Iced Coffee

Posted on September 5, 2002 in Cafes

Iced coffee tastes best with cracked ice, cream, and a lot of sugar, the way you get it in Thai restaurants. I had an American version, developed by myself to fit my diet, at Tully’s yesterday. It’s mostly perfect except that the ice comes in cubes. I use saccharine sweetener, 2% milk (with a few drops of half and half added), and liberal helpings of chocolate, cinnamon and nutmeg powder that I squeeze from a set of spice grinders. Such is my coffee dream: a bit of thick decaffinated and defatted pleasure to tease the tongue and the lips.

I often make a mess when I fill the cup too high and try to put the plastic lid back on, but I always mop off the counter and lick the puddle that gathered around the straw slit before I attempt to move my concoction to my favorite rattan chairs. Then I sit awhile and work on the book, sometimes for a paragraph, sometimes — when the pen flames — for several pages.