This Side of the Pond

Considering that the only complaint I have ever had about the War of Independence is the wasteful tossing of teabags into the wrong kind of water, you’d think my loyalty to a proper cup of tea would be absolute.

But this is not the case for, while I might be British, I am also European.

The Brits have been on board with the wake-up juice for half a millennium, since the first coffeehouses opened and the British East India Company took to importing it. These days, of course, it’s all about the Italian style of concoction.

Consequently, I did not hesitate to join in with the American love affair with coffee. Like many of you, dear readers, I am incapable of starting a day without at least one cup, preferably two.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy coffee back home, it’s just that we’re not good at making it. Unless you’re a barista – and at this point we drink enough latte that I think we have three baristas per head, in London at least – you probably don’t have the necessary equipment on hand.

Your coffee makers are novelty items to the British. For decades, we have relied on jars of freeze-dried coffee that can be spooned into a mug and doused in boiling water. If you are currently turning up your nose, please know it is an appropriate response.

I didn’t know that at the time, though. When it’s all you have available, how would you ever know that things could be better?

My grandmother, rest her soul, included “elevenses” in her daily routine, which was a cup of milky coffee and a biscuit to dunk in it. In other words, she would boil milk in a saucepan, let it cool down until it developed a skin and then pour it over the freeze-dried grounds, believing this to be more luxurious than simple hot water.

I can still taste the last swig of my nan’s coffee, mushy crumbs of cookie floating in the dregs, and I remember that I thought myself very grown-up as I drank it.

Latte, cappuccino, espresso – these were not words my country understood during my childhood. I remember my mother investing in a French coffee press, but this was only brought out for dinner parties.

Barista-style coffee is now just as popular in Britain as it is over here, but we still don’t try to make it for ourselves. Italian brands offer home cappuccino machines for sale, but I don’t recall that I’ve ever known someone who had one in their kitchen.

(I did, actually, at the end of my tenure working for Amazon – it was a gift from my manager. I promptly moved myself across the ocean and discovered I didn’t have anywhere to plug it in.)

The coffee machine in our office was a revelation. Back home, office kitchenettes were usually limited to a kettle, which is used for both teabags and the diluting of freeze-dried grounds.

With a coffee shop just across the road offering a delicious range of lattes, chai and – dare I forget – London fogs, my caffeine needs seemed fully addressed. Why would I need my own coffee maker when I can stick my head under the nozzle of the one here when I need to wake up, or wander over the road if I want something that actually tastes better than it smells?

I tell you all of this to explain why it’s taken me so long to install coffee-making equipment in my own kitchen. I own dozens of mugs, at least four receptacles for the airtight storage of tea and a sturdy kettle, but nothing that would help me wake up on the weekends.

Mom-in-law decided to fix this problem last Christmas, when she gifted us a machine that doesn’t just work on ground coffee, but can also take those new-fangled pods. We didn’t have anywhere to put it because we were still in the process of renovating, and then we completely forgot we owned it.

Until last weekend, when my husband fetched it from the cupboard and ceremoniously brushed off the dust. It was set in a place of honor (next to the kettle, which is as honored as it gets in a British person’s kitchen).

He read the instructions, performed the required test run that I assume is to make sure there are no mice in the tubes, and set it up to brew. This involved fiddling about with three kinds of nozzle, none of which we understood, until we found the one that dispenses pod coffee. The plastic thing for holding charcoal was placed in a drawer, because we didn’t know what it was for.

At this point, he suggested calling for the assistance of mom-in-law, because he was concerned that the improper use of a coffee maker might lead to the decaffeination of one’s soul. I reassured him that I have, in fact, put coffee in a basket and flicked the switch a fair few times at this point.

Satisfied, he whizzed to town to browse the range of coffee, returning with two kinds (because he didn’t know what either of them tasted like) and some fancy creamer. He placed mugs next to the machine, along with a spoon. He even found a bowl to hold the sugar and sweeteners.

I looked at his hard work and smiled. “Well,” I said, “I guess we’re going to need to have ourselves a cup of coffee in the morning.”

He looked at me blankly for a moment.

“Why?”

And that, dear readers, is how I went ten years without a coffee pot, while still managing to drink all the coffee I could ever want. One of us didn’t know you could make decent coffee at home, and the other one didn’t see the point.