“You spent HOW much on your stupid coffee habit??”

Non-coffee drinkers don’t understand

Actually, I don’t understand how I could bring myself to spend so much on such a basic apparatus. I am by nature an extremely frugal person. In most cases, downright cheap. But I do love coffee.

No, I don’t haunt Starbucks. Again, against my nature. I prefer experimenting with flavors on my own. The shining exception is Fresh Market in Montgomery, AL where my daughter’s family lives. There you can get such exotic combinations as maple vanilla, chocolate cherry, or things I can’t hope to imitate like crème brulée and tiramisu. But their

Birthday loot including packets of
Fresh Market coffee from Alabama

prices are so prohibitive I satisfy myself with just a handful of these primo beans, and only brew them on Sundays.

But back to the coffee maker.  This last replacement (I burn through them every 3 years or so) was the cheapest Mr. Coffee at Walmart. It never was very satisfactory. Chief among the aggravations was having to tape the filter to the edge of the basket to keep it from collapsing and dumping the grounds into the carafe.

And then – since I’m a slow coffee drinker, the sort that sips and savors – the brew sits on the heating plate until mid-afternoon, gaining strength, losing flavor, and generally permeating the premises with a stale, scorched odor.

The answer, my wise BFF kept telling me, was the Keurig. The K-Cup system. One freshly brewed cup at a time. No fuss, no muss, no coffee left standing.

Besides cringing at the cost, there was the matter of operation. My BFF went through Baylor Med. She holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology. She can face a control panel that resembles the cockpit of Boeing 747 unfazed.  

The turning point came when Husband handed me an unconscionable wad of money for my birthday. That,

My Keurig with even more coffee
faves from my son's family

plus another major disagreement with Mr. Coffee, set me to searching. It seems that Keurig doesn’t just make those counter-consuming mega machines. They make minis. In pretty colors, too. And you can get refillable cups for using all the coffee I got for my birthday instead those expensive, prefilled disposables.

So I took the plunge. I got me a little red Keurig that cost more than all my previous coffeemakers combined. And I can operate it. And I love it. So I guess me and my conscience will learn to live with it!