Kitchen Items

Complicated Simplicity

I bought this coffee pot shortly after I moved into my apartment.

I should probably qualify that statement, as it makes it sound like a simple, mindless task.

Way back when I was a kid, my mother made coffee in a pot just like this one. She would put some water on the flame, put a "basket" type filter into the basket, dole out the ground coffee into the filter, insert the nesting "reservoir" (my word) into the basket and then pour the boiling water into the reservoir. Five minutes later there was coffee for the pourin'! That was also the same pot which my father, later in the morning, would attempt to reheat the coffee and always, always, ALWAYS boiled it, which is how I came to the ability to drink just about any coffee, no matter how awful it might be.

Later, after my stint in the Air Force, I attended university. After my first year at school I moved out of the dorms and into a house with 4 friends. Despite the fact that I was 24 years old, this was the first time I had ever lived on my own. My mom took me shopping for some kitchen necessities, and among them was a coffee pot just like this one. She had offered to get me an automatic drip, Mr. Coffee-type coffee maker, but I liked the simplicity of the "old-fashioned" kind. I recall that we picked it up at K-Mart for about ten dollars.

As it turned out, one of my roommates brought a Mr. Coffee to the house, and those among us who drank coffee just used that, and my humble little coffee pot was stuck in the back of a cupboard until I moved out again.

A few years later, after graduating, and after I gave up on the freelance video production market in Chicago, I was accepted for a job at a TV station, again at the opposite end of the state. Upon moving, I pulled out the box of old kitchen utilities and was again reacquainted with the old fashioned drip coffee maker. It held me in good stead as I weaved in and out of coffee-drinker-hood throughout the two years in southern Illinois, and through two moves in four years in south Georgia.

Somewhere in that period, or perhaps in the move back to Chicago, the little coffee pot was lost or given away; I don't remember. Mrs. Farrago and I were veritable gadget hounds, so if it hissed, whirred, vibrated or whistled and coffee came drooling out of it, we bought it.

The rent for my apartment includes water, gas, trash removal and heating. I'm responsible for the costs of electricity and any other utilities. Uncertain how far my dollar would stretch, and despite the fact that ts2bx Mrs. Farrago let me take the very nice automatic drip coffee maker, I decided I would get another old-fashioned drip coffee maker, since I could draw water into a tea kettle and boil it as many times in a day as I wanted and it would never cost me anything.

When I got the chance I headed over to K-Mart to pick up the coffee pot I wanted, but despite searching the entire store, they didn't have one like it. Neither did Wal-Mart. Nor Target. Nor Linens 'N Things. Nor Dick's Sporting Goods (battery operated automatic drip camp site coffee makers? Are you KIDDING me?!). Nor any other store that I could think of. So I turned to the internet.

Of all the bazillions of people in the world out there to make an electronic buck, do you know how many offered this simple little humble coffee maker?

One.

It's made in China (what isn't anymore?), and offered by a little importing company in Louisiana, and sold by Shopper's Choice [dot] com. Now, however, it seems it's no longer a simple, little, practical utensil for making coffee. Now it's a bit of an anachronism. Now it's a novelty.

Now it's $32.

But, obviously, I got it anyway. It leaks from the handle when it's full, and it leaks from the spout when pouring. I may or may not be saving money by using it instead of an electric automatic drip coffee maker, but at least I occasionally boil my leftover coffee. For old times sake.


Getting Creamed
I don't remember how I found it, but it was before the separation. At one of the local grocery mega-chains, in their specialty dairy section, I found a regional brand of organic milk from an Amish dairy in Iowa. What intrigued me was their claim that the milk was not homogenized, with the assurance that the cream rises to the top.

This brought back memories of my father in my youth, lamenting the mass-produced, hormone-treated, vitamin D-added milk on offer from the grocery stores: "You don't know what real milk was like. It was so thick with cream that it used to stick to the sides of the glass!" Man! That sounded good!

He also used to tell me that, when he was a kid, he and his friends would run through the neighborhood in the early mornings and "eat the cream" off the top of everyone's milk, left on their stoops by the milk man. As a child of the suburban '70s, I never quite understood this. Cream was liquid, was it not, as one poured it out of the containers bought at the store? How does one eat it?


I couldn't resist having some before
getting the camera out. Remnants
of the cream clot -- which I ate --
can be seen near the top
of the bottle.

Farmers' All-Natural Creamery organic whole milk answered that question for me! More often than not a clot of semisolid cream forms in the neck of an unopened bottle of their product. The literature on the label suggests shaking the bottle to mix the cream into the milk for a thick, tasty drink, but it also suggests skimming the cream "for your coffee." If you don't shake it the plug will sometimes come out with the pour. From childhood used to avoiding any solid chunks of anything that came out with the milk as an indication that something had gone terribly wrong (or long) with the milk, I was at first a little wary of tasting any of the clots.

With a consistency less dense than butter, the coagulated cream tastes slightly sweet, but with a predominant "milkness" to the flavor. The texture more than the flavor makes it an acquired taste, but I like it now.

Shaken well and drunk cold, Farmers' All-Natural Creamery Organic Whole Milk makes for a tasty, satisfying and ultimate refreshment! Lookit me! I'm writing a commercial!

The local mega-chain grocery store stopped carrying it shortly after I discovered it, but I soon discovered that Whole Foods Market carries it in good quantities. I imagine it's only available in the Midwest, but do check around (and look here for carriers). At roughly double the price of mass-produced, vitamin enriched, factory processed milk, Farmers' All-Natural Creamery is sold by the half-gallon in whole, skim, and fat-free forms. But if it's non-homogenized, why mess around with the fat-free stuff? You're just undoing all that joy!