Coffee, Coffee, Coffee

My entire workplace is pretty lousy where the staff room kitchen is concerned.

If you were to come down for morning tea, you’ll often find styrofoam cups, paper towels and clean cutlery in short supply. The microwave is often splattered with food stains, and the sink is frequently piled with dirty dishes. The fridge smells of food that people have a tendency to leave in there. There was a leftover Pavlova still sitting there last week from Christmas Lunch, for heaven’s sake!

Over time, I’ve learned to gather my own stash of things. I have paper plates to save me from washing up. I keep my own plastic cutlery, because our kitchen seems to have more knives than it does forks and spoons. I was furious last time we ran out of styrofoam cups and I couldn’t have my morning coffee. So I now have my own stash of those as well.

Last Friday, I went to prepare my coffee at morning tea time. I noticed that the sugar container was empty. I began opening the cupboards, rummaging around for the big packet that’s normally kept there. But there was nothing to be found.

I never used to be much of a coffee drinker before I had diabetes. Yet these days, it’s one of the first things that I look forward to when I wake up in the morning. No, I’m not talking about the crappy stuff out of the tin. I mean a proper shot of Italian Espresso from the capsule machine, topped generously with heated milk. I’ve become a bit of a snob…

Coffee helps me to recover after a rough night of dealing with diabetes. It gets me through my early starts. I look forward to it at morning tea time at work. It accompanies me outside in the afternoons after work. I also appreciate that coffee is a relatively low carb beverage to enjoy in lieu of a snack. But I’ve never been able to drink it without two sugars, or in my case, equal tablets. 

Over the past year, I’ve been making a conscious effort to cut back. First I cut back to one and a half sugars, and got used to the taste. Then to one. Then to half a teaspoon. I left it there, because hey, half a teaspoon wasn’t much. That was, until we ran out of sugar in the kitchen last Friday at work.

Deciding that a coffee without sugar was better than no coffee, I made myself one. And there actually wasn’t much of a difference in the taste. 

 Today, I’m proud to say that I am able to drink my coffee with no sugar.

All because of diabetes, nonetheless.

(And one very messy kitchen). 

One Comment

  1. Ah, so that messy, unstocked kitchen was actually a good thing in this case. 🙂 I sure hope it’s cleaner and better set up in the days to come though.

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