I inherited his pot, and I have my original too. It's time I got those old pots out more often. I tend to use them when we have company. And when I smell that coffee, good things happen to my mood. My mom used an electric peculator, and I liked that coffee a lot too, partly from the smell of brewing and also from memories. Mom's coffee maker had no off switch; you leave an electric or stovetop on too long, and you can smell the ruination. You only do that once.
One some dreadful days, my parents and I would brew coffee and enjoy it in dainty stoneware cups and saucers around the kitchen table. It was a rare moment when my dad's guard was down and we could talk about serious things. When mom was in the hospital once, I showed dad how to make coffee (he got very good at it, too). I also recall that after dad passed, mom and I would fire up the peculator and share a few cups. This ritual eased, for a little while, her grief.
But it also united us about a favorite beverage. Mom hated coffee machines as producing weak brew. So do I. So did my sadly departed friend Steve Gott. For him, old-school percolation was the only way to make coffee.
Today we have wasteful coffee-pod coffee going to our landfills, whereas I have been composting my Melita filters and coffee, from a plastic cone I've had since the early 1980s. But the peculator! It's even less wasteful; it has a metal basket where I dump my grounds into the compost bin.
Now, with only one coffee drinker in our house, I think smaller. I have a Goldilocks dilemma.
My favorite pot is made for a LOT of coffee. My other peculator is a cafetera from Madrid; it reverses the process by putting the boiling water up, under pressure, from the bottom of the pot. It makes a superb brew. I bought it in 2002, to replace one I'd lost in the late 80s. Sadly, it makes one tiny cup. I need two cups every morning.
I'm not talking about a cappuccino machine; that's another form of perfection. I lack counter space for that, alas.
