A modest request for the coffee shops

You know I'm a lover of sitting in your wonderful, relaxing atmospheres. You know there is little I enjoy more than kicking back with a latte and a book and just losing myself in the setting.
Of course, I can't drink milk, lactose free or otherwise, because of my allergies. and my solution has always been soy. Well, recently I've read some frightening things about soy (including the fact that 90% of the soy generated for North American consumption is genetically modified - if you haven't yet watched the future of food, you should!). As a result, I've switched to almond milk and stopped buying soy products. Now, this works at home, but in coffee shops, the only non-dairy alternative is soy. Timothy's, Second Cup, Starbucks, anyone who can make you a latte without milk can only make it with soy milk. Now, I'm not drinking these every week or anything, but it would be really really nice if someone started offering almond milk based drinks, or any nut milk for that matter.
So, I'm asking you, please oh coffee shop people, give me something I can drink while I'm reading a book other than herbal tea. Give me a latte without the bad stuff. Please?

A post about coffee (which I've been meaning to write for weeks)

You will not believe this... Not if you've read my previous mentions of my coffee addiction, including my complete failures the last two Ramadans to not drink it before starting to fast. Are you ready? Drumroll.............

I QUIT! I, Noha Beshir, professed coffee addict of over 10 years, lover of the Second Cup Paradiso blend, the Timothy's Vanilla Soy Latte, and the regular old Large Timmy's with one milk, have not had a coffee in over three weeks. And, the coffee I consumed three weeks ago was simply due to the fact that I was a counsellor at youth camp, chasing around many lovely, high strung teenage girls on less than 2 hours of sleep for the second day in a row. Before that, I had gone two weeks without coffee as well.
I won't lie: the first 5 days of non-coffee drinking were brutal. Headaches, exhaustion, all that good stuff. But now, I'm smooth sailing. When I'm tired, I try to sleep instead of caffeinating, and I think I'm generally a (slightly) less bubbly person. But yeah: Noha, without coffee. Whoda thunk it, eh?

Well, at least now I have a new record to break for next time...

I broke. At 2 a.m. this morning, despite trying to satisfy my sweet-tooth craving with raisins and walnuts and repeatedly telling myself to just go to sleep Noha. Nothing good can come of this, I opened the freezer and reached for - gasp! - the cookies and cream ice cream. It wasn't a rash decision. My mind knew full well what my hands were doing. I even stopped to calculate how far I'd gotten, to decide if the number of consecutive allergy-free days was respectable enough to break now, or if I should hold off a little longer. 49 days. Respectable. I had the cookies and cream ice cream. I had some chocolate fudge brownie ice cream too, for good measure. And then, only then, did I finally go to sleep.
I won't lie. They tasted positively divine, but if I was expecting harps playing in the background, or the sensation of being carried off to some dessert-flavoured, chocolate-based, culinary heaven, it didn't happen. Things you can't have always seem soooooooooooooooooo much better than what you can.
I woke up with a stomach-ache this morning, but I suppose I earned it. I've also decided that today is a day off. A day to allow myself to indulge in whatever else so that tomorrow, when I start again, I'm not already craving things. I've basically decided that I'm failing today to succeed later. Twisted logic? Maybe. An excuse to stuff myself with anything and everything today? Also maybe. But a funny thing is happening so far: I've had a slice of cheesecake that was in the fridge, left over from a visit we had on Friday, and nothing else. I've been down to press cafe, and looked at the brownies and cupcakes, felt nothing, and ordered my usual coffee. I think I'll end up getting something else, something gooey and chewy and wheat-based, and chocolatey-sweet, before the day is over. But if I don't, it'll be okay because I know how to make the wheat-free, dairy-free, processed-sugar-free version from scratch now. And tomorrow I'll start over. And while last time, my goal was to go as long as I could, this time, I'll have a number in mind. I want to get to 50 days of allergy-free food. At least. 50 days and beyond. Far, far beyond.

It's Open

Remember this? It's finally open. Day 1 today. and they have TV's. Showing hockey. Heaven.

All Hail the Presse Cafe

There's been an empty store front at the end of our street for months now, and M and I have been watching closely to see who'll take it.
Our dream: an independent bookstore with a coffee shop built in.
What happened? First, the store front turned out to be not one, but two store fronts.
Recently, a sushi place opened in one of them. This is very, very good news, but it's not a coffee shop.
More recently, (two weeks ago to be exact), a sign went up in the other window for a Presse Cafe opening soon.
Victory!

I Love My Gloves! I Hate My Gloves! I'm Confused!

