Anyone for coffee?

My can of Raja's Cup, with the shaker
of cinnamon and the carton of rice milk
that makes all this go...

Coffee. I do love coffee ... especially the cappuccino variety from any cafe serving La Crema (like the Golden Fleece in Willunga, and the Old Courthouse in Wellington). The only coffee I don't actually like is Lavazza, which doesn't have a lot of flavor -- frankly, you can make better at home.

There's only one problem with coffee and me: my heart won't let me drink it more than once a week, because the caffeine gives me all kinds of problems. Ever heard of ectopic heartbeat? Google it. It ain't fun,

Meanwhile, Dave is a coffee connoisseur who can drink it by the bucketful any day, all day, leaving me in the position of sighing, "Don't worry about me, I'll just make a cup of tea." Not that I don't like tea; I do.

So I've been looking around for things that'll substitute for coffee, and in fact I'm found two, both of them so flavorful, you'll actually drink them for the pleasure of drinking them. I've had ersatz, long, long ago -- something called Nature's Cuppa, a coffee substitute based on grains, I believe, and shipped out of eastern Europe. Their coffee supply stopped utterly during WWII (what a shock), and they experimented until they found something that'd do till they could get a supply going. I wasn't terribly impressed with the ersatz, so I investigated decaf.

Well, decaf is all right insofar as it tastes like coffee; the problem there is the process by which they rip out the caffeine. Suffice to say, decaf is not something you want to be drinking, if you care about your health in the future. It's ... toxic. So, what else? There had to be something.

Last year we discovered Wild Siberian Chaga, which is actually a wild-harvested mushroom (known in Siberia as "Mushroom of Immortality" because of its antioxidant properties.

At first we were drinking chaga as tea, and the taste is, without one iota of exaggeration, awful. You choke it down because it's so goooood for you. Just hold your breath and swallow, and remind yourself why you're doing this...

Health. Oh, yeah. Right. Ugh.

Then it dawned on me ... chaga isn't a tea, it's a coffee. So I made a chagaccino -- yep, treated the chaga like the coffee component in a full-on cappuccino, and ... whaddayaknow? Fantastic. Chaga coffee is an extremely pleasing beverage, and if you know how to make cappuccino froth at home -- the real deal, stands up for itself, an inch thick on top of the cup -- without requirement for a two thousand dollar barista machine, you're home free.

Like this, below ... cappuccino so good, Dave had to take a phone pic and send it to facebook. I give myself a small pat on the back for this...

Any guesses on how to get stand-up froth an inch
thick, without a frothing machine? Hehehe...

Dave's phone pic...

But wait, there's more. Dave and I were at the Espressoholic Cafe in Aldgate a couple of weeks ago; they not only serve coffee, they SELL coffee -- so many varieties on a great shelf on your right as you walk through the door into a heavenly aroma...

Dave chose a dark Dutch chocolate coffee, which is his "special coffee," a reward after a long bike ride -- such as today. In fact, he's still drinking it as I write this. I just sighed and browsed the shelves, not expecting to find anything I could even think about drinking. And then ... aha.

Well, now. Raja's Cup. It sounds Indian, and the label says it's rich with Ayurvedic herbs which are as loaded with antioxidants as real coffee. Then again, it also says it tastes like coffee, and it doesn't. But I couldn't resist taking a can home for experimental purposes.

Yes, it's Indian ... from Fairfield IA, USA (!), the town where the Maharishi fetched up at last about forty years ago, and built a college. It's a center of Ayurvedic medicine and transcendental meditation, so it makes sense that when they figured out a coffee substitute, it would be based around Indian herbs.

Now, I won't say it tastes like coffee; I won't even say it tastes good ... in fact, it doesn't, until you add a good dash of cinnamon and a generous splash of rice milk. And then ... synergy. The result is fantastic. Very close in texture to coffee, with a flavor you just have to experience. Perfect coffee substitute, and loaded with as many antioxidants as coffee, if not more!

My work here is done.