32 replies to this topic

[Squeat Mungry]

Instant coffee. Tang. Lipton's powdered tea. Why?
Discuss.

Tang because it was invented for astronauts. Astronauts!!!

my nana once told my brother that if he liked the taste of tang so much she'd just soak rusty nails in his orange juice

I would happily drink rusty-nail-soaked orange juice if I could be an astronaut. An astronaut!!!!

[Wilfrid]

(Using Fast Reply here - hold tight.)

Like canned peaches, it's a different thing entirely, isn't it?

[Squeat Mungry]

Fast reply is weird. And why is it only in this thread? Fast reply is like instant coffee.

[g.johnson]

Camp Coffee dates from 1876 according to Wikipedia.

[Cathy]

I would happily drink rusty-nail-soaked orange juice if I could be an astronaut. An astronaut!!!!

My brother and I were obsessed with freeze-dried ice cream.

[Wilfrid]

Camp Coffee dates from 1876 according to Wikipedia.

A coffee and chicory syrup, good for milkshakes.

[yvonne johnson]

My paternal grand-father had a byname "Coffees Jock". Apparently when he was a child he made coffee for workmen sitting by their small fires down by the harbour. I guess this was around 1910 or so. I wonder if he made coffee with Camp. Entirely possible.

[Wilfrid]

My parents weren't coffee drinkers. Coffee drinking at home was, I'd say, rare in the UK thirty years ago - although now it's as common as anywhere. Instant coffee eventually appeared in my mother's kitchen, but I am pretty sure she never bought a coffee bean. I think at some point she aquired a "percolator" for special occasions - using ready ground coffee.

[splinky]

i was a decades long tea drinker [with lemon]until i lived in the uk, where you wackos put milk in your tea. i had my first cup of instant coffee in ol blighty and survived on that for the whole time, thank goodness for cows, smart farmers and double cream.

[porkwah]

i drank quite a bit of nigerian-derived folgers nescafe when i was in kenya. at least in the late 80s it wasn't easy to get anything else there. the good stuff was purely for export.

[corrected]

[Lauren]

I love my coffee and, of course, think mine is the best. When we travel, especially in rural areas, I prefer Nescafe to most drip coffees available.

[Suzanne F]

I will admit to bringing bags of instant Bustelo on vacation to make iced coffee -- melt in a little boiling water, add cold water and ice, and bingo, something almost totally unlike coffee, but drinkable. But I stopped. I also stopped trying to drink it hot, since I have way too many kinds of regular coffee which Paul won't drink any more, and I discovered that I had a one-serving drip cone and filters, I think left over from my mother (+1994). Now when I travel, if I can't get decent coffee, I'm satisfied enough with tea.

[Squeat Mungry]

I will admit to bringing bags of instant Bustelo on vacation to make iced coffee -- melt in a little boiling water, add cold water and ice, and bingo, something almost totally unlike coffee, but drinkable. But I stopped. I also stopped trying to drink it hot, since I have way too many kinds of regular coffee which Paul won't drink any more, and I discovered that I had a one-serving drip cone and filters, I think left over from my mother (+1994). Now when I travel, if I can't get decent coffee, I'm satisfied enough with tea.

On one of my many marathon solo coast-to-coast road-trips ages ago, I stopped into a rural diner in, I think, Kansas. It was a hot mid-west summer, and I needed a caffeine fix to keep me going, so I ordered an iced coffee. The waitress refused at first, because she had never heard of such a thing! But she was sweet and tried to make one for me. Before I could stop her, she filled a tall tumbler with ice and poured hot coffee off the burner directly over it. Of course the glass shattered and made a huge mess. As I was helping her clean it up (it was my fault, after all), I noticed a jar of instant Nescafe on the shelf in the kitchen. We proceeded exactly as you describe, and it got me through the rest of the prairie. Of course I tipped her well.

[cristina]

Nescafé is affectionately known as No Es Café here in Mexico. It used to be much more common to find a jar of the stuff on a restaurant table than to find brewed coffee, although in the last few years, the coffee craze has also hit Mexico. The only way I can drink it is a teaspoonful of the granules and some sugar (or substitute) stirred into steaming hot milk.

Mexico grows lots of coffee (in Veracruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Michoacán, etc) for export, but not much for local consumption--except for Nescafé.

[Orik]

Nescafé is affectionately known as No Es Café here in Mexico. It used to be much more common to find a jar of the stuff on a restaurant table than to find brewed coffee, although in the last few years, the coffee craze has also hit Mexico. The only way I can drink it is a teaspoonful of the granules and some sugar (or substitute) stirred into steaming hot milk.

Mexico grows lots of coffee (in Veracruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Michoacán, etc) for export, but not much for local consumption--except for Nescafé.

One thing I haven't managed to discovered yet is how (if at all possible) I can buy green beans in Mexico and have them shipped to the Yucatan. It almost seems like it'd be easier and cheaper to buy them in the US and take them back to Mexico.