Pimp Your Caffeine

I used to mock my husband over his caffeine addiction. "You're just weak," I told him while I skipped around with loads of energy.

Then we had kids.

Yeah, now guess who can't function without a constant caffeine drip. Honestly, if I don't have a shot of espresso first thing followed up by a good two-three glasses of green tea throughout the day, I'm quasi-comatose by 2 p.m. I want to curl up under my desk, George Costanza-style, and snooze. I'm addicted. Hopelessly, painfully addicted.

But, here's the thing: I can't stand the way coffee tastes. Love the smell — adore it. A whiff of coffee as it bubbles away in a maker takes me back to my childhood and my grandparents' Missouri farmhouse with its linoleum floors and vaguely hay-ish smell and chicks and ducks waiting to hatch in the incubator tucked in the family room. Good times.

Back to the coffee.

Unless it tastes like ice cream, I can't stomach it. Properly diluted with ice and milk, it is palatable. But now it's chilly in the mornings, so iced coffee doesn't cut it. Instead, I make hot chocolate — white hot chocolate is even better because of its ultra sweetness — and cut it with the bitter brew. Coffee that tastes good and, more importantly, gets me through the morning without thinking I ought to do shots of, um, something else, like Jack Daniels.