Grinding your own coffee beans (and other food snob directives you can ignore)

If you've been anywhere near a food magazine, blog, television show, or Facebook feed lately - and by lately, I mean within the last 10 years - you've probably heard coffee aficionados and/or self-proclaimed "foodies" (a loathsome term right up there with "Tweetable" or "yummy mummy") lay down a set of rules one must follow in order to fully enjoy and appreciate the glories of le caffé. Fair trade beans only. 100% Arabica or bust. French press this, freshly roasted that, single varietal blends, vacuum brews, drip vs. percolator, espresso vs. moka, Swiss Water something-or-other...it's an information overload befitting our era, and a good portion of it is either nonsense or the next closest thing. The truth is that we've been enjoying great coffee for generations without CoffeeGeek.com telling us all what we're doing wrong. As much as the 21st century's food revolution has gifted us with improved selection at supermarkets, fabulous artisinal products at our fingertips, higher production standards, and delightfully varied and colourful menus, it has also given rise to a crop of armchair "experts" who spout their opinions as if gospel, in a church where the choir argues amongst themselves over which species of truffle produces the best risotto al tartufo while the congregation sits dumbfounded, wondering when the hell eating and drinking became so damned complicated.

Enough, already. Unless you have the palate of a professional chef or wine taster - and, unless you are either of those, you don't - you can feel free to ignore 90% of these snobbish "musts". It'll make your life easier and your blood pressure lower. Starting with:

Coffee. Have you ever wondered why Illy brand coffee, the quintessential Italian espresso, comes pre-ground in a can? It's because average Italians doesn't fuss about with their own coffee grinders; they get a skilled barista to do it for them. Professional burr grinders - the kind used at coffee shops big and small - do a better job than most home models with their whirring blades, resulting in a more consistent grind. A uniform grind is essential to a cup of coffee that doesn't taste like sludge (the most common complaint with brews from a French press). You can buy burr grinders for home use, but the good ones aren't cheap, so why not just get the coffee shop to do it for you? Coffee connoisseurs fret about the beans losing their precious aroma as soon as they're ground; the longer ground coffee sits around, the more flavour it loses. However, beans begin to lose their flavour as soon as they're roasted, so unless you're fanatical enough to ensure that each blend you buy has been roasted within a day of purchasing - which I am decidedly not, thank you - you needn't get your hair in a kink about the grinding. Your bag of pre-ground coffee will keep plenty of its aroma and flavour as long as it's well sealed. I have ground whole beans with each pot of coffee I made, and have had the same beans pre-ground, and the perceptible difference in flavour and aroma is so negligible it's almost nonexistent (particularly at 7 am, when I can barely perceive my own motor functions, let alone the subtleties and nuances of my caffeine juice). To each his/her own, of course, but don't feel that you're slumming it if you get the cute barista at the Grindhouse to do the job for you rather than monkeying around with that '90s-era Black and Decker you normally use for grinding "herbs".

Wine. Okay, the preciousness with which wine aficionados wax about their exalted elixir couldn't possibly be parsed in a single blog entry, so I'll focus on one particular edict that grinds my gears: namely, that red wine should be consumed at room temperature, and not a degree lower. This is hogwash. Ever been in a wine cellar? It's rather cool down there, isn't it? Quite a bit cooler than what we think of as "room temperature", and there's a very good reason for that. I'll let you do the math while I slurp some Shiraz that's been in the fridge all day yet still tastes just delightful.

Sea salt. Sea salt comes in a variety of flavours, sizes, textures, and uses. A notably coarse salt like Fleur du Sel serves a rather different purpose than a thin, flaked, easily dissolved salt like Maldon, which in turn serves a vastly different purpose than an el-cheapo sea salt from a standard salt mill. One is not better than the other, but they are certainly all better than basic table salt. Table salt is sullied with anti-clumping agents that keep it free-flowing, but more importantly, it tastes bland and slightly industrial. Also, it pours so fast you're more apt to spoil the meal by oversalting than with the coarser salts, which are easier to dose.

Fresh versus frozen fruits & veggies. By and large, frozen fruits and vegetables are just as nutritious as their non-iced brethren...and in fact may be even more healthful, given that they've been picked and frozen at their prime, and in their respective seasons. What you lose in the soft-focused, glory-of-nature appearance and texture of a raw vegetable, you gain in convenience and the ability to eat the food in any season, at no nutritional cost.

And while we're on the topic...

Raw food. This is the point at which food snobbery and food cultism meet; the raw food movement is (mis)guided by principles that rely more on blind acceptance than thoughtfully researched conclusions. There is nothing inherently healthful about a diet consisting entirely of raw foods; in fact, such a diet is counterintuitive to our very nature as homo sapiens, a species that outlived our Neanderthal predecessors by virtue of our ability to cook food. The dirty truth is that raw plants, including vegetables, are (to varying degrees) filled with toxins. Some of these toxins are outright poisons - your nightshades, your poison ivys. Others are more subtle, like nutrient inhibitors, which prevent your body from absorbing the healthy nutrients in the food. Raw spinach is chock-full of nutrient inhibitors, rendering the plant's beneficial iron and beta carotene essentially useless. Cooking spinach kills almost all of those nutrient inhibitors. And that's just one example. "Raw foodism" is an egregiously reactionary movement that serves no purpose beyond making otherwise intelligent people feel better about themselves at the (ironic) expense of nutrition, well-being, and plain ol' good taste.

There are many more, of course, but my coffee (Fair Trade, certified organic, harvested by nuns) hasn't kicked in just yet. Give me an hour.