It All Started With Bad Airplane Coffee.

My office was 35,000 feet up. The view was spectacular. The coffee? Well...

Good morning. Grab your coffee and pull up a chair.

For years, people have told me that I should write a blog, make videos, or post more on social media. The advice usually goes something like, “Just post anything!”

That’s probably good advice for some people.

It just isn’t me.

If I’m going to put something out there, I want there to be a reason for it. I want it to have a story behind it—or at least give us something interesting to talk about.

Oddly enough, Robert’s Morning Brew has a story behind it.

And it starts with bad airplane coffee.

I spent many years as a flight attendant, and the last airline I flew for had some special flying for a particular client. The service was different from our regular flying—more of a business-class experience. We actually plated the meals onboard, and, of course, coffee was a big part of the service.

At first, we served Starbucks.

The coffee tasted great.

The problem was that the coffee bags had an unfortunate habit of bursting inside the airplane coffee makers.

If you've never experienced that particular joy, just imagine coffee grounds everywhere, wasted coffee, and a flight attendant who's trying to provide business-class service while silently thinking words that probably shouldn't be repeated in a blog. 😂

Eventually, the company and the caterers switched to a generic coffee that behaved much better in the brewers.

Unfortunately, it tasted like...well...generic airplane coffee.

I drink my coffee black. I didn't want to start loading it up with sugar, flavored creamers, or a bunch of extra calories just to make it drinkable, so one day I did what we all do when we have a problem:

I Googled it.

“How do you make coffee taste better?”

There were plenty of predictable suggestions—sugar, cream, flavored syrups and so on.

But buried among them was something simple:

Cinnamon.

So I tried it.

And you know what?

I liked it.

At first, there was nothing fancy about my cinnamon. I think I was probably using whatever inexpensive cinnamon I could pick up at Dollar Tree. It certainly helped that airplane coffee, but when I started putting it in the coffee I actually enjoyed drinking at home, it was a little...lackluster.

That's when I discovered that cinnamon isn't just cinnamon.

Suddenly I was noticing Cassia cinnamon, Chinese cinnamon, Vietnamese cinnamon, Indonesian cinnamon, Saigon cinnamon—and eventually Ceylon cinnamon, often called true cinnamon.

Down the rabbit hole I went.

I began reading about the different varieties, flavors and the reasons people had used various spices for generations. Ceylon became my cinnamon of choice.

And being a flight attendant meant that if I liked something, apparently it had to travel too.

So the cinnamon started going everywhere with me.

Before long, some of my crewmates were putting it in their coffee too. Eventually it became almost expected that Robert would have his cinnamon onboard.

No pressure there. 😂

But my curiosity didn't stop with cinnamon.

I've always had a health-conscious side, so I started wondering about other spices—what was in them, how they'd traditionally been used, and whether there were ways to incorporate them into something I was already doing every morning.

That led me to turmeric and reading about its connection with inflammation. That particularly caught my attention because I've dealt with arthritis in my knee, thumb/wrist and shoulder.

Oddly enough, all on my right side.

Apparently my left side has decided to behave itself.

From there came ginger, cloves, nutmeg and eventually my own little spice mixture.

For a while I actually traveled with two blends—one similar to the mixture I use today and another that included turmeric.

And once again, my crewmates got involved.

They liked it too.

What started as Robert trying to rescue a cup of lousy airplane coffee had somehow turned into something I was mixing, tweaking and sharing with other people.

Years later, I'm still tinkering.

Recently I've been revisiting the amounts I use, learning that more isn't necessarily better, adjusting the mixture for both flavor and moderation, and even adding little details such as a pinch of black pepper with my turmeric.

Which brings me to how Robert’s Morning Brew got its name.

I was talking with Seph one morning about my coffee routine and joking that maybe I should start marketing my spice blend.

One thing led to another.

And suddenly I realized:

Maybe Robert’s Morning Brew isn't really a coffee blend.

Maybe it's a conversation.

Coffee is simply where it starts.

So once a week, that's what I’d like this little corner of Lavender Frog to be.

Sometimes we may talk about coffee.

Sometimes it may be about running a small business, inventing something, staying active, getting older, creativity, something I've learned—or something I haven't figured out yet.

And knowing me, we may occasionally start on one subject and end up someplace completely different.

That's okay.

Some of the best conversations happen that way.

So...

Pull up a chair. Pour yourself a cup. Let's see where the conversation goes.

☕🐸 A Thought from Seph

Sometimes the best ideas don't begin with a business plan.

Sometimes they begin because the coffee was terrible.