“I’ll have a black coffee, please.”

“I’ll have an iced decaf caramel macchiato, add shot, upside down, no whip, extra drizzle.”

Yup. Coffee sure has come a long way! 

National Coffee Day was this past week, and since I am a fan of coffee, I thought I would do a coffee post. Actually, a friend send me an article about which states have the longest average coffee orders. I thought it was a fascinating topic, so this post was born. I have linked that article at the end of this post.

I have been drinking coffee since I was in kindergarten. I would come home from morning kindergarten and drink coffee with my mother while we watched soap operas! By coffee, I mean Maxwell House Instant Coffee with milk and sugar in it. For special occasions, like bridge club, my mother would take out the big silver percolator and brew the real stuff

My son works at Starbucks, and I have been a fan for many years. When I lived in California, there were also other coffee shops I went to: Peets, a Starbucks competitor, and for a while Deaf Dog, a small locally owned chain I was loyal to for a while at the beginning of the coffee craze. While I never order just “coffee,” I don’t like Starbucks’s coffee, but I do think they have the best “mixed” drinks around. 

My drink of the moment depends on the weather and where I will be drinking the coffee. For hot weather and outdoor Florida environments, I currently drink iced shaken espressos, often decaf, with a splash of sweet cream. If I am sitting in my house or another air conditioned place, I drink mochas, formerly peppermint and now with cinnamon dolce. Almond milk, no whip, and extra hot. Former favorites include the amazing java chip frappuccino with almond milk and no whip (extra chips, please) and the chocolate cream cold brew with extra cold foam (my daughter’s favorite). 

Yes, if you go every day, or almost everyday, it does get expensive….but then I don’t travel much or buy expensive clothing or jewelry. I don’t drive an expensive car. I guess it all depends on your priorities!

How much coffee do I drink? From looking at my Facebook posts about coffee and my coffee mug posts, you would think it is a lot more than I really drink. I do usually drink my coffee at home. I have a Keurig, which hardly makes me a coffee aficionado! But I do drink good coffee — Starbucks or Peets and always a dark roast. I make 12-ounce cups, so that is fairly large. I go to Starbucks for my iced drinks (in summer, which it usually is here) maybe 5 times a week. I would say I drink about four cups a day, sometimes only three, very occasionally five. Most restaurants have awful coffee, but if I order a salad, I will probably get coffee. (I like the balance of hot and cold! No coffee with hot food unless it is breakfast food.) 

I probably drank more coffee when I worked in corporations. They probably have Keurigs now, but back then, they had those round Mr. Coffee pots with the bitter coffee that would be even more despicable at the bottom o the pot, but no one wanted to make a new pot. And when did those pots get washed anyway?  It was so easy to just get up — for a diversion — and pour more coffee even if you didn’t want it, and it tasted vile.

I have collected coffee mugs for many years and have them from all over the country and the world. (No, I don’t travel, but my daughter did! Actually I have been to most of the United States except for those big square ones in the middle — no offense if you live there. After all, I live in Florida.) When I moved from California to Florida, I packed up five cartons of mugs. I decided I couldn’t take all of those to Florida, so I gave some away and brought three cartons. They were on display, but are now in cupboards because I have a toddler granddaughter!

OK. I will admit it. I used to drink my coffee black with sugar. And then, black with Splenda. After my kindergarten days, I never cared for milk or cream in it. Then, my daughter got me into the flavored creamers. I don’t know what we would do if we ran out of Snickers creamer!

Some coffee trivia:

It takes 42 espresso beans to produce one shot of espresso.It takes 4000 coffee beans to produce a pound of roasted coffee.A coffee plant reaches maturity in five years.A coffee plant produces only about one pouond of coffee per year.About 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed in the world each year.About 400 million cups of coffee are consumed each day in the United States, making it the world’s largest consumer of coffee.The average U.S. adult drinks about 400 cups of coffee per year.About half the U.S. population starts the day with a cuppa Joe.The term Cup of Joe was coined after Admiral Josephus “Joe” Daniels prohibited alcohol aboard Navy ships and so the men began drinking coffee instead,Finland is the largest consumer of coffee in Europe.An athlete will be banned from competing in the Olympics if the caffeine from about five cups of coffee is detected in their bloodstream.About one tenth of coffee consumed is instant.About 40 percent of coffee drinkers drink it black.One third of U.S. coffee drinkers add sweetener.While wine has about 400 distinct flavor characteristics, coffee has 800.

States with the Longest Coffee Orders