SIPPING COFFEE

tiny crackles of free time:  bolts of lightning across a dark sky of boredom.

SWEETWATER COFFEE ROASTERS

Sweetwater Organic Coffee Company is a member of Cooperative Coffees (CC), a green coffee importing cooperative, committed to supporting and partnering with small-scale farmer organizations.

Roaster members stretch from Rhode Island to Washington State, and from the Northern Territory of the Yukon, Canada down to the panhandle of Florida. Some are roaster-retailers, others are roaster-wholesalers, but all a.

Sweetwater Organic Coffee is located in Gainesville, Florida, Home of the Florida Gators is committed to Fair Trade, Organic coffee and sustainability, roasting coffee daily in micro-batches to ensure freshness within each cup.re small-sized operations that are committed to selling sustainable coffees. 

COFFEE FILTERS

coffee?  latte.  Sweet'N Low? Stevia.  creamer?  soy milk.  second date?  nope.

hemp coffee filters

BROKEN HEART

This morning, the sun sparked the gold band on the barista's left hand:  seven days of heart shaped latte art - broken.  

photo by Karl Swedberg

COFFEE AS AN ART FORM

Andrew Saur and Angel Sarkela-Saur have been painting with coffee for several years now. It all started one summer when they planned their first art show in a coffee house in Duluth, Minnesota. They wanted to come up with something unique and creative. Since their show was going to take place in a coffee house, they thought it would be appropriate to use coffee as their medium. They tried several techniques, such as using the coffee bean to sketch with and making pastels out of coffee grounds. These techniques were not successful. So they finally decided to use the coffee as a watercolor.

 From Coffee Art

Download a coffee personality poster, recipes or a screen saver from Coffee Art and there are some unique, very inexpensive prints for sale that would compliment my kitchen decor.  

LAWYERS AND LATTE

The attorney raised his gaze from the retainer check to his client's blue eyes: yes, bad coffee can be grounds for divorce.

IF IT FEELS PRETTY COARSE, THEN IT PROBABLY IS

Intelligentsia Coffee, Venice, CA

SINGLE CUP COFFEE BREWER?

I've been looking around town for a single cup coffee maker for my office.  All I have found so far are either very expensive or the type with a carafe, which frankly don't heat to a correct brewing temperature.  I also don't want to be limited to having to buy a pod, a T or a K.  I like my beans fair trade and organic!

I was hoping the Coffee Detective could help.

HOW MUCH CAFFEINE?

The Wisebread blog, worth reading for its frugal tips, lists how much caffeine is in your favorite drink.

Starbucks (Grande) iced coffee, 16 oz, a personal favorite, has 190 mg with the ice, without the ice, it contains 380mg. Since it's a blog noted for saving money, it also rates the cheapest way to get a caffeine fix, No Doz, at $0.0008 per milligram of caffeine.  (that's $ .15 cents instead of $4+ bucks for the equivalent in Starbucks--minus the ambiance).

THE MOLECULE THAT IS CAFFEINE

Clever caffeine tricks your brain into thinking it's adenoisine, the sleep chemical!

15 Things You Should Know About Caffeine

Via: Homeowners Insurance

BARISTAS!

June 23 - 25 The World Barista Championship in London!

HARD ROCK COFFEE PODS

Hanging out a couple of nights at the Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando provided me with the best in-room coffee I've ever had.  The Timothy's 'rainforest espresso' came packaged in environmentally unfriendly pods that magically brewed in a space age Keurig brewer.  This resulted in a delicious cup of coffee, so great that I made another and a third  that accompanied me to my meeting.  Opening the machine ejected the used pod forcefully and sent it flying across the floor almost hitting the vintage Bruce Springsteen photo on the opposite wall. 

Timothy's World Coffee used to be New York City's second largest coffee shop chain (after Starbucks) but they closed after 9 11, and now have no physical presence in the US.  . 

Vietnamese Coffee Gelatin

in case you don't have enough ways to ingest caffeine, there's coffee jello.  Here's a recipe from the Food Librarian:

Coffee Jello / Coffee Gelatin

1/2 c cold water
2 cups strong coffee, hot. (The coffee needs to be strong. This isn't the time for Sanka instant.)
1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk)
3 packages of Knox unflavored gelatin

1. Place 1/2 c. cold water in a bowl.
2. Sprinkle 3 unflavored gelatin packets over the water. Let sit until the gelatin blooms, about 10 minutes.
3. Stir in the hot coffee and mix until the gelatin is completely dissolved.
4. Stir in the can of sweetened condensed milk.
5. Pour into glass pan. Thickness of finished jello depends on the size of the pan. A 9 x 13 pan will give you thinner pieces and an 8 x 8 pan will give you thicker pieces.

Food Librarian Notes: The combo of coffee and sweetened condensed milk is inspired by Vietnamese coffee. You can probably adapt this to use coffee or espresso, cream and sugar (be sure to dissolve the sugar in the hot coffee and gelatin). One packet of unflavored gelatin will firm up 1 1/2 cups of liquid to finger jello "strength" (according to David Lebovitz's "How to Use Gelatin" post you can mold 2 cups with one envelope - but I feel finger jello needs to be stronger).

