In honor of National Fair Trade Month, this week’s Gourmet Giveaway prize is not only socially conscious, but also smooth and satisfying.

Six winners will enjoy Brazilian coffees from National Geographic’s Terra Firma coffee brand. All Terra Firma coffees are Fair Trade Certified™, which guarantees fair prices to farm families, environmental stewardship and investment in farming communities.

We know many people will love Terra Firma coffee (it was on our Father’s Day gift list in June). The single-origin, specialty-grade coffee is sourced from six of the world’s finest growing regions: Brazil, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Sumatra and Kenya. If you don’t win, you can purchase it on Amazon.com in light, medium and dark roast, ground or whole bean. The handsome bag makes it a nice gift, too.

It’s effortless to make the world a better place, simply by buying Fair Trade coffee.

Serve Constant Comment or other spiced tea
for Halloween. Photo courtesy SXC.

After a busy afternoon of shopping at Bloomingdale’s flagship store in New York City, we sought quiet refuge for afternoon tea at the Fitzpatrick Hotel, a scant two blocks away. The hotel is celebrating “Fitzoween” all month with a Halloween-themed tea: cinnamon spice tea, pumpkin scones and midnight chocolate double layer cake.

Make a date and invite your friends to celebrate Fitzoween—or Smithoween, or Schwartzoween, or whatever your name is. Get some Constant Comment, the original American spiced tea recipe invented by Ruth Bigelow (available in supermarkets and from BigelowTea.com). Decorate your midnight chocolate cake with candy corn or other favorite Halloween candy; or serve midnight chocolate cupcakes and provide different Halloween candies so guests can decorate their own. No one is too old to enjoy Halloween candy and chocolate cake!

Is it “real” brewed or is it VIA Ready Brew instant coffee? Photo courtesy of Starbucks.

Can it be true? According to an article in Business Week about Starbucks’ VIA Ready Brew instant coffee, “most coffee drinkers outside the U.S. use instant coffee.” It’s a $20 billion global market and Americans account for just 4% of worldwide sales.

Where are those instant coffee drinkers? We’ve done our share of world traveling and we’ve seen instant coffee in foreign grocery stores. But we’ve also been impressed by how strong most other nations like their brewed coffee. Are these same folks who demand Italian roast-strength coffee and even more fortissimo strengths actually closet instant coffee drinkers?

At about $1.00 a packet, VIA Ready Brew is likely the most expensive instant coffee in the world. We tried it when we announced it here last February when the instant was first available from Starbucks’ website. It has now rolled out at Starbucks stores nationwide. Head to your nearest Starbucks: They’re sampling through Monday.

Our verdict: We liked VIA Ready Brew as an instant coffee, but we don’t drink instant coffee and don’t find ourselves in situations where we’d need this type of convenience product. Other people—road warriors and campers, for example—might find it a welcome way to get a reliable cup of decent coffee. It mixes with hot or cold water.

On some summer days, it’s just too hot for coffee. Here’s a deluxe iced coffee recipe from entertaining maven Colleen Mullaney, author of how-to books such as It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere and Punch, a book of easy punch recipes, like this iced coffee recipe.

Coffee as punch? Is any liquid served in a punch bowl “punch?” Not exactly, but we’re taking some license here. A brief history of punch:

Punch is a general term that covers a wide assortment of mixed drinks, with or without alcohol. While they generally contain fruit or fruit juice, that isn’t essential. Punch, which seems quintessentially British, actually was discovered in India by the British sailors of the East India Company, and brought to England in the early 17th century; from there it spread to other countries. The word “punch” is adapted from the Hindi panch. In India, panch, earlier called paantsch, was made from five different ingredients: sugar, lemon, water, tea or spices and an alcoholic spirit. The word for “five” in Sanskrit is panchan; derivations of the word exist in the different Indian dialects.

