What's going on with the price of coffee?

I am beginning to feel like with the price of coffee rising so fast, it's going to become another luxury item only a few can afford.  As per Statistics Canada in this article the price of coffee in Canada has risen 19% since the beginning of 2025.  Now of course part of the reason are the tariffs as we don't grow coffee in Canada so it all has to be imported.  Then climate/weather change has a bit to do with it as well.  However all the big coffee shop chain are still posting major earnings!!!!

I, like many other people enjoy specific brands.  My go to brand is this one:

I remember buying this for $6.99 to $9.99 at the most.  Now if I can get it for $15 to $17 I count that as a win.  Canada is a big coffee drinking country, with Tim Horton's coffee shops everywhere.  

When out I drink either Tim Hortons or McDonald's coffee as both are okay...........well they were until the last few months, then I have found them to be getting weaker and weaker in strength?  Is anyone else finding that?  We have been switching more and more to Tim Horton's as the points plan at McDonalds where you get loyalty points is switching and everything is costing more loyalty points for the same items.

I just don't like Starbucks coffee in Canada, and I hate their prices.  I will drink Starbucks in the States, as I dislike Dunkin Donuts.  

We have a Keurig at home and always drink drip coffee.  Never had instant coffee in years other when we go to the UK to my mam's and brother's.  Then most of the time we drink tea.

I have tried other brands of coffee.  Maxwell House I loathed 😂, Folgers wasn't bad.  There is a deal on for Nabob at Sobeys, but on the fence with trying that.  

I drink 3 cups of coffee a day.  Now they are the 12oz cups, so big mugs.  I take a little milk with it.  I try not to drink coffee after lunch, but will occasionally.  I have a cup of tea in an afternoon, then the rest of the time is water.

Our go too brand of Tea is Tetley which we buy at Costco when it comes on sale.  I am guessing tea is also going up in price as well?

Are you a coffee or tea drinker?

A couple of things

On Tuesday I had to run a couple of errands, went to the library, Dollarama and Zehrs.

I have this bush in the garden, that I have no idea where it came from.  I didn't plant it and as you can see by the photo, the top of it is all over the place.

I bought a plastic stake at Dollarama for $4 to try and "tame" it a bit.

Does anyone have any idea what this bush is called?

Also in Dollarama I buy this damp trap.  It works a treat.  I put it down the basement.  Although our basement isn't damp, it is below ground, so it doesn't do any harm to put one down there.

The one I have down there now has been there since April 10th.

They generally last around three months.  I would recommend this product, as it does work.  Especially in Summer when it's humid.

My most favourite coffee is this one.  We have a Keurig, but I have an insert where I can just use ground coffee instead of the pods.  It was on sale for $12.99, plus I got 2,000 points back which I save and cash in for free groceries.

Do you drink coffee and if so what is your favourite brand?

Afternoon Treat

 I have a sweet tooth.  I love cake, cookies, muffins, candy & chocolate.  However with being a diabetic I have to watch what I eat.

One way of getting around that sugar craving mid afternoon is to have a cup of this:

I know it has 7g of sugar but in the scheme of things I can live with that.

A steaming cup of coffee to sip on while reading my book!

What is your afternoon treat?

Nespresso Vertuo Chrome

For Christmas the kids bought me a Nespresso Vertuo Chrome and Aeroccino  I had tried a sample of coffee at Canadian Tire and fell in love with it.  It has a lovely "Froth/Crema" on the top which I enjoy.  I was also lucky they included the Aeroccino with gives me the frothy milk, again which I enjoy.  I got the mug for Christmas, and it's perfect for that lovely big cup of coffee, don't you think?

Part of the package I received with the machine was a sample package of coffee.  When I was looking at it I noticed the package had an expiry date of the end of November.  So I called Nespresso and they sent me another package right away which arrived on January 2nd.

Inside there are 12 different coffee types to try which will give you an idea of what you do or do not like!  Will say great customer service on their behalf.