Links:
The Food Librarian blog: http://foodlibrarian.blogspot.com/
Recipe & Photo on the Food Librarian blog (April 14, 2010): http://foodlibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/04/national-library-week-day-3-coffee.html

WORST ESPRESSO DRINK?

Harmful Drinks in America nominates this as the Worst Espresso Drink:
Starbucks Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha with Whipped Cream (venti, 20 fl oz)

660 calories
22 g fat (15 g saturated)
95 g sugars

Sugar Equivalent: 8½ scoops Edy’s Slow Churned Rich and Creamy Coffee Ice Cream

PRETENTIOUS COFFEE SWILLERS?

The thing that’s cool about Field Notes is it appeals to a rifle-toting Budweiser-drinking mammal killer, AND a coffee-swilling fedora-wearing pretentious Brooklyn hipster. Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners

GOOGLE IS LAUNCHING A NEW SEARCH ENGINE CALLED CAFFEINE?

JAVA POPS?

I can get my caffeine and my sugar all in the form of a lollipop?  

Each Java Pop contains 60 milligrams of caffeine and come in flavors of 

French Vanilla, Chocolate Almond, Irish Crème, Cappuccino, and Chocolate Raspberry. Then, when you're done, you can use the stick as a stirrer for your coffee!

CAN I GET THE MIMOSA AT THE DRIVE-THRU?

My favorite weekend meal is brunch, but sorry Burger King, I won't be putting you on my list of bistros where I can meet my friends.  



Burger King announced they are testing a brunch menu in Massachusetts, Florida and Canada that will include mimosas (minus the alcohol).  I predict sweetened with high fructose corn syrup--just a guess--the company says it's orange juice, Sprite and ice.  

Still the fast food chain doesn't comprehend that people who brunch are not going to do so within the 10:30 AM timeframe when breakfast service ends.  Where's the expresso machine?  It's not brunch without a latte.  

COFFEE TIME CERAMIC AT BAKIN AND BACON

b

Bakin and Bacon's charming ceramic.   

How can there be bacon salt that contains no bacon? and other mysteries of life are contained within their new store in Railroad Square.  
Note that most of the flavored salts contain MSG, so stick with the 'plain' variety.  

Bacon brownies? Yummy wraps?  I was so busy, I forgot to ask if they serve coffee!

A LATTE OR AN IPHONE?

According to number quotes, 100 Caffe Latte Grandes would buy 2.47 iPhones.

SPEAKING OF HIGHWAYS

Florida Turnpike officials--seriously, the replacement of Starbucks with Dunkin' Donuts at refreshment areas, not a good idea.

IT'S ALWAYS AN EXPERIMENT

Today in Tampa, the Starbucks right off the Interstate called to me.  I decided to splurge and try the Vivianno Smoothie: banana and chocolate with a shot of expresso.  Sounded good at the time.  A few sips later, not so much.

COFFEE ALTERNATIVES

Reposted from Green Food Tallahassee:

According the the 1999 archives of Mother Earth News, coffee drinkers may be able to find an alternative to imported coffee beans (see post below). Here are some examples: Acorns from oak trees, no word on if Tallahassee's live oaks will do. Harvest them in the autumn, peel then and boil or soak them to remove tannic acid. Grind the acorns coarsely, roast them like coffee beans. The cautions not to roast the acorns to black because of the danger of creating carcinogens turned me off, be sure to read the article if you're considering acorns as you cuppa joe.
 
Burdock root can be used as a coffee substitute. Now, I know burdock from my visit this summer to Virginia. The edible and medicinal plant walking tour that we took near Blacksburg and the Apalachian trail provided many sitings of the medicinal burdock and I learned even the leaves were used as wound compresses and as diapers.

Use young roots, wash, grate and cut into slices, dry them in the oven, then grind coarsely. Then, roast the ground burdock. Mother Earth suggests burdock as a supplement to your coffee beans.

CALIFORNIA COFFEEBERRY

Evidently, as the name suggests, these are native to California, so wouldn't meet our local test, and it contains no caffeine. Despite its name, it's an evergreen shrub and not related to the coffee plant.

We're familiar with the carob pod, but native to the Mediterranean, and with chicory, which can be grown here, and has been used throughout the South as a coffee substitute. Dandelion root has also long been used as a coffee substitute. If the dandelion looks like this: then it's past its time to be consumed.

We don't find too much grains, like barley and wheat, in Tallahassee, however it's suggested to try any wild grasses in the area to discover something suitable. For example, Slow thistle, from Canada is related to the dandelion and is a more tender root.

ICED COFFEE - GOOD IDEA OR ABOMINATION?

Purist argument: ice cubes melt, watering down the masterpiece that is a good cup of expresso.  
Concoctions of sweet, slushy type especially topped with gobs of synthetic creme can be called many things, but not coffee.

                                                                                                                        

PHOTO: baristamagazine.com/blog