Captain Pike's Ship Log II

I've got no problem with coffee; I could quit anytime. I really do enjoy a great cup of Joe, however. We used to buy all kinds of exotic coffees. I think it matters more how the coffee is brewed than how much you had to pay for a pound. Maybe it's the exact right temperature that makes it best, I don't know.

I really enjoy the coffee that comes out of those "one-shot" machines they have in the grocery store. You know the ones that you place a little, disposable cup of your favorite kind of coffee into the chamber of the machine, press the button, and in a short time, you hear that espresso-like sound and your olfactory system is assaulted with that wondrous energy-giving aroma.

Only the little cups seem so, what is the opposite of green? The disposable cups are wasteful, aren't they? it seems wrong to keep discarding them -- and they are kind of pricey. So, what did I do? You guessed it. I tried to put some more fresh coffee into the little disposable cup after I had already used it. I had a grin on my face as I was spooning the Rain Forest Nut through the little slit I had cut in the plastic top of the supposedly disposable one-shot module. Why wouldn't it work?

I pressed the blue brew button. It sounded right. Wait, what is that chunky stuff? My cup is all full of coffee grounds! Apparently, the hot, steamy water being injected into the single-shot-module is under such force that it blew out the coffee -- out through the slit I had cut. It tasted like crap, too.

Back to the computer, I pull up Altavista, type "Keurig coffee disposable cups", and right of, I get a lot of links to exactly what I'm looking for. I wanted to send away somewhere, buy the individual cups at a better rate than that offered by the local grocery store.

Turns out, once I pay the shipping, and wait while I'm chewing on NoDoz tablets, I'm really not going to get any special deal by going out on the Internet to buy my coffee modules. But what I did find was a very interesting thing: a tiny little basket, very much like what goes in my regular coffee machine, only real small -- mouse sized.

Searching all around the Internet, it seems the vendors are all in agreement about one thing: the price: $14 .99 USD. OK, all right. That means, I'm going to wait. Meanwhile, I'm out of coffee.

Back at the grocery store, tucked way in the back behind the display, behind the flavor of the day, is a little box containing... you guessed it. The little basket assembly is available right now, in my town, for 15 bucks (14.99 actually).

Now I'm having lots of fun. Mixing in a little espresso with some Colombian Supremo Popayán, yeah baby, really good stuff. Looking around the kitchen, I realize, I've come full-circle. There's my old-fashioned coffee pot -- just a regular programmable drip style, flashing the wrong time incessantly. Next to that, my French press -- I didn't really talk about that, did I? The French press, we bought at her mother's house, when we were visiting and they had no machine at all. It's a strange looking contraption. I've seen it in the old movies. It's perfect for making 2 cups -- they don't stay warm but each cup is the same strength. And then, this new contraption: pretty much exactly like the original Mr. Coffee, except on a macro scale.

Isn't that just what you'd predict would happened in this day and age? The day and age of individual everything. I can make my side of the bed undulate at a different frequency than my wife's. Now, in the morning, I can engineer my first cup of coffee. Now, if I could only figure out the rest of my day.