Coffee - What's in Yours?

Since I read The Ominivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, I've realized food really is a dilemma (though such a worthwhile one). We're blessed with so many options, or are we really cursed? As you walk through your average supermarket, you're bombarded with choices, decisions, pros and cons. Do you go the fat free route and sacrifice purity? Do you go the organic route and pay extra? Do you go convenience and load the earth up on extra packaging? What are we consumers to do??

I know where I stand on most of these, and it's made shopping more of a challenge, and sometimes more expensive, but I've also realized my organic, fresh shopping bill does balance out by not buying too many pre packaged, pre portioned items. So yes, I'm clear on a lot of things in the grocery store and on my table, but here's one I keep toying with and going back and forth on...

What's the best thing to put in your coffee?

I only recently started drinking coffee, well relatively speaking,  and without giving too much of my age away, I went a couple of decades without it (yikes decades!), but now even dream about that luscious brew in my sleep. I just LOVE coffee!! I love waking up and knowing I'm about to embark on my first cup - brewed strong, fragrant aroma warming the kitchen, sharp taste kick starting me awake. But here's the thing I wonder, what's our best option to add to it?

I started out with the "synthetic coffee whitener" as Pollan calls it - you know the stuff, comes in lots of flavors, lots of fat contents and has lots of, well, stuff in it. I gave that up a while back and switched to soy milk. Then needed a change and went for cream and turbinado sugar or maybe some soy creamer, maybe the turbinado without the cream. Soy, even plain soymilk, does add a creaminess without so much fat. For as much as I love dessert, I actually don't like creamy sweet coffee, and for as much as I love my Starbucks, I'd never order something like a macchiato, creamy, caramelly, sweet something to pass for coffee.

So it's true, with all the choices in the grocery stores, in Starbucks, even in the coffee aisles with hazelnut coffee and caramel coffee and chocolate mint truffle coffee, I guess I'm just a purist. I choose my organic fair trade coffee and I guess maybe my dollars balance as I pass on those flavored whiteners and whipped cream toppings.

So as I sit and sip right now, the coffee is strong and black, and just darn good.

How about you? How do you take your coffee?