Finding Balance With Coffee and French Fries, Finding Joy Outside of your Comfort Zone ---and Goodbye to Arthur Sulzberger

You know when you wake up at 9:47 thinking it’s 7 am, it was a late night. That means that drinking coffee becomes a late-morning experience, rather than an early-morning, the birds-are-chirping and I’m chipper experience.

Today’s coffee feels a little different because of last night’s pub food.  While the idea of drinking coffee all day long is normal, the idea of eating fries for me is a once-in-a-while experience. Last night I ate fries, drank half a pint of cider and danced to rock and roll at a bar in Middlesex. It was very interesting and lots of fun. There was no coffee---and no skim milk. So it was a paradigm shift, but the band, Road to Ruin----was amazing. Seriously, it was impossible not to dance. Until the wee hours.

Back to the pub food….We’re basically talking chicken wings, soda, and french fries, except in my quest to be healthy and eat clean, I ordered tilapia—which was literally doused in butter. Overall, the food was cooked well and the service was impeccable. And by midnight, when I had been dancing with my friends all night in my black Yoanna Baraschi dress and my structured Ugg knee highs, who cared that I ate a few fries anyway? Once in a while, you have to let go.

The good news is that assuming you are living an overall healthy lifestyle and you have an occasional night out at a pub, drinking coffee can help tip the balance in your favor.  In a 14-year study of more than 400,000 coffee drinkers, published in the New England Journal of Medicine  in May 2012, men who drank 2 to 6 cups of coffee were 10% less likely to die during the study period, and women were 15% less likely to die, assuming that they also drank between two to six cups of coffee. Researchers implicated the 1,000 plus compounds found in coffee as the life-enhancers, though scientists still cannot clearly say exactly which components convey which benefits.

When I finally sat down with my first cup of coffee today (Starbucks Anniversary Blend brewed in a Gevalia), I read with great interest about Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (1926-2012), who died yesterday.  He not only expanded the NYT during his tenure---which included periods of noteworthy financial distress, but he also stood up to bullies who wanted to curtail coverage of Vietnam and widely supported journalistic freedom and excellence. Under his 30 year “reign” the paper won 31 Pullitzer prizes. Today, I drink coffee in his honor.