The Coffee Break: Pumpkin Spice Latte at Home

Living in the U.S., I was never a super huge fan of Starbucks, mostly because my formative coffee drinking years took place in Nebraska where I frequented a local haunt called The Coffee House (aka Panache), where I'd spend up to eight hours a day studying and doing homework.

When Starbucks showed up, we shunned them.

But after I left Nebraska, Starbucks was an easy find. I discovered what I liked and didn't, and it was usually easy to find a place to sit for hours on end and soak up the free wireless access.

When I moved to Colorado I largely reverted to my local coffee shop hopping, but sometimes the local joints didn't have great wifi, so I was sent packing back to ole reliable where I'd get a Grande Starbucks Doubleshot on Ice (which, at 99 percent of stores, they'll tell you is not an available drink and that there is no button for it, but I know the recipe).

All of that being said, I was never a huge fan of their seasonal drinks, mostly because I'm not a huge fan of sweet and milky drinks.

At The Coffee House I started my adventures off with the sweetest treats they had like the Crunchy Cricket (a blended ice drink with creme de menthe and coffee beans) and their Irish Mocha (which was very milky and very sweet).

But as I progressed through my undergrad and money became more sparse, I realized I couldn't afford those drinks, so I'd buy the cheapest cup of freshly brewed coffee and take advantage of the super cheap refills. I learned to drink my coffee black, and I loved it.

These days, I usually take my iced coffee (קפה קר for those of you in Israel) black and my hot coffee with a bit of sugar and milk, but I'm going to attempt to take myself back to my origins with hot, black coffee.

But with the weather turning a bit and chatter on the web surrounding all things fall and pumpkins, I've been jonesing for a classic Starbucks treat known as the Pumpkin Spice Latte. I've probably had a handful of them in my life, but for some reason, the canned pumpkin in my cabinet was begging me to turn it into a coffee drink.

So I brewed up a strong cup of coffee and got to the pumpkin part.

I took 2 Tbls canned pumpkin, 1 cup milk, and 1 Tbls agave and put them in a pan over medium-high heat and brought to a boil. I mixed in a generous dose of nutmeg, coriander, and cinnamon (in the place of pumpkin pie spice), as well as a teaspoon of vanilla. Once it was well mixed with a whisk, I gave it a very hefty hand whisking to bring in some air bubbles (no frother over here).

I poured the coffee into my mug and poured the pumpkin/milk mixture in over top and mixed.

Then? I devoured. It was hot, spiced, and just the taste of autumn I needed but can't really get here in Israel, unfortunately. It's not exactly a latte, because I don't have a fancy espresso machine with a fancy wand or anything, but it got the job done, and when you're a world away from anything remotely resembling "home" as you once knew it, a fudgin' in a recipe is the best thing to do. (Also, this is much cheaper than the $4.50 I would have paid at an actual Starbucks location.)

What at-home coffee concoctions have you come up with to get that fix? 

School starts soon, and I am so unprepared.

I'm back, part two. (That's me in the Omaha airport on Thursday, nursing a 2-hour delay with $3.99 unlimited day's web access.)

After returning from Israel, I headed home to Nebraska to get some time in with my family -- specifically to see how my father was doing after his first round of chemo at the end of December. The trip out wasn't too bad, we flew out of Newark in the wee hours of the morning on Monday and got to Nebraska with time to do some outlet shopping at some sad, sad outlet malls between Omaha and Lincoln. Our first stop? Runza. The world's greatest fast-food joint. Tuvia loved the place so much, every time we talked about getting another bite to eat, he'd joke about going back to Runza. We spent the next few days driving around town, me showing Tuvia my old haunts (especially the Coffee House, where we went three of the four days we were there), my high school, my favorite places, and cheesy places like the mall to buy me a nice formal dress for an upcoming awards ceremony that was canceled due to the inclement weather last night (but it was beautiful -- well, the weather, that is; I guess the dress is okay, hah). We ate at all my favorite places -- Runza, Bison Witches, Lazlos -- and a few places that I wasn't so fond of. We went book shopping and I discovered that my favorite bookshop -- The Antiquarium -- that used to be down in the Old Market in Omaha is no longer there, trading space for someplace out of town. The old places are turning into new places with condos and lofts popping up all over downtown Omaha and in the Haymarket in Lincoln.

But the most important part of the trip was probably the time spent at home, just sitting with my family. Tuvia managed to spend a good hour stumping my mom, little brother, the little brother's girlfriend, and me with a game called "Petals Around the Rose." I could have killed him, that game is so ridiculous. I got to look at old photos of my mom and dad, and many of my mom when she was just a child. My grandmother, in an effort to clean out the house after my grandfather passed last year, has come up with some real gems. My favorites are probably the ones of the car my mother wrecked -- there are so many of that poor front bumper. But the photos of mom and dad opening gifts, dad in his plaid shirts and overalls (a style he managed well into the early 2000s) are some of the most prized I saw.

