Ever since I got one of these cool metal mesh coffee makers, my life has settled into a happy morning ritual: Fill a cup to the brim with water, pop it in the microwave for three minutes. Meanwhile, rinse out the filter and yesterday’s coffee mug, put the now clean filter over the now clean mug, fill with coffee from the fridge – just in time for the microwave to beep. Pour water into filter, wait a minute, and voilá, fresh yummy coffee.
Wonderful, right? Well, not always. You see, by definition making coffee in the morning is something I do before I have had my morning coffee. At which time of day my brain cells are essentially useless. And there’s the rub.
I have lost count of the sheer number of ways in which my little ritual has gone awry in the few months that I have had this device. There was the time I did everything but fill the filter with coffee grinds. That morning I ended up with fresh steaming hot water.
Then there was the morning when I did everything right except actually turn on the microwave. It turns out that if you don’t do this, none of the other steps actually do any good.
One morning I put the cup in the microwave without any water, another day – after a particularly late evening – I successfully boiled the water, only to turn from the microwave oven to discover that I had left off the entire filter/coffee grinds part of the rigamarole.
The most dramatic morning was the one in which I got almost everything right – with one crucial step. I boiled the water, washed the filter and mug, poured just the right amount of fresh aromatic coffee grinds into the waiting clean metal mesh, thinking all the time about that great mug of fresh hot coffee that was only a minute away.
And I was still lost in my thoughts about that mug of steamy fresh coffee even as the dark stain began to spread over the countertop. Soon coffee was spilling and pouring everywhere – into the sink, onto the stove, down onto the floor.
It seems I have forgotten only one little detail – placing the filter on top of the mug. Darn.
But things could be worse, and I count my blessings. You see, this mesh filter has been my morning’s great savior. The proof is hiding in my cupboard, where I lock away my trophies of shame – all of the wonderful coffee makers, once sparkly and new, that now sit there charred, blackened useless, their once-shiny plastic handles melted off. So many coffee makers that I had promised to honor and to use with care, now betrayed, destroyed by my careless morning love.
But not my mesh metal filter. I think this one’s a keeper.
😀 … the other day, I put salt into my nice fresh made warm coffee with milk … lol … instead of vanilla sugar actually. I even tried to drink it, I should not have 😉
Ken, Ken,
now you got me…
I am sitting here – an engineer – and I do not understand what the hell you are doing. 😉
I just try to put the things together, still I can’t answer the question, what kind of technology – coffee maker – you use, that you end up with the coffee spilling and pouring everywhere…
As far as I understood, you firstly put coffee (this dark brown powder- right?) in a mug and secondly you put some boiling / hot water on top since you forgot the filter.
All that could happen in my imagination is that you just put too much water in the mug, so the whole thing will flow over, but that is all.
I just need to understand this, where is my mistake in thinking????
We later will have breakfast with friends, I will ask them.
Maybe I just did not have enough coffee, yet. 🙂
We solved our making-coffee-before-having-coffee dilemma by brewing a pot in the evening, and then storing it in a thermos until morning. You might think that the quality of the coffee would suffer, but the thermos protects the coffee from the air which ruins it, and, If anything, I think the aging improves the flavor. In the morning, the coffee tastes mellow and smooth. Of course we’re making a pot at a time, and you only make a cup, but they do make single-cup thermoses… 🙂
The image of an old-school automatic coffee vending machine comes to mind, where a series of events… cup dropping down, instant coffee granules, sugar and milk powders sequentially doled, hot water squirting in, etc, would sometimes result in a cup of coffee. And a missing or sideways cup, or lack of a powder, or miss-measurement of fluid would often comically result in…. a sometimes messy something else. The funny thing is, the machine never recognizes its mistake.
Before I substituted green tea for coffee in my morning ritual, I could not be satisfied with ordinary brew; I needed a really muddy cup of espresso for consciousness. Because a pressurized steam machine was required to make the magic, the consequences of the odd misstep were potentially disastrous, in proportion to the strength of the coffee. And like the product, the results of carelessness were occasionally explosive.
It has been over four years since I’ve had “vitamin c”. I wake up fairly easily, with awareness and functionality, and almost never err with my trusty whistling tea pot. But back then, I remember mutely bumping around in darkness before my coffee, in an a vacuous state which was about equal to that of the oblivious vending machine.
Shoot. This is the very thing I was going to give to you when I came to NYC. I remember quite vividly the paper towel technique filter with hot water and designer coffee lurking in your freezer. 🙂
Thanks Bernadette, that is very sweet of you. As you can see, I’ve moved up to a classier way of living. Although I cannot take any credit for reforming my philistine ways through better coffee brewing – a certain other woman beat you to it. 🙂