So, random thing I did this morning while heading out for work - pre-drinking my coffee, so that's my excuse for why I was so low on brain-power:
I was leaving the apartment, and in one hand I was holding my pretty, fairly new leather gloves. In the other, I was holding a plastic bag from the kitchen garbage that needed to go down the garbage chute. I pressed the elevator button and walked to the chute. Then, I opened the chute, and tossed my gloves out -- Wait, what???
Yup, that's right, I through my gloves down the garbage chute instead of the garbage I had meant to throw out...
Luckily, I went back this afternoon to the store and they had another pair.
I think I need to sleep...
For those of you Christmas-ing, have a merry one. For everyone else, enjoy your inherent days off... I know I will :)

Latte-Spying

So remember waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when, I had a post where I explained how my food sensitivities turned me into a coffee-snob, and how I went from ordering the mocha to the soy-sugar-free-mocha, no whip (oh yeah, and please make sure that's plain soy, not vanilla flavoured)?
Well, this lovely blog post cracked me up because I'm not always like this, but once in a while, I do hover to make sure that my drink is being prepared the way I asked. I know it can get annoying for the barristas, but at the same time, I figure it's only fair: the obvious reason is my long list of food-ingredient no-no's, but there are some less obvious reasons too. I used to get lattes all the time, and I don't anymore, so I really want to make sure they're exactly how I asked for them. It's like dessert now, and at most coffee shops, you're paying at least $4 for that drink, so....... Anyway, take a look at the post. Can you see yourself in this woman? Are you a - gasp - latte spy too?

For One Month

This is Ramadan. Between dawn and sunset, we don't eat. We don't drink. We don't ingest in basically any form (because I've had questions about chewing gum, popping mints, cigarettes, etc. But no ingesting happens. Nothing.) Before dawn, most Muslims will get up to eat something in order to go the rest of the day without. After a couple of days, the hunger pangs tend to subside and you get used to feeling a little emptier. One of the hardest parts for me is going without the coffee. I've taken to just drinking it before dawn...
The other, less talked about aspect of Ramadan is controlling your temper and behaviour. The food we don't eat is really more of an outward manifestation of the self-control we're supposed to exhibit through out every aspect of our lives. It's almost what I'd call a spiritual-detox period. We use this time to get back on track in our habits, our behaviours, our spiritual / ritual devotions, etc. Things we've let creep in that we don't like, we try to stop. Things we've let slip by the way-side that we want to do, we pick back up. It's like New Year's Resolutions in some ways, except for one month, as the whole community prays together, fasts together, and spends more time together, the hope is that the resolutions won't be broken a few days later, but become ingrained into our daily lives, at least for a while.
Happy Ramadan to all!

This is a joke, right?

So Rachael Ray wears a scarf that sort of resembles a Kaffiyeh in a Dunkin Donuts web ad, and the US conservative commentators go crazy!
Michelle Malkin, one such commentator, tells us that the Kaffiyeh "has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad".
Oh, really? So only Palestinians who kill people wear these extremely popular scarves? Umm, no. It's just a part of the Arab culture, and saying it's akin with terrorism essentially means you think everything Arab = Terrorism, which is just so, so wrong.
The silliest part is that Dunkin Donuts pulled the ad. A little too apologist, non?

Coffee Snob?

I've been drinking the good stuff on a regular basis since I was about 15 - the nearly three hour commute to get to and from my fabulous high school five days a week, plus my lack of self control, really cemented any chance I had of sticking to orange juice to just wake me up.
For years, I kept it to myself and only drank the coffee out of the house. The reason: my mother, who is the most health conscious person I know, abhorred (and abhors) caffeine.
I remember a funny coffee related incident the summer after I finished high school, on my way to a trip to Egypt with my kid sister for a few weeks. We were in the car, on our way to Montreal to catch our flight with my mom and dad, and I suddenly felt the urge to confess.
"Mama," I said, "I have to tell you something terrible."
"Yes?" she asked.
"I drink coffee. I drink it EVERYDAY."
My mom laughed and nodded and said something like "I figured".
I've always preferred a "real" coffee - Second Cup, Timothy's, Starbucks - to a Timmy's or the instant stuff, but the bottom line is that I just have to get my fix, and I'll take it however I can get it (see my trying to quit posts from last Ramadan for further proof). I also like the real cappuccinos from Second Cup WAY more than the sugar-filled stuff at Timmy's.

The reason I'm even thinking about any of this is that this morning on CBC radio (my favourite station ever!), they were doing blind taste tests in TO, having people sample instant vs. really brewed coffee in the streets and seeing which they preferred. Most seem to prefer the real brew, but it seems there are more than expected who like their coffee with "three crystals of Folgers, Half a cup of cream and five tablespoons of sugar" as the radio host said - Yuck!

When I'd first started going into "Proper" coffee stores, I would try not to laugh or roll my eyes as I heard people order the complex sounding names. You know, the "I'll have a non-fat, extra foam, double shot, extra hot soy latte" order? Well, when I first discovered my allergies to milk, my ability to drink Lattes was shot in the foot. I also had to avoid the sugar, but I loved my fancy coffee drinks so much that I HAD to find a way to solve the "milk free, sugar free" coffee crisis. I scoured the various coffee shops until I discovered Timothy's "sugar free vanilla syrup", which they could use with soy milk to produce my "small soy vanilla sugar free latte". I suddenly felt like just as much of a coffee snob as those I was laughing about...
I've since eased up, I only treat myself to a soy latte about once every two months now, and most days I just get a regular coffee and allow myself a little bit of milk or cream in my coffee. I don't avoid all milk or sugar products any more, I just make sure to keep it to a minimum and that seems to keep me ok.

On My Coffee Cup This Morning

I liked this a lot:

"The law, for all its failings, has a noble goal - to make the little bit of life that people can actually control more just. We can't end disease or natural disasters, but we can devise rules for our dealings with one another that fairly weigh the rights and needs of everyone, and which, therefore, reflect our best vision of ourselves."

-Scott Turow