When I was six my neighbour, and best friend, Suzy showed me how to make coffee, and it went a little something like this…. 1 teaspoon of coffee, 1 teaspoon of sugar, run the tap until the water becomes as hot as possible, fill the cup and stir. Genius! Good idea, not great coffee. Plus, I was only 6. My grandmother told me that if I drank coffee, I’d end up growing a tail.
The next progression in the coffee chain was mocha. My god-sister, also named Suzy, introduced me to this one. Half a teaspoon of milo, half a teaspoon of coffee, a touch of water and stir like crazy. Boil the water, (yes we were allowed to use the kettle by now), pour into the cup and add a touch of milk. I don’t know if we actually liked the taste of it or whether we were more intrigued by the process of making it. Just remember folks, this was the 80’s, no foxtel, no ipads, just channel 7, 9, 10, ABC & SBS. Yep! (Oops, did I just give my age away?)
It must have been the novelty of coffee that made me drink it as a kid, because as I got older I didn’t drink it at all. I just didn’t like it. In my early 20’s everyone was “catching up for a coffee.” I felt like I was missing out. So I went out on a coffee date. What do I order, a cappuccino, latte, short black, long mach… a half double decaffeinated half-caf, with a twist of lemon? Aargh!! I still didn’t like coffee and I didn’t like the guy anymore after that. Let’s just say I liked coffee better than him.
I thought I’d give the coffee game another crack in my early 30’s, so I went back to the good old mocha….but with real, melted chocolate, oh divine…..and fattening! One of the guys in my office said, “I’m going to grab a coffee, want one?”
I said, “Yeah, , I’ll have a mocha please.”
He said, “How old are you, 16?”
I said, “Sort of…….double that.”
But the answer to your question, yes, I started drinking coffee. Slowly I moved on to ‘just coffee’, but then the milk I had would change. I went from full cream to skinny to soy to coconut to spelt to almond. Why? “Cut out all dairy out of your diet,” my Naturopath said….”Kill me,” I said. The trick now was finding a barista that could make an almond milk latte that didn’t taste like dirt water. I finally found coffee heaven, down the street at one of my local cafe’s. The hell of it is that I can’t drink coffee anywhere else because, well basically, it’s crap everywhere else! My coffee addiction has become a cafe addiction.
Not a bad one to have if you ask me.
*Please note: Every now and then I make an exception and drink a small cup of Turkish coffee so an aunt or a family friend can “read” my cup and lie to me about my future.
Photography & words: Diane Kitanoski for www.thisisroshambo.com 50 Anderson St, Yarraville.
Title: “Coffee shop” – Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Best coffee in town coming to you live from “Wee Jeanie” cafe 50 Anderson St, Yarraville.
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