Driving through Anastasia Island on my way to a cookie delivery, a fluttering banner caught my eye: Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii.
I thought, “Really? Out here on the east coast of Florida?”
I made a mental note of other stores nearby before I obeyed the GPS directions to my delivery destination. Check it out on my way home? Absolutely.
When I pulled in, there were no other cars but the sign announced “Open” and I walked in.
All three women behind the counter welcomed me. I cut straight to the chase. I explained that I had been to a coffee farm in Kona on the big island eighteen months ago. They had a 10% Kona blend ready to go, but could make a French press 100% Kona for me. I had a chance to chat while they prepared a medium for me.
I asked, “How long have you been open?”
“About a week.”
The manager (?) explained that she used to live on Maui, behind the original Bad Ass Coffee shop. Her home was destroyed, and after two years in FEMA housing, she decided to move to the mainland with her husband and daughter. When a new franchise opened in St. Augustine Beach, she knew she was in the right place. There are around forty franchises on the mainland.
She showed me a wall of coffees for sale, including the most expensive Peaberry Kona coffee. But there was another more expensive variety on the shelf called Typica. “What’s that?” I asked.
She admitted, “I don’t know.”
So I did a little research. It’s the original variety brought to Hawaii in the 1830s, thriving on the volcanic hillsides. I’m sure it’s delicious, but at $70 for twelve ounces, I’m probably not going to find out very soon.
Anyway, my 100% Kona was delicious, and I’ll definitely be back with the wife. How nice to find an alternative to S’Bux and Dunkin.
Every time I take my car in the service at the dealer, they’ve upped their coffee game. Here’s a picture of their latest machine featuring espresso, cappuccino, latte, and mocha. Plus, a couple of things I’ve never seen before: a vanilla steamer and a chocolate shot. It served up a delicious latte in less than thirty seconds. Nicely done!
I’ve written about coffee machines before. Waiting areas have come a long way from the days of a single glass carafe one quarter full of burnt-tasting day-old coffee.
Which on this day was good because I had to wait about 2-1/2 hours for some simple service on my car. I had an appointment and the service bay didn’t look busy, but it too them a while before they got around to my oil change and tire rotation. Maybe it was because this was the car’s first service, so it was free.
But I can’t complain too much. I took advantage of the free snacks, including cookies, chips, crackers, granola bars, and fruit. No I didn’t eat all of those. I was polite. I only took one bag of popcorn chips to munch on while watching some home improvement TV episodes.
Eight service advisors were busy on computers. They received service customers, called about insurance, took payment for completed work, and discussed repair options. I suppose snacks and beverages takes the edge off having to get work done, which always costs more than you expect.
My body usually wakes me up around 6 am every morning. I don’t even have to set an alarm.
After I pull on some pants and a t-shirt, I hit the bathroom, wash my hands and face, and wander out to the kitchen to start the coffee maker that I set up the night before. It takes about five minutes to brew the pot. I drink a big glass of water and wait to hear five beeps from the coffee maker. It’s ready!
I drink my coffee black, so I fill up my favorite mug and sit at the dining room table with my bible, journal, and a pen, and do my morning reading and writing. I’ve been reading straight through the bible for years. I read a chapter or two and write down my thoughts, which may be the start of a devotion I’ll write for my blog. I also write what I did the previous day and the things I need to do today.
Sometime during those quiet moments, I’ll hear the big dog (our Great Dane) stirring in the back bedroom. So I let her out of her cage and take her out into the back yard. When she’s done doing what she needs to do, I fill her bowl with food for her breakfast and another bowl with water. She’ll usually lie down for a few moments after she eats, giving me a little more time to write.
And that’s my routine just about every morning. In the summer when the sun rises early, I’ll sit outside on the back patio. It’s so nice to be out there as the sky slowly brightens with all sorts of colors. It’s an amazing moment when the birds suddenly all start singing.
We took a morning trip to Mountain Thunder coffee roasters, just up the road from the house we were staying at on the big island of Hawaii. It’s on a hillside in the middle of the Kona coffee belt on the western side of Mauna Loa.
When we arrived we were invited to try samples of the different roasts, including light, French, espresso, and a blend of light and espresso they called “black and tan.” Before our coffee education, we were just glad to drink coffee. Later, we’d understand the different roasts and flavors of each. In other words, we were just steps away from becoming coffee snobs.
The free tour explained the whole process, from farm to brew. This roaster bought coffee beans from many nearby growers, all of whom harvested by hand. We got to see where the beans were sorted, rinsed and shelled, roasted, and finally packed for sale. We learned a lot.
Light roast has more caffeine than dark, which is roasted hotter and longer.
