Our digital art exhibition

These last weeks' Art lessons in our school were dedicated to coffee.

Here are some examples of the "works of art" created by our young artists.

Collective classwork - 3^ A -  The Coffee Army: peaceful but full of energy

Coffee Art - Kizoa - Video con foto

From the past to the present (joint activity)

There are many legends about coffee but also many historical facts.

In this digital timeline we work together to pinpoint some milestones (true or legendary) in the history of the fascinating protagonist of our journey towards Expo Milan 2015.

History of Coffee on Dipity.

The Coffee Cluster: 9 countries

In the following picture we have represented in different colours the nine countries included in the Coffee Cluster at EXPO Milan 2015.

Three Latin American countries: Guatemala, El Salvador and Dominican Republic
One Asian country: Yemen
Five African countries: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Two of our students have drafted a short presentation on two of these countries: 

Edoardo's presentation on El Salvador


El Salvador - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

Francesca's presentation on Rwanda

Copy of Copy of Copy of Copy of Rwanda - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

From our Recipe Book: Moka Cake

   Moka Cake

Ingredients:

For the cake: 3 eggs 160 g of sugar 250 g of flour 2 teaspoons of instant coffee 100 ml of milk 100 ml of sunflower oil 1 cup of moka coffee 16 g of baking powder (1 bag) 1 spoon of unsweetened cocoa powder

For the moka cream: 250 ml of milk 100 ml of moka coffee 50 ml of fresh cream 20 g of corn starch 120 g of sugar 100 g of egg yolks

Prepare the moka cream for the filling. Mix the milk, the cream and the moka coffee in a pot and warm up for a few minutes. 


In a bowl add the sugar to the egg yolks and whisk until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the corn starch and mix until smooth. 

Pour this mixture into the pot where the liquids have been warmed up, mix and cook. Let it boil for a minute and then let the cream cool down.


Prepare the batter for the cake: whisk the eggs and the sugar, add the milk, the sunflower oil, the cold moka coffee and mix well.
Then add the flour, the cocoa, the baking powder, the instant coffee and the cream. Mix gently until it is smooth.

Grease a baking pan and put the batter inside it. Bake for 40/45 minutes.
When both the cake and the filling are cold, you can use the cream to fill and cover the cake. Decorate the top of the cake with chocolate coffee beans and/or real coffee beans. Enjoy!



Believe us! It's delicious. We would like to thank Morgan and his mum for giving us this recipe and baking us the delicious cake you see in these pictures which was highly appreciated. Yummy!


Photographs: Morgan - 2^A - Scuola secondaria di primo grado di Torano Nuovo

A small class experiment

How to check the quality of your coffee blend

The density of ground coffee is lower than the density of water. That's why ground coffee floats in water.

If you want to check the quality of your beloved coffee blend, you can try this little experiment that we carried out yesterday in our Science class.

You can put a spoon of ground coffee in a bowl full of water. 

If part of the coffee powder sinks down into the bowl, it means that the coffee blend contains some kind of coffee surrogate, such as barley, or if it is of lower quality, roast broad bean powder.

Photographs: Niccolò - 2^A - Scuola Secondaria di primo grado Torano Nuovo

Curiosity Café: this week's update

Our reporters are going to keep you posted on curiosities and news from the world of coffee.

Coffee brewing: a mind map

Go green on St. Patrick's Day: coffee in Ireland

Ireland is not only Irish coffee. 

Even if tea is still more drunk than coffee, the trend is slowly changing. More and more people are drinking coffee, su much so that Dublin has recently been listed by a travel website as fourth best city in the world - first in Europe - for coffee lovers. 

Last year a national research found out that 3/4 of Irish adults drink coffee: Cappuccino is the most popular choice, followed by Americano. Only 10% drink Espresso.

There are more and more cafés serving different types of coffee; instant coffee sales are decreasing but, on the other hand, fresh coffee sales are increasing. That means that a new coffee culture is spreading.

Moreover, a recent initiative has drawn inspiration from the Italian tradition of "suspended coffee" and has been introduced to Ireland to help people in need, especially homeless people. For further information, visit Suspended Coffee Ireland's website or their facebook page.

