Coffee crêpes

Ingredients

4 teaspoonful of instant coffee
200 g of flour
1/4 Kg. of sweetened cream
1/4 litre of milk
4 eggs
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 small glass of rum
50 grs. of flour

Preparation:

In a bowl, mix the flour, the sugar, the eggs, the milk, the rum and 2 teaspoonful of instant coffee.
Melt a little butter in a pan
Pour 3 tablespoons of the mixing and move the pan so as the mixing covers the pan totally.
Turn it
Put the crêpes in a tray
Prepare a cream with 2 teaspoonful of instant coffee, mixed with the cream.
Serve the crêpes with the cream on top.

The Golden Rules of Good Coffee

When it's all said, making a good cup of coffee at home is not a complicated thing. In fact, you only need to remember a small number of fundamental rules to make good coffee. How many of those rules you adhere to is up to you. The more you adhere to, the better the cup of coffee you brew. Adhere to them all, and you make the perfect cup of coffee at home.

It's key to your whole process of making great coffee at home to plan in advance so that you cover each of your bases.


Golden Rule #1: Ground coffee expires at a faster rate than whole coffee beans.
Further to the first Golden Rule, coffee goes stale for as long as it's not kept airtight. In addition ground coffee deteriorates at a different rate than whole coffee beans. Groundd coffee deteriorates at a much faster rate. This even goes for grocery store-bought ground coffee which comes airtight in a vacuum-packed packaging or tin container, but begins to go stale as soon as you break the seal. Most North Americans seem satisfied with the quality of barely air-sealed ground coffee to get them up in the morning and get them through the day. But here, we're talking about good and fresh coffee. Keep coffee beans whole until you're ready to brew them. Then, grind only what you need to grind and brew it. Invest in whole coffee beans from a local retailer. They're worth having for that perfect cup of coffee at home.


Golden Rule #2: Air is the enemy of coffee.
Coffee is perishable, and anything perishable goes stale as much as it's in contact with air. Think about investing in containers designed to be airtight, most commonly ceramic containers with latch-closes and a rubber band squeezed between the lid and container. "Tupperware" containers and sandwich bags are better than leaving coffee in open air, but don't do the same job of keeping air out and keeping coffee from going stale as a container designed to be airtight. Contrary to what many believe, freezing your coffee beans doesn't keep them from going stale. In fact, the humidity from the freshness of coffee beans will congeal and once thawed, evaporate quicker from the beans.


Golden Rule #3: Coffee is mostly water.
In fact, it's 99% water. If you don't get the water right, you might still make a decent cup of coffee, but why take chances with such an important ingredient? If you take precautions with drinking water, remember those precautions with coffee water. Purified water makes good coffee. At a minimum, keep a Brita water pitcher full in the fridge.


Golden Rule #4: Heat is the enemy of brewed coffee.
We like our coffee hot. It's a drink served hot. But, heat burns anything liquid the more that liquid is exposed to the heat. After 20 minutes of your coffee sitting on the coffee machine's heat plate, consider that coffee to be beginning to burn. After 40 minutes, the difference in taste should be noticeable. And, burnt coffee is not distinguished like blackened chicken or tuna. Burnt coffee is not good coffee. Some coffee machines have heat settings for the plate to resolve the very problem of burnt coffee. If you have such a machine, just leave the heat setting on Low and never touch it again. Even better machines have a switch to identify that a small amount of coffee is being made, say 2-4 cups. After all, the heat required for a full pot is a lot of heat to apply to only a quarter or half of a pot. The less expensive coffee machines don't tend to have these bells and whistles. They normally just have an on/off switch. As with most quality, you get what you pay for.


Golden Rule #5: Clean everything that comes in the coffee's path.
The compartment of the coffee machine that holds the grinds. Want proof? Wipe yours right now with a paper towel. You should notice coffee residue on the paper towel from multiple brewings. Your coffee pot. Your mug. Your spoon. Your spoon-holder. All of these things come into contact with brewed coffee, and like any liquid, it leaves its mark unless entirely cleaned. Most people wouldn't consider that this coffee residue is as perishable as coffee, and begins to go stale over a short period. In fact, there is a natural oil in coffee that makes its residue extra 'sticky'. Soap and water is the easiest way to clean anything.


Golden Rule #6: Plan for when you make coffee.
If there's one theme connecting all of the previous five Golden Rules, it's that it takes planning and preparation to make good coffee.

Tools: To make the perfect cup of coffee, it starts with the coffee machine. Buy a coffee machine with heat settings for the plate, a switch to identify that a small pot is being made, and a tone that sounds or beeps to identify that the coffee is finished brewing. That way, you can pour a cup as quickly as it's brewed.

