It is time to make a change
As with many things in life, it could take a little while (or long while) until I reach the point where I'm ready to make a change and do it with determination. Until I reach that point, I know myself well enough that it's not the right time yet (for whatever reason) to succeed in my desires to make a change. The topic this time is my coffee with sugar and powdered milk intake.
Great example
I've seen it with smoking, for years I was done with the bad habit, the taste and I realised for quite a few years already that it was the habit that was making me continue rather than the joy of sitting down with a coffee and a cigarette as it was once the case. But I don't like to be set up for failure and as I've learned a lot about myself in the past decade or so, I knew that it was not time to quit yet. I'd hate myself more for trying and failing than to sit out the time and smoke less until I was ready to say "this is it, I quit right now."
Mindset matters :)
For those that don't know, it was a success story, since that moment about 4,5 years ago, I never smoked again. There were cigarettes in the house for months after I quit, as my boyfriend could not stop cold turkey, but my mind was set, this was the last one and so I felt amazing and proud for being able to quit without any help , while he kept smoking . I'm the worst ex-smoker though, I will admit it, I hate the smell probably more than people who never smoked, lol.
Caffeine withdrawal is so much worse!
And then there was this moment, when we lived in Budapest, where I realised all my headaches were caffeine related. Here I needed a little less time to decided to call it quits because the headaches were killing me, I could not function anymore and therefore I made the choice to stop drinking coffee totally. Let me tell you that these weeks of caffeine withdrawal were MUCH worse than quitting smoking, which I had no issues with at all. I don't know how long I quit drinking it but I believe I drank my first coffee again here in Spain so my guess is about a year. It's the lifestyle here that made me get back into drinking it because of the fond memories of going to a bar to have a coffee and toast for breakfast while having the sun shining on your face.
More and more
Slowly, I noticed my caffeine intake got worse, not from drinking it outside because I had already decided my own coffee at home was more delicious than those in the bars. I'm not one that drinks the coffee purely for the caffeine shot, I want it to be a moment.. So when my homemade version is better, I will not drink it elsewhere.. But things got out of hand again and I'm also concerned about the "completa coffee creamer" which is the only thing I use to make the perfect coffee (for me) as I suspect it's not healthy at all. Last week, I made the change and stopped using "completa" completely.
No quitting this time
Instead of quitting coffee in total, this time I wanted to see if I could be happy with my own version of iced coffee instead. This means I use whole milk (maybe I will try almond later) and add cinnamon to the coffee for a nice touch in flavour. Iced coffee is a totally different experience if you ask me so I have other preferences. The first day, I still made it with sugar but then I realised I should stop the sugar intake in my coffee and use honey instead.
My evening ritual
To be able to drink a cup of iced coffee in the morning, my evening ritual now consists out of prepping 2 or 3 cups of coffee, adding cinnamon to it with honey, a bit of whole milk (while still in the cup) and then mix it well. Then I pour these cups into a big bottle which was a water bottle first, add more milk and if needed honey and cinnamon until the flavour is to my liking. You can easily test it by putting on the lid and shake it, best testing is done after it's completely cooled though.
Coffee change
Above you can see my first attempt, here I still used 2 cups, while later I changed to three, OR made less so it was more coffee-ish than milk-ish as you see there. Still delicious though! You can see there's quite a bit of cinnamon in it so I still use a spoon to stir it when I'm drinking it.
Completa coffee creamer is imported so quite expensive each month for 2 heavy coffee drinkers, of course we will start saving now that I swapped to this coffee but I also wanted to see if I could get rid of the expensive L'or coffee cups now that my coffee ritual changed. Today I bought a cheaper brand (extra strong though lol) and we'll see how that goes. One pack of 20 cups of these is 75 euro cents cheaper than one pack of 10 cups of the coffee I normally drink.
So far so good
My boyfriend sadly told me that he'd follow my example to try this right after I ordered a new load of coffee creamer. I told him please finish that first or mix it up a bit or so because otherwise that's a shame that we have so many bottles of these. I bet it will last months now, so at least that's good as I don't have to do monthly orders anymore now. I hope this will be noticeable in the budget soon, but mostly that I keep enjoying this little ritual to prep it and enjoy it while it's been cooled overnight.
Do you like iced coffee? When you do, is it store-bought or do you prep it yourself? Let me know in the comments <3
All pictures above are mine...
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