A Mochajava State of Mind

Today, most of the northern half of South Dakota is hunkered down mid-blizzard. I-29 is closed from Watertown north, into North Dakota. It’s the last day of February—practically spring already—and I guess Jack Blizzard wanted to make this leap day extra special, lest we let down our prairie guard too soon. Here in the southeast corner of the state, we have only a little dusting of snow, but the 35-mph winds whip it into the air, turning our little farmyard all grey and blizzardy. I have a pile of papers to grade, but thankfully, I don’t have to leave home today, so it’s a delicious, woodstove-fired, coffee-fueled, tucked-in day. 

And speaking of coffee, part of my utter joy at staying home stems from long, lingering, pajama’ed coffee mornings. You can read about the coffee origin myth, and my own re-discovery of the magic brew during my college years, on this previous blog post: http://uncanneryrow.blogspot.com/2008/10/blog-post.html

But my obsession with coffee goes back much further. When I was in 3^rd grade at Florence School in Omaha, Al Vaccaro dared me to eat a whole clove of raw garlic. I felt compelled to take the dare, both because Al was my boyfriend and often brought me snapdragons to school (making Lori Boonstra, my arch nemesis, gloriously jealous), and because, well, I’ve been a rebel from the get-go. It didn’t take Mrs. Lindsay, my teacher, long to discover the shenanigans. She marched me to the cafeteria, where the Evil Lunch Lady made me chew up a few…my life will all make sense to you now…coffee beans! 

Lunch Lady’s evil deed was designed to override my garlic-breath, but what it actually did was to set me on a path that would eventually become my passion. My kitchen is decorated in "coffee kitsch;" I own every kind of coffee apparati made (Bunn auto drip, Moka espresso pot, French presses, Melitta, etc.); I have a potted Arabica plant in my greenhouse; I collect coffee cookbooks; my anniversary present from Ray was a burr coffee grinder, for which he scored major partner points; my entire wardrobe is various shades of brown and black. As the song goes, “I love the java jive, and it loves me.”

So I’m settling in today with my second pot of elixir, and I thought I’d offer a bit more coffee lore to warm up this snowy South Dakota day…

Today, nearly half of the coffee plants in existence are the progeny of one tree that was smuggled into Martinique by a French soldier in the 18^th century. 

The coffee beans we know & adore are the pits of a cherry-like fruit that grow on evergreen trees. Coffee trees (cultivated to grow only 10 feet high for easier picking) cannot tolerate frost, and they prefer volcanic soil, indirect sunlight, and high altitude. The higher the altitude, the better the coffee. The annual yield of a coffee tree is about a pound of beans.  

There are only two species of coffee, Arabica and Robusta. Arabica is the stuff most of us drink. Robusta is generally lower in flavor acids and higher in caffeine but is sometimes mixed with Arabica to give the brew an extra caffeine kick.  

Contrary to popular belief, the darker the roast, the less caffeine, since caffeine is broken down in the roasting process. Espresso roasts have the least caffeine.  

Coffee is the second most widely used product in the world after oil. We drink 1400 million cups per day, and it’s the world’s most popular drink after water.  

Coffee was declared illegal 3 times by 3 different cultures: (1) In Mecca during the 16th century; (2) By Charles the II in Europe; (3) By Fredrick the Great of Germany in 1677.  

Medicinal Benefits – People who drink coffee have less colon cancer, Type II diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, gallstones, and cirrhosis of the liver. Coffee can protect your teeth from cavities, and it can help manage asthma and help stop an asthma attack in progress if no meds are available. People who smoke or drink alcohol and also drink coffee get some protection from liver and heart problems.

Other Coffee Uses – sprinkle used coffee grounds around your garden plants to stop snails and slugs, and to keep cats away from the garden. Coarsely ground coffee makes a good exfoliating facial scrub. Greasy pans can be cleaned with the leftover ground beans you used to scrub your face. Rubbing coffee beans between your hands for a few seconds will get rid of food prep odors, and you can suck on a coffee bean to freshen your breath (or chew a few, if you’re a daredevil 3^rd-grader).

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.

Snoffunkicity

My supreme weakness, and my ultimate joy, is COFFEE. I’m a complete, unabashed, elitist snob coffee junky—a SNOFFUNKY.

According to varying legends, coffee was discovered in the (Arabian Peninsula/Ethiopian Plateau) by Kaldi, an (Arabian/Ethiopian) goatherder in (500 BCE/600 CE), who noticed his goats happily frolicking after eating the red berries (coffee “cherries”) of a wild shrub. Kaldi snacked on a few berries himself and was soon dancing merrily with his flock. Noticing the euphoric goatromping, a local monk snagged a few berries and cooked up a drink for his brothers, whose hyped-up prayers could now extend well into the wee hours. Africans were soon making their own power bars out of coffee and goat fat—yummy—and kicking back with coffee-cherry wine. During the Renaissance, coffee was referred to as a “heathen liquid,” and while I don’t consider myself a heathen, it’s perhaps revealing that I call my stove an altar…

My personal coffee trek began when I was an undergrad and had to pull all-nighters writing scripts or papers for playwriting or English classes. There on the flatlands of coffeeland, I was content with a Mr. Coffee and some dried-up ground Folgers. In the foothills, I discovered the Bunn coffeemaker and fresh ground beans. But I pressed on until finally, I have reached the pinnacle of the coffee mountain—a Chemex drip coffeemaker and Chemex filters, the blackest, oiliest Sumatran or Ethiopian organic free-trade beans I can find (refrigerated, not frozen, and ground only when the water is just below boiling), and cold, filtered water.

The Chemex is partly responsible for my snofunkiness. It’s glass and looks like a lab beaker or, better yet, a woman—busty top, narrow waist, ample bottom. Water is boiled in a teakettle and poured over grounds that rest in a filter in the top half of the pot. The filters are thicker than ordinary coffee filters to slow the drip and capture more of the bitter oils. I make it STRONG.

Call me romantic, but I sometimes see a split in the world between godlessness and its utter faith in science or humans or capitalism, and anthropomorphized god-centricity, with its utter faith in faith, or in religions whose original beauty is buried and lost in layers of humanist rules, dogma, & politics. What happened to seeking after mysteries? Strangely, this rant brings me back to java. It’s the ritual of morning coffee that I love. I revere the process of coffeemaking and the miraculous transmutation from simple bean to elixir. I perform the ritual in a quasi-meditative (or not quite awake yet) state. And the resulting liquid manna isn’t nearly as important as the process, which is hymn, prayer, pilgrimage.

Okay, maybe I’m blowing my own snofunkity a wee bit out of proportion. And if it turns out that coffee can’t put me in touch with the Divine, can’t bring me to the foot of the great spiritual Mystery, can’t initiate me into the Sublime, well, at least I’ll be wide awake and bug-free, because caffeine is also a natural insecticide.

Here’s a little coffee poem, just for fun…

MOCHAJAVA IDYLL

black blood cooled in sunlight
I wake chanting to the dark beast humbled
a chicory garland twisted in my hair
walk the coals to the kitchen
where you sit
cup cradled in your hands so tenderly
time grinds to a snaked unwinding
we lick our lips while we
boil and boil and boil
hungry for that melding moment
we circle the Circle
sink to stove to table
and the linoleum crawls with lichen and fern
our cool bare feet wearing a groove
until we’re ecstatic fertile singing

mochajavakenyasumatra
mochajavakenyasumatra

and we dance the dark dance
and we drink the strong black blood
again and again and again
until we fall redeemed
into moon and moss
the big dipper spilling black
into a saucer of sky