This Mother Runs on Caffeine

I've been needing and wanting to post lately, but I've been thwarted by really nice things, like gettin' myself a little job and having to fill out grant proposals. Yay! I'm working on a longer essay-type piece, but I want to make sure I get it right, so it's taking me longer than most posts. I also was "hired" by my friend Catie to make a bespoke dog fleece for her awesome Frenchie, Twyla, and I've been taking pics to make a little tutorial, but while sewing today, I realized I did the math wrong on the pattern and now have a dog fleece...for a dog much bigger than Twyla. Catie gave me the awesome idea of donating it to a shelter, so I will! I still have more than enough fleece to make a properly fitting coat for Miss Twyla, but there's a shivering dog somewhere who's gonna score some sweet duds!

In the meantime, I thought I'd post quickly (sort of quickly) on my new daily ritual: homemade iced coffee. I spend an embarrassing amount of money at coffee shops, but until recently I hadn't found a way to make acceptable iced vanilla coffee at home. I read about cold brewing in (I'm waiting for my friends to smile knowingly or laugh) Martha Stewart Living, and since I'd follow Martha into the ocean with rocks in my pockets, I thought I'd try it. It's not a Peet's iced latte, but it's very good even if you're a snob, and it costs a fraction of what Peet's does. Follow me into the rich, dark, delicious ocean:

I bought a French press for cold coffee. We tossed our old one in the move, and this one was on sale for $24. My friend Katie says you can do all this without one, but I like the ease of this. I got the syrup at Whole Foods (with a Groupon!) for $10, which is ridiculous, but it's organic, and $10 is still only two lattes. That's how I justify it. The coffee is Peet's New Guinea Highlands, and it ran me $8 for a half a pound, which makes a surprising amount of coffee, I have to say. I've been doing this for a week and getting two big iced coffees out of it each day, and I still have plenty left.

Start by filling the carafe with two cups of water. I marked two cups with a Sharpie, because if there are two things I hate, they're measuring and thinking.

I use an ice cream scoop for the grinds. Iced coffee needs really strong coffee, about doubly as strong as hot coffee. Here's a silly and inaccurate way to figure out how many scoops to use: Decide how many scoops of ice cream you'd want if you were having that, and then double it. I call those "poet measurements." If you want doctor measurements, like my husband usually does, then I would say two or three scoops per cup. It's a lot. But it's better than wasting your beans and your time by making weak coffee that leaves you with weird-tasting beige milk.

Stir until it looks like...something you'd never drink.

Put it in the fridge overnight, at least 12 hours. It'll hang for a while there. It doesn't get bitter like hot coffee. I've made iced coffee from coffee that's been in the fridge for almost 24 hours. It's still good.

This French press has a separate lid for brewing in the fridge. I plunge down with the other lid. Maybe it keeps your coffee from tasting like metal. Who knows.

Then get a glass, and fill it this much with vanilla syrup:

Then coffee:

Then whatever milk you like. I use 2%:

Then ICE! And then you drink it! And there's enough to make one or two more in the course of your grant-proposal-form-filling, dog-fleece-sewing, blogpost-writing day!

NOTE: If you don't like twitching, maybe don't make a third one. Save it for tomorrow, and let me know if it's still good 36 hours later. I'm all for squeezing every drop out of my orange press. :)