HOT WATER AND WEAK COFFEE
I think I have the answer for why I don‘t have a solar hot water heater and tank on my roof in Swannanoa. After consulting with Phil Diehn, a Swannanoa neighbor who understands solar water heaters and all things mechanical and after a brief, non scientific and uncomprehensive on-line ten minutes of research similar to the research anti vaxxers and QAnon followers claim to be doing, I have decided that the reason Americans don‘t have solar hot water heaters on their roof is because they want what they want when they want it and they want a lot of it. It is not, after all, a result of political polarization although it may have something to do with being a real American. The only place where these kinds of water heaters seem to be used in America is for swimming pools, which aren‘t in a hurry. According to Phil solar water heaters take a long time to heat up and on a cloudy day may not heat up much at all. If you have to take a shower when you want to take a shower, right now, and stay in for half an hour this is unacceptable. If you can wait to take a shower or wash your dishes until the water is hot (or god forbid use luke warm or cold water and take a quick shower) then you can probably get along fine in America with one of these heaters.
Susie has a spring fed propane hot water heater but no bathroom so takes a hot shower outside under a tree, even in winter, which also would probably not suit most Americans, but she doesn‘t get much sun in her holler so maybe a solar water heater wouldn‘t work. I have no trees and sun on my roof all day and am not only patient but itch if I take a shower more often than every three days (and itch if I don’t, I have a relatively narrow window) so a three day schedule would probably work for me but I could wait patiently without complaining until the sun returns. So I’ll look into it. And that solves the hot water heater problem.
The only other thing that I can think to talk about is Nescafé. So I had better do something today worth talking about. (I think I‘ll report on cats tomorrow, so I have a day‘s reprieve.)
When I was growing up in India in the last days of the British Raj I don‘t remember ever having filtered coffee and there were certainly no electric coffee makers so all we had was Nescafé. (But lately I remember a line around the block to get into a very elegant, first in India, Starbucks on Connaught Place at the center of New Delhi and there are Cafe Day and other coffee shops now everywhere.)
In the grocery store just around the corner there is ground coffee of various kinds, including, I think, Starbucks. But all I have is an electric pot to heat water and a hot plate and no device for making filtered coffee.
But again, I am in luck. Because although I drink maybe five cups of coffee a day (never decaffeinated) and like to have a cup of hot coffee to sip from as I sit and type, my good luck is that I don‘t much care at all for the flavor of coffee and will drink anything. It is the caffeine that I am after. Strong coffee, what some people call good coffee, is too bitter for me. I like my caffeine weak but hot, which is a bit of a problem because even though I cover my cup with insulation of one kind or another, a napkin or piece of cardboard, it gets cold pretty quickly.
I‘ve tried reheating the coffee in a sauce pan on low heat, but I forgot it and it boiled down and it took me half an hour to scrub the baked in black goo away. So now I just add more boiling water and a touch of Nescafé.
Nescafé has a bad rap. I think it is freeze dried coffee and to me tastes like the real thing, although I don‘t, as mentioned before, care much what the real thing tastes like. But between constantly changing the plugs (there is one outlet for the small refrigerator, the hot plate and the water pot and if I forget to change back to the refrigerator each time I am afraid I‘ll lose the little bit of food I have in there) and constantly reheating having a hot cup of weak coffee is a complicated process.
Sometime I will write about how so called „good“ coffee is overhyped (and over priced), but right now this is all I can think to write about.
Sorry, folks. NHT
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 