So far, we are digging apartment living. Far more than we ever thought we would.
The one thing that is mildly annoying is the door buzzer system. Like most apartments, when visitors show up, they use the phone at the front door to dial a code which rings the phone in our apartment so I can push a button and let them in. Drunk people, however, or the mildly dyslexic, can’t always operate this system efficiently, which is why I was woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of the door phone ringing (we have a phone just for the door as we use cell phones and not a landline – thus that phone is always the door). As I wasn’t expecting anyone at 2am on a Wednesday night, I didn’t bother to answer it, but it screwed up my sleep pattern all the same.
Come morning, I was in one of those unshakeable fogs, and while I managed to make coffee, the process of making breakfast was insurmountable. Greg had been out with the beer geeks last night and needed a good greasy breakfast, and so we abandoned our coffee and headed to our local greasy spoon for some eggs and pancakes (and let me just say – yay for local greasy spoons that open at 7am so you can have your fix before a busy work day!).
But abandoning coffee is not something we do in our house. These were not cups of gritty Maxwell House, easily tossed down the drain, but Tanzanian peaberry, roasted super-dark and smelling oh-so-lovely. Before we headed out the door, I poured the two cups of black coffee into a pint glass and stuck it in the fridge. Greg wanted to know why I had an untouched glass of stout in there, until he noticed the steam coming off it.
A while ago, I took that now-cold glass of dark-roasted Tanzanian Peaberry coffee, topped it up with vanilla soy milk, and stirred in a heaping spoonful of Ghiradelli Mocha hot chocolate mix. I am sitting here, enjoying my very first iced (minus the ice) coffee of the season. It’s 21 C outside – perfect weather for a cold drink, I’d say. I don’t usually bastardize the African beans with chocolate, regardless of whether the coffee is consumed hot or cold (I save that for my less-favoured South American beans which taste better with a bit of sweetness), and I’d never have made iced coffee with left-over Yirgacheffe, but boy howdy, it sure was tasty.
I think I’ll roast some African beans for morning coffee and some Colombian beans for making iced coffees in the afternoon. Summer’s coming, you know, and nothing says summer like a smooth chocolatey iced coffee.