I love my new coffee maker.

The other morning, the coffee maker refused to work.

It’s had a good life, and it was one of those grinds-and-brews-all-at-once machines … I think we’ve had it for probably eight years or so. Anyhow, it seemed completely done, and with my inability to tolerate caffeine these days, we were looking for something a little different, something that would make it easy for us to have some leaded and some unleaded on the go.

We considered the Keurig machines, as they are pretty neat: with the reuseable capsules you can buy now, you wouldn’t have to buy the staggeringly wasteful little cup things (when you have to haul your trash to the dump, you pay attention to how much waste you generate). Still, filling those little capsules seemed likely to be a messy job, and the machines are not cheap.

Then The Reluctant Farmer noticed this at Canadian Tire: a one-cup-at-a-time coffee maker that has a little scoop filter, much like the scoop you use on an espresso maker. Just fill it with grounds and stick it in the slot, fill your mug with water and pour it in the back, then hit the on button. Voila. Coffee. Also … tea. Loose leaf or bagged. And since there are two scoops, I can take my tea leaves and set them aside for the second cup (and third and fourth – I can drink several cups of tea off the same set of leaves) without keeping the rest of the household from having a mug of coffee. Awesome.

The little pieces are super easy to clean and rinse – much easier than cleaning the full sized coffee maker, that’s for sure. And since we already have a little grinder, we still have freshly ground coffee (though I grind up enough for several days at once, still, it’s fresher than if you buy it already ground).

I have a feeling this little machine will save on power (as there’s no heated element keeping the pot warm), and will encourage me to drink more tea throughout the day. I can go from “hmm, I think I’d like a cup of tea” to full mug in about a minute, which is awesome.

And, it was on sale and cost less than half of what we’d have paid for a Keurig. Yay!