Most coffee beans grow two to a pod. The pods which only have one bean are called “peaberry.” The $70 per pound price of peaberry meant no free samples of that roast. But we bought dark chocolate covered peaberry beans in the gift shop. A nice caffeine boost without drinking a cup of coffee.
Kona blends (10%) are more common and affordable than 100% Kona coffee. the Starbucks in the Honolulu airport served Kona coffee.
Other regions (Ka’u, Puna, and Hamakua) boasted about their superior beans and roasts. We enjoyed the coffee in those places, too. We’re not that snobby.
I looked but never found a place to try a cup of peaberry coffee. I just wanted to find out if I could taste the difference. After the tour, I tried the samples again and did taste a big difference between light and espresso roasts.
This was one of our must-do activities in Hawaii. We could have spent a whole day visiting the coffee shops and shacks that lined the roads around the island. That would be a very good day!
When there’s a hurricane and the power is out for a few days, you learn what you can live without. Without electricity, there’s only candles after sunset, no wifi or cellular service, no streaming, no ice for drinks, no air conditioning or fans, no hot water for a shower. Everything is closed, so there’s nowhere to go.
I can get along with non-perishable food for a few days. I don’t mind drinking bottled water on mission trips. But the first question my wife and I ask when a storm knocks out the power is, “How are we going to make coffee in the morning?” If there’s no power to work the coffeemaker, I can boil water over a propane burner for some pour-over or instant coffee. I guess coffee is the luxury I wouldn’t want to live without.
A close second would be ice. Drinks pulled out of an ice-filled cooler or poured over ice into a glass are just so good. It doesn’t have to be a fancy beverage. Tap water over ice is delicious after yard work on a hot day.
It’s easy to forget how many luxuries we enjoy. I’m grateful for havingso much more than life’s necessities of food, water, shelter, and clothing.
The service adviser said, “It’s going to be about three to four hours.” The look on my face must have prompted her to add, “Yeah, they have to take the whole dashboard off to get to the wiring.”
I had expected to wait a couple of hours for the recall service to be done on my van. Double that? Good thing I brought something to do. And since it was early, maybe the coffee would be good.
Typically, I’d find a few pump thermoses in the beverage area. That’s fine, as long as the coffee is hot and fresh. A few hours from now it would be old and lukewarm. Once in a while, the dealership will install a Keurig coffee maker. Unfortunately, they’ll also buy the cheapest pods they can find, resulting in so-so brew.
But today I saw a coffee machine I’ve never seen before. It’s a Selectbrew coffee system, featuring Folgers coffee. Not a brand I reach for, but today I’ll give it a shot. I placed my cup, pushed the “dark roast bold” (of course) and within five seconds I had a strong, freshly brewed cup of coffee. It smelled and tasted wonderful. Later on, I tried the decaf variety, and it was just as tasty.
I know, I should probably be more concerned about the service and costs of car repair. But we’ve been coming to this dealership for decades and they’ve always done a great job at a reasonable price. I’ve had better coffee at coffee shops. But they didn’t have a clue about how to fix my car. Lol.
So what happens on Monday of Holy Week? Jesus returns to the temple in Jerusalem where he heals and teaches, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and spends the night with Lazarus.
When Jesus was twelve years old, his parents found him in the temple. Back then the he impressed the teachers of the law with his questions, knowledge and understanding. I wonder if any of those teachers were present that day when Jesus drove everyone out, including the animals.
I often hear people describe Jesus as being angry that day, even though anger is not mentioned in the bible. With a whip of cords in his hand, chasing man and beast out, he may have been angry. He certainly was passionate.
I think of this scene when I walk into church buildings. On the way to worship, I pass offering kiosks, donation boxes for mission offerings, and youth selling tickets to a fund-raising event. Not much has changed.
What do you think happened after Jesus left the temple that day? Everyone gathered up the money, set up the tables, rounded up all the animals, and got back to work. After all, it’s the week of Passover. The city is packed with people from all over Israel. It’s similar to race week or bike week in Daytona Beach. This is when businesses make most of their money for the year.
So what’s going on here? I don’t think the temple was restored to a house of prayer for all the nations. At least not until Pentecost. Jesus’s actions and stories provoke the religious leaders to get serious about getting rid of him. It’s like lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite.
And that’s exactly what Jesus intends. He is not caught up in a chain of events over which he has no control. He’s written the script. He’s playing the lead. He’s poking the bear. And everything is going according to plan.
Imagine a visitor to your church deliberately bumping the snack table hard enough to scatter donuts and coffee cups everywhere on a Sunday morning. That would stir things up, wouldn’t it?
While walking the dogs the other day (we take them out about twice a day), my mind wandered to some of the meals I ate while visiting new members and homebound folks. Coffee and cookies were pretty common. Sometimes good. Sometimes not. Sometimes out of a package. Sometimes homemade.
