I love the July 4th celebrations. The whole idea  of picnics, family get togethers, fireworks, and listening to the Star Spangled Banner just does something for me. Generally we open the house up to anyone who wants to come, put up the volleyball net, the horseshoe spikes, the hatchet targets (yes my kids throw hatchets at targets, doesn’t everyone’s kids?), and point people in the direction of the creek if they want a swim.

The house fills with flies as people run in and out and gallons of lemonade, tea, cokes, and other beverages are consumed. The only requirement is that guests bring food to share and control their children.

Seems fair to me.  I am not a fan of uncontrolled children. People assume because I have 8 kids I LOVE children. Not true. I like kids all right but I have no tolerance level for undisciplined, uncontrollable, disrespectful kids. They all seem to end up working at the local grocery stores but that is a whole ‘nother story.

Anyway, if you are looking for something a bit different to serve this Fourth of July take a look at this. Coffee coke float,with just a quick glug of Kahlua for some pizzaz. You can leave the Kahlua out if you want but it is just awesome with it.  Serve it in old fashioned ice cream parlor style shake glasses and top with a mound of whipped cream.

Coffee Coke Float

• 2/3 cup half and half (light) cream
• 2 1/2 cups espresso, or strong coffee, cold
• 4 scoops coffee ice cream
• 1 -2 liter bottle of Coke
• 1/2 cup Kahlua if desired
• 4 frosted glasses

Mix the cream and the cold coffee

Add 2 tbs Kahlua to each glass

Place a scoop of the ice cream in each of four glasses

Half fill each glass with the coffee then fill up the rest of the way with Coke.

Serves 4

Image;Wikipedia

Coffee fights bad breath. Yes it does.

See, I was always under the impression that coffee was what made my mouth taste like seven desert camels with incontinence had ventured through it with muddy feet. I mean, you get up, you brush your teeth, you drink coffee, and an hour later you need a breath mint…STAT!

Dude, YOU need some coffee, stat!

But according to this ever so cool study done by the Israelis coffee actually blocks a lot of the bacteria that are responsible for bad breath. There is even talk of a salve that would be made from coffee that could eliminate bad breath.

We have reached a pinnacle in coffee history. We are at the dawn of the age of coffee toothpaste. This could revolutionize the free world and give Starbucks a totally new venue for their greed.

Imagine if you will…you could go into your local Starbucks and order a tube of caramel macchiato toothpaste. You could forego coffee in the mornings and just brush your teeth for an extended period of time…

Caffeine junkies, desperate for a caffeine fix would be sucking down coffee flavored Listerine and squeezing the last few globs out of discarded toothpaste tubes.

Interesting thought. Coffee actually freshens breath. Wow.

image:sxc

I do. Back in the early 1960s air conditioning meant throwing open the windows. I swear you could hear the ring of the bells of the ice cream truck for miles. In fact, in our neighborhood, you could look out the window and see kids sitting there, waiting for the right moment to hit their mom’s up for some money.

You did this carefully. There was finesse and timing involved. If you did it too soon she would shake her head and say she didn’t hear any ice cream truck…but wait one minute too late and you couldn’t get there in time. You timed the quest for ice cream money as carefully as you timed a trip to the bathroom during Bonanza.  Timing was everything.

So…you waited and the minute you could hear those bells clearly you made your pitch as earnestly as you could, eyes wide and innocent, fingers crossed behind your back for luck. A few beads of sweat on your forhead didn’t hurt.  Then you rushed out the door and waited with the other lucky kids while the unlucky kids glared at you miserably from the sidelines, or sidled up to you hoping to get  a lick.

When I saw this story in the Boston Globe it brought all of those memories back. Imagine, not an ice cream truck but a coffee truck. Not just any coffee truck but a truck holding artisan roasted coffees, top coffee technologies, and lots and lots of coffee.

A moment of silence please.

The brilliant mind behind this is Bob Weeks. He roasts his own coffee in 6 lb batches at his home. And apparently this is pretty darn good coffee.  He then sells various coffee drinks to a variety of customers who are, no doubt, waiting impatiently for the sound of his truck…

This is so cool.  And best of all? I have my own money now.

“Hey! Stop! Coffee Man!”…….

image:sxc (photoshopped by marye audet)

Think of this as a late night chat, sort of informal and nothing big. How addicted to coffee are you? I mean, how much coffee does it take you to get through a normal day?

How Much Is Enough?

Right now my coffee consumption is down. It tends to be in the summer. Marc likes iced coffee a lot but I never really developed a taste for it. So, I am on the ice water side of the year. I drink (and this is the straight up truth) about 2 1/2 gallons of ice water a day in the summer. I go through about 2 1/2 lbs of ice a day. Not just any ice either. It has to be specific ice with a specific texture, and right now only one store is carrying it.

Now you know why I have to work at home.

But I still like my coffee in the morning. I drink about two cups before I switch over to ice water. I enjoy a glass of sweet tea in the afternoon but I can’t drink gallons of it the way I can drink pots of coffee in the winter time. That’s probably a good thing since I definitely don’t need that much sugar.

I would probably drink more coffee if we used the air conditioner but the idea of a 120 degree drink on a 110 degree day when it is 104 degrees in the house is not so appealing, you know?