I will say I was a little surprised at how expensive these pods are, but in the scheme of things they are cheaper than buying a take out coffee, so that's good.  Does anyone else own a Nespresso machine?  Are there any do's or don'ts?

Hasn't even been two months yet.......

and already we have had a problem with the Keurig.  Remember I wrote a blog post about it here.

One of the things I love is able to use my PC Great Canadian coffee pods, as that is my all time favourite coffee.

That coffee pod is not made by Keurig though.  So the other day I was making a cup of coffee and it flooded out of the top with water and there was no coffee.  Thought I had done something wrong, and/or there was something wrong with the pod.  Tried it again and it came out okay.  Tried it again the next day and same thing happened it flooded everywhere.  So I call Keurig Canada and the problem is the coffee pods.  They are recyclable and the filter on the pod is too thick.  So when the water is gushing through the needle it can't flow through the pod and filter so backs up.  Which then results in coffee grounds getting into the needle and cup and blocking up the needle.

{{{SIGH}}} So I had to flush out the coffee maker, clean out the needle and go from there.  I called PC to let them know about it, and this is the first they have heard of this.  They said they would pass on my concern to quality control.  Told them to get back to me.  So it will be interesting to see if they do.

I hope this is not one of many problems I have to deal with regarding my Keurig, as I have heard other people complaining about them.

Bit late jumping on this bandwagon!!

We finally bought a Keurig coffee maker in February.  How long have they been around; turns out 21 years as per this Wikipedia page.

My biggest gripe with the older Keurig coffee makers that the coffee was never hot enough, especially when you add milk as I do in my coffee.  However last year when our son and wife came to live with us for a short while, while their house was being renovated he brought along his Keurig and I found I used it a bit more.  Fast forward to us moving into the new home and our regular drip coffee maker was making an unusual noise when it turned on for dh's coffee at 4:15am.  Enough of an unusual noise that dh thought something was wrong with the water heater in the house.......turned out it was the coffee maker that was making this odd banging noise.

After much research I ended up ordering this machine which is the K-Select model in Volcanic Glass (grey) colour.  This had all the features we needed without being over the top.  I ordered it from the Keurig website and it was here within a couple of days.  I also ordered the Folgers coffee pods as they were on sale. (pretty funny don't you think making a coffee using a David's Tea Mug!!😉)

 As I already had a bit of ground coffee in the house I ordered the My K-Cup Reusable Coffee Filter so we can use the ground coffee.  I must say that was worth every penny.

I am a big fan of McDonald's coffee, so when I was placing an order through Amazon, I added a box of that to the shipment.  However my all time favourite coffee is the PC brand "The Great Canadian."  It is quite mild and very smooth.  Again bought it when it was on special.

Do you drink coffee in your house?  What is your preferred method of brewing your coffee and do you have a favourite brand of coffee?  How do you take your coffee?  Mine is milk, no sugar.

(I was NOT paid to review these products; these are all my own words)

Coffee Shop's

In Canada coffee shops are ten a penny in every town and city.  Whether it's a large chain shop or a small independent coffee shop.  A lot of Canadians cannot function in a morning without their coffee shop coffee.  One of the best known and very popular coffee shops is Tim Horton's.

So when there was a survey asking Canadians to vote for their favourite brand of coffee, you would think that the number one spot would go to Tim Horton's?  It turns out the number one brand is McDonald's, McCafe. and I for one am in agreement.  I find Timmies (as that is what we locals call Tim Horton's) is much too strong for me and has a bitter after taste.  I will drink it in a push.  I cannot stand Starbucks at all, that is way, way too strong.

We occasionally go to Coffee Culture, but more times than enough I end up having a tea there.  McDonald's has come a long way in the past few years with their brand.  I will say I did not like the McDonald's coffee in the States, they use a different brand.  Here is a link to show you want we can get at McDonald's McCafe.

If you want to see what position your favourite coffee shop brand coffee came in at, click on this link.  

