Thursday, April 2, 2009

Guilty pleasures.....


I try to not splurge all that often. I try, it doesn't always work. We get Starbucks coffee every morning at work, delivered by the pharma reps so it's not like the practice pays for it or anything. It's only supposed to be for the providers (the doctors and the nurse practitioners) but they never ever finish the stuff. I sometimes partake because I kind of straddle the line between 'them' and 'us'. Your average medical assistant or any assistant in a doctors office has a high school degree and something like 6 months of training. And by training I mean they know how to take blood pressure and temperature, the rest they just muddle through and get to know what their doctor wants. Kinda scary huh? Since I have a college degree and years of experience at what I do I fall into a sort of middle ground. I am 'in charge' of the mass spectrometry department there, population 1. We'll eventually hire another person but I'd only be a supervisor to them by way of seniority and really nothing more. So when I feel like I want a cup of coffee I don't bother with the nasty stuff they brew for everyone else, I go for the Starbucks.

Mind you I don't normally drink coffee. At all. The hubby is addicted to it. Bad. He went to his mom's house for a week and after day 3 of drinking their coffee in the morning he was looking at his eyes in the mirror and realized he had dark circles underneath. Turns out she had switched to decaf and didn't tell him. It hurts you know, cutting a man off his addiction. Me, if given a choice I'll take decaf. Neither makes a difference for me, I just use a bit of coffee for taste. Did I mention that the box of Starbucks comes with a cup of creamer? Here's my usual coffee mix:

20-25% coffee
20-25% sugar
the rest of the cup is filled with creamer
then I heat it up for about 20 seconds in the microwave because the creamer is cold and liquid coffee candy tastes best hot.

I am lucky that no one else uses the creamer in any quantity of note because then I might feel guilty. Well maybe not but still. I don't know what the calorie content of this liquid is but I bet it's higher than it's caffeine content. I think I should be embarrassed about admitting I do this about 3 days a week but really, it's only bad if you add a donut. The hubby's favorite coffee drink is a Starbucks venti white chocolate mocha. Do you think that is a higher or lower caloric content? According to the website it clocks in at 470 calories, 170 from fat, 150 mg of caffeine. Wow. A regular blend coffee from there had 5 calories and 330 mg of caffeine. They don't list the creamer, huh interesting. They list milk though as 260 calories, 60 fat. I'm going to make a blind guess here that cream is going to be higher than that, whatcha think? Yeah. My mix seems to have the same caloric content as the hubby's but with higher caffeine content. Oy maybe I should switch to decaf before I become an addicted....

2 comments:

Stephanie Harsh said...

I'm a big fan of Starbucks, but since it's my wallet, I try not to go to often. It really sucks having one just down a short hallway, too. Sigh.

The Husband always goes for the white mocha. My hips won't allow for that, so I stick to a regular ol' nonfat latte. Sometimes with sugar-free caramel syrup. I'm a total wild child, right?

Caffeine doesn't bother me- I like the coffee more for the comfort factor than anything, but decaf? I don't know. A decaf nonfat latte seems like a "why bother."

Kimberly said...

I am a big creamer snob! Most say it is all about the coffee, wrong all about the creamer. I think I have maybe four bottles in the fridge at any one time.
Oh and calories at starbucks dont count...:)