Coffee cup Mona Lisa

This is pretty cool.














Artist assistants stand next to 3,604 cups of coffee which have been made into a giant Mona Lisa in Sydney , Australia . The 3,604 cups of coffee were filled with different amounts of milk to create the different shades!

The Nia Coffeehouse Has a New Home

Well the Nia Coffeehouse has been on hiatus for a couple of months. We hope you missed us.  We will be back soon.  Home base will be St. Alban, 2555 Euclid Heights Blvd.  Look for the read door on the hill.  We have more space, we'll serving food and bringing you poetry, music, and spoken word.  We will be back to you soon with times and dates.  You can see where we've been at facebook, https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Nia-Coffeehouse/129467261263?sk=app_2309869772

Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony

I hope you enjoy this essay on Ethiopian Coffee Cerimony by Emily Doyle
Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony

culture by the cup

Culture in a Cup
By
IT Blog
Food writer and Modern Spice cookbook author Monica Bhide recently returned from visiting her family in India, and we asked her to share some glimpses of contemporary life she noticed while there. You can read her first post here.


For centuries India, particularly North India, has been a country of tea drinkers, while steaming cups of coffee were loved by the folks in South India. And then something happened. Since 2000, coffeehouses like Barista and Café Coffee Day have begun to spring up in major cities by the hundreds. They offer different types of coffees, smoothies, and snacks very much like Starbucks does. The initial reaction was interesting to watch. "The affluent young Indians will love it," the media claimed, as they noted all the youngsters gathering at the coffeehouses. There was an outcry from lovers of Indian culture and tea--it was blasphemous for them to even think that coffee culture could be percolating here in India, sacrilegious that a tea-drinking nation could love drinking coffee. Culture watchers were quick to point out that people drinking in these fancy coffeehouses weren't any better than the ones who drank tea off the street stalls.

My view is a bit different.

In my opinion--and I have been watching this closely over the past ten years-- these coffeehouses aren't about the coffee. While tea stalls provide a quick stop for the frantic in need of a hot shot, they aren't places to gather for contemplative conversations. A Barista opened near my parents' home in New Delhi several years ago, and as I stopped by on a daily basis during five weeks of my trip, I discovered it had culture of its own.

The early morning hours find retired older men who sit around with newspapers in hand discussing politics, their children, the new iPod Nano and their good old times. I spoke with a few of them and they told me there was nowhere else to go in this heat, and at home their wives objected--oh, the maids are cleaning, not now! So they meet here; this is their support in their old age. The afternoon finds the young adults with their laptops, and book clubs meeting to discuss the latest Jhumpa Lahiri masterpiece. As the day fades, these coffee shops become places to be seen, with teenagers gathering to discuss where to eat and what the evening holds.
They meet, they talk, they reminisce, they discuss, and they work here. True, some of them sip the beverages offered, but it isn't about the coffee. It is about the culture: the togetherness it has bought. Why not celebrate what it is bringing to contemporary India, instead of lamenting about what it is supposedly taking away? There are, and always will be, crowds at the local tea stalls. That is also a culture, and I don't think it will, or should, ever go away. But this diversity is what makes India what it is today.

Photos: Above, a lovely cup of cappuccino is served at the Barista in Phoenix Mills, Mumbai. Below, a traditional tea stand in Mumbai. By Monica Bhide.

Coffee Roads that Cross to the Future and Rome

B. "Coffee roads that cross, to the future and to Rome. (On the Continent).(Coffee, coffeehouses and European history and culture)." Tea & Coffee Trade Journal. Lockwood Trade Journal Co., Inc. 2002. Retrieved October 10, 2009 from HighBeam Research: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-86876710.html

Coffee's Road to the Future Raising Coffee From the Dead
However one chooses to believe that coffee came to Europe -- abandoned by fleeing Turks at the walls of Vienna after their unsuccessful siege, shipped in by Venetian galleys as prizes of war -- it is indisputable that the stimulating drink caused a revolution in Western Culture. Coffee house quickly spread from Vienna and Venice to Paris and London.
The "cafes," as they came to be known, were far more than our espresso bars. They became the collective depository of those supercmharged explosives of culture -- political thought and radical art.
The European cafe became something of a common man's parliament of free speech and thought. This is why the geniuses of the ages have adored them, from Bach to Voltaire. Far before the advent of the Euro or the bureaucratic corridors of power at the EU in Brussels, they existed in all European nations and were a nexus of thought and energy -- a pan European stimulation by the dark and aromatic bean.
How many revolutions were plotted over cups of cafe coffee; how many schools of art found their beginning at those wobbly, wet tables and on such uncomfortable chairs? It is not hyperbolic to suggest that the cafe and coffee were perhaps second only to the University and the book in bringing enlightenment and a commonality of shared ideals to play in the rapid advancement of Western culture from the 17th century well into the past century.

African Origins of Coffee

Did an Ethiopian
goatherd discover coffee?

AFRICAN ORIGINS (Circa A.D. 800) Goats will eat anything. Just ask Kaldi the legendary Ethiopian (map) goatherd. Kaldi, the story goes, noticed his herd dancing from one coffee shrub to another, grazing on the cherry-red berries containing the beans. He copped a few himself and was soon frolicking with his flock. Witnessing Kaldi’s goatly gambol, a monk plucked berries for his brothers. That night they were uncannily alert to divine inspiration. History tells us other Africans of the same era fueled up on protein-rich coffee-and-animal-fat balls—primitive PowerBars—and unwound with wine made from coffee-berry pulp. Coffee later crossed the Red Sea to Arabia, where things really got cooking... [next]

© 1999 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.

Indian filter coffee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Indian filter coffee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Culture

Coffee is something of a cultural icon in Andhra, Kannada and Tamil cultures. It is customary to offer a cup of coffee to any visitor. Coffee was originally introduced by Baba Buden to South India in 16th century and became very popular under the British Rule. Until the middle of the 20th century traditional households would not use granulated sugar but used jaggery instead in coffee."