October 25th, 2009 by Geoff Marks
A simple cup of coffee is a powerful thing! It can mend fences and save friendships. They say that the pen is mightier than the sword, but it could be that a simple cup of coffee is more powerful than both of them put together.
It had been a tough week in the neighborhood. It was cold, and the kids had been underfoot indoors at one house or the other all week. My neighbor and I had been close friends for several years, but our relationship had gotten seriously strained over this past week. She had called me twice to complain about how my Bobby was tormenting her Shawn. She had sent him home, too, more than twice.
Now, the boys played at my house as often as they played at her house, and I was fully aware of the fact that her Shawn wasn’t the little darling that she thought he was. Our relationship …
Read the rest »
October 17th, 2009 by Geoff Marks
You can find those on both sides of this issue. Is coffee a weight loss help, or a weight loss hindrance? On the one hand, coffee is a stimulant and it is addictive. There are those who even call coffee a drug. These are people who are firmly against the use of anything that could remotely be called addictive or a stimulant. They advocate abstinence from practically everything.
On the other side of this coffee and weight loss issue, you will find those who point out that there are no calories, no carbohydrates, and no fat in a cup of black coffee. Coffee has a satisfying taste that one can enjoy guilt free. These people agree that coffee is a stimulant, but they see that as a good thing. Coffee is recognized by many as a very natural appetite suppressant, which is an extremely desirable quality for those who are trying to lose some unwanted …
Read the rest »
September 11th, 2009 by Geoff Marks
Now, when your feet first touch the floor in the morning and you are groggily making your way to the coffee pot, you probably aren’t thinking about where coffee came from or who discovered the magic stuff. But the origins of coffee are really rather interesting, and after you have finished that first cup, you might like to know how it happened that you have a cup of coffee to get your day started off right. There are several versions of how coffee was discovered.
One story is that a sheep herder from Caffa Ethopia named Kaldi noticed that when his sheep ate red “cherries” from a certain plant, they became very active. The sheep would have been bouncing off the walls, had there been walls. The sheep herder decided to try the “cherries” himself and soon he was as hyper as his herd of sheep. A monk came along and scolded Kaldi for “partaking of the …
Read the rest »
March 18th, 2009 by Geoff Marks
The State of Hawaii has been contributing a very important flavor of coffee to the community of coffee lovers. It is called “Kona”, and it is grown on a relatively small portion of the Hawaiian Islands. The entire crop of kona coffee beans comes from a two to three thousand acre plot of land which has it’s own unique history.
Hawaii has strict rules on it’s coffee industry. To be called by the name “kona” the beans have to be from the specific part of the region where the beans are currently grown. Some lower cost versions of Kona coffee are mixed with Arabica beans from Columbia and Brazil. While these Kona coffee blends are still full of flavor, they are not the true variety hat has brought such renown to this delicious bean.
The coffee plant was originally brought to Hawaii by a Brazilian man in the 1800′s. It never really came of any significance until the coffee market …
Read the rest »
Tags: 