So. Coffee? How much? Be honest.

image:sxc

I was reading this article about Starbucks in Reuters with great interest, Green or Greenwashed?

Frankly, I am not sure that any large company can ever be green. No matter how much they try their very existence as a corporation will preclude them being environmentally friendly.

Green belongs to the small, local coffee shops that use “for here” cups and buy their organic, shade grown, bird friendly coffee from a local roaster or roast it themselves. Green belongs to small, family owned companies that operate in communities, support the local communities, and refuse to grow past a certain, controllable point.

Read more

When Ken, of Weekly Roast Coffee asked if I would like to try their coffee I said “Yes”.  I am nothing if not enthusiastic about the bean. The funnything is that I have been reviewing so much coffee lately that I haven’t reviewed tea…even though I have been drinking it.  Anyway, Ken sent me a package of their El Salvador.

The beans smell peppery. The flavor of the beans before brewing is mild with a crisp teture. These are the beans to use for chocolate covered coffee beans, coffee bean brittle, or anything that you are going to want coffee beans as a textural ingredient.

The flavor is bright without out being too acidic. Very smooth. This is a great morning coffee. Cream and sugar bring out butterscotch and vanilla flavors, but black the coffee is mild and slightly nutty.

If this coffee was a vacation it would be a small lake cabin: Relaxing, satisfying, and fresh.

I have a special place in my heart for indy companies, start ups, and artisans. I think that the corporate boom in midcentury 1900 lowered the quality of living for everyone as items became affordable but lacking in quality. Walmart is a great example. You can save money but you end up with pure- D- crap. Outsourcing to other countries irritates me.  So, when I have the opportunity to support local companies, small companies, American companies I do so.

I look forward to trying more of Weekly Roast’s coffees.

So, I am reclined here this morning, mostly wasting time. We could say “twittering” away my day…and we would be right. I am also sipping a cup of Boca Java’s Light Up Las Olas. Not the first cup, mind you… a cup.

Light Up Las Olas is a dark roast, blended from Columbian and Brazillian coffees. The aroma of the beans is spicy and licorice-y.  Nice.

The flavor is described on the site as having notes of cocoa. Eh. Maybe.

The flavor is warm and smoky, a bit too acidic at the end for my tastes. Slight nuances of marshmallow on the intake, makes you think you are going to have a toasted marshmallow flavor but at the last minute it morphs into almost an amaretto-pecan.

Oddly, with the flavors invoked this is not a smooth coffee. After the first few sips you lose track of the flavor of it and it becomes just coffee.

On a scale of 1-5 it gets a 3. There is nothing outstanding about it and yet it isn’t bad. I liked it much better sweetened and cream added.

By the way? If you are interested, you can follow me on Twitter… never a dull moment I promise.

Image:Boca Java

When Mike of Daily Shot of Coffee talked about this I knew that I had to try it. It was too weird to be missed in my little world, so I ordered it. I was trying to imagine how maple and bacon and coffee would taste and trying to figure out how they did it without muddying the flavor.

I still don’t know how they did it but I can tell you that the flavor is reminiscent of the way your mouth tastes after you have eaten pancakes and bacon, and are washing them down with copious amounts of coffee.

One thing I do not like about Boca Java is that their coffees are very delicately flavored. It is easy to miss some of the nuances of flavor, and I would like to seem them intensify the flavor a bit. However, saying that, I liked this coffee a lot. It was a nice melding of maple and bacon held together with coffee like duct tape. I think it needs to have sweetener and cream to get the best flavor, and you need to keep that in mind.

This isn’t going to be your every day coffee, this is one of those that you have to pull out for friends just to freak them out with your uniqueness, or buy for a coffee freak that has tried everything.

Image:Boca Java

I got an email from Kaffee Magnum Opus the other day and they have introduced a new, kinda cool sounding, coffee flavor. Single Malt Scotch.

I may definitely need to try this one. I am not a drinker at all, but I used to like an occasional shot of good  scotch. The combination of the buttery sweetness of the scotch with the flavor of the coffee is intriguing to say the least. I think I could plan a whole menu around it.

I don’t know. So much coffee….so little money. sigh.

If you have some extra time on your hands and you want to shop some really unique flavors of coffee, you need to head over there. It is amazing what they come up with, I have seriously never seen anything like it.

image:Kaffe Magnum Opus

No one was more surprised than I was when I picked up a bag of Starbucks Arabian Mocha Sanini at the Starbuck’s Kiosk in the grocery store. It was more expensive than what I would normally pay, especially considering that I am at the point where coffee and tea companies send me free samples to try.

But… I wanted to taste a 16.99 a pound coffee. I expected this post to be sarcasticly biting, somewhat like the flavor I expected from the coffee.

But it wasn’t.  And this won’t be either.

I loved this coffee. It was extra dark, smoothly silky in texture with lingering clove, raisin, and berry flavors. It had none of the usual acrid over-roasted taste that I normally associate with Starbuck’s, but was smooth all the way through, with a pleasant aftertaste that was almost a cardamom, although some might describe it as citrus.

I didn’t think the aftertaste was clean enough to be citrus, it was more mysterious and exotic, thus caradamom. This is a complex coffee, well worth the 16.99 I paid. I know, I am shocked myself, but there you go. Miracles do happen.

Give this one a try. I think it is seasonal so it won’t be around for long.

Image: Starbucks