And sometimes I got a meal. Kathy was one I visited many times, while she was taking care of her father at home and then later when she couldn’t get out and around. But she could cook.
On one occasion, I had a vicar (pastoral intern) in tow when we went to visit her at lunch time. She roasted two whole chickens for us. These were surrounded by mashed potatoes, green beans, salad, and rolls. All this was followed by a Klondike bar for dessert. She always had six or seven varieties of Kondike bars in her freezer. That’s why you couldn’t find many in the store. It was enough food for a dozen people.
Pastoral ministry tip: just take a little bit of everything. Pace yourself. When pressured to get seconds, take even smaller spoonfuls. And, of course, leave room for dessert.
The day would come when Kathy couldn’t prepare meals for me. So she would have me take her out for lunch. We hit Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Alfie’s (on the beach in Ormond Beach, FL), TGI Fridays. She always paid, even though she was living off an impossibly small monthly income. She never ate much, but took home leftovers for the rest of the week. She also took home all the packs of butter on the table to go with the rolls.
When Kathy couldn’t physically get in and out of my car, she would have me stop and bring lunch. Her favorite was Chinese take out. While I would get General Tso’s chicken and fried rice, she would always request a large container of egg drop soup. When I arrived, she would drop a whole stick of butter into the soup container, and stir it until it all melted. I know, I little rich for me, too.
She also got meals on wheels each week. I got to try one of those meals. The microwavable meal was some kind of meat (the label didn’t specify), green beans, mashed turnips, and a roll. As I ate the meal she graciously shared with me, I remembered that I had eaten goat in Haiti, and banana soup and ugali in Kenya. I’ll live.
When she could no longer cook, Kathy offered me a pork roast out of the bottom of her freezer, underneath all the Klondike bars. When I asked how long it had been in there, she said, “I think it’s from last year.” It was over a year old.
That I said, “No thank you.” I wasn’t sure I’d live through that. One needs both faith and wisdom to survive in this world.
Another member I went to visit, S., had grown up in Cambodia. She escaped in the 1980’s, found refuge through a church in Michigan, and there met her husband. For my visit, she prepared enough food for twenty people. She deep fried two-dozen homemade spring rolls over a small backyard burner. To this she added multiple vegetable, noodle, and sesame seed side dishes. All for me. She didn’t even eat. She just watched me. I brought home a nice container of leftovers from her house.
And then there are many visits to ninety-eight year old B., who lived with her daughter, B2. Before Covid, B. would be awake most of the night and sleep late into the day, so she didn’t make church very often. It was a three-hour event when I came to visit. B2 always prepared a wonderful meal. I had chicken parmesan, tilapia, short ribs, meat loaf, pork loin chops. The sides were all kinds of vegetables, potatoes, rice, and bread. And of course, a dessert, most often some kind of cake or pie, with a scoop of ice cream. B. and B2. had lived in Bolivia back in the seventies, and had an arsenal of South American cuisine to draw from. Yes, it was always delicious. But it was also enough food for eight to ten people. I never had to worry about supper on the days I went to visit this family.
Every once in a great while, I would visit a family who offered me a beer. One such family thought I was German, so I had a choice of six imports that day. I only had one, since I still had to work that day and I also had to drive home.
P. who was a non-drinker, had the most extensive selection of beer and liquor in town. Whenever I visited him after his wife died, he always offered me a “bump and boost.” I think he meant a shot and a beer.
For me, the coffee (strong and black, please) was the best part. Caffeine is an essential part of an afternoon visit, if you catch my drift.
If I think of more snack and meal reviews from my time in ministry, I’ll be back to write a sequel.
Sometimes a shot of espresso is the perfect medicine for a nagging headache. After all, over the counter migraine remedies contain acetaminophen, aspirin, and caffeine. Let’s cut to the chase and dig out the espresso maker.
A few years ago I bought a small kitchen counter deLonghi espresso maker. It works well, but I had been decaffeinating, so it’s been unused on a shelf for a while. The last time I put on my barista hat, I learned that some pretty nasty stuff comes out of an espresso maker fresh out of hibernation. So I ran vinegar and then water through until it came out smelling like… nothing.
I found a can of Cafe Bustelo on the shelf, my measurer/tamper, and a couple of espresso cups in the kitchen cabinet. I switched on the machine, the green light came on after about ninety seconds and the machine began pressing hot water through the scoop of ground coffee. A dark brown dribble began filling the cups with a nice creme rising to the surface. It smelled and tasted wonderful. And, along with a little Tylenol sent the migraine packing. Mission accomplished.
Once it’s out on the counter, the machine calls out, “Use me!” So I’ve been making espresso to accompany dessert and pump up my morning cup of coffee. It has an arm with which I could steam milk, but I haven’t tried that yet. But I should. A latte must be a cure for something.
Waite for it... 