I'm always amazed at how a cup of coffee can soothe the savage beasts no matter what time of day it is. I don't know about you, but first thing in the morning, I often feel that savage is far too kind of a word to describe my demeanor. In fact, one cup of coffee is rarely enough to enhance my calm and unruffled my caffeine deprived feathers. Of course, the same can be said for about three in the afternoon or nine in the evening (perhaps this final cup is the reason I'm so groggy in the morning?).

Regardless of the hour or the time of year, there is a coffee drink that will suit the mood and serve up delicious flavor. I get a kick out my two year old. We were trying to explain to her that my cup off coffee was warm. Of course, it had a double shot of cocoa for good measure. It was Halloween, cold and trick or treating had gotten old for the children right after the first violent wind gust. But mommy's coffee, her (youngest daughter's) first taste I might add and her response was "I like warm!"

Some of your are rolling your eyes and others are wondering where on earth I'm going. My point is that at nine on Halloween night my two year old built a memory around coffee. Whether she ever actually remembers that moment, we'll remind her of that moment for the rest of her life. It was too cute to pass up and we all smile at the shared happy memory. My point is, how many of your happy memories have been built around a cup of coffee? Seriously. As I think back, every memory I have of my grandparents (without exception) there was a pot of coffee brewing nearby. If there wasn't a cup in hand, there was about to be.

I remember shelling butter beans in the southern hot August sun and my grandparents drinking coffee (mind you this was long before iced coffee made it's debut in the southern United States and probably a little before Starbuck's became even a neighborhood coffee joint) in order to cool off. I can also remember thinking that they were quite certifiable as well. However, we all survived those long hot summers and I now have coffee memories of people my children will never know to share with them and new coffee memories to torment them (at least the little one) with as well.

Drinking coffee has become such an integral part of our lives that it is almost an unconscious event (some would say a non event). We drink coffee so much that the caffeine seems to be completely ineffective until we've gone a few hours without its stimulation of our brain cells. It's in those foggy early morning moments that we truly understand the nature of our weakness and dependency upon coffee all the while reveling in the rich aroma and the wonderfully bittersweet flavor of our favorite brew.