Make Mine a Flat White.

I would kill for a coffee. A girl needs some vices and one of mine is the daily requirement for a good coffee. Since I don’t grow coffee I haven’t had one since I started this experiment and it is beginning to affect my demeanour each morning. My only drive to get out of bed each morning was to get down to my local café for a coffee. It is my special treat after the bedlam of getting ready for school and kindy in our house. Not only is it for the caffeine fix but also serves as a good place to catch up with friends before the real start to the day i.e. Making beds, picking up little boys undies around the house, mopping up split milk on the kitchen bench and feeding the animals.

Since the commence of this experience I feel like a social leper, wondering what my other coffee friends are up to and what the local goss around town is. Interestingly I am surprised that I am not experiencing the tremors or headaches of a true coffee addict. Perhaps I haven’t drunk enough!

I have read that during the war people would grind dandelion root to make a poor man’s version of coffee. Thinking this may be an answer to my caffeine, or lack of, dilemma I go on a forage for  some roots.

Freshly dug dandelion roots

Dandelion root dried and ready to brew

 Dandelion plants have a long single tap root so need to be dug up with a spade. If you try and just pull them out by hand they will snap off at ground level. Trust me I know this for a fact. Once dug out  scrub the roots clean under running water and place them in a hot oven for half an hour. Very proud of myself as I did this at the same time I was baking my bread. The roots will become crisp and easy to grind up in any grinder. Place in a coffee plunger, add boiling water and let steep for a few minutes.

Don't try this at home!

After sampling this concoction I will admit if you imagine very hard the aroma does smell of coffee (sort of) but you do need a vivid imagination. The taste is dreadful, bitter and woody with a hint of mushroom? Sorry I can’t recommend this to anyone. After 10 minutes I still had the bitter aftertaste in my mouth. Give your dandelions to your rabbit, chickens or goat. They will put it to much better use.

What to do? I still have the dilemma of no daily coffee. Armed with some freshly cut sunflowers from my garden I trudge down to Hawthorne, my local cafe, and explain my experiment and resulting predicament. I ask if I  can barter some produce for an occasional flat white. The wonderful people at Hawthorns are with the programme and I am back enjoying my coffee and social catch up time. Perhaps it’s not just the morning coffee a girl needs?

Do you know that a Flat White is as kiwi as pavlova? Apparently my daily indulgence was  developed in little old NZ. On my recent trip to New York there was not a flat white to be seen! In fact I know I was a tourist in a big city but I found it really hard to seek out any form of good coffee in the big apple. Lots of warm filtered coffee (yuk) and that horrible stuff from Starbucks but not a lot of proper coffee as we Kiwis know it. Surprising given the number of cultures found in this giant melting pot. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the know?