I woke this morning to the unmistakable smell of roasting coffee. As is often the case my husband was not beside me in bed. Not unusual to smell coffee roasting in the morning, but since in this instance the coffee roaster had broken and we had ordered a replacement, it seemed odd. I wasn't delusional, it was coffee roasting, nonetheless.

I had checked last night on line to see what had happened to our Purolator delivery for which we had paid the express rate. It should have been delivered yesterday afternoon, but hadn't been. And I could see why; the driver had missed a 5:30 delivery deadline and our package had gone back to a sorting terminal. Delivery would, obviously, be put off until Monday.

This represented a serious situation. My husband faced the disaster of being deprived of his fresh-roast coffee. The beans, organic and fair-trade are all there, but they've got to be roasted before they can be used.

Well, he is nothing if not resourceful. When he awoke early in the morning, he went downstairs to the basement workshop, and took apart and cut to fit a small aluminum waterbottle. Whose shaft was just the very right size to sit on the coffee roaster in place of the smashed glass insert. And he then proceeded, as usual, to roast his morning coffee.

Ingenious, he is, without a doubt. But it's a temporary fix; the timer on the device has long since gone wonky and that alone meant that it was time for a new coffee roaster.

On the way.

Just incidentally tomorrow is International Coffee Day; September 29.

"Coffee is the No.1 consumed item in the Canadian marketplace from a food and beverage standpoint", according to the executive director of food services of the NPD Group.

Canada's love affair with coffee, evidently, is second only to Italy's.

"Annually, Canadians consume 2.1-billion servings of coffee, which reprsents over $6-billion in sales. And that's just out of home. It's crazy", he said.

Yes, it most certainly is, considering that there's a preferential (to me) alternative: tea.