Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we ruminate. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Honey cinnamon cortado at home
Here’s the moka pot.
It starts with one. It always starts with one: Every morning, I allow myself to have One Cup of Coffee. It can be a pourover, or a cafe au lait, or recently, thanks to the acquisition of a tiny, beautiful moka pot, it can be a proper espresso beverage: 3oz of strong coffee from the moka pot, 3 oz steamed milk, which I make by frothing it first and then microwaving for 30 seconds, a dash of cinnamon (which I let sit in the hot coffee), and a teaspoon of honey. Every morning, I look forward to making my coffee; even if I wake up at 1 in the afternoon, it’s still my morning routine. But when you look forward to something so much, it also has the ability to let you down. On a week when I’m feeling slightly on edge already, I can’t have anything let me down; so I throw the One Coffee out.
Cardamom cortado at home
Same moka pot; Zabar’s blend coffee.
I start over again. I bring the water to a gentle boil before pouring it into the bottom chamber. I carefully pack, but don’t tamp, my coffee grounds. And in case I want to post on Instagram, I film the bubbling coffee percolate into the pot. I steam the milk. I froth it. I carefully pour it into the cup. This time, I add a tiny pinch of cardamom to the hot black coffee before I top it off with milk, inspired by the Caffe Cardamo at the local coffee shop, About Coffee. But something is off. The coffee is not perfect. Maybe it burned a little bit on the bottom, the flame was too high. Gas stoves are tricky things. I throw it out. My cat, who has been meowing at me for the past hour, grows more frantic in her pitch; her meal has been delayed. The smell of coffee grounds fills my apartment, a scent that’s usually comforting, but now makes me feel slightly nauseous.
Iced cinnamon honey latte at home
Same as above.
Coffee Number Three. If it’s a workday, I should probably already be in a meeting by now. I will go to the meeting, uncaffeinated and slightly unhappy, to a chorus of even unhappier meows. But that’s better than the alternative: making another coffee. Which is what I do. For Coffee Number Three, I try something new. Maybe that will break my curse, and set me free from this infinite loop. It’s warm recently, so let’s make an iced latte: The same 3oz of moka pot espresso, a dash of cinnamon, a teaspoon of honey. A tall glass of ice cubes. A splash of cream. I take a sip. It’s delicious. It tastes a little like melted coffee ice cream. But I never drink iced coffee. It always has to be hot, because a little part of me abides by the Chinese rule of hot beverages only. I don’t understand why I made an iced beverage when I knew that about myself. I throw the iced latte down the drain, the disapproval of my parents, who lectured me to never waste food, echoing in my brain. The ice cubes cluster stubbornly at the bottom, even when I run the tap.
Cafe au lait at Maman
429 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10024
I am starting to make myself nervous. The pile of hot coffee grounds grows high in the trash bin, and dirty mugs pile up in the sink. I thought that making a morning cup of coffee was my favorite part of my day. I want to cry. I wish I lived with somebody who loved me, who would gently pry the moka pot away from my hands, tell me, babe, stop making coffee, everything will be okay, and take me to Starbucks. But I live alone, and I also generally don’t feel safe telling people about my neuroses, which is ironic because I live to comfort other people about theirs, except now I’ve told all one thousand people on this mailing list. I don’t trust myself to make coffee anymore. I didn’t want to spend five dollars on a latte today, but I’d pay 20 just for the opportunity to get away from myself. So I grab my keys, and my pepper spray, and I spend $10 for a cafe au lait and a chocolate almond croissant. I forgot that I don’t like the coffee there. It tastes too much like cardboard and there’s too much milk. I wince when I toss it out.
Coffee with whole milk at home
Melitta pour over set-up here.
Coffee Number Five. This is the last call coffee. It’s two in the afternoon by now. I just wasted the two hours that I carve out each week to write my food newsletter. I didn’t feed the cat. (I feed the cat). I don’t have any energy to make coffee anymore. I lie on the carpet and scroll through a zillion TikToks on my phone, which go from encouraging mental health post to tarot card reads to increasingly deranged accounts encouraging me to catfish men. I consider deleting TikTok. I will not delete TikTok. Then I slowly peel myself off of the floor and make my fifth, and final coffee. It’s just a regular pourover cup, with regular milk. I force myself to drink it, even if I don’t like it, because I need to escape the infinite coffee-making loop. I try not to think about how much money I’ve spent on coffee today. I’ll write the newsletter tomorrow.
XOXO,
Soph
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