Coffee

On the Friday before Election Day, President Barack Obama was ahead of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in 7-Election polling throughout Maryland. Billed as unabashedly unofficial and unscientific, 7-Election invites customers to vote by selecting specially marked coffee cups, blue for Obama and red for Romney. Nationally, Obama was polling 59 percent to Romney's 41 percent. In Maryland, Obama's lead was more stretchy (65 percent to 35 percent), and in Baltimore it was stretchier still (68 percent to 32 percent)

Steve Frazer from Reisterstown was looking for the recipe for the chocolate chip cake that used to be sold at Miller's Delicatessen in Northwest Baltimore in the 1970s. He remembers that it was a very dense cake and most likely made with sour cream with an abundance of tiny chocolate chips and a sugary crunchy topping. I received an email from Leslie Miller-Scherr of Baltimore in response to Frazer's query. She said that her family was the original owner of Miller's deli and that she remembers the cake well.

On Thursday, February 3, 2005, RONALD NELSON COFFEE of Elkridge, beloved husband of Linda Coffee, loving father of Starla Collins and John Coffee, caring brother of the late Shirley A. Coffee and John Joseph Coffea. Remembered grandfather of Tommy Hawke Stacey Hawke and Owen Coffee. The family will receive visitors at the family owned Singleton Funeral Home, 1 Second Avenue, S.W., (at Crain Highway) Glen Burnie, from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 P. M on Saturday the 5th and Sunday the 6th. The Funeral Ceremony will be held on Monday at 11 A. M in the funeral home chapel.

Caribou Coffee is converting to the Peet's Coffee & Tea brand in the Baltimore area, and one of the four area locations, in Owings Mills, will close on Sunday. The Reisterstown Road Caribou is one of 80 "underperforming" stores the company said it decided to close after closely evaluating markets over the past few months. The three other Baltimore area Caribou coffee shops, in Hunt Valley Towne Centre in Hunt Valley, in Gambrills and at North Charles and Fayette streets in downtown Baltimore, will stay open but will be re-branded over the next year and a half.

Main Street business and property owners can share their safety needs or concerns with Laurel Police Chief Richard McLaughlin at a Coffee with the Chief, Friday, April 27 from 10 a.m. to noon at Partnership Hall, 811 Fifth St. All Laurel businesses and residents are invited to attend, and coffee and light refreshments will be served. Reservations are requested by Wednesday, April 25. Contact the Laurel Board of Trade at 301-483-0838.

Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz will hold a community forum at the Double T Diner, 4140 E. Joppa Road, Perry Hall, this morning, Tuesday, March 26, beginning at 10 a.m.  The session, dubbed "Coffee with Kevin," will run for an hour and be open to the public. No registration is required. "We've held these community forums in the Lansdowne and Parkville areas and it was very valuable for me to have an unscripted opportunity to talk with people about what's on their mind," said Kamenetz.  "I look forward to a really good exchange of information and ideas.

I must have my cup of coffee before I exercise each morning. No java and I can't function. Recently, a gym-buff friend told me that caffeine before a workout is bad for you. It dehydrates you and falsely stimulates energy, he says. What do you think? While those with high blood pressure should stay away from coffee before a workout, studies have shown that coffee drinkers have better stamina and less muscle soreness than nondrinkers. That said, caffeine is addictive, and if you're able to get your day started without it, more power to you. If you can slowly wean yourself off that morning fix, you will find you don't really need it at all. There is the famous claim that apples are more effective at waking you up in the morning than coffee.

And now you can't bring your cup of coffee on board the airplane. It's the latest new rule laid down by the nation's security wizards. Everyone knows it's ridiculous - the notion that you can toss together a few liquids and make an explosive is a fiction from late-night movies. You might as well prohibit bald men on the grounds that the evil Lex Luthor was bald and so was Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE. But we ditch our venti latte in the trash barrel (goodbye, four bucks) and board the flight, and there we read in the paper that aggressive CIA questioning of an al-Qaida bigwig - stripping him, turning the air conditioner to 40 degrees, blasting him with Red Hot Chili Peppers music - broke him, so he ratted on Jose Padilla, a terrorist who set out to make a dirty bomb and who believed that by swinging a bucket of uranium in a circle over his head, he could separate plutonium.

Care for a premium-priced bacon and egg sandwich with that latte? Starbucks, the upscale coffee chain, is speeding up its hot food experiment on the West Coast and is poised to roll out the new menu nationally. A test program it began last year in 20 Seattle stores has quadrupled to 80 stores after positive results. "We've been pleased with the test results so far and our customers have responded favorably. We continue to believe our food program is an opportunity for growth going forward," said Starbucks spokeswoman Valerie Hwang.

