1)  If I could make the canyon leap from coffee with cream and sugar to unadulterated black, I think I could drink it with dessert (or donuts or anything sweet).  Now it's so sugared and creamed it IS dessert. 
    a)  Plus, I'd feel like a grown up.
    b)  Double plus, it'd be waaay less fattening.

2)  Did you know there are multiple methods of making your own buttermilk?  To make one cup, you can stir together: 

• 1 cup milk PLUS 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice (let stand for 10 minutes before using in recipe)
• 1 cup milk PLUS 1-3/4 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1/4 cup milk plus 3/4 cup yogurt

It's best to warm the milk first and always give it time to congeal.  I've also read in the past you can substitute measure for measure yogurt for buttermilk, but I never have. 

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The mention of both coffee and buttermilk suddenly–and unexpectedly–stir thoughts of my mother this Memorial Day morn.  These dustiest memories bring a smile to my lips as I see Mama sitting in our tiny apartment dining room, overlooking both our scant kitchen and spacious-in-comparison den.  I think the table was oak and the chairs painted red.

Her chair faced the back yard; sliding glass doors led to a narrow cement patio that bled into a community sidewalk that bordered a small hill.  Georgia clay, I don't recall grass growing on it, and I wonder if our clothes were stained red from our constant play on that hill.  I think for a while we had an aluminum swing set.  My favorite things to do were to find roly polies and seal their fate in an empty mayonnaise jar, in spite of piercing the lid with an ice pick so they could breath; and to make mud pies, decorated with holly berries, worth the price of getting pricked 'cause they made all the difference.

Mama watched us from that chair. 

She drank coffee, but I cannot remember if she drank it black or with cream and sugar; I know my baby brother drank coffee with her, that's one of his treasured memories.  Mama also drank buttermilk, and even as a child, I never understood it.  Milk with chunks held no appeal to me then or now, no matter how good she claimed its taste.  I always presumed it had something to do with her deep country roots…when we visited relatives from her side of the family, we stepped out of the city and into a different world.

I didn't appreciate the richness of that life until adulthood.  And I'm a little sad my children will never experience water from a well, swimming in the blue hole, playing unsupervised with pocket knives and firecrackers, being so bored your imagination was freed to run wild. 

Sentimentality from black coffee and buttermilk; portals to my youth…I didn't see that coming!

{When I began this post, I thought it was just going to be a series of random, numbered thoughts.  Clearly, it went in another direction, lol…!  Does this ever happen to you or am I on that limb alone?}