Category Archives: Coffee

A GOOD CUPPA

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A coffee ceremony is a ritualised form of making and drinking coffee. The coffee ceremony is one of the most recognizable parts of Arab, Eritrean and Ethiopian culture. Coffee is offered when visiting friends, during festivities, or as a daily staple of life. If coffee is politely declined then most likely tea (shai) will be served.  MORE [Wikipedia]

FOR THE LOVE OF A GOOD CUPPA

by

Karen Fayeth

This year The Good Man and I had the chance to celebrate the Fourth of July with some good friends. There were six of us total (three couples), and we met at our friend’s house for a special treat.

One of our crew had just recently returned from a trip to Ethiopia. She and her husband are in process of adopting an adorable baby boy and she had to make a visit to work through the paperwork with the local courts.

While in country visiting her baby son and patiently working though the long process, she was treated on several occasions to the Ethiopian coffee ceremony.

On our Fourth of July holiday, she wanted to share this ceremony with us, her friends.

About the coffee ceremony, here’s a quote from Ethiopian ambassador Haile-Giros Gessesse:
“Coffee has social value in our society. It is deep rooted in our culture. The coffee ceremony in local areas is used mainly for social gatherings. In the mornings and evenings parents, especially mothers gather together for a coffee ceremony and also use it as a platform for exchanging information in their surroundings. It is a means of communication. When people sit down they usually spend three hours finalizing the ceremony, starting with the preparation, and then roasting to brewing it.”

Our friend had hauled home a big bag of green coffee beans, water hulled (the good stuff) not fire hulled, and we sat outside in the beautiful sun while she told us about the ceremony.

First, she roasted the beans on the grill. We watched as she shook and swirled the pan, much like a slow Jiffy pop motion.

When we all agreed that it looked like the beans were at a good medium roast we all took in a whiff of the fantastic aroma from the pan.

We then took turns using a mortar and pestle to smash the beans down to a nice grind.

It was satisfying work to smash, smash, smash those crispy beans and release the beautiful scent and oils.

The grinds were then put into a French press and once brewed, a round of coffee was poured into six cups.

Yuuuummmm! It had a floral aroma and tasted so light and delicious. So amazing with just a touch of sugar and nothing else.

In keeping with tradition, we had three rounds of coffee while we discussed our lives, the news of the day, baseball, and got caught up with each other. This is part of the ceremony, the community, the support, the friendship.

Now, I love a great cup of coffee, but I rarely drink caffeinated coffee. After three cups I was ready to clean my house top to bottom, jog a thousand miles, and throw a 98mph fastball.

But it was a happy caffeinated high.

I was honored to be a part of the ceremony and I can hardly wait until our friends bring home their baby boy. I hope to we can continue to give him a sense of community and family…maybe even over a cuppa or two…or three.

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Credits ~ Feature re-blogged with permission. All rights reserved. Photo and quote from a CRIEnglish.com article by Wei Tong. Visit Karen Fayeth HERE.

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COFFEE AND … HONEY?

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tupelo_bottle_large1

Photograph courtesy ofSleeping Bear Farms Website

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt – marvellous error! -
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.”

From the pen of poet Antonio Machado

Okay, so I was looking for an excuse to post Machado’s poem, which I love. Hence, this odd post. But coffee with honey is a relatively new thing for me. Honey may not be the first thing you think of when you want to sweeten your coffee.  It wasn’t for me until I saw the CitySon Philosopher add it to his one day.  It turns out to give coffee a nice, mellow, buttery sweetness, distinctive in all the best ways.

Despite the Van Morrison song, I never tracked on Tupelo honey. I got interested in the Tupelo Honey  (pictured above with link below the picture to Sleepy Bear Farms, a manufacturer) after reading The Secret Life of Bees. I suspect Sue Monk Kidd put that honey on the map for a lot of us, giving it a little romantic spin in the process.

A hot cup of honied coffee on a rainy weekend and a good movie sounds wonderful to me. My choices: The Secret Life of Bees or Ulee’s Gold, one of my all-time favorite films.

Honeyed Coffee

The recipe

  • 1 cup of hot,  fresh coffee, not a Sumatra
  • 2  tablespoons of half-and-half
  • 1 tablespoon honey

Add the honey and half-and-half to your coffee. Stir well.

Tupelo Honey, Van Morrison with Pee Wee Ellis on sax. Enjoy! Back with our regular programming tomorrow…

Video posted to YouTube by .

NEGOTIATING THE PATHWAYS OF JAVA JOLT

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Public domain photograph courtesy of Petr Kratochvil, Public Domain Pictures.net.

Starbucks says they are going to start putting religious quotes on cups. The very first one will say, ‘Jesus! This cup is expensive!’ Conan O’Brian

I stopped with a friend at a Starbuck’s for a quick fix the other day. Her conversation with the young barista might sound familiar to you:

Friend: “I’ll have a small coffee.”

Barista: “You’ll have a tall coffee.”

Friend: “No. I just want a small coffee.”

Barista: “Oh, yes. A tall coffee is a small coffee.”

Friend: cross-eyed by now, “Ah, okay.”

Barista: “Miss, will that be a decaf.” (It was almost four in the afternoon.)

Friend: “No thank you! I just want a small, plain, caffeinated coffee.”

Barista: “Okay, a tall, regular coffee.”

Wow! I think it took me less time to negotiate the mortgage on my first house. And not to point a finger at Starbuck’s, I believe it’s a little like that almost anywhere these days. And that conversation didn’t get into the challenges of flavored coffee drinks: “I’ll have a small – no make that  a tall – decaf mocha with whipped cream – make that a nonfat, decaf mocha with whipped cream – no hold the whipped cream … do you have soy? – I’ll have a soy decaf mocha with whipped cream. Small. No! I mean tall. Make it iced. Oh, wait a minute. Is your soy gluten-free? I better not take a chance. I’ll have a tall, iced nonfat mocha without whipped cream.Thanks! How much? An arm and a leg. Okay, and here’s my right eye for a tip. Good job! Thank you.” It’s all a bit of a jolt: java included in the packaging.