one man's words

onemanswords:

haygirlhay:

A fridge in the summer months just isn’t right without a big jug of the most perfect iced coffee. It’s high time to make another batch.

You have just changed my life. I am making this tomorrow night. No question about it!

So I tried this today. It’s pretty good. The result actually tastes like coffee, as opposed to whatever Starbucks and Breugger’s are throwing out there. It’s as if I’m  drinking a nice, cold cup of the coffee I make every morning, which is probably what iced coffee should be.

I don’t exactly prefer it to Starbucks, but I know it’s probably more pure, and at least I made it myself.

I took this woman’s recipe and halved it since I only have 1 gal containers. I used (roughly) 8 oz of Cafe Bustelo dark roast grounds (like her), but I might experiment with a lighter roast next time to see if the taste becomes more appealing.

One final note: Some grounds still came through in the final product, depsite using a strainer and cheesecloth. Perhaps this is unavoidable?

haygirlhay:

A fridge in the summer months just isn’t right without a big jug of the most perfect iced coffee. It’s high time to make another batch.

You have just changed my life. I am making this tomorrow night. No question about it!

TRUE CONFESSION TUESDAY

I know what it means to be addicted to something because I was addicted to nicotine for seven years (ages 15-22). On Sept. 17, it will have been five years since my last cigarette.

I quit smoking cold turkey, which is something I’m very proud of. People spend hundreds of dollars and countless months struggling to quit — my father and grandfather included — and often don’t succeed.

A NEW ADMISSION
A full decade after one addiction started, another has emerged, and I need to recognize it. So, here’s my dirty little secret, Tumblr. I’m addicted to coffee. I won’t say I’m addicted to caffeine; it’s not like I’m holed up at a 7-Eleven washing a bottle of No-Doze down with a 32 oz. Red Bull. I don’t like energy drinks and the majority of sodas I drink are caffeine-free.

But I am addicted to coffee. I need it to start my day. I need it to continue my day and, sometimes, I need it to end my day. If I don’t have coffee, I get raging headaches (worse than the ones I get when I have too much). I spent some time this morning calculating how much I spend on coffee each year, and it’s not pretty. Basically, I could have an extra $1,000 in my bank account if the coffee my wife makes every morning were enough to satisfy my addiction.

A STARK REALITY
I go to Starbucks more than I go to the gym. I go to Starbucks as if I owned stock in Starbucks, which I’m too poor to afford because I give an obscene amount of my disposable income to Starbucks. The irony is stacked like a house of cards.

I’m not sure what to do with this right now because, like most addicts, I’m unwilling to admit that my dependence on Starbucks is a problem, beyond the obvious financial hit I take each month (roughly about $850 a year). That’s not even counting the coffee we buy at the grocery store each month. If you add that into the fold, you’re talking about $1,000 each year on coffee. COFFEE!I don’t spend $1,000 a year on car insurance, which, you know, is a necessity.

Here’s how a normal trip to Starbucks goes. In the warm months, I’ll order a Venti Iced Coffee. Sometimes, if I’m feeling frisky, I’ll add a croissant, so I’d say my average bill in April through September is about $4.50. In the cooler months, I switch to a simple Venti coffee. On average, my bill drops to about $3.75 during these months. On particularly brutal mornings, I’ll ask for an extra shot of espresso in these drinks (a “red eye”), which ups the cost 75¢.

And this is, more often than not, an addition to the 16 oz. of coffee I’ve already had during the day, which is brewed at home each morning by my lovely wife. It’s delicious coffee. She’s really mastered the water-to-grounds ratio. So, in all, I’ll consume 36 ounces of coffee a day. And that’s not even counting what I’ll call “incidental coffees” (coffee after dinner, coffee offered during meetings, coffee bought on a road trip). If I’m lucky, my body operates on a 2:1 coffee-to-water ratio each day.

ROAD MAP TO “RECOVERY”
Again, I’m not prepared to say that my addition to coffee is necessarily a bad thing. I’ve talked to my doctor and he told that, health-wise, there’s nothing wrong with drinking coffee everyday, especially if it’s just normal brewed coffee (as opposed to, say, the caramel frappuccinos my wife is so fond of). What he did say was that the amount of coffee I was drinking wasn’t good for me. It’s not good for my heart and it’s empty calories, like beer or sugar.

So by drinking less coffee, not only do I stand to improve my health, but I also will save a significant amount of money. If I were to eliminate Starbucks from my life, that’s $850 I’d have back in my pocket each year. That’s four months of gas in my car. That’s a vacation to California to see the in-laws.

But it’s not like I’m all of a sudden going to stop drinking Starbucks. It’s something I need in my life, just like protein and deodorant. But I don’t eat filet mignon every night and I don’t buy the $17 deodorant Esquire recommends — necessities don’t have to be extravagant. And, simply put, $70 a month, on average, is entirely too much to spend on extra coffee.

THE PLAN
So I’ve devised a way to lessen the financial hit. It’s pretty elementary, which makes me mad I didn’t think of it sooner.

I downloaded the Starbucks app onto my phone, which I plan to pre-load with $20. That $20 is my monthly Starbucks budget (good for four-to-five visits, depending on what I get). When the $20 is up, so is my Starbucks for the month. On the first of every month, I will re-load the card, but only up to $20 — there’s no reward for carrying funds over. The point is to not just save money but to also reinforce the fact that a weekly visit to Starbucks is more than enough.

My name is Harry, and I’m addicted to coffee. But I’m working on it.