This is from weeks ago— our first morning in Budapest, 11/24/2019. Let me define the problem space. Despite spending about three weeks in early November (after Mr. Big Food semi-recovered from being a Hip Crip— remember that?) preparing to travel, I failed to pack a pour-over cone in the checked bags. Recall that we *always* travel with our own mini-electric kettle, filters, coffee, and cone so as 1) to be able to have morning coffee in our hotel room, 2) without having to shell out good money for bad hotel lobby coffee, and 3) thus ease into the day as normally as possible— which means Mr. Big Food can bring me coffee.

In my pre-travel preps, I even went so far as to investigate whether a 110V electric mini-kettle was compatible with 223V Euro electricity if I just had a simple plug adapter, and having determined that it was not, ordered an appropriately adaptable Euro kettle. (See above. It’s collapsible, so perfect for checked bags. Plus it came with some totally cool adapters which I later put to good use in service of connecting lights and computers of both USA & Euro needs. More on this American Prepper Ingenuity coming.)

Just imagine my utter embarrassment upon realizing, as I was setting up the coffee station on the little table (see above) in our room (see below), that I’d forgotten to pack the pour-over cone! (The USA pour-over cone is safely in the truck with the USA mini-kettle. But as the truck is in the USA, and we were in Budapest, lotta good that did.)

What is a pour-over cone? A pour over cone is a rigid thing that holds a #2 coffee filter (with ground coffee) and channels boiling water poured from a mini-electric kettle over the ground coffee in the filter into a cup and … MORNING COFFEE!!

How hard could it be to construct a pour over cone?

Turns out, not that hard at all. All you need is some flimsy plastic plates picked up at the local Spar*, a pocket knife, a rudimentary understanding of how circular things are converted to conical things in virtue of one simple cut, and something to hold together the two cut edges of your 2-D circle to form a 3-D cone.

It came as quite a surprise to learn that Mr. Big Food had managed to travel from Mississippi all the way across The Pond without a paper clip or two.

Fortunately my buds at the Prepper Forum had alerted me to the fact that there is nothing paracord cannot do. So the paracord was cut into an 8” piece, disassembled, and the fine cord used to loosely tie the two sides together (leaving a nice small opening at the bottom through which the coffee could flow). A pour over cone!

*Comments on Spar in a separate post. Suffice it to say the Spar around the corner from the Lemon Bicycles was not of the same calibre as the Gourmet Spar across the street.