Confessions…someone more clever than I but anonymous wrote the above quote but I’m sure many more than I have used it.

I prefer my coffee strong and black. French roast coffee is my first choice but sometimes I will add a sprinkling of cinnamon or a tsp. of Droste cocoa to the freshly ground coffee prior to brewing. Sometimes I live dangerously and add both.

Occasionally, I will mix different beans to make my own coffee blend. I recently bought coffee pinon, (flavored with pine nuts from New Mexico), and that creates a slightly different but subtle flavor. I once interviewed some local coffee houses for an article and they all said they travel the world tasting beans. Now that’s a vacation/business trip/expense write-off I could get used to.

I keep my coffee beans in the freezer and only grind a bit at a time. While I’m a minimalist in the kitchen, I wouldn’t think of not grinding coffee beans every morning.

Once I was visiting my friend Annette who owns the South Bay School of Cooking in Manhattan Beach, Calif. and she served ginger coffee. She grated fresh ginger root into a cup of steaming coffee and added a bit of half-n-half. Nirvana!

As for chocolate — hmmm, that’s another topic and as for men — well, you’ll just have to use your imagination. As my mother used to say, “A rich man is easier to love than a poor man.”

Fun t-shirt saying!