Grinding Of The Coffee Beans!

Grinding Of The Coffee Beans!

I love decorating my home.

I really love tweaking recipes and baking or cooking and sharing them with you my dear readers.

Even more I love playing with my dishes and setting pretty themed tablescapes.

But you already know that about me.

But as much as I love decorating a room or making a wonderful tasting Mexican recipe from my years in New Mexico or setting a Valentine’s tablescape that knocks the socks off of the Captain…

….my heart has always been with the story telling.

 

 

When I started writing this Blog, it was so my stories could find a home.

In my very first post, I spoke of the many unfinished novels that lay in stacks of paper (which I have never been able to toss even though they have all been transferred over to the word processor) and my desire to be a published author.  

AND my large binder of poetry that chronicles the lives of my children, my parents and siblings……

……and my life in general.  

I have never forgotten about these pieces of my soul.  

And therein lies my heart.

And my therapy if one could call it that,…… is sharing these stories with you, my dear readers.

So let’s talk beans.

Several weeks ago, I bought a bag of Sumatra coffee beans which happen to have the greatest coffee flavor, in my opinion.

If you have not ground your own coffee beans, you are really missing a truly flavorful experience.

It really doesn’t take that much of your time to grind your beans and the most wonderful aroma wafts up from the grinding process giving everyone in the room the desire for a hot steaming cup of coffee made with fresh coffee beans.

That is if you like coffee.

I do like a great aromatic cup of coffee.

However, I do like hot tea too….I love to steep me a nice cup of hot green tea.

Which leads me to my story.

After buying the coffee beans,  knowing that I would not use the whole bag right away…I decided to put the beans in a air tight plastic container.

Being my fairly organized self…I realized that the only container I had available was the one labeled black beans which had recently housed said beans.

I dumped the bag of coffee beans with the intention of changing the label, when I became distracted by who knows what. 

The coffee beans were shuttled to the pantry and life goes on.

Until, one evening, when I unexpectedly decided make one of my favorite Mexican dishes…Posole!

In my defense, let me set the stage please.

I was in the middle of a horrible cold where I couldn’t smell or taste anything.

You have been there I am sure.

AND….it was late in the evening and I was watching the Kansas Jayhawks play basketball on the TV and during a commercial I thought… SOUP!

Posole Soup to be exact.

This would certainly taste good for a late night snack as well as the next day, so I rushed into the darkened kitchen, illuminated only by the under cabinet light near the fridge.

I am sure you know where this is going.

I filled the pressure cooker with water (hoping I filled to somewhere close to the max fill line) quickly pulled out a couple pieces of bacon from the fridge and plopped them into the pot, grabbed the black bean container from the pantry shelf and dumped in a couple cups of black beans, all the while racing against the clock as the commercial for  “Cialis, For When The Time Is Right” was about to end.

Because I used the pressure cooker…I did not place it on the cabinets with the light because one does not want the steam giving one’s cabinets a steam bath much like a sauna, which is not good for the  under side of the top cabinets, although it probably would have done my sinuses a bit of good. 

Instead, I placed the pressure cooker on the outer countertop, and managed to hit the start button just as the buzzer on the TV told me the basketball game was continuing it’s play.

I didn’t miss a minute of the game, as I could hear the pressure regulator beginning it’s familiar sing-song dance to the rocking chair mash.

And then, just as the game was becoming one of the knuckle biters…..I also began to have the strongest urge for a nice cup of hot coffee.

Normally, I don’t drink coffee after 7 p.m. so I found that urge rather strange until I heard the dancing/rocking pressure regulator go into the frenzied spitting and spurting of a shark being thrown chum in a feeding frenzy.

And then it was like a lightening bolt hit me.

You know that giant light bulb that goes off in your head with the brightness of a thunderstorm in May.

I jumped out of the bedroom recliner (yes, I have a recliner in my bedroom…don’t judge please) and literally ran like Jackie Joyner-Kersee to the kitchen just as Frank Mason was attempting a 3 pointer basket to tie the game!  I didn’t know my legs could move that fast, these days.

I reached the plug in the outlet and managed to pull it free of it’s electrical source just as the TV buzzer beater sounded making me want to throw my hands up in a times up victory!

But as the pressure released itself….and the lid was carefully removed….I could see (the kitchen light was on now) the blackest ugliest spattering of coffee bean shells all over the inside of the pressure cooker and lid.

What a mess and what a stench!

Believe me when I say that my nose had no problem smelling that concoction.

The moral of the story? Avert a cooking disaster before it happens.

This is just between you and me, right? 

That is all I have to say.