I drink coffee. I love coffee. I make a pot of coffee first thing every morning. And I drink several cups. My favorite hot coffee is hazelnut flavored. Mmmmmm!

 But then there’s cold coffee. Another thing (besides cell phones, DVD players, etc.) that I thought I would never try.

 Cold coffee?  As far as I was concerned, those two words didn’t even go together – like “affordable housing,” or “organized chaos,” or “anxious patient,” or “honest thief,” or “athletic supporter” (Oh, wait! Those two words do go together.)

 But then something unexpected happened. My friend who owns a coffee shop offered me a sample of something called a Granita. It’s like a frozen coffee slushy. And I tried it – to be nice (I can be nice sometimes).   Wow! Delicious! I was hooked.

 Now I get a Granita whenever I visit the coffee shop. Don’t worry – I’m aware of the latte factor – I only buy one every week or so. Well, most of the time. There were a couple of times this past winter when I went over my buying limit.

 I know – frozen coffee seems more like a summer thing. It is! But it’s so good I drink it in the winter, too. And this winter was particularly hairy. We had snowstorm after snowstorm – which meant that there were times when we had to stock up in preparation for a coming storm.

 I would go to the grocery store (for obvious reasons), the pet store (for my two cats), the gas station (to fill up my car – want a full tank, don’t want condensation in the gas tank, blah, blah), and the coffee shop. I would call my friend and ask her to make a batch of Granita. I would take a box to the coffee shop. I would buy the whole batch, put it in to-go cups, and put the cups in the box to take home. Then I would put the cups in my freezer. And, voila, I could have Granita during the snowstorm and during the aftermath when I couldn’t get out of the house for days and days and days.

 It was so decadent – being able to open the freezer and take out a luscious Granita. I didn’t have to be concerned about wanting one and not being able to leave the house to go buy one. I could schedule when I would have a Granita, move one from the freezer to the refrigerator the night before, and then enjoy that sumptuous icy delicacy without leaving the comfort (and the heat) of my home.

 I did discover, however, that there is a problem with having many cups of Granita just sitting in the freezer – calling to me. Mmmmmm!