Last Tuesday, we took my dad to his doctor's appointments, eventually shuffling him to a hospital across the way for some extra looks into what was making him feel so crappy. We spent nearly four hours with my dad that day. I followed him into the doctor's office, helped ask questions, and took about four pages of notes to share with my mom on his medicines, how he was feeling, his shocking weight loss, and other notable things. He kept apologizing for taking up our time, and I kept reminding him "We're in Lincoln, Nebraska, there isn't that much for us to do, it's okay!" In some way, I have to believe that me being there helped calm him, in some way maybe.

It was more emotionally exhausting than I had planned for, and it didn't really hit me how drained I was until Tuvia and I got back to our little Motel 6 room each night. I just wanted to sleep it all off, prepare myself for another day, and go. Even now, as I sit comfortably in Connecticut staring out the window after a night's snow leftovers, I feel a little tired. I talk to my mom who tells me when dad is having his up days and down days. Some days he's down for some Subway, other days he just feels sick. It's the chemo.

So that was the past week for me. Trying to smile and stay lifted. Excited to see my little brother, who has managed to grow a nice little "emo" 'do on his head (men in my family are blessed with thick heads of hair), which his girlfriend seems to really like. He's a smart kid, a really smart kid, and he always makes me smile, no matter how crappy I feel. I miss him -- a lot. Luckily, having Tuvia there was a great lift. He's kind of a personified smile. He is always optimistic, uplifted, and manages to keep me afloat. I think it was a good thing for my parents to meet him when they did -- he allowed laughter, smiles, and fun to enter the house for a few days.

At any rate, a sobering post, I know. I have more Israel to talk about, of course, and I'll probably write next on my Bat Mitzvah ceremony, which was a major trip. I think, if anything, the photos will do the talking for me, though. The look on my face? Priceless and cheesy!

Chavi en Route: Part I

The thing about a nearly eight-hour drive across Western Illinois, the entire state of Iowa, and a smidgen of Nebraska, is that you have a lot of time to sit and think. Yes, the rental car is brand new (a 2009 Ford Focus), and yes it has a bajillion channels on Sirius Satellite radio, but that doesn't mean the wheels stop turning. The car lacks cruise control, so I had to spend a certain amount of energy making sure I wasn't breaking the sound barrier, but I made really good time and as I pulled into Nebraska a little after 10:15 last night, I felt a sense of nervous calm flush over me. I know that sounds contradictory, but I guess I have to explain.

Driving into Nebraska, you realize how dark and quiet everything is, and this is where the calm comes from. I miss being able to see every last star in the sky, to watch the moon shuffle behind dark clouds and it to be completely, utterly pitch black. The nervousness comes from being home again after eight months. Though, I don't know if I can really call it home anymore, since it isn't where I hang my hat and it is most definitely not where my heart it. Then again, my heart is on one coast and I'll soon be on the other coast. That was food for thought during the length of my trip, but I digress.

Have you ever been to Nebraska? Do you understand it's absolutely underrated beauty? The simplicity, the quiet, the dark, the complete and utter sanctuary-style life. This truly is G-d's country. 

I'm sitting at my favorite coffee shop in the entire world -- the Coffee House in Lincoln, Nebraska. Some call it Panache, but in truth they don't really get it. Panache is what the overhang reads, but it's the Coffee House. I started coming here in high school, and I lived for a long time off of their Irish Mocha before I was able to drink straight coffee without gagging. I've watched the furniture change from dingy couches to upscale plus chairs and couches you might find at Pier 1 Imports. But it still has that classy, collegiate coffee house vibe. The chalk board still hangs in the women's bathroom, and people have taken to writing on it in marker since, well, chalk in the bathroom isn't very sanitary.

But the best part?

I walked into the coffee shop and there, sitting in the big open first room were two classic regulars of the Coffee House -- the Russian who was always friendly and here more than I ever was, and the old man with tattoos all over his arm, sporting the sleeveless shirt I always knew him in. The guy at the counter is the same as it was those years ago when I'd spend eight hours a day studying Biblical Hebrew. Those days were more productive, too, because I didn't have a laptop and I actually had to focus on the work (sans distractions). It was like coming home. I mean really, really coming home.

So I haven't even been "home" for an entire 24 hours, but I notice the divide. Maybe when I go out with friends tomorrow and Saturday I'll start to feel like I'm back and like I'm floating right back into the place I once fit. But there are certain people who aren't here, who -- to me -- make this place feel like home. Thus, I'll drink my Irish Mocha and surf the web and eat at all my old haunts and watch little Timmy fill up his coin collecting book and watch people study and the regulars do their thing and I'll think about the long drive I have coming up.

If I thought the nearly eight-hour drive was long, my head just might implode during the 22-hour trek to Connecticut I have coming up.