A cup of coffee is really enough to change the world, even if little by little.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Coffee message

A visit to a coffee trade de niculinac

A recipe in images: Tiramisu

Tiramisu (Enhanced) from nichita on Vimeo.

Coffee Roasting

As special reporters for TIE2015 and our project blog, we have visited Caffè Benitez in Teramo, about 30 km from where we live. Anna and Viviana, our hosts, and their assistants and husbands showed us their coffee shop and roasting lab.

We saw the different blends and could touch the green beans coming from various countries all over the world.

Arabica or Robusta? We couldn't recognize them by looking only at the beans.

It was an exciting afternoon. 

We witnessed the operation of a roasting machine and could smell and taste the coffee beans.

No coffee for us: we're too young!  But we were offered chocolates! Great!                             

A cup of coffee, in the future...

Every morning I wake up at half past 6 when my bed massage program starts. After a quarter of an hour, my place becomes alive: an enticing smell of coffee invites me in the kitchen.

After  drinking a large cup of coffee with a slice of bread with seeds, I get dressed for work.

My car has a new GPS-4D help program, made especially for megacities. With the help of the fastest real time communication module, the program can memorize the starting point, the finishing point, all filters you may select (such as: short way, detours, scheduled stops to pick up buddies on the road etc.), and can modify the selection made by receiving non-stop real traffic information.  For instance yesterday, because of the New Old Computers Festival, all traffic was disturbed. I was forced to remain in traffic for two long hours, in spite of my last GPS-4D help program updated. So, I switched to my last bioengineering task concerning my research on designing, implementing, obtaining and printing of a new 4D - sort of coffee (the usual 3D plus the fourth dimension: the flavor, the unrivalled smell of coffee). I’m working together with my best high school friend…she was crazy about coffee and … genetic engineering. We almost finished the project, and the results are great! Our boss, a great coffee drinker, didn’t feel the difference between our “self made coffee” and the natural one! We do hope that we will show our research work at the next Conference of the Unified Field Sciences…and we also hope to win a Nobel Nomination for the next year.

Now it is half past 8, and I’m at the office in front of my desk. We usually start our working schedule with a small video conference. Our boss, wherever he is, wants to discuss with us our tasks, so, at half past 8 sharp, every day, the large holographic monitor who occupies the northern wall of our office becomes alive, and we discuss our future projects. The office acoustics is amazing, so you can hear his voice wherever you are. But all our desks have microchips built-in that allow us to move during our conversation.

This new technology permits us to constantly change our body position, so that old problems of body improper position are only history. And I forgot to add, a peerless smell of coffee spreads over all of us. Yes, we are testing our new project… I reset all my thoughts, and close my eyes, and I drink a cup of coffee, and I start woking!

by Christina (”Food for life”)

            

Coffees of the world (II)

Once upon a time ....

      Once upon a time there was a mighty Roman Warrior. Because of his skills, he soon became the leader of the Roman Army. Before every battle, the Roman Emperor asked him for advice.

          Life was almost perfect for the Warrior, he had a lovely and clever wife, and he was very proud because his Emperor trusted him. But there was still something missing: a child… Each time he returned home from a battle, he made sacrifices in Proserpina’s honor in order to get a child.

       One day, as he returned home, his wife told him that Gods blessed her and that she was expecting a child. After 9 month, the surprise arrived: there were two boys instead of one. From that moment, the Warrior thought that he was the happiest man in the world…

        Seeing how happy he was, Mars, the God of war, put him to a test: soon after he celebrated the 5-th anniversary of his sons, he began to realize that they were very lazzy…and powerless. Since then, the Warrior became more and more sad…after every battle he begged Mars to help him with his children. 

       One day, after a rough battle that took place somewhere between “Arabia Felix” (Happy Arabia, or Yemen nowadays) and Ethiopia, the warrior was mortally wounded. Feeling that he was dying, the Warrior asked Mars, last time, to have mercy and to protect his children. Mars transformed his body into a tree with red small fruits. Then he told to the Warrior’s wife to roast the fruits and to make a potion from it. From that day, both powerless teens drank every morning a cup of potion, and they became as faster and skilful as their dead father.