I did enjoy the milky coffee's that you get in Britain, they are the best too my mind.  In the States I liked Dunkin Donuts the best.  I take my coffee with just 2 milk.  How do you take your coffee?

Some goals for July:

Figured I would set some goals for July, can't hurt can it?

1. Paint ceilings and walls in basement.  Biggish job, but doable.  I hope to get a good start on the trim, but that all depends on dh, as it's all to put up.
2. Knit 31 Hexagons for my beekeeper's quilt.  That's one per day and doable.
3. Reduce spending.
4. Have no MacDonald's coffee or muffins Monday through Friday.  It's getting an annoying habit popping out to WalMart to grab a coffee and muffin at MacDonald's.  We do have a gift card for there, so will use that if we go on a weekend.
5. Don't eat out more than twice this month.  To be fair, we don't actually eat out much at all.  We had our wedding anniversary last month and used a gift card we got at Christmas.  We still have one other gift card to use, but I was saving it for dh's birthday in September.
6. Try and keep a handle on the grocery spending......with the rising prices easier said that done.
7. NO buying magazines other than Pretty Patches at the end of the month......this is a hard one for me!
8. No shopping online........even harder!!

Do you have any monthly goals, you would like to share with us all?

Second day at work.........

and it went well, although I did sleep in, I didn't wake up until nearly 6:30am. Couldn't log onto the computer on Tuesday at work, so had to get my boss to do it..........I don't know!! Still things are trotting along nicely, and it's surprising how much I have remembered. The drive in was 50 minutes, so managed to shave 5 minutes off my journey. Still enjoy the scenery while driving. If I remember I must take my camera with me, so I can take some photos. The view at one point is breathtaking.

I have to call in for gas for the car on Wednesday morning, I am using a 1/4 of a tank of gas per day for my journey to and from work. I drove through some nasty weather on the way home. The heavens opened and it poured. Will say though it has cooled things down a little so that's good.

The way the garage is built, when it rains hard, it runs in through the front of the garage down one side. Well it was raining that hard today that it blew in under the other side of the walls of the garage {{{SIGH}}}, so we had to move a pile of stuff off the floor. My dad had put up some shelves, so dh just put things on there. This is a job that should have been done a while ago, it was a case of not having time to do it.

Now a little funny thing.....Linda who I am covering for left me a list of instructions, which was good, as I have said before it's been a year since I last worked there and things have changed. However the last thing she wrote was instructions on how to make the coffee. I laughed such a lot at that, as she knows me so well, I hate to make coffee at work, and will do most things but make coffee, and she knew my excuse would be I don't know how to do it. So she wrote down exactly how to make coffee......drat Linda, you know me too well!!!!

Coffee or Tea....

I have to say I got the idea for this post from Linda, as she was talking about tea.

When we lived in England we drank a lot of instant coffee, Nescafe being the brand of choice, and obviously black tea, probably either Typhoo or Tetley's. Both were with milk, no sugar and on the weak side.

When we came to Canada, still stuck to that choice, but over the years I began to develop a lot of headaches and decided to cut out coffee and stick to tea. I do drink coffee still but its make in a coffee maker with coffee grounds and its decaffinated. I am partial to the flavoured creamer, the liquid type, as I do find most ground coffee too strong for me.

Tea well that's a whole other ball game. I was always a strictly black tea type of gal, however I discovered green tea last year and love it. I can even drink it without milk, it actually tastes better without milk. I start the day with a cup of green tea with my breakfast. Its either the Tetley or the Lipton Pyramid tea brands. There is even a ginger green tea which I bought for when I have an upset stomach or am not feeling well.

I am still not a fan of herbal or flavoured teas, though at a push I will try one. I tried the Rooibas red tea the other week at Starbucks, and due to that I went and bought the Tetley's Rooibas Vanilla Tea the other day. I put milk in that and is different to any other teas I have tasted.

Are you a tea or coffee drinker?

How do you take your coffee or tea?

Do you like a mug or a china cup and saucer?

Do you like it weak or strong?

Do you have any favourties that you'd like to share with us?