Before Christmas, my wife, my step-daughter, and I went up to Algonquin, Illinois, to do some unique shopping. We stopped at Syrup for a late breakfast and enjoyed the food immensely. On a whim, I had the waitress add a couple of pumps of vanilla syrup to my coffee. Somewhat unsurprisingly, that little trick turned a good cup of coffee into an amazing cup.

Since then, I’ve been adding two or three pumps of sugar-free vanilla syrup to my coffee mug, and I’m never, ever going to apologize for it.

I know there’s a contingent of people who treat coffee purity as a moral position and I’ve decided they can have all that. For me, the bitterness and the sweetness do something together that neither does alone. It’s just chemistry.

Also, it makes 6 am more manageable, which is worth something.