Is Folgers really coffee?

Due to an emergency shortage (long story), I wound up with a pound of Folgers. I remember the paint-bucket-sized tin cans my grandmother used to buy. They were bright red and had a stylized mountain on the side. Mountain-grown. I didn't know why that was a selling-point but by the time I hit puberty I'd heard the words repeated so many times on so many commericals that "mountain-grown" elided into a meaningless new word: "mountingroan."

Note to self: perhaps that's what advertising does -- siezes on vocabulary, sucks the life out of words, leaving nothing behind but the syllables stripped of meaning?

Now Folgers comes in a plastic tub with a margarine-style plastic snap-on lid. That's to preserve freshness, in case you didn't know.

When I opened my Folgers, I saw that the freshness seal didn't work. Seriously -- this stuff looked like something you'd shovel into a sandbag out on the levy. Dry, dark brown grains without a trace of natural oils. Shredded tree bark, maybe. Or mulch.

The brew itself? Acrid and smoky. I found the only way I could even halfway enjoy it was to add about five shakes of cayenne pepper to the filter before brewing. Ay-yi-yi! I call it "rocket fuel." It has a jalapeno-like flavor and a long hot tail that lingers in the throat for a moment after each sip.

I tried cinnamon and fresh-ground nutmeg (added directly to the finished cup) before resulting to cayenne. Neither had sufficient kick to break through the stolid, smoky wall of Folgers "flavor."

So -- have to drink crappy coffee? Desperate? Try a few shakes of ground red pepper to perk yourself up in the morning. Maybe the capsacin's stimulation of blood flow to the stomach helps the body to absorb caffiene faster!

Hey, it's possible.