Nona: There sure is a big crowd at the new coffee shop! It’s nice to see how busy it is!

Caffeine Cathy Dear Caffeinated!

It’s not what you think. Sure, they have some real good coffee. The Polish Connection, something like four shots of some turbo-charged energy beverage, has the downtown area closed by noon. The business folk have been stopping in there on their way to work, and they drink one of these things and have been getting all their work done in three hours. It’s pretty productive, except the ladies at the hair salon are running around in that place like chickens with their heads cut off. Rumor has it that Betty with the Blue Hair and Redheaded Ruby got mixed up, and now you don’t know who is who, because they were so wired on their java, they mixed up the dye.

I was wondering how this place was so popular. All of the “gentlemen” were even going there instead of Stosh’s Place in the afternoon. It’s like the town has been civilized!

Piston Pete closed up this auto repair shop early and he met me there. He said he did 14 oil changes and a transmission flush in 2-1/2 hours. “This coffee is unbelievable,” he told me. “The thing is, in the afternoon, you have to come in for the antidote.”

So, there they were, the whole happy crowd drinking what they said as something called a latte, but it smelled like straight booze. “You’ve heard of Irish coffee?” Pete asked me, “You’ve got to try the Polish coffee.”

And so I did. Irish coffee features a splash of whiskey in the brew. Polish coffee is the opposite. There’s a shot of coffee in the whiskey. It was a heck of a drink, and the headache was worse.

Nona’s Banana Bread Ingredients 3 ripe bananas, mashed 1 cup white sugar 1 egg ¼ cup melted butter 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease a 9x5inch loaf pan.

Combine bananas, sugar, egg, and butter together in a bowl. Mix flour and baking soda together in a separate bowl; stir into banana mixture until batter is just mixed. Stir salt into batter. Pour batter into the prepared loaf pan.

Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean, about 1 hour.