The Perks of Perked Coffee!
Yes, that's my stove!! (You knew there was a reason you went bounding out of bed this morning and headed straight for the computer and then logged onto Marilyn's Room...)
My stove. This is a new stove -- I got it in the spring. For a brief shining moment, I had one of those smooth top ceramic stoves, but unlike the rest of America, I hated that smooth top stove. The very first night I had it, I merrily made popcorn on it (I make it the old-fashioned way and not in the microwave b/c I like chemical-free popcorn that also has flavor -- and no, I don't use butter. The popcorn flavor comes from, well, the flavor of the popcorn when it's made the old-fashioned way.) (I digress.)
Anyway. Making popcorn the old-fashioned way on a smooth top stove is a great way, as it turns out, to scratch the hell out of your new smooth top stove! So rather than hate myself for scratching up my new stove on my very first night of owning it, I projected my hate outward, toward the stove itself, for being so scratchable.
As luck would have it, one day soon after that, I was broiling something (fish, probably -- I broil a staggering amount of fish, just generally) and the broiler would not turn off. For many hours that broiler broiled away, at top heat, and refused to turn off. The fire hazard of that arrangement got me the stove pictured above.
In case you aren't really keeping track of this, that whole above portion was a huge digression, because this post is really about perked coffee (see title).
I could actually go off on another digression and talk about my love of bad art (some examples pictured above). I don't know why I love bad art. I don't go out in search of bad art. But when a work of art captures my eye and I find myself really loving it, I buy it and bring it home & immediately nail it up on the wall and am then informed by people who come by and view it that I have bad taste in art. (I generally spend between $1 to $20 on art...That said, though, I honestly really do love the art I buy! That metal sculpture over the stove there? I love that thing!! I stare at it while I'm cooking and am filled with the joy of loving that thing. It's nonsensical Chinese "still life" metal art, aimed at weird-ass American consumers like me. I paid about $7 for it 7 years ago, which means that, yes, I actually lovingly packed it up at one point and moved it from one home to another, across state lines...It appears to have a coffee theme to it -- coffee tin, coffee pot, coffee grinder, enamelware kettle, coffee cup -- but on closer inspection, it also has some random cherries in it -- in one grouping of two cherries, another grouping of three cherries -- and some eggs in a bowl, then 2 eggs outside of the bowl. I could get all "Lao Tzu" on you and suggest that this is actually a metal art sculpture about eggs and cherries that for some mysterious reason has coffee-related items randomly thrown into it, but that might be too esoteric for you on this cozy Saturday morning...)
Perked coffee, however, is a solid, straight-forward topic; good for all days of the week, all hours of the day.
For some inexplicable reason, a few mornings ago, I decided to dig out the percolator and get totally & thoroughly retro by perking my Chock Full o' Nuts coffee ("New York's Coffee Since 1932") in the percolator instead of making it in the incredibly-much-more-quick-and-convenient Mr. Coffee maker.
And what did I discover? Two things: the perked coffee makes much more coffee (what is called "6 cups" in the Mr. Coffee maker yields about 2 mugs of actual coffee; 6 cups in the percolator makes about 4 mugs of coffee). And the coffee itself goes farther: 3 tablespoons of coffee are used in both scenarios and with the perked coffee, it yields twice as much coffee and makes it much stronger.
I find this so interesting. I've been making my coffee like this all week. Of course, it takes a lot longer. First, you've got to heat it up until it perks; then perk it; then let it stop perking & settle, and then pour it. This takes a good half an hour or more. Luckily, though, I'm up at 5 AM and no one in their right mind is going to drink a cup of perked coffee at 5 AM. Drinking it at 5:45 AM is foolhardy enough.
Perked coffee is really strong, but not in the Starbucks way. It is totally different, but still strong; the flavor doesn't totally overpower you with bitterness, like Starbucks coffees do (for me) yet the coffee is deceptively quite strong. I guess this explains why, in the "old days" (pre-Starbucks, designer coffees), people drank coffee out of those demur, 6 ounce porcelain coffee cups (with saucers).
I watch all these old TV shows and movies and see the characters drinking their morning (or afternoon or evening) coffees out of those little cups (plenty of which I happen to own, porcelain dish-fanatic that I am) and I wonder: why bother to drink coffee at all if you're just going to have it in one of those little cups? You're going to have to re-fill it ten times...
But now I see the truth of it. The coffee they had in that little cup was a whole different breed.
On that note, gang, I am actually done with my morning coffee allotment and I am now going to spend the weekend formatting & publishing a Kindle edition of another one of my novels! How exciting!! I hope Saturday is good to you wherever you are, gang! Make it a perky one!! Thanks for visiting. Come back soon. See ya.
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