2 PM Nap? No! Make Some Iced Coffee!

There has been this pattern lately. I have been hitting a wall of exhaustion around 2pm almost daily. If you've been in this predicament, you know exactly what I mean. The energy drink commercials describe it as "foggy" sometimes. That's about accurate. Foggy and "if I have to walk one more step, clean up one more mess, run one more errand, I might actually pass out" is how I think it really feels.

A good solution to this problem? Legal stimulants, OBVIOUSLY. In other words, coffee. But dang! It's 90 trillion degrees outside, who the heck wants a warm beverage?! That's when you run down to your local coffee shop and spend $4 on an iced coffee beverage. And unless you specify, you usually end up with more than just coffee, too. It's often cream, sugar, syrup, whipped cream, a second kind of syrup drizzled over the whipped cream... Basically, you start off just wanting a caffeinated jolt and end up with a sugar crash and 600 extra unnecessary calories.

Before I go any further, I'd like to make it totally clear that I am madly in love with coffee shops. Local coffee shops and Starbucks. I love Starbucks because, well, the employees are consistently nice, the coffee is consistently good, the wait for your beverage is consistently short, and any other product you walk away from a Starbucks with is consistently of high quality. And I don't feel I should have to explain why I love local coffee shops. They're always just cool.

But I digress. How do you avoid doling out $4 (or more) a day when all you want is some high-quality, cold coffee to kick your dragging self back into gear? Um. Well.... YOU MAKE YOUR OWN. It's pretty dang easy.

Directions

1. Go to your local co-op and buy some delicious, fair trade coffee beans. (They don't have to be delicious or fair trade, but I prefer mine to be both.)
2. Grind desired amount of those beans to a medium coarseness. If you don't have a grinder at home, every store that sells coffee beans has a grinder. I'm not kidding. Wal-Mart even has a coffee grinder. Wal-Mart also sells fair trade coffee, in case anyone's wondering.
3. Pour into the bottom of a French press.
4. Pour warmish to hot water over the beans and let sit with lid on (not pressed down!) for at least two hours. I often let mine sit overnight.
5. Press the filter down.
6. Pour over ice. You can now add all the crap that you want to. Sugar, Splenda, cream, milk, cocoa powder, chocolate syrup, caramel syrup, whipped cream, etc.
7. ENJOY and revel in the fact that you just saved yourself roughly $3 or more!

Like my pretty little hand towel?