Dear Falsely Labeled Coffee,
My husband purchased you a little over a week ago. We generally prefer light roasts (dark roasts are too bitter and we subscribe to the Alton Brown school of thought that lighter roasts equal more caffeine [no, we don't really care if it's wrong, we just prefer to think that]), but husband got off work after the grocery store was closed and we were out. of. coffee. This is an unacceptable situation for us to be in, so he stopped at one of the little drug stores that also has a grocery section to make sure we could get our fix the following morning.
Sadly, all that was available (other than the French Roasts, which I’ve already explained we think are gross) was a medium blend. You were that medium blend. Husband thought, medium is better than dark, right? And since he knew we’d be ready to kill each other (and probably our children) in the morning if he didn’t bring something home, he bought you.
He arrived home. I hugged and kissed him hello, then asked “You got coffee, right?”
“Yes, of course – don’t look at me like that, of COURSE I remembered,” he replied.
I put the few other things he’d purchased away and proceeded to pour the coffee from its bag into the airtight container we keep in the refrigerator.
“Huh. That’s pretty dark for a medium roast,” my love observed.
“Yes. Yes it is. Hopefully it will taste okay,” I said.
And then thought nothing else of it.
The following morning I woke up with Baby Girl, just like every other morning.
I prepared the French Press and winced a bit at your strong odour as I spooned you into the carafe.
“Ugh,” I thought. “I really hope this tastes better than the smell would lead me to believe.”
You didn’t.
I’m not ashamed to admit that due to my extreme klutziness, I’m familiar with the flavour of dirt. I’ve faceplanted more times than I can count, and my first cup of you brought to mind that one time in high school when I was running back to the gym and tripped over an uneven section of pavement. That time where I went flying through the air, arms pinwheeling and ended up scraping up my entire frontside? As well as passing out and waking up to find myself with the taste of dirty concrete on my tongue? That’s what you remind me of.
Dirty concrete.
“Surely some more creamer will make this palatable!”
I could not have been more wrong, because guess what I had then? CREAMY DIRTY CONCRETE!
Mmmmmmm.
Or not.
Definitely “or not.”
“Maybe it’s just because I’m sick right now?” I said to myself. “Perhaps husband will think it tastes just fine?”
No. He confirmed that you were gross.
“I WILL WRITE A LETTER OF COMPLAINT!”*
Oh, but we threw the bag away, so I can’t even provide the required information when writing.
“Well, maybe I’ll blog about it?”
So I was mulling this post over in my head this morning and saw that this week’s Weekly Writing Challenge involved using the post by email feature and asked us to write a letter of some sort.
“HOW SERENDIPITOUS! I may not be able to write a letter to the company that mislabeled their coffee, but THE COFFEE ITSELF CAN HAVE A PIECE OF MY MIND!”
Because we’re cheap, we mostly slogged through you, but last night husband brought home some GOOD COFFEE. Better coffee. Coffee that isn’t you. Coffee that I can enjoy with my book for 10 minutes in the morning before I get my kids up. Coffee that doesn’t make me hate the fact that I have working tastebuds. Coffee that tastes like glorious alertness. Like coffee should.
As for what’s left of you? You’re going in the trash.
- sj
tl;dr
Dear Coffee,
Sometimes I love you, but this week I hated you.
* I do this all the time. I email companies with all of the pertinent information from the package and express my deep disappointment in how they’ve failed me. The best was the time I complained to the pistachio company about the huge number of EMPTY SHELLS in my bag of pistachios and they FEDEXED ME 10 BAGS OF PISTACHIOS! There was also the time I complained to a company that their medium salsa was NOT medium, but hot, and they sent me coupons for a bunch of free salsa. Sometimes companies ignore you, but sometimes they send you free stuff. The free stuff is nice. The ignoring isn’t.
