These simple iced coffee bars honor my grandmother — and her love of coffee

For as far back as I can remember, I have loved coffee.

Even when I was a child and didn’t actually like it, I loved it. I can remember the stolen sips from my grandmother’s cup tasting bitter, sharp and harsh, being so disappointed and frustrated that her declaration of “oh, you’ll develop a taste for it” never seemed to happen. At the time, I didn’t understand why this taste-for-it thing was taking so long. Of course, she meant it would happen once I was grown, but with fingers crossed, I tried her coffee daily during my stays with her, hoping each day would be the day when I would miraculously love her acrid brew as much as she did. 

My maternal grandmother, Frannie, was my first love — and I wanted to be just like her. And she loved coffee. She used to say that when she died, she wanted to be cremated and put in a Folgers coffee can, which when she said it sounded like “Fol’-jahs  caw’-feh kay-an.” She had a distinctive Southern accent, different from the rest of ours, a true Southern belle — and could charm her way in or out of pretty much anything. Thinking back, it was a little macabre, her talking about her death like that to me at such a young age — but somehow it wasn’t creepy at all. It just reinforced her passion for her Folgers coffee and inspired in me that growing to love coffee was in my DNA. 

In case you are too young to remember or perhaps weren’t even born, Folgers and Maxwell House were the only two coffee brands in grocery stores for-ever, at least until the early 1980’s. Folgers was in the large red metal can and Maxwell House in blue. (We were a Folgers family on both my mother’s and my father’s sides!)

Frannie said she didn’t start drinking coffee until ‘The War,’ meaning World War II. Coffee was among many everyday items like sugar, cheese and milk that were rationed during that time, so perhaps that added to its mystique. She turned 17 the year The War started in 1939 and was soon to be married, but when she made that statement about not drinking coffee until The War, it sounded like she was implying she was older, not younger, when her love affair with coffee began.     

---

Want more great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to Salon Food’s newsletter, The Bite.

---

Frannie took her coffee black and only wanted her cup filled to halfway. I aspired to have mine the same way (though drinking it black would take a few years) and still to this day, prefer only a half cup pour at a time.

Brewed in her sleek silver percolator, the coffee was ready before I was up each morning and I loved waking to its smoky, earthy smell. When I stayed at her house, the aroma of fresh coffee came to signify another perfect day unfolding:  staying home, reading, playing Scrabble and card games and maybe having some cinnamon toast when we felt like making it. No plans, no rush, just the two of us hanging out and letting the day stretch out for as long as possible. Those were my favorite days — and those were every-days when I was at Frannie’s. 

She was not known as one of the gifted cooks in my family, but I will admit she had stiff competition. It wasn’t that her food wasn’t good . . . it was! She just couldn’t carry off the timing of a big to-do like Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners without at least one or two things tasting faintly burnt or being stone cold from finishing them too early to coordinate with everything else. She also might cook a pot roast big enough to feed the whole neighborhood while barely having enough carrots and potatoes for three. You could, however, count on her to have plenty of delicious, hot coffee and a little something sweet afterwards to fill in whatever gaps her meals might have had.

These Iced Coffee Bars are reminiscent of the ones she and I would get at a little cafe called La Patisserie, which was a few miles from her house. She with her steaming mug of java, filled to just halfway, please — and me with my hot chocolate, laced with a few spoonfuls of her coffee. We would savor our fresh baked, delicious selections. I could never resist their huge (but thin) cinnamon rolls as large as a dinner plate, warmed with a pat of butter gently melting out from the center; and Frannie would order a piece of coffee cake or one of their coffee bars, as they always had one or the other. We never finished it all, but looked forward to having what was left with our next go-round once we were back at home.

Coffee was served morning, noon and night at Frannie’s house and the ritual of making it and of being with her imprinted on me a love for it that has remained throughout my life.