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!

When President Ronald Regan declared July to be National Ice Cream Month back in 1984, he also said that the third Thursday Sunday of the month (today - July 16th) would be National Ice Cream Day. In honor of this, how about some ice cream facts?

• The top five most popular ice cream flavors are: vanilla, chocolate, neapolitan, strawberry and cookies n' cream, in that order, with vanilla comprising about 1/4 of all sales!
• The US produces more than 1 billion gallons of ice cream every year.
• It takes 50 licks to finish a single scoop of ice cream.
• By federal law, regular ice cream sold in stores must have at least 10% milkfat. "Reduced fat" ice creams have 25% less fat than regular ice creams, "light" has 50% less fat, "low fat" has a maximum of 3g fat per serving and "nonfat" ice creams must have less than .5g fat per serving.
• There are ice cream options both for conservatives and for liberals.
• The biggest ice cream sundae in the world was made in Alberta, Canada and weighed nearly 55,000 pounds.
• The world's largest ice cream sandwich weighed in at just about 2,500 pounds.
• Carvel made the world's largest ice cream cake, which weighed 12,096 pounds. It took 54 people to assemble it.
• The world's largest ice cream cone is in Peoria, Illinois.

More ice cream stuff at Slashfood:

• The history of... ice cream cones
• eCreamery lets you make your own ice cream flavor
• Ice cream that will make you break out in a Cold Sweat
• Ice creams for Tastykake Fans
• Slashfood Ate (8): Decadent Ice Cream Sundaes

July is National Hot Dog month and summer is certainly an appropriate choice, as Americans eat 7 billion hot dogs during the summer (from Memorial Day to Labor Day), cooking up two thirds of them in the backyard or at home, and a total of 20 billion every year. On the 4th of July alone, 150 million hot dogs will be eaten in the US and most will be grilled, since 60% of Americans say that they prefer to eat them that way.

Want to test your hot dog trivia knowledge? Take the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council's online quiz and see if you have the goods on one of America's favorite foods. I have to admit that I only got 7 out of 10. What are you waiting for? Test the test and let us know how you scored in the comments!

 

More hot dog stories:

• How do you dress your dog? 
• Peanut butter hot dogs 
• Slashfood Ate (8): Best Hot Dogs 
• How hot dogs got their name 
• Microwaveable hot dogs... with buns? 
• Heinz makes the best ketchup 

With people being ever more likely to check the nutritional information on a product before they eat it, these ads mentioned at AdJab, are meant to point out that not everyone has access to the nutritional information of what they're eating. In this case, the ads refer to the homeless. The idea behind the sticker is that it contains the nutritional information for one "can" of food, with a message at the bottom to "help the homeless." The url that it gives does not actually exist, but it's an interesting way to present the message.

I would say something snarky about how that nutrition label would have to be revamped if it appeared on a bin outside of, say, a fast food joint, but feeding the hungry and/or homeless is nothing to joke about.

[Image AdArena]

 

Wikis, if you're not familiar with them, are online pages that anyone can edit. This leads to comprehensive definitions on just about any subject from applications like the Wikipedia. For a recipe, this means that all the collective knowledge of cooks can be added in to one central location. Does it make the perfect recipe? The directions for making a grilled cheese sandwich at WikiHow look pretty clear and even though the instructions are simple, keep in mind that every great chef (and hungry cook) must start somewhere. If the stove top method is too conventional, you can also try using a George Foreman grill or an iron.

Speaking of grilled cheese, here are a few facts to tide you over while you wait for your sandwich to be done:

• Americans make 2.2 billion grilled cheese sandwiches at home each year.
• The most popular two cheeses for grilled cheese are cheddar and American, though Gouda, Swiss and Gruyere are also quite popular, especially in Europe.
• 30% of Americans name the grilled cheese as their favorite homemade sandwich
• Grilled cheese often has add-ins and the most common is tomato, followed by bacon/ham, potato chips and pickles, while other variations include the French croque-monsieur and croque-madame.

We have some facts and figures about general drinking trends, but what about just beer? Here are a few fun bits of beer trivia, from Here's to Beer and other randomly collected factoids, to quiz your buddies when you're all relaxing over a brew and a game after work:

• According to the Canadian Ace Brewing Co., there are 6,998 drops in a 12-ounce bottle of beer.
• St. Arnold is recognized by the Catholic Church as the patron saint of brewing beer.
• A 12-ounce beer has fewer calories than two slices of standard, sliced bread.
• In Fairbanks, Alaska, it is illegal to give beer to a moose.
• The country with the most brands of beer - 400 - is Belgium.
• In Germany, you can buy beer popsicles.
• Cenosillicaphobia is the fear of an empty [beer] glass

For more refreshing beer info, check out Slashfood's beer archives!