Coffee!

Coffee!

And all the ways I make and love it.

My mother was a real coffee drinker. She drank her filter coffee black. No milk, no sugar. She taught me how to make coffee. So many scoops, one for everyone who was drinking, and one scoop for the pot. Pour slowly until the coffee in the filter is moist, and then pour slowly until the entire coffee is saturated. The water sank slowly through the coffee; when it had sunk, pour again.

As a child, I didn't like coffee, probably because somebody told me that if you drank coffee as a child, your hair would turn green. Maybe my mother told me this.

Around the age of sixteen, I started drinking coffee. Always with lots of coffee milk, Dutch coffee creamer is a typical Dutch, long-life, light brown, and syrupy whole or semi-skimmed milk that makes coffee creamy, and three spoonfuls of sugar.

After I arrived in Amsterdam and my girlfriend met Saïd, a cheerful Moroccan whose name means “cheerful,” we drank Turkish coffee with sugar and cardamom.

We had a Turkish coffee pot that sat on the gas stove, and when the coffee was about to boil, we took the pot off the stove, put it back on, then repeated this three times. A few times a week, Saïd would call and make coffee in the kitchen.

When Saïd didn't come, we did it ourselves, of course.

So I drank about six cups of sweet Turkish coffee every day. Until my stomach couldn't take it anymore, and I threw up the coffee. I didn't drink coffee for six months, and after six months, I didn't drink Turkish coffee with sugar, never black again, and rarely with sugar.

I discovered the percolator, and for years, that was the coffee I drank.

I have two at home. One for six cups and one for two. My first stop in the morning was the kitchen to put water in the bottom part, coffee in the coffee filter, and then on the stove. Oat milk in the frother, and after three minutes, a small cup of coffee with nice foam.

I drank three cups. How they concluded it is for six cups remains a mystery to me.

Last Tuesday, I visited the cardiologist. My heart was fine, but my cholesterol and blood pressure could be better.

"How much coffee do you drink?" she asked.

"Three cups," I said.

"That's actually too much," she said. "And you'd be better off drinking filter coffee.”

That afternoon, I bought a small filter coffee pot with a permanent coffee filter.

People were full of praise. The coffee was so delicious.

I told a friend about it on the phone, and she said,” Pouring takes so long”.

Still unaware, I said," Ohh, that should be fine.

Today I used the new filter coffee pot for the first time.

I did it the way my mother taught me, one scoop for me, another scoop for me, and one for the pot. I poured the boiling water on top and understood again why they call this "slow coffee" in some coffee shops.

Not a lesson in patience, but a mindful exercise.

The coffee was delicious. As smooth as I remember it from my mother.

Thank you, dear mother, for the coffee lesson.