Tell Us About . . . Favorite Things: Coffee, Of Course!

When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling sad, I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel so bad. ~Oscar Hammerstein II

When I see or hear the phrase "favorite things" I immediately think of the song from The Sound of Music. I love a lot of things that are mentioned in that song, but not all of those favorite things would be on my list. In fact, I've always found it really hard to choose just one favorite thing in any category. So how am I to write about my favorite things for this Tell Us About challenge, when it's just so hard to narrow it down?

I remembered doing a series of posts a long time ago that focused on favorites in different categories, so I dug up those archives to see if I could use them as a starting point to talk about a few of my favorite things. A lot of those were homeschool related, which isn't as personally relevant any more. I found other lists of favorite books or recipes or museums, and other things. And yes, I did find one really obvious idea for a post about favorite things.

I guess my favorite color is blue, since that's the most common color in my wardrobe and I also like it for decorating. My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. My favorite movie . . . if I had to pick just one it would be The Princess Bride, but if I can choose a favorite holiday movie and a favorite musical and a favorite comedy . . . I'd still have to mention three or four in each subset! My favorite food is usually the last thing I ate that was delicious, so that changes all the time. 

However, one food-related item that has been a favorite for years and years, and hasn't changed is coffee. It is most often my beverage of choice, is sometimes a flavor of choice, and has the status of a love language in our family. And perhaps you've noticed that it's featured on my blog!

Coffee and I have a long-standing relationship. I don't remember how old I was when I first started drinking coffee, but it was an established part of my life by the time I was in high school. I had a small group of friends that whiled away many hours together in a local restaurant that had good pie and good coffee with free refills. I settled in with another little group of friends that regularly went out for coffee and conversation during college. Lifelong friendships developed over numerous cups of coffee. And one of the college friends that enjoyed those evening coffee breaks became my husband!

Visits to his family included spending time at the family business, and we could count on someone bringing coffees from Tim Horton's whenever we were there. After we moved to the US, we missed our Tim Horton's coffees, and made sure to enjoy plenty of it whenever we visited Canada, and to bring some ground coffee back so we could have a taste of Canada at home. We were quick to notice when a few Tim Horton's coffee shops started to open in New York state, and they became a regular stop on the drive home for a visit.

Coffee has achieved the status of a love language in our family too! There was some controversy as to the magic age at which we'd allow our oldest to drink coffee, but the standard was set at 13 years old, and we have managed to turn that first official cup of coffee on the thirteenth birthday into quite a ceremony.  The joke has been that our kids get their first cup of coffee instead of a bar mitzvah! It is a celebration of coming of age, and drinking coffee together is an act of solidarity and a declaration of our unity as a family. No, really. Coffee is one of the things that does bring the family together! We all love our coffee, and an evening spent together playing games or watching a show includes brewing coffee for everyone as well. Our daughter is the only family member that doesn't drink coffee, but she does enjoy time spent in local coffee shops. One highlight for me on our recent family vacation was sitting on the front porch in the morning with our sons, each of us with a fresh cup of coffee in hand.

After many years of being known as a lover of all things coffee, I wound up working at a small batch coffee roastery for a couple of years and loved it! I learned all kinds of things about coffee from choosing and blending beans, roasting, grinding, brewing, and about tasting notes. I actually got pretty good at identifying what region beans are from based on the taste of the coffee! Since one of the perks of the job was a pound of coffee every week I became quite the coffee snob! (We went through a lot more than one pound of coffee a week, but of course I got an employee discount!)

Furnace Hills Coffee Company
was where I worked

Coffee breaks have been a standard feature of my friendships since I was a teenager, and I think all my friends know that I'm always up to meet for a cup of coffee. One of my dearest friends and I had a well-established coffee break every week for a few years, so when she moved away and then I moved too, we continued our weekly coffee break conversations over the phone, in a virtual coffee break. 

So when I established my first blog, Homeschool Coffee Break, the reason I chose the name is obvious, right? My standard excuse for being at the computer reading or writing blog posts or interacting on message boards was that I was "on my coffee break" so that became the name of the blog. I also was writing little reviews of books I read and some other things that weren't really related to homeschooling, so I set up a second blog, and named it Just A Second. After all, when I was caught up in a book or a blog and somebody tried to get my attention, I'd often holler "just a second!" Plus I've always been up for a second . . . or third . . . or fourth . . . cup of coffee. So more recently, with my ties to homeschool community unraveling, it only made sense that it would be time for A Fresh Cup of Coffee, so that's how this blog got its name.

It would probably be fair to conclude that coffee is a bit of an obsession, or that I'm clearly addicted to caffeine. I don't doubt that the caffeine content plays a role, but really, coffee is just one of my favorite things!

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Tell Us About . . . is a monthly opportunity for bloggers to showcase their creativity. Each month one of the co-hosts will choose the word to focus on. On the third Thursday of every month we'll respond to the prompt "Tell Us About ---" which could be absolutely anything. And how we respond is also wide open. It could be a blog post with our opinions or reminscences; a poem, photos, a short story or whatever takes your fancy―it could even be a mix of all these! This month's theme, chosen by Jill from Grownup Glamour, is "Favourite Things" 

This post is linked at Is This Mutton.

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