I am a coffee-holic.
I’ve always loved the smell of coffee. I think most people do.
My daughter Britain (my only child who doesn’t drink the bean juice of the gods) once said to my dad, “I would drink coffee if it tasted like it smells.”
“Everyone would,” he replied.
He’s not wrong, I think.
I have a lot of different coffee options at home. I buy certain brands on a regular basis and enjoy trying others. A company I buy from regularly emailed me last week and asked if I would like to sample some new coffees.
I said yes, of course! So they shipped me a free package.
I assumed it would be three or four sample-size packs of new blends or some seasonal options I had yet to try.
What I got was two one-pound bags of coffee. One was a vanilla bean bourbon-infused blend that didn’t smell very good straight from the bag, honestly. But when brewed, it was quite good. It is a newer option from the company, but it has been available for a while now.
The other was a bag of very strong espresso with hints of dark chocolate — one of the blends I always order. Neither new to the company nor to me.
Either there was a mistake made and no one actually looked to see what I have repeatedly ordered — though they offered this to me because I am a repeat customer — or they did this on purpose. They sent me a blend new to me to try to get me to purchase more of it and give it a good review online that may help sell more of it. And ... they sent me more of something they know I already like so I will keep buying from them.
And give a good review online.
Well, it worked, either way.
I will enjoy both bags and review them positively for the people who are likely to order them anyway.
I’ve had coffee I was unimpressed with and a very few that were just terrible, but I like most to some degree... it’s coffee, after all. Another coffee I tried in recent months was a free cup offered at a car show. It was delicious — the best coffee I had tasted in a while, and I said so, asking if they would be so kind as to tell me the brand and blend.
The woman didn’t know — it had been prepared for them — but she would find out and let me know.
I can sometimes tell the brand by the taste, and I had my suspicions about what it was. I was surprised, however, when she sent a message to me a week or so later.
It was Maxwell House original. I was expecting a specialty coffee, honestly, and had a couple of brands in mind. Instead, it was what could be called “ordinary” coffee.
But it was very good.
I chuckled to myself and wondered about some of the coffees I have paid too much for, really. Are they better because they cost more or are made in smaller batches or whatever? Apparently not.
Sometimes it is the “ordinary” that we need, I believe, in order to appreciate everything we have, both the ordinary and the extraordinary. And in appreciating the ordinary parts of our lives, we may just find they are extraordinary, instead.
I hope you and I each find something extraordinary in our ordinary today. And I’ll drink a cup of coffee to that.
Contact Brett at chunkybrett@mail.com.