Summertime is getting easier for coffee lovers as choices expand in the bottled-coffee category. Starbucks' successful Frappuccino is getting some competition on store shelves, and competition is good news for consumers. For folks more comfortable with a familiar brand of coffee than with a $3-a-cup java habit, Folgers has good news. Its new Jakada drink offers a sweet combination of Mountain Grown Folger's coffee and low-fat milk. The drink comes in 10.5-ounce, single-serve plastic bottles - no need to worry about broken glass with this drink - and is available in three flavors: French Roast, Vanilla and Mocha.

Tribeca Coffee is open in Mid-Town Belvedere. "We are here!" said owner James Jeon. Jeon said he wants to attract students from the nearby campuses of the University of Baltimore and the Maryland Institute, College of Art.  He also wants to draw in coffee enthusiasts and develop some new ones, too. You can tell Jeon's serious. He's brought in beans from PT's Roasting Co. of Topeka, Kan. and he's invested in top-notch equipment like a Mahlkonig grinder, a Synesso espresso maker and a Diedrich roaster for in-house roasting.

Artifact Coffee, Amy and Spike Gjerdes' follow-up to their acclaimed Woodberry Kitchen , has been growing on me. In the span of eight days, I had two of my favorite restaurant entrees of the past year at Artifact Coffee. The first night was a 12-hour braised pork shoulder with rigatoni, tossed with roasted turnips in a pesto made from sharp-flavored ramps, the early spring vegetable sometimes called wild garlic. Another night was a sublime stew of chicken, carrots, parsnips and kohlrabi bathed in red wine.

Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz will hold a community forum at the Double T Diner, 4140 E. Joppa Road, Perry Hall, this morning, Tuesday, March 26, beginning at 10 a.m.  The session, dubbed "Coffee with Kevin," will run for an hour and be open to the public. No registration is required. "We've held these community forums in the Lansdowne and Parkville areas and it was very valuable for me to have an unscripted opportunity to talk with people about what's on their mind," said Kamenetz.  "I look forward to a really good exchange of information and ideas.

Sunni Gilliam does, in fact, know how to read the tea leaves. In late 2005, when a Starbucks seemed to be popping up on every block, Gilliam opened Tea-ology, an "urban tea house" in Fells Point. The name was soon changed to Teavolve, and a few years later, she opened another, larger Teavolve in an up-and-coming area called Harbor East. "We were here before Legg Mason. We were here before Four Seasons. We were here before Chazz," Gilliam said. Now, Gilliam and her fiance, Del Powell, plan to open a new Teavolve in the Hopkins BioPark in the next two months.

Every morning, Monday through Friday, blogger Matt Vensel will hook you up with reading material -- mostly on the Ravens but with some other Baltimore sports stuff, too -- to skim through as you slug down coffee and slack off at the start of your workday. That way he'll have an excuse to do the same to start his workday, too. RUNNING IT BACK The Ravens beat the San Francisco 49ers, 34-31, to win their second Super Bowl title . ... Joe Flacco, your Super Bowl MVP, is going to Disneyworld . ... With a pair of big plays, Jacoby Jones also made a claim to be Super Bowl MVP . ... The Ravens defense hung on for a wild win . ... Ray Lewis was victorious in his final NFL game , but Ed Reed once again said that this was not his last ride . ... All season long, these Ravens just kept finding a way to win . ... The Ravens will hold a championship parade in Baltimore on Tuesday morning.

You have the sofa. You have the chairs, the TV, the lamps. The last big piece for the living/family room is likely to be the coffee table. Finding a table can be a significant challenge. How do you know what size, height and shape? Chicago interior designer Mitchell Putlack offered some clues. Know thyself. Know how you are going to sit at the coffee table, Putlack says. "Are you going to sit on a sofa or chair and put your feet up" on the table? If so, look for an ottoman-style coffee table and put trays atop it to hold food and drinks.

BERKELEY, Calif. - In a city of one cafe after another, three to four to a block on some streets, Rick Young chooses his coffeehouses carefully. He takes his java strong, fresh and only with fair trade. The way he sees it, the world, or at least Berkeley, would be closer to perfect if every restaurant, every 7-Eleven and every bake sale served only fair-trade-certified coffee - coffee that guarantees its suppliers provide a so-called living wage to small farmers in developing countries.