My husband and I awake every morning to a nice hot cup of coffee. We have been having our morning cup of coffee for years. It is hot, caffeinated, and looked forward to every morning. I wake up with coffee on my mind.
So when we wake up and have no power it poses a slight problem to our coffee routine. We can't use the coffee maker to make our pot of steaming hot goodness. We could do without - just this once - but why deprive ourselves.
Back about 12 years ago we had a huge, and I mean HUGE, hurricane come through our area and it knocked out our power for 14 days. We thought we had prepared for everything. We thought we were ready for whatever emergency came our way. But in the first couple days we quickly realized, particularly with 3 little kids, that it was the little things that made all the difference. We could handle not having power as long as we had a few little creature comforts to keep our spirits up. Coffee was one of those things that could make or break our spirits.
We were prepared to cook on our grill. We had cast iron pots and pans and a griddle. We also had a steamer pan on the side of our grill where we could boil water. We quickly figured out that if we could boil water then we could make coffee, through our electric coffee maker. And so we did.
We brought our coffee maker out to the porch where our grill was and we boiled the water, then ladled it into our coffee maker. We just opened up the top where you put the filter and the coffee grounds and slowly added the boiling hot water. It steeped and poured down into the coffee pot and in a few minutes we had piping hot coffee. Voila!
After the hurricane disaster was over I began to stock up on a few things that we could use in the future for emergencies such as the one we had just lived through. One item I found was this one cup coffee steeper.
You can find and read about it here on Amazon.com. (No, I am not an affiliate, nor do I get money when you buy it. No I am not advertising. I am just showing you what I have.)
It is a manual coffee brewing system. You also have to buy the paper filters that goes in it (cone shaped) and then add your coffee grounds. Place it on top of your coffee mug. Then simply pour water over the grounds and it will steep into your coffee mug that is sitting below. I like this method a lot better than pouring water through my electric coffee maker because I don't always need or want a whole pot. Plus if we brew a whole pot of coffee at once it will cool down before we can drink it all unless we put it in a thermos to keep hot. That creates a bunch of dirty items that I will then have to manually wash (remember no power here). So this item will brew one or two cups of coffee at a time and I only have to wash my mug and this plastic brewing cup. I also get a hot cup of coffee each time I make one. No pot getting cold waiting for me to come back for a refill.
Again, it is the little things. I keep this in my pantry and keep the box of filters that goes with it next to it. It doesn't take up much room at all and I never have to resort to instant coffee in an emergency situation. I just use the coffee we normally have in the house.
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