{"id":17920,"date":"2022-03-28T08:41:39","date_gmt":"2022-03-28T12:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/?p=17920"},"modified":"2024-08-29T14:04:09","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T18:04:09","slug":"now-thats-coffee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/2022\/now-thats-coffee\/","title":{"rendered":"Now That’s Coffee"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Now That’s Coffee\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

I took a writing course once, and I remember the first free writing assignment vividly. I learned something that day about listening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The assignment was to write about my morning ritual. Like many others, I wrote about what I did every morning. Afterwards, I started thinking about the word \u201critual\u201d, and I realized that I had simply written about my routine in the morning. Was that actually a ritual? According to Webster\u2019s dictionary, a ritual is \u201can act or series of acts regularly repeated in a set precise manner\u201d or \u201ca ceremonial act or action\u201d. The first could, I suppose, apply to a morning routine, but it was the second that caught my attention: it dawned on me that my ritual in the morning was making the coffee \u2013 a ceremonial series of precise steps that I perform for myself every morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I wake up, even before I\u2019m up and moving, I anticipate my coffee. Not just the first cup, but the act of making it, the ritual. The same steps every morning: filling the kettle with water, opening the fridge and getting out the grounds (always Tim Horton\u2019s), taking out my favourite cup, rinsing the glass coffee pot \u2013 there is ceremony in this set of actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pot I use is one that I have to replace periodically, as I have a tendency to break one every year or so. It must be sparkling clean. I put a paper filter in the Melitta cone and measure in the coffee \u2013 half decaffeinated and half hazelnut. Then one half cup of skim milk measured into a microwave safe mug (not my special cup), and heated for 40 seconds. By now the kettle is boiling, and I pour a little hot water into my special cup. It is wide and flat, and probably meant for caf\u00e9 au lait or something else exotic. It had a saucer once, long since lost or broken, but I don\u2019t miss it. The cup is a rich, deep shade of blue, made of some kind of thick pottery, and there is only one, used exclusively for my morning coffee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next I start pouring boiling water over the coffee grounds. The aroma is wonderful. I pour some boiling water into my carafe, a fancy name for an insulated jug that will keep my coffee hot, to warm it. As the coffee splashes gently into the bottom of the pot, I empty the hot water out of my special cup (now warmed sufficiently), pour in the heated milk, and take out my milk frother, a funny little gadget that was given to me by a friend years ago. Battery operated, it has a little wheel on the end that I immerse in the hot milk. Pressing the button whirls the milk to create a thick layer of foam on top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coffee is ready now. I pour some into my special cup and the rest into the heated jug. I take my first sip of coffee for the day. Heavenly. My day has started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I took a writing course once, and I remember the first free writing assignment vividly. I learned something that day about listening. The assignment was to write about my morning ritual. Like many others, I wrote about what I did every morning. Afterwards, I started thinking about the word \u201critual\u201d, and I realized that I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoir"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17920"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24545,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17920\/revisions\/24545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/lifelong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}