I am a coffee addict

I am a coffee addict. I like a strong robust coffee. Each morning, I go into the kitchen, grind my coffee beans until they are almost like dust and begin making coffee. The smell of coffee wafts across the kitchen and up through the house announcing the morning has started.
And every morning I begin my day by pouring a 20-ounce cup and heading off to work with my cup that I will nurse for over two hours. I tell everyone that I drink my coffee pure, not to be diluted with milk or cream or sweetened with flavorings or sugar. I like my coffee simple.
My friend Sheila Johnson helped me start enjoying various different coffees from around the world.
Having grown up believing that Columbian coffee was the best in the world, I started to discover that a Tanzanian Peaberry coffee that was grown on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro was far different than a bean grown in Mexico or Jamaica or the Kona grown in Hawaii.
Each of those countries all have great coffees with unique flavours. I am starting to sound like a coffee snob, but I have learned to enjoy their subtle differences. And I learned to enjoy coffee that had been roasted to a much darker colour over a bean that was roasted to the colour of sienna.
After my son had visited Greece, he returned with 500 grams of Greek Coffee. It was a really dark roast and almost had a burnt flavour. When he ventured into the mountains of Ethiopia, he returned with Ethiopian Harrar which grows almost wild.
The coffee was roasted to an almost black colour and had a glistening sheen of oil covering the beans.
In Ethiopia they have small pots that are put into fires and the coffee and water are boiled vigorously producing a very robust flavour.
My friend Shelia liked to mix her own blends and eventually came up with her signature line called “Rainy Lake Blend” now sold out of the Coffee Landing Café in International Falls. It was a mixture of full roast Columbian Bean and medium roast Mexican beans. It reminds me of the freshness of an early spring day on the lake and the serenity of the setting sun in a late summer evening.
In the morning, sitting out on the deck at the cabin, nothing is better than enjoying waiting for the sun to rise over the trees, watching the stillness of the water and nursing that cup of Rainy Lake Blend. In winter, I like to savour the cup while reading a hard cover book on a Sunday morning.
When someone arrived at my parents home when I was young and coffee was offered the immediate response was “Don’t go to any effort, if it is ready, I’ll enjoy a cup but if it isn’t don’t put a pot on.” Today we don’t even worry about going to extra effort.
Growing up, my mother and father had a percolator coffee pot. At the cabin, the coffee and water all went into the pot and was boiled. It was strong and at the end of a cup, you were able to enjoy the grounds. Both took a while to make. Today with some coffee makers the water is always hot, so that the coffee is available in only a few minutes.
And so today we say “It’s no effort to make a fresh pot”.

–Jim Cumming,
Publisher

To reach Jim email him at
jcumming@fortfrances.com