General Foods International Coffee

When I was in high school there was this bar in Broad Ripple, Indiana that was a coffee shop by day, bar by night. It was called Cafe Espresso.

We thought the place was totally hip and cool, and we discovered a secret in the fall of my senior year of high school — if you were inside before 7pm they wouldn’t kick you out when they switched over to their bar milieu.

My friends and I learned very quickly to drink coffee, let me tell you. And sitting around the fire pit in that darkened, wood paneled place I quickly learned something else.

I didn’t like coffee.

Until I discovered General Foods International Coffee.

Now that I’m a serious coffee drinker, I realize that GFIC is really a coffee “drink” vs being “real” coffee but it’s actually made with instant coffee and it’s full of sugar and cream and FLAVOR! It’s also GOOD!

GFIC has twenty one different flavors and varieties, some containing no coffee at all (cremes), others are coffee-riffic! Sugar free, fat free, they’ve got it all. Personally, if I’m going to indulge, I say bring on the sugar, bring on the fat! What else ya got that is tasty and bad for me?

I have obviously just re-discovered this treat and for a little over three dollars, I’m remembering why I used to like it. Late at night, after the kids are in bed, sitting on the couch with a blanket… It’s nice to drink a cup of creamy sweet goodness. I am not whisked back to Paris or back to that hottie waiter, Jean-Paul nor do I recall mornings of croissants and cinnamon coffee on the Danube. Nonetheless, I do really enjoy it.

But maybe, just maybe, I am eighteen again, sitting in a dark room around a brazier sipping coffee while the real adults swill alcohol and do stuff around me that looks really cool.