Thoughts on food and beverages – Part 27
March 31, 2010 by rum lounge
Filed under Food And Beverage
The best hot beverage I ever had, and I have never been able to duplicate, was a drink we had at the home of some Druze friends of my husband.
My husband and his brother own and run a metal shop together. Often Druze are coming and asking them to build machinery, or make a small repair on one of their machines; often they ask for very small favors. My husband’s friend, Mahmud’s son was getting married, and my husband had been invited to the wedding but was unable to make it. So we decided to come and bring a gift.
It was a Saturday morning, we took our then 12 year old daughter with us and we drove up to a Druze village in the Golan, called Maz del Shams. It’s about a forty-five minute drive from where we live, and Mahmud lives near the Syrian border. His house is right on the outskirts of town. It was late fall, not really cold where we live, but near Maz del Shams, very cold, because they are higher up near the mountains.
Druze are extremely hospitable. You can come and visit them for no reason at all, just to say hello and they will be sure to make you stay for quite a spread. You have to stay, because otherwise it will insult them. And unfortunately, women’s libbers, it is the women who prepare the food, with the help of their children, of course, but they don’t sit with the guests, at least they did not sit with us.
Well, one of their living rooms where we sat had wall-to-wall couches and a T.V. in the center of the room. There was a giant coffee table in the middle of the room. Mahmud’s wife was my age at the time (39) and she had nine children. Some of the children were home, and we sat with them too. We all sat quietly and talked and some relatives came in and we talked with them too. There was a nice little fuel stove keeping the room warm, almost making us forget how cold it was outside.
And then some of the food came in. There were trays of nuts and dried fruit, and then Mahmud’s wife had one of the children bring in a tray of cinnamon flavored tea with roasted or sugared broken pecans on the top. We are not talking about the fancy flavored teas you buy in the store, we are talking here about the real thing, and the cinnamon was freshly ground into the tea. I don’t remember if the nuts were sugared or not but they were not soggy. Not only was the mixture of cinnamon, nuts and tea soothing, it was the tastiest drink I ever had.
One would think such a concoction would be simple to imitate. I’ve tried. But I can’t. I wonder if it’s the combination of love, old world secrets, cold mountain air and good old-fashioned hospitality that made it taste so good. But by God, we will never really know.
Coffee Tables – The Key To A Great Conversation Area
October 8, 2009 by rum lounge
Filed under Drinking Games
Every time you host a party, it always seems that your guests have a hard time talking to one another. Well, it might be because your living room is not set up right for it. Take a look around, if you have the couch over here, the love seat and chairs over there, you’re guests probably are going to have a tough time talking. So, if you want a nice conversation area in your living room, you need to build it that way and lovely coffee tables are a great starting point.
If you are scratching your head as to why coffee tables are the answer, just keep reading. You see, you can build up everything else in your space around this wonderful furnishing to create a great spot where everyone can face and see each other to make talking and having a good time during those get-togethers easy. Take your living room for example, first you place the coffee table in the space, then add whatever kind of seating you want around it making sure that the seats are facing one another, then you add any other decorative touches that you want like lamps, pictures, and flowers and your space is good to go. With this space, anyone who sits down will then be sitting across from someone else so they can see and hear each other without any having anything in the way distracting them. Plus, you can also use the coffee table to set down drinks and other things if you want.
Along with being a great option for creating the ultimate conversation space, coffee tables will also add a nice decorative element to it as well. Why? Well, it is because this furnishing can be crafted out of a wide variety of eye-catching materials that can be finished off in a number of lovely stunning ways. You can get ones made out of wood, a combination of metal and glass, and even stone that feature all sorts of finishes like espresso, brushed stainless steel, and different painted colors. What is great about all these lovely materials and their finishes is that they produce coffee tables of many marvelous styles and designs, making it pretty effortless to find the perfect one to match your space and your tastes. Like, you can get ones that have a modern flare to them that have a metal base and glass table top or you can get traditional ones that feature elegant scrollwork.
For a stress free way to check out the different choices, just hit the world wide web for some comparison shopping. You can browse all the online stores and their products just with the glide of the mouse.
So, the next time you host a party, make sure that you have a space that is ideal for conversation and a great way to build that space is to start with beautiful coffee tables. Without a nice spot where everyone can talk and have a good time, your party might be over before it even begins.
Coffee Tables – A Home Without A Coffee Table Is A Home That Is Incomplete.
July 9, 2009 by rum lounge
Filed under Drinking Games
While there has been a movement to omit coffee tables from today’s décor, a room without one seems partially empty. It noticeably shows that something is missing. For instance a loveseat and a sofa grouped without a coffee table is extremely open, too open. While that open void of a space is the goal of many designers these days, it lacks a convenient space to rest anything you are dealing with, whether it’s a scrapbook or photos, a laptop computer or, of course, a cup of coffee. Even the best conceived furniture groupings lack places to rest things that inevitably end up in your hands. How frustrating would it be to be forced to hold your coffee cup until you had finished your drink? Or to be forced to balance things on your lap all the time, because there was no table available to set them down?
Coffee tables are a source for a lot of socialization. This is where people sit and sip their drink while talking, or possibly gossiping to one another. If people are uncomfortable talking, because they are forced to balance their coffee or hold it the whole time, they may be more focused on where they could put their drink, instead of giving you the best dirt.
Coffee tables also serve another valuable purpose – to define the room. Coffee tables define the space as much as end tables define the grouping in a living space. If you’re designing an L-shaped grouping, the coffee table helps to connect one piece of furniture to another visually. While the two pieces may match, they exist individually until there is a centerpiece that can bridge them. Those centerpieces are often coffee tables.
Of course, coffee tables don’t end on the table top, they also provide much needed storage and flexibility, being able to accommodate today’s lifestyles. Many coffee tables have drawers or shelves below the top that can be used for storage of games, remote controls, magazines or serving pieces such as coasters that you may need to pull out when your guests want a place to put their drinks. Other coffee tables can even serve as eating spaces where the tops can be raised from the base to serve as a secondary table offering. This is convenient for today’s home theaters or a perfect way to change up the space if you want to gather with the family to play video games, watch movies, or be able to eat while you relax.
No matter what décor style you are shooting for in your home, there are coffee tables on the market to suit. While some designers would like to move the coffee tables out of the living room, others are not fans of bucking the tradition, and have kept creating coffee tables in styles ranging from old country rustic to ultra contemporary modern.
Give your coffee a rest, or at least give yourself a place to rest your coffee.



