There are some of we who know my mother. See my mother. Talk to her on a unchanging basis. And since she doesn’t review this column, we ask we for a favor: NEVER discuss what we am about to write.
Because that will be it for me. Over. we will be banished. Cast off from a family. Written out of a will. Seated during a worried dilemma during Christmas cooking with a chair that could fall during any minute. Called a “traitor” and someone who disrespects his heritage.
Why? It’s all since I’ve given adult on Cuban coffee.
Oh, a horror! The shame! we am truly a bad son.
Yes, it is true. we now decoction Starbucks mass-produced drift in a super-easy 4-cup American-style coffeemaker. It takes small mins and can be finished in one easy step.
I have traded tradition for morality and convenience. And law is, we unequivocally like it!
I satisfied recently we don’t wish to give adult a half hour each morning only for correct percolation! To put on a leather apron and gloves and goggles for when a fiery caffeine starts to separate sparks. All for an early morning jolt. My new small coffeemaker can do it in a fragment of a time.
But something about it feels wrong. Like a stage in “The Godfather” when Michael Corleone says, “Don’t ever takes sides with anyone opposite a family.”
Making Cuban coffee was reduction about a outcome — a finish product — and some-more about a experience. It isn’t easy if we do it right. It’s 300 stairs that start with collection and instruments, not coffee pots or filters. You contingency refinement it. Nurture it. Give it love.
The normal approach my mom used to decoction Cuban coffee seemed some-more like a scholarship examination than a breakfast routine. She boiled water, afterwards stretched it by what looked like an 80-year-old sock swinging precariously from a precarious contraption. It emptied into an aluminum coffee pot that contingency have been pilfered from a vagrant camp. Years after when we trafficked to Cuba, we watched a small family in a remote encampment decoction coffee over a stay glow a accurate same way.
My hermit and we grew adult celebration café criminal leche. It’s clever stuff, and a reason we had to start shred before facile school. Good Cuban coffee is half divert and afterwards filled with 4 lbs. of sugarine to make it semi-palatable. It will send a super-charged swell of caffeine rushing by your veins. My mom would ask a pediatrician because my hermit was hyperactive. (She never mentioned a dual cups of coffee he had that morning.)
But that’s all changed. Mornings are easier now, nonetheless they don’t feel utterly right. Making Cuban coffee was some-more about a story and birthright and tradition than brewing something to drink. It was a daily sign of my Cuban roots.
So, maybe I’ll only save it for a weekend. That will keep me in good graces with my mother. As we all know, we never take sides opposite a family!