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When your house is filled with coffee, sometimes it doesn't all get consumed and there is a leftover cup.  Or sometimes you just need and excuse to make another pot.  Either way, cooking with coffee is a great way to deal with these issues.  Thankfully there are lots of recipes out there using coffee in some way. One of my favorites is for Texan Sheet Cake.  Not being from Texas, I have no idea whether this is a traditional dish or if adding coffee to this cake is the "right" way to make it (like the age old debate about...

Is anyone else having trouble with time?  We seem to go from time standing still to absolute craziness.  And who knows what day or month it is (who can forget what year it is!)?  Spring simply mushed into summer and without back to school, football season, homecoming, and normal Halloween, it's hard to know where we are in the calendar.   But this fall, an odd thing is occurring. The days are getting shorter, the temperatures are falling, and the leaves are changing colors.  Not this doesn’t usually happen but it seems more pronounced this year.  Those changes are making...

We seem to be in a swing towards local products from farmers markets, handmade crafts, small batch jellies and local boutique stores.  After malls and big box stores took over the world, we realized there really was a need for smaller stores and opportunities.    But what about coffee?  Cafes and coffee trucks everywhere talk about local and small batch roasters.  How is that better or even different the from grocery brands or mass coffee production?   Small batch roasters can actually mean more than one thing. First, the amount of coffee roasted at one time is a smaller quantity...

Back in the day there was 1 kind of coffee… BLACK.  There were no conversations about roasts and countries and processes.  Now we have so many choices that it can be a bit overwhelming.    What’s the difference between coffee roasts? The roast, from light to dark, is how long the coffee bean is roasted.  Coffee beans start off green and soft with virtually no flavor.  The beans absorb heat and get darker the longer they roast.  Light roasts have more of a toasted grain taste and pronounced acidity.  They also have the most amount of caffeine.  As the beans...