Coffee On The Cubes is one of Colleen’s favorite beverages, a way to serve a festive coffee recipe that keeps it cool for hot days. Move over, iced moccachino: This recipe is super-rich from the cream, but it is unsweetened; guests add their own sugar to taste. See the recipe.

Keep cool this August with this super-rich iced coffee recipe.

• Visit our Tea Section for more tea ideas.
• Learning to brew tea is an art and a science. Find out how to make the perfect cup of tea.
• Read about the history of tea.

• Keep cool with these iced coffee tips and recipes.

Each candy bar delivers the caffeine content
of two cups of coffee! Photography by Corey
Lugg | THE NIBBLE. Styling by Lauren LaPenna.

Many people love a good cup of coffee. And they love a good chocolate bar. So now, how about a coffee bar—not an eating establishment where you get a cup of coffee, but a coffee candy bar that’s cousin to the chocolate bar? After much experimentation, the founders of Caffe Acapella have created coffee candy bars that have the creamy texture of milk chocolate, without any chocolate ingredients. They’re made from roasted coffee beans instead of roasted cacao bean (the basis of chocolate). Coffee lovers are going to love them.

But a creamy candy bar that melts on the tongue isn’t the only focus. The star of the show is the genuine coffee flavor of the Arabica coffee beans used to make the bars. With each new batch of beans, sample bars are produced for experts to taste test; with approval, the beans move ahead to production. The resulting bars not only encapsulate the coffee flavor of fine beans, but also the caffeine content. Each 2.25-ounce bar contains the caffeine equivalent of about two cups of coffee! (And boy, does it ever taste better than Red Bull.)

Read the full review to see why these coffee candy bars had us singing with happiness after the first bite.

Read more reviews of our favorite candy & confections.

Learn more about the history of coffee.

How do you describe the kind of coffee you like? See THE NIBBLE’S glossary of coffee descriptors.

A strong cup of bitter farewell.

Read more about Winter and his coffee break – full story at the Wall Street Journal.

-Read all about gourmet coffee.
-What’s your coffee IQ? Take our quiz.
-Learn about the history of coffee.
-Check out our glossary of coffee terms.

1. Coffeemaker. Brew your morning cup at home. Resisting a three dollar cup of purchased coffee will save you nearly $1,000 per year. If your coffeemaker is old, you can upgrade…and buy great beans.

2. Freezer. In 2008, shipments of home freezers were up 5% as consumers started to realize the savings in stocking up on frozen sale items. Purchase meat, fish, poultry and costlier items you use a lot of (Haagen-Dazs, anyone?) while they’re on sale and stick them in the freezer. If you have room, buy a supplemental freezer and look for an ENERGY STAR model to save even more on energy costs.

4. Your Favorite Foodmaker. What do you regularly spend money on that you could make at home, if you had the right appliance? If you have a daily need for cappuccino, smoothies, pizza or frozen yogurt, you might break even or be ahead of the game if you got the right appliance or gadget and fed your hunger at home.

5. Food Dehydrator. If you spend a lot of money on healthy dried fruit and veggie snacks, consider making your own with a food dehydrator. Ronco has a nice one, “as seen on TV.” If money is no object, see our Snacks Section for our favorite dried fruit and vegetable snacks.

Made with the highest-quality, ethically-sourced Arabica beans, Starbucks claims to have “found a way to microgrind them in a way that preserves all their essential oils and flavor–trust us, you won’t find anything like VIA Ready Brew anywhere else.” “We have been working on this project for more than 20 years,” Starbucks said, “and have a patent pending on the technology that delivers Starbucks coffee in an instant form.”

You don’t have to trust them on this point: You can send for a free sample and try it for yourself: http://www.starbucksstore.com/products/via/freesample.asp. The instant coffee is available in Columbian and Italian Roast. VIA will be sold online and in Starbucks stores in packs of three for $2.95 or packs of 12 for $9.95—a cup of instant Starbucks for under $1.00.