Mountain Thunder Coffee

http://www.mountainthunder.com/

Burnt toast.  The odor fills one's nose the same way that the delicious aroma of freshly brewed coffee beans does.  I smelled my dad's burnt toast this morning before I opened my eyes, which made me think of COFFEE!

OH, how I miss my coffee!  I'm in coffee pergatory right now, waiting, waiting, WAITING for the day I can drink of God's most wonderful creation.  I believe the promised land flowed with milk and coffee...who drinks milk and honey? Oh, but I do like sugar, so if they used honey instead I guess it could be milk and honey and coffee...but I digress. 

Why no coffee? you ask.    My children.  I now understand what sacrafice means!  I had to give it up in my 9th week of pregnancy when my stomach lurched while grinding beans one morning.  That was one very wicked day of caffiene withdrawl!  I got back on the wagon the day I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes five months later.  I decided that if I couldn't have sugar, I WAS going to have my coffee!  The last two months of the pregnancy was pretty rough, but I had coffee to make it all better.

THEN I delivered early.  Darn kids robbed me of three more weeks of coffee drinking! 

The boys were just a few weeks old and I was SO sleep deprived I could hardly believe it.  In fact, I remember thinking, THIS is why they use sleep deprivation as a form of torture!  Steve was making coffee.  Mmm, just thinking about grinding the beans now makes my mouth water.  I'll have just a bit, a teacup full instead of my Mountain Thunder coffee mug, I reasoned.   I sipped that teacup and made it last all morning...ah, heavenly.  How could something so wonderful POSSIBLY affect the babies?

Oh, we learned.  In a hurry we discovered why nursing moms (me, at least!) should NOT drink coffee.  Let's just say I'm OFF the wagon again, waiting in coffee pergatory for those pearly gates to open and let me in coffee paradise.

Where is coffee paradise?  It's at Mountain Thunder Coffee in Kona, Hawaii.  When you leave the sunny, warm Kona coast and drive about 30 minutes up the hill into the cooler, foggier coffee region, you discover coffee heaven.  I've had the privilege to visit twice and can't wait to return.

There's so much to learn about coffee there!  Did you know that when you buy a "Kona Blend" coffee that it's only 10% Kona beans and those are the lowest quality beans that plantation is allowed to sell?  I don't even buy it any more! 

Now don't get thinking I drink 100% Kona coffee all the time.  That would be like eating wedding cake every day!  (Not that I wouldn't like that, though.)  We buy a bag or two of Kona to bring home with us and brew it until it's gone.  We've learned you can't save it for special occasions because otherwise the beans dry out and then you've got a very expensive bag of dried up, tasteless beans.  Might as well be decaf then.

Isn't it funny how something so strange as the smell of burnt toast can remind you of something so fabulous as Mountain Thunder Coffee from your Hawaiin vacation?  Or is it just me?