Just Sugar

(originally written Friday, February 19, 2010)

I don’t put cream in my coffee, nor any other milk or pseudo-milk product, just lots of sugar.  Like, two and a half teaspoons in a large cup.  Coffee fascinates me.  It has such an invigorating, rich smell, and combined with its heat makes for a very inviting morning drink.  Or in this case, a comforting bitter balance for an evening’s dessert of chocolate cake… in a subdued restaurant overlooking Rideau Street in Ottawa in February.

 

“Nursing a cup”

 

We do, don’t we?  We lovingly cradle the warm cup in our hands, soaking in the radiant heat, somehow warming our souls through our fingertips.

 

There is such a wide variety of sorts of sugar.  Given the choice I will take the larger-grained “raw” sugar or “natural” sugar.  Not because I think it is more healthy or classy, though these could be valid reasons.  I like how it looks.  And I love it when pastries and other baking have large crunchy sugar crystals on the top, or in them.  Yet neither of these qualities make this coffee any different for me than using regular, white sugar.  The crunchiness dissolves.  The looks are lost.  And logically, smaller-grained sugar dissolves quicker, so that would be the most efficient sugar to use.  So there’s really no proper reason for me to use the raw sugar when given the choice.  And that’s just one of the reasons coffee holds its mystery for me.