These are great! I hope to hear a few more before I close comments tonight.

Oh, and my Best Coffee Story? You get it everyday, honey. Everyday.

(No. Seriously. It should be for tomorrow’s main post.)

End note to my entry. Hubby was mightily peeved at me when he found out. 1) because I walked that far 3 days after the c-section. 2) because he missed out on a chance to call all friends and family to witness me making an “arse” of myself… pun intended

3 years later I am unable to think about it without blushing and killing myself laughing!

Kelly, when do you write Your Best Coffee Story?

At 5 am I was measuring the coffee into the pot and chatting with the early shift folks (3 or 4 of them who hovered around the coffee pot like junkies looking for a fix). I was getting ready to add water when I hit the glass pot against the side of the sink and it shattered. It was the only coffee pot we had and no one had the chance for a cup yet.

I looked up at everyone in the room and I can honestly say I now know how it feels to face down an angry mob. There was absolute silence and yet I could hear the screaming.

This happened years ago but if I called anyone of the people there that morning today they’s still not speak to me. *laughs*

FAR too FUNNY!!!

Mr. Handsome shows up. He’d spent a year living in Italy working for a Formula One race team, traveling the world, and learned to love the brown bean. He enjoyed one cup of espresso each morning. Two years we spent dating. Nary a drop crossed my lips.

We married and enjoyed a romantic Italian honeymoon. Nothing for me, please, I don’t need coffee, thankyouverymuch.

Five years later, we’re lucky enough to go back to Italy. Time and a good marriage softened my prickly edges. Sitting on the Mediterranean, in a postcard-perfect town in the Cinque Terre, on a postcard-perfect day, Mr. Handsome bought himself an espresso. “This is the most wonderful cup of espresso I’ve ever had in my life,” he says. “Whattheheck,” I say. He goes back into the teeny-tiny little Cafe Giuliana and orders a cappuccino for me (better to start out with something fluffy than go right for the hard stuff).

The heavens opened. I was hooked. It was like perfection in a cup.

And now, every weekend morning, Mr. Handsome fires up the macchina and pulls me a cap with whole milk foam and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

When I was 13 my grandma took me out for a day of shopping and lunch. I felt so grown up because no one had ever taken me out for a day like that except my mom.

I don’t remember where we went shopping, or even what we bought. It couldn’t have been anything terribly exciting because grams never spent money on toys and her taste in clothes was somewhat akin to a private school uniform.

Grams told me we were stopping for lunch in Yorkville on the way home, at a little restaurant she often visited with her friends. The restaurant was in a strip mall, but not the kind you see today. The strip mall was actually built around a set of courtyards that had trees and park benches. There were antique street lights for night. All the stores faced inward so that from the street you saw the back of the buildings, not the store front. It was a beautifully designed little shopping area.

The restaurant looked like it had come straight out of a 1920′s tea party. There was lace over every table and big potted ferns placed around the dining area. The walls were covered in a large pastel peacock tail design. Once you were seated a little plate of lady fingers and a silver serving set containing sugar and cream were set at the table. Each table was also adorned with a small potted African violet.

Once we were given the menus grams told me that I would love their tuna melt sandwiches (my fav. at the time) and that after we ate, I had to try the hazelnut coffee. I was so excited. I had never been allowed to have coffee before. I felt like I was twenty-five years old, instead of 13. After the meal, as promised, grams ordered two cups of hazelnut coffee. They brought it out in wide rimmed cups atop little saucers. The coffee was topped off with real whip cream and they then sprinkled cinnamon on top of that. It was the best thing I had ever tasted. It was sweet with a definite, but not overpowering, taste of hazelnut. I drank ever single drop.

I have returned there only 4 times since that day. I took my mom to lunch for the first time there when I was 16 (I actually drove and paid), I took a very close friend who was visiting from out of town, and I visited two more times with my grams.

I had always planned on taking Liberty there when she was 13 , hoping to share a special moment with her as she passed into her teen years. Sadly, when I went through the town last summer for the first time in almost a year, I found that the strip mall had been torn down. Stores, restaurants and all, and had been replaced with a more modern strip mall. My restaurant was gone. I actually teared up at the loss of such a special memory.

I’m sure many people have never given that restaurant a second thought. But me? Well, Who could ever forget their first Cuppa?