Coffee

I work at a coffeeshop now. Pour iced tea into cold glasses and wipe down tables and take orders for “caramel decaf lattes with an extra shot and almond milk and extra foam and do you have whipped cream?” 

This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Coffee is as complex as wine, and the people who work with it are just as obsessive— primarily because coffee is something you can manipulate.

“Taste the Kenyan,” the man who teaches me to make pour-over coffee says, “it tastes like tomato, vegetal, thick.” It takes about four minutes to make a single cup of coffee this way. It tastes like coffee, not like tomatoes, but when I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth I can barely eek out the flavor.

Lately, I think about coffee and memory and how time presses on, how truly growing up in your hometown means you’re constantly being tugged at by memory. I go everywhere and see someone I know, and yet, somehow, the texture of my day to day continues to change. 

Lately, I think about how even though atrocities are happening all the time, everywhere, somewhere a barista is drawing rosettas and swans and roses into cups of milk foam. 

This comforts me. 

Anyways. 

Here is a recipe for chimichurri sauce that I like a lot:

 http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/chimichurri-sauce-2

And more soon, I promise.  

XOXO

m