Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Coffee Book

If you love coffee, you might want to consider getting the book, "The Joy of Coffee: The Essential Guide to Buying, Brewing, and Enjoying," by Corby Kummer. It contains everything about coffee you'd ever want to know - and includes a whole separate section with dozens of recipes that include coffee as an ingredient. There are bunches of interesting tidbits, as well as very useful information.




Good for Your Health?

A friend of mine, who is 65 years old, has smoked since he was a teenager and swears he was just pronounced "healthy" by his doctor. He also consumes an amazing amount of coffee during the day - and these two facts might just be linked. According to an article on WebMD, coffee may offset damage done to your body by other bad habits, like drinking and smoking. People that drink a significant amount of coffee reportedly have less heart disease and liver damage than those that don't drink it. The article also says that coffee may help asthma sufferers, stop headaches, boost people's moods - and prevent cavities (?) You can read more at: http://men.webmd.com/features/coffee-new-health-food. There's another article on Harvard Health Publications at the following link; http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/coffee_health_risk.htm.



"Green" Coffee Filters

We've all been calculating our carbon footprints at work and trying to come up with ways to offset them. I ran across the ifyoucare.com website that features environmentally friendly coffee filters among its products, where the company manufactures them using 100% unbleached paper, and other products using 100% recycled resources. Granted, using one or two paper coffee filters per day won't make much of a dent in my 11-ton carbon footprint, but it's a start!




Saturday, July 12, 2008
Cupping

Well, here's a new use of an old term for you: cupping: Apparently, coffee growers, buyers, and roasters use this term to describe the method that they use to evaluate the aroma, taste, quality, and flavor profile of different kinds of coffee - usually, fine specialty coffee. And the growers, buyers, and roasters are called "cuppers"! These cuppers taste coffee the same way oenophiles taste wine: a little at a time, with no swallowing.

Annual Barista Championship

The Specialty Coffee Association of America (www.scaa.org) holds an annual Barista championship, and the winner this year is from Los Angeles. In fact, of the top six in the final results, five of them were from California! Do we know our coffee, or what? ;-) The contest itself consisted of the baristas' making 12 coffee drinks: 4 each of espressos, cappuccinos, and their own concoctions - in 15 minutes! Wouldn't it be nice if the baristas at our favorite coffeehouses could make them that fast?

The winner of the national competition received a trophy, a thousand dollars, AND an all-expense-paid trip to the WORLD championship to be held in Copenghagen, Denmark, from June 19 to 22, 2008. Who would have thought that making coffee could be so lucrative?

Single Cup Brewing Machine

On my to-do list one day was to transfer my bimonthly $100 from my checking account on to my Starbucks card. But while I was in Target that day, I noticed a Keurig machine, the kind where you can make one cup of coffee at a time, on sale for 99 bucks. I made the impulse decision to get that instead of my Starbucks refill, and it was one of the best (coffee) decisions I've made. The coffee is delicious, and it cost only 50 cents per cup instead of four dollars! I've converted a few people at the office, too.

Now I only have Starbucks when I want to "treat" myself!

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