Offerings on the coffee altar...

 

Cleo Coyle is my newest Zen master. I’m on book 4 or 5, Decaffeinated Corpse, in Coyle’s series of light-hearted murder mysteries (“cozies”) called the Coffeehouse Mysteries. They’re set in or around a Manhattan coffee shop and feature a female protagonist (resident expert barista), who runs the shop with her swarthy, international coffee-buyer ex. I like cozies as a kind of “tai chi” for the brain—focused but gentle movement, predictable but meditative—compared to the “calisthenics” of the more analytical, 4-color-highlighter reading I do for school throughout the semester.

I like this series in particular because the novels center around one of my favorite rituals—the making & drinking of coffee. And interspersed with a character’s occasional swan dive off a balcony, “accidental” stumble in front of an oncoming subway train, or trip down a flight of stairs, the books offer coffee lore, history, tips, recipes and fun facts. Like, did you know you can tell if coffee’s fresh when you add milk or cream? If the milk “blooms” (rises and spreads across the surface of coffee) immediately, the coffee’s fresh. Or, did you know you should store bulk coffee beans in the fridge, with about a week’s worth of daily beans in an opaque container on the counter—not in the fridge or freezer? That’s because taking beans in & out of the cold daily causes condensation inside the container, which can spoil the beans. And seriously, who DOESN’T wanna know how to make a perfect Frangelico Latte? We have so much to learn, Grasshoppers…

Ray indulges my cafetheism; for our anniversary, he bought me the new Keurig Mini Brew for my office. It’s a departure from my staunch Chemex/French press/Bialetti purist snobbery, with its new-fangled, drop-in coffee “pods” (he even bought me extra bold, fair trade, organic coffee pods). And I haven’t tried it yet, so the jury’s still out on the all-important aroma & taste. Still, I like the idea of a fresh, hot, instant oneness with the java gods in the middle of the day—a tiny little epiphany between triplicate form-filing and panicky student consultations.

So don’t tell my prairie neighbors there’s no Folgers or Mr. Coffee in the house. Don’t tell them I cross myself with a dab of fresh brew, leave a bean in Buddha’s dish, smudge the kitchen with smoldering coffee leaves, toss glass coffee mugs over my left shoulder, kneel toward Brazil (ahem…the only country with seasonal snow that produces Arabica beans)—they wouldn’t understand these stones on my path to coffee nirvana.

And when they ask about the chanting…mochajavakenyasumatra…ohm…ohm…ohm…just tell them it must be the hum of the brooding lamps in the barn.