Saturday, August 2, 2008

Cold-brewed Coffee in the New Digs

Aaaaaaah. There now, that's better, isn't it? Thursday was the big move day and went off without any major hitches. Sorry I haven't written, but I was eating things like cold leftover Chinese food out of the carton, since all my plates and forks were packed and Christy took the microwave. Also a calzone from the place down the hill, also cold and leftover for breakfast. Needless to say, nothing photogenic or terribly original. In fact, you could say I'm cheating a bit because the first thing I've prepared in my new place is... well, it's coffee.

But we don't have a coffee maker! So I had to get creative! (Oooh, I'm getting all defensive! You can tell by the exclamation points!) I had read this article in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago (from the comments it appears they had covered the topic last summer as well) and the accompanying "recipe" is not at all daunting.

It did, however, call for a pound of coffee and ten cups of water, to yield 8 cups of coffee concentrate. That seemed excessive to me, so I bought a tiny 2 oz bag of Kona blend ground coffee, which I forgot to photograph before I chucked it. I did the math, and made a 1/8 recipe (16 oz down to 2 oz of coffee, and 10 cups down to 1.25 cups of water.)

I mixed them together and let it sit overnight on the counter. This morning I strained it once through a mesh sieve and then again through cheesecloth, then followed the original suggested proportions: 1/4 cup coffee concentrate to 3/4 cup of milk (as you can see, I used soy milk).

Oh man, it was so delicious! I took it up to the roof deck (roof deck!) to hang out with my plants.

And their new friends, the tomato brothers and the basil forest.

It's not going to be much of a beach day, but at least we've got a roof deck with a sweet view. It's good to be home.

2 comments:

  1. I'm very jealous of your basil, it's thriving! Mine, unfortunately died last week. I thought it might make it through this winter, but no such luck.

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  2. Just tried this...DELICIOUS! (I used vanilla almond milk)

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