Fertilizing Hydrangeas

In the foodie world, trends seem to come and go every few months - crisped prosciutto, duck fat in everything and, now, cold-brewed iced coffee. Of course, it's easy enough to make a few extra cups of coffee in the morning and keep the rest to cool for iced coffee. But, because I have read about cold-brewing at least four times in the past two weeks, I wanted to give it a shot, so to speak.

I took my recipe from the San Francisco Chronicle article by Janny Hu. I added a full pound of coffee grounds to 10 cups of water and let it sit for 12 hours. It's not a pretty process - why are wet coffee grounds so nasty-looking?

After the coffee has steeped, you must strain it to remove the grounds. I did this by lining a strainer with a paper towel, resting the strainer on the top of a pitcher, and ladling the coffee in a bit at a time as the liquid drained into the pitcher. It took quite a while as the coffee grounds quickly clog the "filter," slowing the process to a lazy drip. I was working in the kitchen anyway, so I just got on with my other tasks, returning periodically to monitor the process and refill the strainer.

The result was about nine cups of stand-your-spoon-up-strength concentrate. Don't try drinking this stuff straight - it's lethal! After refrigerating, where it will keep happily for weeks, I added water in about a four-to-one ratio to the coffee concentrate, lots of ice cubes, and half-and-half.

I do love iced coffee and I have to admit this stuff is superior. Robustly flavorful, even when smoothed with cream, it is to me the essence of summer leisure drinking. It's a bit of a nuisance to make but, once made, you have many tall glasses of iced coffee to enjoy without further ado.

The bonus for your garden plants is that you can throw the full pound of wet grounds around the acid-loving azaleas, camellias or hydrangeas to give them a shot of caffeine as well. Keeps snails and slugs away, as well.