I've been chortling over the sort of goofy invention that I would've mocked mercilessly if I'd just heard about it. Since I actually use it, though, I can't very well do that. See, I drink coffee. A lot. I am a coffee junkie. If they ever make coffee a controlled substance - it is an addictive drug, after all, and there are those who view any addiction whatsoever (except their addiction to sanctimonious meddling) with alarm - then I'll be one of those sad souls out in the park with a pocket full of twenties, trying to buy little baggies of primo Colombian and bitching about the time that lousy dealer burned me with an ounce of Sanka.
All of this means that I can't be satisfied with instant coffee - it's got to be ground, and brewed. Which means that it has to be filtered.
I tried permanent filters - both metal and cloth. They're okay, but they're not the environmentally-benign alternative people think they are. You have to clean them, which takes hot water, which takes energy, and it's very difficult to get the grounds out of them for compost. So I've gone back to using paper filters, which can be placed with the grounds they contain directly into our compost bin.
But paper filters have an annoying disadvantage of their own: they come in stacks of 100 or more, and it's almost impossible to pick up just one using unaided fingers.
Enter the Mr. Coffee® coffee tweezers. Found these in a pack of 500 filters we bought at a rummage sale for 10 cents, and I'm glad I did... I'm not sure the seller even knew they were in there.
These little white tweezers with their rubberized ends work great! I get out one paper filter, and just one filter, every time. What an ingenious, albeit absurdly overspecialized, device. If you use paper filters, and if you can find 'em (I don't know where to get a pair these days, and the Mr. Coffee® website hasn't mentioned 'em for years, if it ever did), you might want to pick up a pair.
©2000, 2006 Alan P. Scott. All rights reserved.
Last modified November 19, 2006.
Contact me:
ascott@pacifier.com