Cup Of Coffee

If you are reading this Sunday paper with a cup of coffee in your hand, it is probably one of your 2.5 cups for the day. (That is if you are between the ages of 30-49, more if you are older, fewer cups if you are younger.) And those beans that you ground were probably picked by people who were paid less per day than what you paid per pound for the coffee.The story of coffee is a fascinating one. A complex blend of history, trade wars, economics and politics. How did that little bean discovered by a goatherd in Yemen more than 1,500 years ago become such a hot commodity through the centuries?

It all started with a cup of coffee.In 1997, Andrew Sonnet was new to the Baltimore area. A consultant for Larson-Juhl, a national frame and artwork supplier, Andrew was determined to make a life here. And to find a place that served a good cup of coffee.Though Andrew was living in Columbia at the time, his quest for java took him all the way to Canton. There, at the Needful Things coffee shop, he found a drink that met his approval -- and a place where he felt at home.On June 22, 1997 -- the date is etched indelibly in his memory, he says -- Andrew went to the shop for breakfast.

I SAW the best minds of my generationAddled by the hype, sucked into the white-hot vortex of twisted modern thought that says each cup of java we drink must be this Great Experience.This flowering of the senses, this imperceptible awakening of the taste buds andBlah, Blah, Blah.But not me, brother.I don't want your cappuccino, or your frappuccino, either.Don't want your mocha or espresso.Don't want your latte or Guatemala Antigua.Ain't interested in no House Blend.I just want a cup of coffee.

Before Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Washington and before he sang "We Shall Overcome" on national television, Baltimore's civil rights leaders had picketed segregated downtown coffee shops and demonstrated to integrate the Johns Hopkins University.But such details are little-known because the city's -- and state's -- civil rights history has not been fully written.Which makes yesterday's gathering so remarkable.Perched on metal folding chairs in a church hall and rubbing their bald and grayed pates, a dozen who led Baltimore's struggle for equality more than a generation ago talked about the blood shed and the insults taken.

GO AHEAD, give me your No. 1 gripe about this country. A president who thinks the Oval Office was built for sexual hi-jinks? A do-nothing Congress full of rock-heads? Schools that can't teach Johnny not to club his classmates, never mind read?Yeah, well, here's mine: It's now just about impossible to get a cup of coffee at a convenience store or fast-food joint that won't sear the roof of your mouth.Am I right? You betcha.Look, I like a nice, hot cup of joe as much as the next person. But I don't like it so hot that it charbroils your tongue and fuses your lips together.

I HAVE BECOME a bean counter. Now if I spill any coffee beans, I begin a full-scale, down- on-my-knees search for the missing ones. This aggressive, bean-chasing behavior is new for me.Not long ago, if I spilled beans while putting them in the grinder, I would only pick up the ones that were easy to find. I retrieved the beans sitting on the kitchen counter. But I ignored the ones that had fallen to the kitchen floor.Then the price of coffee went up, about $1 a pound for the kind of beans, Yirgacheffe and Golden Sumatra, that I buy, and my habits changed.

A Taneytown woman who claims she was severely burned when a cup of coffee spilled on her at Harry's Main Street last year is suing the Westminster restaurant for $1 million.In the civil suit, filed in Carroll County Circuit Court, Carole A. Almond contends her injuries resulted from the negligence of an employee who failed to properly place a lid on a carryout cup and warn her the coffee was dangerously hot.Charles Mentzer, a Baltimore attorney representing Almond, said Wednesday his client has "bad burns, but that is all I can say [at this time]

The 'Secrets' is out about low-fat cookingA hundred techniques and 200 easy recipes, along with guides to foods such as beans and salad greens, are featured in "Secrets of Low-Fat Cooking," from the editors of Eating Well magazine (Eating Well Books, 1997, $16.95). Recipes include old favorites such as meat loaf and Boston baked beans, and trendy dishes such as grilled mesclun-stuffed swordfish and roasted vegetable and linguine salad. Start your backyard garden off right this year with a cup of coffee -- or at least the grounds.

I HAVE EXCITING NEWS for anybody who would like to pay a lot of money for coffee that has passed all the way through an animal's digestive tract.And you just know there are plenty of people who would. Specialty coffees are popular these days, attracting millions of consumers, every single one of whom is standing in line ahead of me whenever I go to the coffee place at the airport to grab a quick cup on my way to catch a plane. These consumers are always ordering mutant beverages with names like "mocha almond honey-vinaigrette lattespressacino," beverages that must be made one at a time by a lengthy and complex process involving approximately one coffee bean, 3 quarts of dairy products and what appears to be a small nuclear reactor.

AS HAS BEEN discussed in this space before, there is nothing more annoying than people who don't say thanks when you hold the door for them.You know how a dog will instantly gravitate to the person in the room who fears him the most? Well, I seem to attract all these rude idiots who don't say thanks when you hold the door for them. It's like wherever I go, these people are holding a club meeting or something.What brings this all to mind is something that happened recently at the convenience store.

