Chocolate Mocha Peppermint What??

I'll admit to enjoying a fancy coffee on occasion.  Yes, I've been known to haunt the hallowed halls of the local coffee bar hoping to get my decaf fix for the day.  I can say "hand over the grande decaf caffe latte skim, please" with the best of them.  Unfortunately, where we currently live, there is no such option located within a convenient distance.  Besides, sometimes I want to settle in with a cappucino while curling up with a good novel at around nine o'clock at night.  I'm really not motivated to climb out of my jammies and bunny slippers to venture into the cold, dark night.  Nor do I feel like hiring a sitter for my three sleeping children just so I can fetch said beverage.  The obvious answer is the home brewing system.

Here's where the confession comes in.  When I'm looking for that nine o'clock fix, I quite frankly don't care if the espresso beans have been freshly ground seconds before pulling my beverage.  If I am not standing there frothing the perfect container of milk I will somehow manage to sleep with myself at night.  Perhaps this makes me a rube in the coffee annals, but I just want my drink so I can get back to my book already.  This leads me to the lazy man's version of the cafe latte -- the home brewing system.

Now I know there is a very popular system that is making the rounds of every Walmart, Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond out there.  At the time I was looking to buy however, there was no milk frothing option on this machine.  Plus, as my brother is wont to say, I'm not looking for anything fancy like "Midnight Romance in Vienna" I just want the cup of coffee.  As a result, I ended up going with a less popular brand. 

To be honest, I am completely thrilled with my machine.  Both performance wise and product wise, it has lived up to my expectations.  Problem is, I feel like I was on the Beta side of the VHS showdown.  For the sake of simplicity, we shall refer to my machine as Beta and the other machine as VHS.  At this point, you could probably walk into the hardware store and pick up coffee for the VHS model.  Perhaps a slight exaggeration but not by much.  And there are any number of popular brands that are churning out beverage options for the VHS machine.  I, on the other hand, am forced to go online to order coffee for my Beta.  Which means when I've discovered the coffee carousel is empty, I don't even have the option of running out for a quick box.  To add insult to injury, I can only drink decaf.  The limited selection available online has fewer and fewer decaf options.  Maybe I should save the decaf bias rant for another day, but it seems to me that those of us not wanting to pump stimulants into our systems should still be able to enjoy a cup of fine roasted goodness.

Now, folks, I'm not some out of touch snob who thinks the lack of foam-topped beverages in my life is the end of western civilization as we know it.  Sometimes, though, it sure would be nice to have the small luxury of settling in with a frothy delight and the latest Janet Evanovich without having a 40 minute round trip or trying to remember which is the larger size, grande or venti?  Not wanting to invest additional coinage for another piece of machinery, I guess I shall have to wallow in my quixotic little coffee dream of a skinny decaf latte whenever the whim should strike.