in the smelter heights, on the wrong side of the tracks. They lived across from a small airport. Every year the city would sponsor an Easter Egg Hunt and the eggs were hidden in the grass surrounding the airports runways.

All the small children would hunt for Easter Eggs and everyone found at least one colored egg. In addition, my grandparents would give each child an Easter basket full of candy and chocolate eggs, as well as one chocolate bunny a piece. I would eat my chocolate bunny slowly starting at the ears. I wanted to savor each bite of chocolate as I ate it. This was my first encounter with chocolate.

My first encounter with coffee was more dramatic and painful. It occurred on a Sunday morning. I was sitting on my father's lap and he was reading the comics to me. He had a cup of hot coffee setting on the table in front of him. I watched daddy pick the cup up periodically and sip it. When he was focused on reading a comic, I reached out and grabbed the cup. I pulled the hot coffee onto my father's lap and my own. Dad rushed me to the hospital, which wasn't very far from where we lived.

Everyone should have known that I would be a coffee drinker. After only a coffee drinker is going to pull a hot cup of coffee onto her lap when she's only three or four years old. While my father played a big roll in my first encounter with coffee, it was my mother's father, who taught me to drink coffee.

My grandfather made what he called Cowboy Coffee. It was strong enough ride a horse and drive a herd of cows across the plains. I did an Internet search a couple of weeks ago and found that there actually is a recipe for Cowboy Coffee. According to INeedCoffee http://www.ineedcoffee.com/02/cowboycoffee/ you need

4 qt. water
1 1/2 cups freshly ground coffee
1 egg shell
1/2 cup cold water

Bring the 4 qt. water to boil in a sauce pan or coffee pot. Add the coffee grounds and the eggshell and then bring the mix to a boil again. After it boils remove from heat and let stand 2 minutes. Next slowly add the cold water (this is to settle the grounds) and let stand 1 minute.

This wasn't the way my grandfather made coffee. He used an electric percolator, which he left plugged in all day. In the morning he put in the water and the basket of coffee grounds and then plugged in the coffee pot. He never unplugged the coffee pot, unless he needed make more coffee. When this happened he put in cold water and some fresh grounds on top of the used ones.

Lead entry for "Follow the Leader"   by mood indigo