"erin meister" news and stories

A cafecito (with a Hemingway Special chaser). Photo: Erin Meister

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is part of a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.

Doesn't the heat make you daydream about being someplace else?

Someplace tropical and friendly, where the heat is part of the romance -- bellying up to a Havana lunch counter, enjoying the languid spinning of a lazy ceiling fan, the cool droplets crawling down the side of a sweating glass, the tinny tenor of cantador Beny Moré. And, naturally, a coffee.

You're thinking, "Coffee?! Who daydreams about coffee while sweat is making tracks down your spine?"

Me, that's who.

Brutal summer days are made for cafecito -- the thick, strong Cuban-style espresso brewed with sugar that's best when belted first thing in the morning. It may look like a regular ol' espresso, but the extra sweet kick might just jump-start your day a little quicker.

A muy tropical cafecito video, after the jump.

Coffee beans drying. Photo: william.neuheisel, Flickr

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is part of a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.

Hey, wait a sec! Are you really about to dump out the rest of the too-big coffee you ordered this morning, drank a third of, forgot about and let get lukewarm? Come on, pal -- you think this stuff grows on trees?

Well, actually, it kind of does -- except they're more like bushes. And the beans that we enjoy roasted, ground and percolated in the morning are actually seeds, not beans: They're more like a cherry pit than any legume you put in your famous Super Bowl Sunday chili. And much like every other fresh fruit or vegetable we enjoy, the beauty and deliciousness of a coffee is fleeting, seasonal and really labor intensive.

Read more about coffee's journey from seed to cup after the jump.

Gazpacho. Photo: Emily Farris, Fifty Bucks a Week.

Each week, we round up the top food articles we've spied Web-wide. This week, a special edition of our own bloggers' primo pieces from elsewhere on the Web.

Pervaiz Shallwani boards a bus with a stripper pole alongside a bunch of bartenders to harvest rye in upstate New York ... for Gourmet ... really.

"Mad Men" fiend Eric Diesel reveals his recipe for perfectly "clean" martinis -- a 2-to-1 gin-to-vermouth concoction at his Urban Home blog.

Mike Pomranz on the phenomenon of a cat opening a jar of food at Comedy Central.

Bruce Watson reports at sister site DailyFinance that the United States may "run out of sugar" in the next year!

Cook and film buff Monika Bartyzel notes that Michael Moore might be done with the documentary style that made him famous, for Cinematical.

Gretchen Roberts, our savvy sommelier-in-training, offers freebie gourmet treats at her wine blog Vinobite.

CoffeeMeister Erin Meister makes peace with the five-second-rule over at her culinary blog, the Nervous Cook.

Joshua M. Bernstein visits Scores, a Manhattan strip club, to eat steak (again, really!) for the New York Press.

Emily Farris tries to toe the budget line with a basic, beautiful gazpacho at Fifty Bucks a Week.

Photo: Erin Meister

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is part of a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.

There are a lot of awesome jobs out there, but if I may say so, I think I've got one of the best: Getting paid to taste, learn and teach about coffee. (Great for the palate, maybe not so great for a night's sleep.) But as much as I've been able to learn while busily caffeinating New York City, there's always more to be discovered. Coffee's so fascinating, it could be its own Trivial Pursuit category. I thought I'd share five of the best facts I've picked up along the way about our favorite little buzzin' bean, for you to wow your coffee-loving friends with.

5. Espresso has less caffeine than a cup of drip coffee ... sort of. A 7-ounce cuppa joe averages about 150 mg of caffeine, while a 1.5- to 2-ounce shot of espresso yields roughly 100 mg (data varies from source to source). But yes, strictly speaking, drip coffee does have more caffeine per total volume -- but not per ounce. Espresso wins that round, hands down.

4. Coffee is one of the most complex things we consume. Clocking in with nearly 1,000 aromatic compounds (and more being discovered all the time), coffee runs laps around even red wine, which contains about a third as many.

Three more after the (jittery) jump!

A vintage couple gets the jitters

There's nothing like the calming warmth of a shot of espresso -- that old friend you count on to get you going.

But like the passive-aggressive pal leaving catty notes on your Facebook wall, your morning joe can turn on you in an instant, especially if you have one too many.

I've only been betrayed once, but it was enough to permanently slow my caffeine binge habits: The moment I swallowed the offending shot, my heart started pounding, I saw double, my hands started sweating and I stumbled blindly towards the door of my favorite café, trying to sneak out unnoticed. (It is not ideal for a CoffeeMeister's reputation to be crumpled on the floor of a café in a fit of caffeine-induced hysteria).

It's easy for people to forget -- or deny -- that caffeine is a drug, but the facts say otherwise: Like its distant cousins cocaine and nicotine, it's an alkaloid, though there aren't typically state-funded "quit cappuccinos" campaigns. The stimulating stuff's natural function is as a built-in pesticide for plants like coffee, cacao and tea.

Contrary to the paralyzing effect it has on crawling critters, it sends us skipping back to our desks at 3 p.m. with a renewed sense of joie de vivre. Sadly, however, too much of a good thing is bad news indeed.