Few things bring me as much joy as a perfectly crafted cortado in the morning.
I try to find a local coffee house when I travel. However, there are times (I'm ashamed to admit) when I will pop into a starbucks and grab a substitute.
The flat white at Starbucks approximates a cortado, with way too much milk. But, in a pinch, it'll do.
I had one yesterday. I was stuck in a god-forgotten town in central Texas and was about to walk into a jail to visit a client. I needed a coffee. I wanted a cortado. What I settled for was a flat white.
The day before, I found a perfectly crafted cortado in a little college-town-coffee-house. It was served by a barista with a ring in her nose and a shade of purple in her hair that defied understanding, but still worked.
God has not forgotten this town. I met a young missionary out front. He was smoking a cigarette and telling me about his sailing ministry he's starting. Sweet kid. Misguided and young - which seem to go hand in hand a lot - but a sweet kid, nonetheless.
Today, I've been in the car for a while. I finished my flat white about half way through the four hour drive.
I'm staying in a tiny-house on an eight hundred acre ranch for the next few nights. There's not a coffee house within 30 miles, not even a starbucks. I'll brew a pot of drip coffee in the morning. It'll be some kind of pecan flavored coffee. It'll be fine. I'll make it into town to enjoy a cortado at some point.
Few things bring me as much joy as a perfectly crafted cortado in the morning. But waking up on a private preserve seems to ease the pain of drinking pecan flavored drip coffee.