Hot Apple Cider

It was back right after Thanksgiving that I got on my present apple cider kick. Was looking in the supermarket for some kind of fruit juice, found that most of them featured high fructose corn syrup as an ingredient. Then I noticed that apple cider was, well, just water and apple juice concentrate. So I got some apple cider. And I've been going through it ever since, by the gallon.

I find it hard to drink apple cider cold. Something about the taste— same as with apple juice. But warm the apple cider up, and it's a whole 'nother story. Some other time we'll get into what a Selective Luddite™ I am; but I do appreciate the microwave. A coffee cup of apple cider will heat up to just the right temperature in 2 minutes and 10 seconds.

One great thing to do with a cup of hot apple cider is to go curl up on the couch. Preferably with a blanket over me— I use an über-heavy wool blanket I picked up at an Army surplus store. Then just lie there (or, as we say in my dialect of English, "just lay there"), holding the hot coffee cup of apple cider in my hands. And just fade in and out, mind lost in the wide open fields and closed lumber rooms of woolgathering. Taking a sip of hot apple cider as the spirit moves me. When I finish the cup and come to, I sometimes find that half an hour has passed me by.