Spring Creek Arts Guild: I Heart Coffee

I remember exactly when I first started drinking coffee. I was fourteen and staying with my aunt in Alabama for a couple of weeks one summer. She and her girlfriends would often visit during the day and these visits were always over coffee. I was at that age where it did not interest me to go outside and play like a child, but I was not old enough to really visit with the grown women, either. I decided the least I could do was partake in the coffee. My aunt helped me fix up the little cup of coffee with a lot of milk and a lot of sugar. I remember thinking it was not so bad that way. To the best of my recollection, I left the coffee drinking in Alabama when it was time to go back home.

About a year later, during the summer, I developed a very strange habit for a teenager—I started getting up around five every morning and watching the sun rise over our back yard. Coffee reappeared. I found it was very enjoyable to have a cup of coffee on these early summer mornings. When school started I found myself in first period with a very sweet, but very troubled teacher. She apparently had a drinking problem and would be barely coherent many mornings. She would assign us bookwork and would doze at her desk. I found it necessary to have coffee every morning to keep from dozing at my own desk. Somewhere in that same year, I discovered coffee ice cream.

The only time since then that I have parted ways with coffee was during both of my pregnancies. Caffeine caused contractions that made my belly like a basketball-sized rock and also could have potentially caused my babies to be premature, so I regretfully said “see you later” to my beloved beverage.

Over the years we have seen the delightful development of a coffee culture, including things like coffee houses, exotic coffees, and all sorts of cool coffee gadgets like Keurigs and, the latest object of my desire, the Nespresso. My daughter and I went to the Pacific Northwest a couple of years ago and discovered that instead of little snow cone stands everywhere, they have little coffee stands! We were in heaven!! And now I hear that coffee c

As I have grown older, my coffee tastes have changed. I started thirty-something years ago adding lots of milk and sugar. I soon dropped the sugar but stuck with the milk until this past year. Now I have dropped the milk and am surprised to find the black coffee to be delicious! Two weeks ago I had my first straight, black espresso and that was just almost too good to be true, but I think I may have hair growing on my chest now. The only thing that has not changed is that I have never liked the screaming-hot coffee that my parents like. I prefer to wait for it to cool just a bit before I drink it.

Lately, I have seen two different artists who paint with coffee. (I will try to link to their work on the blog version of this article.) A couple of months ago one of my art quilt magazines had a challenge to make art quilts that celebrated coffee and/or tea. I have made one coffee cup quilt and have collected many coffee-related cotton prints for future projects. Clearly I am not the only one who hearts coffee. Do you heart coffee or hot tea? Tell me about it!