White Coffee, please

We fell in love with coffee in Seattle.  I started drinking it for the first time in Milwaukee in 2006 after Greyson was born and what I loved about it then, and still do, is the ritual of it. I love a cup early in the morning before the day starts, the smell of it and the temperature, but I didn't truly start appreciating great coffee until we moved to Seattle. Seattle knows coffee. Not just because Starbucks was born there. If you've spent any time in and around the city you know that it's appreciated as much for Starbucks as it is for the eccentric mom and pop shops, the one-man espresso stands and the aficionados who can tell the difference in blends, origins and bitterness by sight.  I'm not one of those but I do love a great cup of coffee with cream just like my parents drank when I was growing up.

What's my point? This is a challenge in London. Most places serve weak, watered down versions and the beans available in stores are average. Even a cappuccino from a great breakfast cafe is bland. I have found a few good cups of coffee in the area though (there is a Starbucks if I'm craving it, though it's a only a treat due to location and prices) and in fact this once Keurig-hating girl now owns a UK version by Bosch called "Tassimo" and the single-serve coffee is actually really good.  The challenge now is finding cream!  You can't get "half and half" here.  I can buy "single cream" or "pouring cream" which are similar but they come in little sour-cream-like plastic tubs and expire 2 days after they're purchased.  I can buy mini plastic cartons of whole or part-skim milk but the flavour isn't right.  Powdered Coffeemate is available- eww.

So, I shared this dilemma with a German colleague and she kindly sent me 3 little glass bottles of this:

Jackpot. It's perfect. I don't know what it is but the flavour is perfect and they don't even have to be refrigerated until they're opened (I would have been geeked out by this concept a few months ago- all dairy should be refrigerated right- but I've gotten over that). Problem is, I'm about to run out and it’s not available here either so unless I take a trip to Germany once/month I either ask my colleague to be my dealer or I continue my search.  For kicks, I popped the text from the bottle into Google translate.  "Creamy Dream".  I'm glad I waited to do that until after I tried it.  Creamy dreams conjure images of a different sort and I wouldn't put it in my coffee.

So, if you've got any ideas, I'm listening. A great cup of coffee is a wonderful treat for me and having been on my own these past weeks, the most enjoyable part of the day before the silence sets in.  The boys will be home in 2 days.  If half and half could survive a 12 hour journey, I would add it to the list of groceries that are coming with them.  The good news is we'll be in Italy in 9 days and I know I can count on a great cup of coffee from there. It was, after all, the "true" birthplace of Starbucks.