Lunch on the town is all long skirts, tall drinks and sunny salads. What’s better than old friends and new outfits? We lunched, we lounged, we lingered. Sans coffee, we listed toward the car, which perversely had left.
While we were chatting up smoked salmon, the car had been kidnapped. I called to get the terms of ransom.
Before lunch, the free parking space had seemed fortuitous. After lunch — on a street-cleaning Wednesday — the tab came to free plus an $11 Uber ride, $60 parking ticket and $170 “relocation” fee.
As I directed the driver to spiral under Wacker Drive, we descended from plaza, to parking, to purgatory, to pound. One of my lunch companions, the one who doubles as daughter, mused: “It’s like you’ve been here before.”
Later, I showed my girl how to swirl coffee cubes and coffee beans into thick, sweet reprieve. The crunchy drink restored my mood, though not, I suspect, my street cred.
Crunchy Coffee
Prep: 5 minutes, plus time to freeze
Makes: 1 refreshing drink
Cold coffee
Half-and-half
Sugar
Vanilla
Chocolate-covered coffee beans
Freeze: Pour cold coffee into ice cube trays. Freeze solid. Pop out cubes. Store in a plastic bag in the freezer.
Measure: Choose a serving glass. Fill with coffee cubes. Half fill with half-and-half.
Swirl: Empty contents of the glass into blender. (If your blender has a single-serve carafe, use that.) Add 1-2 teaspoons sugar and a drop of vanilla. Swirl smooth.
Pulse: Drop in a handful of coffee beans. Pulse a few times to break up (but not pulverize) beans.
Serve: Scrape into serving glass. Enjoy.
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