Slice of Heaven

I love the idea of coffee: hot, black, creamy, dreamy, precious. I only drink it about once a year, which makes me one of the few people in the known universe who understands the fantastic drug-like properties of the brew.

Seriously, my dear, if you drink it all the time, your resistance to its charms is so strong that you don’t even notice them, not unlike any other long, and yet comfortable marriage. Stay off the stuff for a year, and take a sip, and it’s honeymoon time all over again.

Of course, most of the Slice of Heaven 24-Hour Pie Shop and Driving Range are coffee fiends, so we do what we can to keep them happy, or at least in check. While my apprentice Prentiss and I continue our search for the perfect key lime pie recipe, we are also seeking out the perfect coffee chaser.

This lovely espresso pot might just be part of the puzzle:

Isn’t it gorgeous? I found this in a www.boingboing.net, Posted by John Brownlee, December 18, 2008 12:56 AM | permalink

Gorgeous Otto espresso maker is like time capsule from the future, full of joe

It is 9:48am and I am drinking instant coffee out of a gigantic mug shaped like the hollowed out brain pan of an anthropomorphic cow. I love the ease and comfort of instant coffee. Simultaneously, I am admiring the OTTO espresso maker, with its bright, world-flipping mirror polish, as metallurgically liquid and mercury-like as some sort of device sent back in time by advanced creatures from the last moments of the universe to record our lives. The discordancy of it all is enough to make a hungover Berliner sneeze brain out of sheer incredulity.

OTTO espresso maker - stove top espresso maker [Appliancist]

Of course, by the time Prentiss and I come up with the perfect pie-coffee combo, we may all be drinking our coffee in space:

Space travel, by the way, seems to be getting more interesting all the time. This teaser from The History Channel even makes me wish I had a TV:

Tags: Gadgets, Stand Back I'm Going To Use Science by Bjean
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The Morning Guy claims not to listen to NPR, but he does seem to read Garrison Keillor’s website “The Writer’s Almanac” which astounds and confuses me. I do listen to NPR, but built up a sensitivity to Keillor’s voice over the years, until it has become a sound akin to fingernails on a blackboard. But that’s another story.

At any rate, I was surprised to find this poem in my in-box this morning, before I even went in to work. “Everyone must read poetry with their coffee,” he’d written on the attached sea-blue Post-It note. I’m not sure if that is meant to be a new rule — The Morning Guy has many of those — or just an observation.

Sadly for me, like the narrator of the poem, I no longer drink coffee. Or smoke. Or drink. Damn, sometimes life is hard. No wonder I look forward to those stormy days when Hurricane Rules Apply.  I used to love a shot of 100-proof Hot Damn followed by a beer chaser.  Oddly enough, I just don’t get the same kick from a cinnamon Altoid and an O’Doul’s.

And I do miss drinking coffee with my poetry. At least I’ll always have pie.

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

Literature in the 21st Century
by Ronald Wallace

Sometimes I wish I drank coffee
or smoked Marlboros, or maybe cigars—
yes, a hand-rolled Havana cigar
in its thick, manly wrapping,
the flash of the match between
worn matchbook and stained forefinger,
the cup of the palm at the tip,
the intake of air, and the slow and
luxuriant, potent and pleasurable
exhale. Shall we say also a glass
of claret? Or some sherry with its
dark star, the smoke blown into the bowl
of the glass, like fog on portentous
morning, the rich man-smell of gabardine
and wool, of money it its gold clip?

Sometimes I wish I had habits
a man wouldn’t kick, faults a good man could
be proud of. I’d be an expatriate from
myself, all ink-pen and paper in a Paris café
where the waiters were elegant and surly,
the women relaxed and extravagant
with their bobbed hair and bonbons, their
perfumed Galoises, their oysters and canapés,
and I’d be writing about war and old losses—
man things-and not where I am, in this
pristine and sensitive vessel, all
fizzy water, reticence, and care, all reduced
fat and purified air, behind my deprived
computer, where I can’t manage even
a decaf cap, a mild Tiparillo, a glass of
great-taste-less-filling light beer.

“Literature in the 21st Century” by Ronald Wallace from Long for This World: New and Selected Poems. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. Reprinted with permission.

Tags: Pie Shop Stuff, Poetry, The Morning Guy by Slice of Heaven
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Oh, yes. I remember coffee. Did you know that there is not even a support group for people who, for reasons both sad and true, are better off without caffeine? My name is Barbara Jean, and I am in coffee recovery.

What am I missing? Only a major connection with most of the people I know. Ah, to be one of you and savor that early morning, or late evening, cuppa cuppa cuppa. 

I long for it. 

What’s my perfect cup of coffee these days? A glass of ice water.  What’s my perfect cocktails? A glass of ice water. And on and on and on. It’s tap water, too. But we have excellent tap water here at the Slice of Heaven 24-Hour Pie Shop and Driving Range, so don’t go getting all hoity toity on me. I’m thinking of bottling some of it with our own house brand special “Quality of Mercy” label.

You just wait and see.

Meanwhile, if you do want to talk about coffee, here’s a great starting point. But pull up a chair and get comfy. I can guarantee that’s it’s more than you want to know.  Have I listened to it?  No, so I’m hoping you do and give me the abbreviated de-caffeinated version.

Free University - How to Make The Perfect Cup Of Coffee

September 14th, 2008 

Dr Mark Miodownik - How to Make The Perfect Cup Of Coffee

Mark Miodownik: How to make the perfect cup of coffee.

What elements are involved in the making of a simple beverage. The
Director of the Materials Library and Head of the Materials Research
Group at King’s College London provides an audibly practical
demonstration of the answer.

Duration: 43:10.

 Free University - How to Make The Perfect Cup Of Coffee [43:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Visit http://www.materialslibrary.org.uk

Tags: Fantasies, Pie Shop Stuff, Recipes by Slice of Heaven
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It’s a little before noon so I am just coming in to work. The morning guy has already been there to chat with the late shift postal workers and firefighters. He’s stocked the soda machine and, once again, removed the Dixie Chicks from the jukebox. I will put them back in after you & I have had a chance to catch up. I do love the smell of coffee even though I can’t drink it any more.So, what’s going on with you? How about a piece of pie?

Tags: Introduction by Slice of Heaven
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