September first has come and gone, school is back in session, and the skies in Los Angeles have decided to go a bit grey. For this I am overjoyed, while summer is busy and frolicking about half naked is fun, the truth summer is just…okay. With Fall around the corner we can cozy up, hunker down, and borrow ourselves back at home, where we likely should be anyway as this pandemic rages on. All of this makes me long for sweater weather and warm beverages. Steaming in mugs that could also pass as soup bowls. Though I haven’t sat in a coffee house in quite some time I still taste the warmth of these drinks as I write.
Wanna know a secret? I can’t drink coffee. I know. Don’t gasp, even though it sounds like a minor tragedy. Caffeine and I are not on one accord and haven’t ever been really. As a kid the scent of coffee was one of my favorite things. Writing this I think back on the mornings sitting my grandmother’s when she would sneak me a small nip of the elixir during my visits. At the table with her as the sky was just beginning to brighten, in the quiet as the rest of family was asleep, fog cloaking the bay of Oakland were some of my favorite moments. I still love that smell, even if I can’t stomach a cup. That in turn made me a heavy tea drinker; matcha, earl gray, black tea. Unfortunately even the caffeine from those sometimes proven to be too much. But what is a morning without a steamy, creamy beverage to help wake you up? Nothing! So I needed to find a way to get that jolt without the actual…jolt. So I’m back with delicious alternative – a turmeric latte!
