Coffee Deal

You all know this is one of my favorite delicious subjects. If you didn’t know, you’ll find out now. I grew up with Turkish coffee, which I started to sip when I was about 11 or 12. A tiny bit, with little sugar, but a thick “caimac” (foam) and a chat to accompany it, this was our tradition at home in Romania. I loved it! It all changed when I moved to the US and for a year I could not go anywhere close to the “regular” coffee. It seemed to be a scalding caffeine soup stripped of any pleasure. Luckily, my friend and I made our own Turkish coffee at home and enjoyed it with relaxing conversations. In time, I got used to the actual “espresso” value of the American coffee, I adapted to life in the US, and regular coffee became “the norm.” I never bought though into the gallon-sized Starbucks coffee, which gave me the same dizzying anxiety that skyscrapers did. But how wonderful to move to Oz and find a strong European culture for coffee! Coffee cups are on a human scale. Coffee itself has a natural flavor and comes with blanketing foams of milk or cocoa. The only thing that’s scalding hot is the price (two or three times more than that of an American coffee), but I guess quality comes at a price I cannot negotiate. Especially when taste and pleasure are paying off. Today’s picture is that of a twin wasp nest I found in the Red Centre of Australia, but made me think of twin espresso cups.