Storage: Now, you need ceramic containers designed to be airtight. These are available from kitchen stores for spices, beans, and many cooking ingredients. That have a metal latch that creates the airtight seal, which should consist of a rubber hand underneath the lid in place to seal with the container when the latch is closed.

Whole Beans: Next, the main event. The coffee beans themselves. Buy them whole. Often when you do, you'll be asked, "Do you want the beans ground?" Answer with a 'no', but act like you're insulted, too. You should have a nearby retailer that sells whole coffee beans, and I don't mean the grocery store. The beans that most grocery stores sell in addition to ground coffee is whole, but there's no accounting for how a grocery store takes care of its coffee beans. Ideally, you want a cafe. Starbucks sells quality coffee beans, in my humble opinion, but the price premium is hard to justify. If all you have near to you is a grocery store or Starbucks, let me know and I'll try to direct you to a good online retailer with affordable prices.


Planning: When you are preparing to make a pot of coffee, make sure all the tools are clean. Measure out as many whole coffee beans as you intend to grind for this pot. Click here for guidelines on the correct ratio of coffee to water. After they're ground, get them in the coffee machine along with some fresh, purified water. As soon as the brewing is complete, begin serving your coffee. If your guests or yourself are having more than one cup of coffee, you might even consider making multiple pots, one for each "round" of coffee that you'll be serving.

Coffee may help protect against liver cancer

That hot cup of coffee may do more than just provide a tasty energy boost. It also may help prevent the most common type of liver cancer.

A study of more than 90,000 Japanese found that people who drank coffee daily or nearly every day had half the liver cancer risk of those who never drank coffee.

The American Cancer Society estimates that 18,920 new cases of liver cancer were diagnosed in the United States last year and some 14,270 people died of the illness. Causes include hepatitis, cirrhosis, excess alcohol consumption and diseases causing chronic inflammation of the liver.

Animal studies have suggested a protective association of coffee with liver cancer, so the research team led by Monami Inoue of the National Cancer Center in Tokyo analyzed a 10-year public health study to determine coffee use by people diagnosed with liver cancer and people who did not have cancer.

Decreased risk
They found the likely occurrence of liver cancer in people who never or almost never drank coffee was 547.2 cases per 100,000 people over 10 years.

But for people who drank coffee daily the risk was 214.6 cases per 100,000, the researchers report in this week’s issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

They found that the protective effect occurred in people who drank one to two cups of coffee a day and increased at three to four cups. They were unable to compare the effect of regular and decaffeinated coffee, however, because decaf is rarely consumed in Japan.

It’s the caffeine in coffee that makes some people nervous and it has been shown in other studies to prompt mental alertness in many people. Some studies have suggested caffeine aggravates symptoms of menopause or intensifies the side effects of some antibiotics. Heavy caffeine use has been linked to miscarriage. But studies have also shown that a skin cream spiked with caffeine lowers the risk of skin cancer in mice.

“It’s an excellent, interesting and provocative study and their conclusions seem justified,” commented Dr. R. Palmer Beasley of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

“It will provoke a lot of new work here,” said Beasley, who was not part of the research group.

Reason for effect unclear
While the study found a statistically significant relationship between drinking coffee and having less liver cancer, the authors note that it needs to be repeated in other groups.

And the reason for the reduction remains unclear.

However, Inoue’s team noted that coffee contains large amounts of antioxidants and several animal studies have indicated those compounds have the potential to inhibit cancer in the liver.

In their study, the team also looked at green tea, which contains different antioxidants, and they found no association between drinking the tea and liver cancer rates.

“Other unidentified substances may also be responsible” for the reduction in cancers, they said.

A separate study reported in the same issue of the journal reported no relationship between drinking caffeinated coffee or tea and the rates of colon or rectal cancer.

However, that analysis did find a 52 percent decline in rectal cancer among people who regularly drank two or more cups of decaffeinated coffee.

In that study a team led by Karin B. Michels of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston analyzed data from two large studies — the Nurses’ Health Study of women and the Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study involving men. The analysis of nearly 2 million person years found 1,438 cases of colorectal cancer.

While they did not find any association between cancer rates and consumption of caffeinated coffee or tea, people who regularly drank two or more cups per day of decaffeinated coffee had about half the incidence of rectal cancer as those who never drank decaf.

The rate of rectal cancer was 12 cases per 100,000 person-years among those who consumed two or more cups of decaffeinated coffee per day. For those who never drank decaffeinated coffee, the rate was 19 cases per 100,000 person-years.

