What a beautiful story! 💙💙 the Folgers can brought back a lot of memories - especially of playing cards with my grandma while she drank black coffee. Now I want to try Turkish and Indian coffee. Thank you for sharing your adventures!
Well done Candace Rose! This is a beautiful tale of self reflection and recognition told through the lens of our favourite beverage. Like you I love both coffee and tea and from now on I’m going to be a little more introspective about it.
International coffee and memoir writing? You had me at coffee. Thank you for this fine account of the many places you made a brew and all the reflection that came with it. I enjoyed this piece, and the illustrations, and I will recommend it and I will read it again!
What a fantastic conclusion! "the act or process of extracting the essence of something" Oh my goodness, there it is in one tidy little revelation! It made the whole journey, through tea and coffee, fall right into place. Thank you for sharing, and for the reminder that there is deep meaning waiting just beneath the surface of our simple daily rituals, if we will just keep curling up in our metaphorical chairs-by-the-fire often enough to discover it💕
(and thank you, it's very nice to have the whole thing in one place for the final installment)
What a lovely essay and I am so pleased to know coffee brought you home to yourself - so heart-warming. I see that your mother is still a tea person at heart 😉! And I hope you had a chance to taste the Hong Kong style-milk tea one day. Apparently the real thing took a lot of work like your South Indian Coffee but there are shorter ways these days!!
The effort is worth the taste of the coffee. Anything easily obtained doesn't excite us. When you sip the coffee after all the efforts or processes you put in, there is the real achievement of happiness.
Just beautiful, Candace. I love the word "decoction" and it seems to express so much about what your work is doing.
The part about taking coffee to your dad sparked old memories for me from childhood on the family farm, which I feel now I might have to write about. Thank you!
My favourite line of this whole piece is the one about your eyes being left free to soak up all the mornings on the lagoon. There is such a feeling of freedom in this, it just makes me smile 💙
FYI, I bought a copy and loaded onto my Kindle your book Stuff Every Coffee Lover Should Know, and it will travel with me from Mexico to Canada. Not as easy and permanent to annotate the inside cover with my traditional where and when I read it, but your art will travel with me in electron spirit.
P.s. I am still in the valley of indecision on what to do about the Devil’s brew while on the trail for the next five or six months, but I can always fall back on Nescafé.
P.p.s. Did you get a chance to see my illustrated post you inspired me to put out there for the world to see? It’s called the Sad, Strange Journey of Al’s Cheesburger.
I loved reading this all the way through. The yurt, I remember from a previous post - or am I making that up? Your story of how your father introduced you to coffee reminded me of how mine did, at a similar age. We were at a family event at my older sister or brother's high school. My dad fixed up a styrofoam cup with half coffee, half milk and a whole lot of sugar. Yum! I never knew it tasted that good! I now drink it black, so I thank you for resurrecting that sweet memory.
What a beautiful story! 💙💙 the Folgers can brought back a lot of memories - especially of playing cards with my grandma while she drank black coffee. Now I want to try Turkish and Indian coffee. Thank you for sharing your adventures!
Well done Candace Rose! This is a beautiful tale of self reflection and recognition told through the lens of our favourite beverage. Like you I love both coffee and tea and from now on I’m going to be a little more introspective about it.
International coffee and memoir writing? You had me at coffee. Thank you for this fine account of the many places you made a brew and all the reflection that came with it. I enjoyed this piece, and the illustrations, and I will recommend it and I will read it again!
What a fantastic conclusion! "the act or process of extracting the essence of something" Oh my goodness, there it is in one tidy little revelation! It made the whole journey, through tea and coffee, fall right into place. Thank you for sharing, and for the reminder that there is deep meaning waiting just beneath the surface of our simple daily rituals, if we will just keep curling up in our metaphorical chairs-by-the-fire often enough to discover it💕
(and thank you, it's very nice to have the whole thing in one place for the final installment)
What a lovely essay and I am so pleased to know coffee brought you home to yourself - so heart-warming. I see that your mother is still a tea person at heart 😉! And I hope you had a chance to taste the Hong Kong style-milk tea one day. Apparently the real thing took a lot of work like your South Indian Coffee but there are shorter ways these days!!
This is amazing, the pictures, the story, the coffee. Oh the coffee description is just so good, delicious even.
In Colombia, they say "ahí le dejé café" or I left you a cup coffee as a sign of love within the family. You reminded me that
This was such a wonderful piece. I think I need to read it twice. From one coffee fan to another, thank you for this. I learned so much.
I really enjoyed reading this. Now at 2am, I fell asleep early, I'm making a coffee and going to reread it.
The effort is worth the taste of the coffee. Anything easily obtained doesn't excite us. When you sip the coffee after all the efforts or processes you put in, there is the real achievement of happiness.
Just beautiful, Candace. I love the word "decoction" and it seems to express so much about what your work is doing.
The part about taking coffee to your dad sparked old memories for me from childhood on the family farm, which I feel now I might have to write about. Thank you!
Such an enjoyable journey through the infusions and decoctions of the liquid landscapes of life!
My favourite line of this whole piece is the one about your eyes being left free to soak up all the mornings on the lagoon. There is such a feeling of freedom in this, it just makes me smile 💙
A
Candace!!! Bellissimo!!!
FYI, I bought a copy and loaded onto my Kindle your book Stuff Every Coffee Lover Should Know, and it will travel with me from Mexico to Canada. Not as easy and permanent to annotate the inside cover with my traditional where and when I read it, but your art will travel with me in electron spirit.
P.s. I am still in the valley of indecision on what to do about the Devil’s brew while on the trail for the next five or six months, but I can always fall back on Nescafé.
P.p.s. Did you get a chance to see my illustrated post you inspired me to put out there for the world to see? It’s called the Sad, Strange Journey of Al’s Cheesburger.
I loved reading this all the way through. The yurt, I remember from a previous post - or am I making that up? Your story of how your father introduced you to coffee reminded me of how mine did, at a similar age. We were at a family event at my older sister or brother's high school. My dad fixed up a styrofoam cup with half coffee, half milk and a whole lot of sugar. Yum! I never knew it tasted that good! I now drink it black, so I thank you for resurrecting that sweet memory.