Honey, That’s a Great Cup of Coffee!

By RAHN ADAMS

The other night Timberley and I stopped at Krispy Kreme for a doughnut and cup of coffee. It was Sunday, the day we’ve decided to take a break from our low-carb, low-sugar, low-salt, low-taste, low-down diet. Besides, the “HOT NOW” sign was lit. So it was their fault.

I’m the one to blame for the diet. Since I’m overweight, hypertensive and prediabetic, we’ve spent the past four months watching what we eat and drink, and we’ve tried to get more exercise. My most recent doctor visit last month was encouraging, as I’d lost 15 pounds and had better blood test numbers.

But I had trained for that three-month checkup as if it were my own personal Olympics, and my results were less impressive than expected after all the dietary sacrifices we’d made. I was Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican bobsled team—happy to be in the competition but definitely out of the medal race.

No bread of any kind, not even the whole-wheat, sugar-free Nature’s Own bread we’d eaten for years. No rice, neither white nor brown. No potatoes—not baked, mashed, scalloped, hash browned or French fried. Nothing with added sugar or too much salt. No real desserts, not even with sugar alcohol, whose main side effect on me is almost as lethal as high blood sugar, at least as far as Timberley—or anyone else around me at the time—is concerned. No sugary drinks. Other than all the protein we could eat, no food that didn’t taste like cardboard.

Upping our coffee consumption was one way we coped with our self-imposed ban on good-tasting food and drink. Instead of sitting on the veranda consuming sweetened beverages, we drank mainly herbal teas and decaffeinated coffee in the evenings. I especially like hibiscus teas like Celestial Seasonings Red Zinger and Tazo Passion. But there’s nothing like a good cup of high-test coffee on a cold morning.

We discovered our favorite brand—Community Coffee Dark Roast—about 10 years ago on a visit to New Orleans. The Walmart Supercenter on Tchoupitoulas Street near the French Quarter featured a Community Coffee display promoting the family-owned and Baton Rouge-based company’s campaign to raise money for Louisiana schools. We bought several pounds of dark roast and liked it. Back then, I’d never seen it in our local stores; now it’s everywhere. Unless it’s on sale, Community Coffee is a bit more expensive than the more common brands but cheaper than Starbucks and other high-falutin’ javas.

We both get our love of good, strong coffee from one person—Timberley’s grandfather, the late Lester Clark, who drank cups of A&P’s Eight O’Clock Coffee so strong they could “jump up and slap you in the face,” Timberley says. Whether it was 8 a.m. or 8 p.m., Grandpa usually had one of those heavy, white, diner-style coffee mugs in hand if he was at the table or in his favorite easy chair or front-porch rocker. Since he rose before Granny each morning, Grandpa made the coffee himself, using a stovetop percolator that often left grounds in your cup.

Before Timberley started taking me to visit Granny and Grandpa when we were dating, I had no idea that what my own family drank each morning at the breakfast table wasn’t fit to be called coffee. My parents bought the cheap instant stuff, or, if they wanted to put on the Ritz, they purchased freeze-dried Taster’s Choice, which tasted only slightly better than tepid dishwater. The only time I remember them drinking real coffee was when we attended church dinners on the grounds or sunrise services, and the coffee was brewed in one of those big silver urns and consumed from white Styrofoam cups. Praise the Lord and pass the powdered creamer.

Now, I certainly want to lose weight, and I definitely don’t want to develop type 2 diabetes. But I also want us to eat, drink and be as merry as we can reasonably be, especially during the upcoming holiday season. So, after my cautiously-optimistic doctor visit, we decided to let ourselves break the diet in some small way on Sundays. It might be with a single slice of pizza or a hamburger or hot dog in an actual bun, not in a sopping-wet lettuce wrap. Or popcorn instead of pork rinds.

That brings me back to our coffees and one doughnut apiece late Sunday afternoon at Krispy Kreme. To be honest, it wasn’t just the “HOT NOW” sign that attracted us. We were also killing an hour before meeting an old friend for dinner—salads, nothing off our diet. I had forgotten how pleasant a good cup of coffee and some quiet conversation can be.

And—thank you, Jesus!—how good a Krispy Kreme Glazed Raspberry Filled Doughnut from the Southern Part of Heaven tastes, with all due respects to my Dunkin’ Donuts and Tim Hortons friends.

But as I wiped stray flecks of sugar glazing off my fingertips with a napkin and sipped the rich, hot brew from my green Krispy Kreme cup, I slowly returned to the gastronomical world as I now know it. Timberley even did her part to ease me gently back down to earth.

“You know,” I said, looking at the long display case of sugary doughnuts, “there isn’t anything I can eat or drink here except this coffee—I mean, any day other than Sunday. Nothing.”

A mother and daughter smiled at us as they headed toward the double glass doors, each carrying a dozen doughnuts in a festive Krispy Kreme holiday box. “Sure you can,” Timberley said, nodding toward the contented pair leaving with their confections.

“Huh?!” My spirits rose. “What kind of doughnuts did they get?!”

Timberley grinned. “Not the doughnuts, honey. The cardboard box. You can use the fiber.”

Happy flippin’ Thanksgiving. Is it Sunday yet?