Type B Mama Confessions: Coffee

I have always been a self proclaimed tea girl. I still love tea but since moving to Seattle, getting married and having a baby I have morphed into a coffee person. It started small, a cup here and there with Steven while we were dating. Now a day rarely goes by when I don’t have at least one cup. One cup for me is a humongous pink polkadot latte mug!

Some days I make a 6 cup pot of coffee and drink it all. Coffee makers use 6oz for a cup so in those days I actually will drink 36 ounces of coffee!! Those days are rare but it has happened. I took a break while pregnant and in the beginning days of nursing but those sleepless nights drove me back to the mug.

I wish I could say that drinking coffee was the ENTIRE confession, but it’s not. Now, I am a pretty crunchy mama. We are a real food, organic, baby wearing, cloth diapering type of family. However, I struggle with doing what I know is best and of course that would be eliminating coffee entirely. But the next worse thing is that I love cream and sugar. Cream is great! But sugar is the devil, apparently. I use a lot of grade b maple syrup, sucanat and raw honey in my day to day cooking and baking but when it comes to coffee I cannot surrender my sugar, even if it is unbleached, organic, fair trade evaporated cane juice. I have tried to make deals with myself that every other day I will use stevia in my coffee. It never lasts long, sadly. I just can’t handle the “off” taste combined with the natural coffee bitterness. It is just too much! So for now, I am still on the sugar.

“That is not so bad,” you say. “This is all you have to confess?!” Nope… still one more thing. Recently we bought into the idea that whole bean is better, right? Sure. We used to just buy ground coffee and it was easy to brew a quick pot. Now we store huge bags of beans in our freezer and measure out the appropriate amount of beans on our food scale and grind them in our grinder like most other pretentious Seattle coffee drinkers who choose to home brew. We do have a french press to top it off, OF COURSE! But on a normal day the drip is my go to. Being a busy mama makes it hard to enjoy a hot cup anymore so I love the drip maker for keeping things nice and warm. Since moving into this new realm of grinding, a new bad habit as emerged. Some days I am just too darn tired from being up all night with a toddler getting molars. Some days the grinder would be too loud and wake up said toddler! What does a mama do!? That’s right folks, a type B mama will reuse yesterdays grinds still in the pot to make another quick pot of coffee. SO it’s weaker, bitter, old, gross… it get’s the job done! I just have to add more devil sugar and I can’t tell the difference! Besides, at least it’s frugal!

Please still be my friends!

That is my confession of the week. Have you ever reused coffee grounds?