Okay. I’ll admit it, I’m addicted to caffeine. When I was in grad school, I was drinking a lot of Coke. A LOT. I was also slightly overweight. And by slightly, I mean embarrassingly. So one of my weight loss tactics involved cutting out sugary drinks, which also meant cutting out caffeine (I hated coffee).
Fast forward to a few years ago and the introduction of Frappucinos. I always got the vanilla ones (no coffee flavor). But somewhere, somehow, I started getting the occasional sip of JavaMochaSpressoCoffeeBlast flavor. It was an occasional dalliance. Then McDonald’s introduced iced coffee. Now, it’s not the greatest coffee in the world, but it is the cheapest mainstream iced coffee out there, and I was on a one-a-day habit. It adds up over time, so at the behest of my wife, I bought the least technologically advanced coffee maker in the world: the French press.
It is a Godsend.
I am still in the refining phases of making my perfect iced coffee, but here are the hints I have so far:
1. Avoid Folger’s like the plague.
2. Starbucks ground coffee works well enough for now (I’m gonna experiment with other grinds)
3. Coffeemate French Vanilla coffee flavor (liquid version) tastes better than McDonald’s vanilla flavor and probably saves me 100 calories or so per drink.
Once I get the balance down, I’ll share my coffee secrets with you. I can still only handle one cup per day, otherwise my stomach rebels, but rest assured, the wheels of progress grind slowly, but unceasingly. I will create the perfect iced coffee, and the world will be my oyster.
And I’ll save about 40 bucks a month!
I love the French Press! (As opposed to the French press: the Le Monde newspaper and the like.) Try adding vanilla extract or other flavors instead of the flavored creamers, along with milk or half and half. Tastes yummy without most of the chemical stuff. (Creamers tend to have HFCS and hydrogenated oils.) And that’s all on my nutrition lesson for the day. 🙂
Coffee’s gross. My grad school addiction is DIET Coke. MMMMMmmmmmmmm aspartame.
But more importantly, I have believable data that says you should try Dunkin’s ground coffee. Wait you guys don’t even have Dunkin Donuts, maybe you can’t get the grounds either…..
Ala – the natural vanilla is expensive – as in $20 per bottle expensive. That’s what I use in cooking as a bottle last me a few years – but with Michael’s coffee habit it would be $$$$