The bag lists the ingredients as: “High Altitude Organic Arabica Coffee and Piñon Nuts – May Contain Flavoring” (Germanic capitalization style theirs)

But it should read: “High Altitude Organic Arabica Coffee and Flavoring – May Not Contain Piñon Nuts”

This is such a let down. I was really excited for the idea of roasted piñon in my coffee.

But, no. This is just typical flavored stuff… the likes of which can be found oilily auto-dripping at half past eight on Thursday morning under the shrill whine of flickering fluorescent lights that reluctantly illuminate the slightly soiled, threadbare cubicle walls of an insurance agent’s inner suburban office in a half-abandoned strip mall.

Mundane is what I mean. Not delicious – and, critically, NO PINE NUTS IN EVIDENCE. And I dug around in the bag as if for a Cracker Jack prize.

I won’t hold it against you, New Mexico.

I wish to thank the organizers of the conference for the astrocytes, the proteoglycans, and the painfully, painfully, painfully weak coffee in the tiny styrofoam cups.

Oh, Wawa. You mean so much less to me than you probably should – since you are coffee and all.
You don’t mind if I use your drip grind to make espresso do you? No?

You don’t mind if I take ^your picture without asking, do you? Okay.
Because you’re wearing antlers on your head.

Considering that nothing of quality or note has come from your quaint burg since, I would suggest that you do more to promote the fact one of America’s greatest lyric poets walked your uneven streets one short century ago. As a sulking, morose teenager, Edna St. Vincent Millay composed her first notable works amidst (and on the subject of!) your bountiful rocks, brambles, and fog. She won a scholarship to Vassar based on those works, where she learned how to be a swinger and a lesbian. Shortly thereafter, she received the Pulitzer Prize.

Today, all the notice that the Town of Camden appears to afford her is a mottled statuette obscured by overgrowth in an out-of-the-way corner of the dumpy harborside park.

Please correct this grevious oversight.

-the_deli

PS – Thanks a lot for the free coffee. I know it was Nescafé; I saw the sachets.

Hey! Café du Monde is hiring. Vietnamese ancestry appears to be the only prerequisite.

Every drunken, boob-flashing, Yankee tourist knows about Café du Monde. It’s near the riverfront, off Jackson Square – not far from that cloying (but pleasingly dissonant) steamboat/calliope – by the fake antique shoppes, the sports bars, &c. &c… i.e. amidst all the Lower Vieux Carré wonders.

It’s only from nostalgia that I went there at all. The first coffee I ever tasted was Café du Monde – made from that ever-present orange can that resided in the pantry.

My grandmother could’ve just as easily combined chicory with regular coffee to get the same effect, but like all old ladies, she loved pre-mixed foods. She would pour two cups, add bourbon to both… and then set one on fire. She’d offer me the café brûlée once the alcohol had burned off, but I could only take a sip and then grimace. Naturally, she would drink the unburnt one.

I guess Café du Monde is famous for its beignets too, but I wasn’t about to stick around and listen to some hokey live jazz band while involuntarily eavesdropping the lifeless conversations of semi-retired Bostonians and get powdered sugar all over my fingers. I took my iced coffee in its charming styrofoam cup and marched over to Washington Park, where I eavesdropped a bunch of grade school kids instead.

[An aside, but for the record: Annette's Diner (219 Dauphine) - a place that bills itself as "American, Greek, Cajun" will make vegan beignets if you order in advance. I got some funny looks as I added pepper sauce to the top of my sugary doughnut (as is my custom!). Otherwise they're nice folks. They normally make po-boys and the like. Oh, and good spinach pie. Their coffee is not worth mentioning.]

Waffle House’s coffee is “America’s Best” in the same way that their syrup is “America’s Best”.

Here is a picture of their syrup:

No consumable dispensed in such a fashion can actually be of any quality.

The cultish appeal of the franchise is irresistible though – even if I can’t bring myself to eat most of the garbage on the menu. And their jukeboxes continue to fascinate me. So now I just go to the nearest* Waffle House to take in the atmosphere. Rarely do I try to gulp down the brown water they sell as coffee.

*”In town”, i.e. New Iberia: Apparently, the ancestral home of some currently-famous Creole who’s song seems to be on ‘infinity repeat’ in the region:

Last Saturday my friend Пафнутий got so sick on Cambas Ouzo that he was forced to lie down.
During a party. In the middle someone else’s floor.

In true Hollywood style, he rasped, “Go on without me…” … He meant to the next party.

Contrary to Hollywood style I obeyed, and walked over to an unfurnished apartment full of total strangers who offered Sambuca. Sambuca is the Italian attempt at anisette. Like most anisettes, it’s usually oversweet and needs to be cut with something a bit stronger than water. Such as coffee. I don’t remember the brand (I’m sure it ends in a vowel… … …) but I do remember spilling some on the floor. I’m really sorry about that.

When I finally got home, I realized my condition. Dreading the next day, and too lazy to wait for water to purify, I drank the last of my frosty half-gallon of root beer.

I picked it up at a convenience store, and apparently the stuff is produced right here, in the White Mountains. It seems that every inn needs a brewery, and every brewery makes a root beer, and every root beer gets reviewed by just about everyone – - – but not every root beer comes in a huge half-gallon glass jug. It wasn’t bad tasting, but it wasn’t medicine either.

{Finally, here was a little bittersweet something about the band Liquorice, but the video was deleted from Youtube, so now it makes no sense.
Just know that it jibed with all of the above, as this was a fully-flushed, themed entry.]

I did go out to Ethiopian food the other night, and had the not-quite-vegan,
honey enriched ginger drink.
That is pretty good.

Also, I gave a last chance to that horrible Visoda – but it doesn’t
taste any better having aged in my refrigerator for a few days.

Oh!
Also, I drank some Algerian wine one night fairly recently.

Sorry.

Despite my extreme bias against hippies, they do make the occasional quality food product -
in the same way that the Nazis made the trains to run on time.

But this train was LATE.
A 355ml. bottle of flowery, rich, non-acidic, over-sweet Vermont goodness.
Would make a great perfume, for when you run out of patchoulli.

In converse – I had some really unappealing, drip coffee at the Multnomah Greyhound Park
(it’s not actually a park, it’s a… racetrack).

It tasted like hot cardboard-water.

You should adopt a greyhound.
I am told that they are, in reality, extremely lazy.