I hope I'm finding you all well and happy and healthy and blessed.

I love coffee, coffee is life. Well, I must love coffee since I joined this community, right? Duh!

I have built fond memories around coffee, and I have tasted several types of blends throughout my life, Turkish, Italian, French, etc, all with their perks and respective anecdotes.

Like food, coffee for me has a direct connection with a certain part of my life or a certain member of my family and friends. I got a boyfriend once just by being a maniac coffee love; we clashed every time at coffee breaks from rehearsals at the Orchestra, and he always wanted to cut the line in front of me, and one time he waited for me to get my cup and there he was, standing with one for him and another for me, the rest is history...

One time in France, I was on tour with the orchestra and in the Hotel, they gave us a latte, not enough to start my day, so I scaped from our security team (I'm tiny so no one noticed) to the coffee lounge and bought one large. My oh my, I thought I knew strong coffee, that kept me awake for two days!

There are beautiful memories as well as some others not that good, like the time we had a food shortage in the country and coffee was nowhere to be found, and those who could get their hands on a package were willing to pay five times over what it was worth. For less fortunate people like us in that time, when our stockpile (yes, we had a stockpile) we couldn't pay the obscene prices that were in the market so artisanal products were a cheap solution although a really bad one for sure. It turned out that it wasn't coffee but ground roasted types of flour, corn, wheat, or barley, even we once got roasted black beans, and they all tasted so soo bad that my dad even threw up with some of those.

That's why we harvested our own coffee beans because guess what?

We have a coffee tree in our backyard!

It's small I have to confess that, and the first time we harvested we got about 200 grams of coffee, I think the Robusta kind, I don't know for sure, all I know is that my dad got it from a neighbor, with no intention of harvesting or anything. But the need is a powerful thing, and we wanted good coffee so we took it upon ourselves to get it.

The process was long, so long, from picking the berries, to get out the grain, to soak them for the gooey layer to fall off, then dry them, to peel them, to dry them again, to finally roast them, ground them and make the brew. We lasted almost a month doing that, it was a tedious job and we all had jobs to get to, so it wasn't like we spend all of our time with the coffee task force.

I was the one who roasted them, my God, I was scared, I didn't know what to expect, the temperature had to be just right otherwise they could burn and ruin everything, I had to keep stirring the grains in the pan to make sure they all got the same amount of heat. I think I lost a few pounds in that hot kitchen roasting those coffee beans.

Then I hear a POP, then another, and before I knew it they were all poping like kernel corn or something. I had read that something like that was supposed to happen when the residual humidity within the grain evaporates or something like that, but I didn't expect such loud noises and some of them even jumped up, so scary but funny at the same time. My biggest trouble was knowing when to get them out, burned or undercooked. I went with my gut and I got it right, they were perfect. We cooled them, then ground them and brew them.

It was a light color, not what we expected from the color of the roasted grain, so I thought that I had burned them, but nope, the taste was so robust and strong, like I don't know, wood?. That's why I think is the Robusta kind, that taste is not fruity, is butched, and it gave us a boost like we hadn't had in a long time.

That coffee lasted a month, we blended it with other brands when we got to buy some at the supermarket or trade it for another good. We also saved some for a special occasion, like that year's holidays, when my brothers and my sister came to visit. The next year we wanted to do it again but it was a very dry year, and the tree didn't give many beans, and the ones we could salvage we gave to my aunt, and later on the tree sort of died.

Last year however flourished again and I got to harvest some beans, and I even took pictures which my mom deleted from the phone, thank you very much. But I found one, with the beans drying, and now all I have to do is peel them and roast them, just to test it again. Currently, we have 3 trees, one about 3 meters high, that's the first one, the resurrected one, and 2 others small and cute, the babies.

You see, when people say coffee is life is because it's true, and for us meant a time out during a difficult situation, and also a learning experience for sure, for our day doesn't start without a good cup of coffee and the memory of what it means and how grateful we must be just to have one.