We recently moved to a foodie town, population 32,000, with no fewer than five independent coffee roasters whose wares we are sampling to identify our -- actually, Himself's -- favourite. Although we own a coffee mill of the approved burr type, he seems to be buying it ground at present.

We keep most of our coffee in the bag it came in, carefully resealed with as much air as possible expelled. The bag is then stowed in a large ceramic crock. Ready-use espresso coffee is kept in a plastic jar fitted with a vacuum seal that works with a clever little hand pump of the type also used with rubber corks to reseal bottles of wine.

Himself is one of those people who cannot settle down to a specific method of making anything, let alone coffee. We already have every kind of coffee-making technology available in southwestern Ontario, including a Rancilio espresso machine that cost us north of Cdn$800 ten years ago, but he recently purchased a granite-ware coffee pot that would fit right in on the set of Bonanza in order to make coffee "cowboy" style -- i.e., boiled. Personally, I see nothing about the cowboy lifestyle that merits emulation in a 21st-century suburban house with central heating, but this is not the hill I choose to die on. Live and let live, I say, especially if doing so means that (a) Himself is happy, and (b) Himself habitually makes coffee in the morning, sparing me the task.