Kicking myself for not kicking the habit..
I use to hate the smell of coffee back in my childhood days. Mom’s close friend, Sue, drank that stuff all day long. In all the years that I spent time there with her son,( my friend), Jimmy, I can’t recall ever seeing her without a cup of coffee (with cream and sugar) in her hand and usually working on one of her “bejillion” pieces puzzles. I’m not sure which she enjoyed more, the coffee or the puzzles.
Uncle Sam had a hand in getting me started on the caffeine. I was stationed on an aircraft carrier for three years and soon after I started working up on the flight deck, I learned to appreciate the warming effects of a hot cup of java. Even bundling up like an Eskimo didn’t seem to do the trick, when the carrier turned into the wind for aircraft launching operations. So I started to drink more for warmth than enjoyment.
Fast forward to 1993, when I moved back to Sacramento, California. I discovered high octane coffee drinks at an espresso chain called “La Boulangerie”. Concentrated coffee blended with hot, steamed milk and chocolate syrup. Imagine having one drink with the firepower, or should I say eye-opening power, of eight cups of coffee. You get a legal buzz at a premium price and extra shots added if so desired. One shot of espresso equals about four cups of coffee. Even though the cost of a regular cup of coffee has gone up over the years, it’s still nowhere close to paying about four dollars for a “venti” size cafe mocha.
Consider this. Current fuel cost locally at this time runs just under two dollars for a gallon of regular unleaded gas. A venti mocha, all twenty ounces of it, will set you back about four dollars. Based on those figures, one gallon of this drink would cost you a whopping $256.00. (I wonder how regular unleaded would taste with steamed milk and chocolate syrup). I need to drop this habit and pick another one that’s a little more economical, like crack cocaine. (I’m just kidding, of course!)
So much for this chapter of “That’s Where My Money Goes”. Time for a change. Time to at least pull out the home version “make-your-own-and-save-a-ton-of-money espresso machine and stay far away from Starbuck’s. Just think of how money I’ll save and have available for other luxuries and necessities, like food, for instance.
note: This one inspired by the Starbuck’s mocha I’m enjoying as I write.
November 18th, 2005 at 12:17 am
I remember when one shot of espresso would set me off in a spin… Nowadays, one shot maybe gets my eyelids to open in the morning and at 10am I’m ready for another. Of course being that this is Italy, it just won’t do to go without an espresso after lunch then after dinner. Don’t even get me started on the price of fuel, it (diesel) recently went down by about 5 euro cents but my calculations figure it to be around 5 bucks a gallon.