In a pale yellow room in the Schlesinger home in Arnold, sunlight pours in through two long windows. Avery, 3, is running her neon-colored toy around the edge of the coffee table, making engine noises. Her pink-framed glasses are slipping down her nose, her short brown hair a mess of tangles. She seems unaware that everyone in the room is talking about her. Her father is sitting in an armchair, her mother sinking into an overstuffed couch next to a 23-year-old woman from Germany she met two days ago. In another room, Avery's brother and sister are watching a cartoon, and its sounds flitter in and out of the conversation.

The name is long, Eric's Eatery and "Simply Delicious" Carry Out, but the menu is short and sweet. It's a new breakfast and lunch spot opening next week at 2334 N. Charles St. Linda Stewart-Byrd, who left a job with the state Department of Transportation to take the plunge with her husband, chef Eric Byrd, said the food will be American and Caribbean, and the focus will be "wholesome, nutritious and delicious food." She mentioned omelets, Belgian waffles, salads, grilled seafood, shrimp and jerk chicken.

The all-in-one grind-and-brew coffee maker -- a machine that, with one press of a button the night before, has a hot, brewed pot of coffee waiting for you in the morning -- is a coffee lover's dream. But, like all utopian promises, you have to wonder if it's really possible. So we decided to put the three grind-and-brew machines on the market -- Melitta, Cuisinart and Capresso -- to the test. Only the Capresso offers the advantage of a burr grinder, which crushes the beans between rotating cones (rather than shredding them with a single blade)

Main Street served as the church aisle and fellow kaffeeklatschers as congregants. Champagne toast? Hardly. The bride sipped a breve drink with whipped cream and caramel, and the groom had his usual triple espresso with hazelnut macchiato. In a city that loves coffee as much as Annapolis does, this was a match made in Starbucks. George B. Sparks III and Leslie A. Baumhower, both in their 40s, met at the City Dock outlet of the ubiquitous coffee chain. And yesterday, it's where they held their wedding reception.

More than an hour has passed since the Ethiopian coffee ceremony began at Baltimore's Dukem restaurant, and still not a drop of coffee has been served. It is a purposely slow and deliberative process. Coffee here is not just coffee, it is a performance meant to stimulate conversation, a ritual guided by tradition and folk stories said to be as old as coffee itself. The green buna beans are roasted until flavorful smoke wafts over the diners gathered around tables or sitting on straw stools, like background music against the din of spirited chatter.

Whether they're coming from a nighttime job at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport or meeting a longtime friend for a regular cup of coffee, customers flock to Lexington Market in the early morning, looking to start - or finish - the day with some sustenance.

For as long as I've been swilling coffee, my philosophy on the stuff has remained constant: Give me regular joe for regular Joes. I don't need all these fancy high-priced "specialty" coffees strong enough to leave you twitching at your work cubicle for a week. Don't need no lattes, espressos, cappuccinos or frappuccinos. Don't need no sleek plastic cups with little paper sleeves and space-age lids and little green emblems that feature the Goddess of Macchiato, or whoever she's supposed to be. Don't need no stinkin' baristas, either.

McDonald's Corp. is changing its conventional cup of coffee for the first time in 30 years, hoping that a stronger, richer blend will boost breakfast sales and better arm the burger giant in the ever hotter battle for coffee drinkers. The new "premium roast" coffee is being served in some stores, and a full nationwide rollout is expected Monday. To reinforce its premium name, the more robust coffee comes in a new paper-covered Styrofoam cup and black lid. The change appears to follow the realization made by Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks and Burger King years ago that Americans want a richer cup of joe than the nondescript blends they have been offered in the past.

Lots of coffee shops nowadays are more about being groovy than grabbing a cup of caffeine. They've got cool music bopping through the air, overstuffed couches artfully angled in every corner and, it seems, a posse of graphic designers on staff, making sure the zillions of flavors of coffee listed on the inevitable chalkboards behind the inevitable wood counters are written in just the right font. Not that this is bad. But sometimes it's tiring. Sometimes you don't want to remember that a small is a tall and a large is a venti, and you don't want everyone around you tapping away on WiFi-connected laptops.

A barista fusses over a display of tea bags near a fluffy couch. The aroma of gingerbread and fresh coffee drifts through rooms that are more than a century old. A fork, knife and spoon, entwined, hang as a door chime. Their rattle announces a customer's arrival. Callahan's Coffee and Confections is in many ways not unlike the countless cafes that cater to the mocha and latte crowd in city neighborhoods and suburban strip malls. But this coffeehouse experience unfolds at a country crossroads far from town, among the soybean fields and gentle hills of northern Baltimore County.