Friday Favorites: Coffee from Abroad

When I was originally in the blog brainstorming stage and started tossing around blog topics, most of which seemed fairly fruitless, the only one that stuck even a little bit was blogging about passions of mine. I am a very passionate person. Those who know me will attest to this...granted, they have their own descriptions of what this looks like. I've heard myself described as animated, spirited, dramatic, prone to exaggerate slightly (okay, the slightly is my addition), easily excited... the list goes on. I prefer the word passionate; for one, I feel it is a more favorable description than the others. But mostly I like the word passionate because, while all those other words are true of me, passionate doesn't stop and end with me. When I tell people I'm passionate, they inevitably respond with, "Well, what are you passionate about?" Oh, sooooooooo many things. And that is no exaggeration :)

So I had resigned myself to writing a blog about my passions, aka favorites, aka all the people/places/things that have stolen a piece of my heart and taken permanent residence there. I figured that would give me at least 637 posts. The biggest problem was finding a name for my blog. The obvious answer was Passions, but I guess that is already the name of some soap opera and I didn't want people stumbling onto my blog when all they really wanted was to find out who accidentally married their brother in the next episode. Fortunately, now that we've moved here to Willoughby and started this new adventure, I have other content to write about besides just the things I'm passionate about, which I'm sure would have grown old day after day, both for the readers and writer. But I cannot move away from the idea of writing about my passions, because I want all of you to fall in love with my favorite things too! So, without further ado, I introduce:

FRIDAY FAVORITES

That looks a lot cheesier in writing than it sounded in my head. Oh well. I know Friday Favorites has probably been done before on a lot of other blogs, so I really wanted to pick another day and another name for it. But my fondness for alliteration won out, and as there is no day of the week beginning with "P", I couldn't name it _________ Passions. So, until I come up with a better word or until someone changes the names of the days of the week, I'm stuck with cheesy Friday Favorites.

Moving on from that super long introduction, today's favorite is Coffee from Abroad. This topic was chosen largely on the basis that I'm currently drinking Honduran coffee, courtesy of my sister Chloe and her latest mission trip. But current situation aside, I really do always love coffee, and particularly coffee that comes from another country. I'm not just talking about the coffee you can get from Starbucks that says "Colombian", or "Argentine", or "Chilean" on the bag. I'm talking about the, "Hey, I just got back from this tropical hot place and I bought you this huge bag of coffee from a street vendor there for US$1.27" coffee. For all my traveling friends, this is the BEST SOUVENIR EVER. Even for non-coffee drinkers. The scent alone is worth it. If I didn't drink it so fast, I would put these bags of coffee in every room in the house just for air fresheners. They smell amazing. And you may think I'm crazy, but it's not just a coffee smell.  If I wanted that, I'd buy a Yankee Hazelnut Coffee candle (okay, let's be honest...I'm way too cheap to buy Yankee. It'd be Walmart Mainstay Mocha or better yet, some Goodwill half-burned gem labeled "Javarrific". But you get the point). The smells produced from these international coffee beans/grounds awaken all my senses as they tell stories from their country of origin. I brew my Honduran coffee, and despite never having visited Honduras myself, I can almost picture myself there, walking the streets, hearing the Spanish chatter and the colorful sights in the marketplace. It's like they're creating memories...I know the skeptics out there are thinking, you can't actually "remember" a place that you've never visited. You probably think I'm crazy and that my pretend memories would best be labeled delusions, but hey, that's okay. I'm happy in my own little world. When you love traveling as much as I do but don't have the money to do it, you make up for it in the best ways you can.

I do actually have legitimate memories of places I've visited (more on them to come in later "favorite" posts), and many of these are tied to the taste and smell of the coffee I drank there. If you don't believe that smell is tied into memories, I have two things to say to you. (1) You are mistaken. It's proven. (2) If you still don't believe me, explain why someone can walk by wearing Calvin Klein Obsession for Men and you suddenly remember that first boyfriend who has not snuck into your brain for 6 years [Disclaimer: HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION]. But going back to the coffee=memories thing,  I will provide some examples. Those of you who know me know I have this huge thing for Brasil. Many of my Brasilian memories have coffee involved in them. I remember waking up there and having coffee with dear friends, sweetening the rich, black, hearty liquid with...wait for it....condensed milk. Sounds gross, I know, but don't knock it till you've tried it. Sugar addicts, take note. They're onto something. And then there's French coffee. I'm guessing it probably wasn't actually made in France, but whatever it was, it was très délicieux, which translates into English as mmmmmm. I drank many espressos in France, along with some of the creamiest lattes ever made. French coffee has its own characteristics that parallel everything about France: sophisticated, superior, high class. Yes, coffee can taste classy.

Dominican coffee, Bajan coffee (from Barbados), Mexican coffee (watch out... they sneak in tequila)... they all tell a story. There will always be something special about coffee from abroad. Because it's so special, I make it a treat. Most mornings, I brew whatever coffee I had a coupon for during the last grocery trip. Usually, I am rationing the spoonfuls of grounds, willing to drink a weaker brew if it means I make it last till I can afford the next $9 bag. As I rush around getting ready, I gulp down a cup and a half or so in my chipped black mug or my blue mug with the pharmaceutical company name stamped across it. And the coffee wakes me up and does the job it's supposed to do. But the best mornings are the ones when I get carried away by the smell of culture in a cup. Those mornings I indulge. I choose a bag from my (diminishing!) stash of international coffee. Heaping spoonfuls of the full-bodied grounds go into the coffee pot; I literally do a happy dance in the kitchen as I watch it brew, and then I pour the final results into my favorite extra-tall mug with the blue and orange flowers on it. Those mornings I don't rush; I sit down... sometimes I read... but mostly, I dream... and I remember.

Do you have a favorite coffee-related memory?

Until next time,
Chels