That difference may, however, be due to differences in lifestyle, the researchers commented, suggesting that drinkers of decaffeinated coffee might be more health conscious overall.

The Japanese study was funded by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan. The U.S. study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Coffee may lower breast cancer risk for some women

Women with BRCA1 gene mutations, which confer a high risk of developing breast cancer, might decrease their risk by drinking a lot of coffee, according to a multicenter team of investigators.

Dr. Steven A. Narod, of the University of Toronto, Ontario, and colleagues examined the association between coffee consumption and the risk of breast cancer among 1690 high-risk women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations.

The study included women from 40 clinical centers in four countries. A self-administered questionnaire was used to assess the average lifetime coffee consumption.

The likelihood of developing breast cancer among BRCA mutation carriers who drank 1 to 3 cups of coffee daily, 4 to 5 cups, or 6 or more cups was reduced by 10 percent, 25 percent and 69 percent, respectively, compared to those who drank no coffee, according to the report in the International Journal of Cancer.

When the investigators classified the women by mutation status, they found significant protection from coffee for women with a BRCA1 mutation, but not for carriers of a BRCA2 mutation.

The investigators note that coffee is an important source of phytoestrogens, which may have protective effects.

"The mechanism by which phytoestrogens may beneficially influence the risk of breast cancer has predominantly been attributed to their structural
similarity to endogenous estrogens and their ability to bind to estrogen receptors," Narod and colleagues explain.

Coffee a top source of healthy antioxidants

WASHINGTON - When the Ink Spots sang “I love the java jive and it loves me” in 1940, they could not have known how right they were.

Coffee not only helps clear the mind and perk up the energy, it also provides more healthful antioxidants than any other food or beverage in the American diet, according to a study released Sunday.

Of course, too much coffee can make people jittery and even raise cholesterol levels, so food experts stress moderation.


The findings by Joe A. Vinson, a chemistry professor at the University of Scranton, in Pennsylvania, give a healthy boost to the warming beverage.

“The point is, people are getting the most antioxidants from beverages, as opposed to what you might think,” Vinson said in a telephone interview.

Antioxidants, which are thought to help battle cancer and provide other health benefits, are abundant in grains, tomatoes and many other fruits and vegetables.

Vinson said he was researching tea and cocoa and other foods and decided to study coffee, too.

His team analyzed the antioxidant content of more than 100 different food items, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, oils and common beverages. They then used Agriculture Department data on typical food consumption patterns to calculate how much antioxidant each food contributes to a person’s diet.

They concluded that the average adult consumes 1,299 milligrams of antioxidants daily from coffee. The closest competitor was tea at 294 milligrams. Rounding out the top five sources were bananas, 76 milligrams; dry beans, 72 milligrams; and corn, 48 milligrams. According to the Agriculture Department, the typical adult American drinks 1.64 cups of coffee daily.

That does not mean coffee is a substitute for fruit and vegetables.

“Unfortunately, consumers are still not eating enough fruits and vegetables, which are better for you from an overall nutritional point of view due to their higher content of vitamins, minerals and fiber,” Vinson said.

Dates, cranberries, red grapes
Dates, cranberries and red grapes are among the leading fruit sources of antioxidants, he said.

The antioxidants in coffee are known as polyphenols. Sometimes they are bound to a sugar molecule, which covers up the antioxidant group, Vinson said.

The first step in measuring them was to break that sugar link. He noted that chemicals in the stomach do the same thing, freeing the polyphenols.

“We think that antioxidants can be good for you in a number of ways,” including affecting enzymes and genes, though more research is needed, Vinson said.

“If I say more coffee is better, then I would have to tell you to spread it out to keep the levels of antioxidants up,” Vinson said. “We always talk about moderation in anything.”

His findings were released in conjunction with the annual convention of the American Chemical Society in Washington.

In February, a team of Japanese researchers reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that people who drank coffee daily, or nearly every day, had half the liver cancer risk of those who never drank it. The protective effect occurred in people who drank one to two cups a day and increased at three to four cups.

Diabetes risk
Last year, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that drinking coffee cut the risk of developing the most common form of diabetes.

Men who drank more than six 8-ounce cups of caffeinated coffee per day lowered their risk of type 2 diabetes by about half, and women reduced their risk by nearly 30 percent, compared with people who did not drink coffee, according to the study in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Bonnie Liebman, nutrition director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said she was not surprised by Vinson’s finding, because tea has been known to contain antioxidants.

But Liebman, who was not part of Vinson’s research team, cautioned that while many people have faith that antioxidants will reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and more, the evidence has not always panned out. Most experts are looking beyond antioxidants to the combination of vitamins, minerals other nutrition in specific foods, she said.
© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.