    And this happened long before Kaldi, the goatherd, discovered the coffee tree…
by Diana (”Food for life”)

From our Recipe Book: Tiramisù

Coffee is not only the dark drink but also a precious ingredient for some delicious recipes. We have decided to start from a classic Italian dessert.

This is Mattia's family's version of the original recipe.

Mattia's Tiramisu                                                                          

Ingredients:

3 eggs

6 spoons of sugar

250 gr of mascarpone cheese

28 Pavesini biscuits

3 spoons of cocoa powder

2 spoons of Sambuca  (liqueur)

2 spoons of rhum

2 cups of coffee

Break the eggs and separate the yolks from the whites. In a bowl, whisk the 3 egg yolks with 3 spoons of sugar. In another bowl, whisk the 3 egg whites with 3 spoons of sugar. Mix the two creams and gently add mascarpone and 1 teaspoon of cocoa powder until everything is blended together.

In another bowl mix the 2 cups of coffee with the Sambuca and the rhum. Dip the biscuits in this bowl and then lay them, side by side, inside the container chosen for the dessert. Pour the cream over the biscuits and cover it completely. Cover the cream layer with a second layer of biscuits and sprinkle the rest of the cocoa powder on it.

Put the dessert in the freezer for at least one day. Take it off the freezer half an hour before serving. Enjoy!

Coffee lesson at school

Coffee Lesson from nichita on Vimeo.

The Dark Side of Coffee

TIE2015 Gazette Our team of reporters have written an article about the negative aspects of coffee production and the necessity to support Fair Trade Coffee. Click on the icon below to read the article.

Curiosity Café: the latest news from the coffee world!

Welcome to the Curiosity Café! Our reporters will keep you updated about curiosities, news and views related to coffee.

A survey about coffee (please, ask your parents/teachers - coffee drinkers - to answer to the following questions) - joint activity

Coffee@home: the Moka Pot

Photo: Luna D.A. - Year 3 student

Every Italian household has at least one Moka pot.

Let's find out something about its history, design and operation. 

MokaPot - Kizoa - Video con foto

Drawings by Matei B. - Year 1 Student - Scuola Secondaria 1° grado Torano Nuovo

Percolation 

This is how this brewing method is called. In coffee percolation the water is in the lower chamber which is positioned on a heat source.  When water boils, the pressure generated by steam forces the water to enter the middle chamber - the funnel - where ground coffee is placed. Then the dark liquid rises into the upper chamber.

Source: Wikimedia Commons - Author: Alborzagros

One word... one world?

Wouldn't it be nice if one word could unite us all?

 

Although we speak many different languages, we should learn to find what we have in common. Expo Milan 2015 could be a great opportunity to be... TOGETHER AS ONE!

Peace and Love!

Coffee Quotes

A coffee is enough to change the world!

Coffees of the world

Welcome into ”the temple” of coffee (a coffee shop leaded by a famous writer from Bucharest)

Welcome into the temple of coffee by niculinac

In Bucharest’s temple of coffee (with Gheorghe Florescu) I

coffee temple by niculinac

Our guide to EXPO 2015 (just a day)

Legends about coffee

Publish at Calameo or read more publications.

A suspended coffee

A long time ago, in 20th century Naples, people who were particularly happy because they were celebrating a special event (the birth of a child, a wedding, a new job, etc.) used to go to a café, have a cup of coffee and pay for two cups. 

This practice was called "leaving a suspended coffee”. 

It was a cup of coffee paid for anyone who would need it in the future, no matter why.

A cup of coffee could change things… It could offer a smile to a person in need, a warm hug in a cold day. It was a symbol of social solidarity.

This practice has been revived in this period of economic crisis and the idea has also led to generous initiatives by non-profit organizations all over the world.

On 1st October 2015, International Coffee Day, thanks to a partnership between ICO, EXPOMilano2015 and Oxfam Italia, an app will allow donors to leave a "caffè sospeso", a virtual coffee for a beneficiary of Oxfam's projects.