A Nice Cuppa

I live in Manhattan and I have to ride the subway to work squished up against and in between hordes of strangers. At the office, like almost every other office building in North America, there is a coffee maker fitted with large circular filters and ground coffee sealed in single pot bags. I used to anger the rest of my colleagues by using two or even three of these bags for one pot. You see, I like my coffee strong and bold. I drive my in-laws insane with it whenever I visit. Finally, someone at work told me I was being selfish and shouldn???t make such strong coffee. I reluctantly agreed and had to figure out a better way to get better coffee.

Here I was, unable to take advantage of the free coffee at work and unwilling to shell out the big bucks for some strong brew from the tasty coffee shop down the road. I was left with one option: making coffee at home and bringing it in every day on that smelly subway. And so I discovered the travel mug. Besides my way, there are loads of reasons to use a travel mug. First of all, coffee gets cold pretty quickly when you???re using a disposable paper cup. Second, you???re saving the world just a little bit by reusing rather than just trashing everything. Third, and possibly most important depending on your klutziness factor, you can avoid becoming that lady who sued Mcdonald???s.

There are so many travel mug options out there, but the two I like best are on coffeecakes.com. The first one is made out of white ceramic and shaped almost like an Italian water pitcher. Surprisingly attractive and useful, it has a polypropylene lid and is great for the office or in your car. I wouldn???t call the second beautiful, but if you want to hang upside down or even put it in your bag when on the subway with the hordes, then this baby won???t leak. It???s pretty incredible.

*Both travel mugs are available online at coffeecakes.com