Guatemalan Coffee: Nueva Alianza
For the socially conscious coffee lover, the best way to enjoy one’s coffee would be if the beans originate from fair trade practices. In today’s society wherein the less fortunate are being stepped on by the “haves,” it is sometime easy to just ignore the ills of society. Guatemalan coffee – fair trade, I should say – was brought to my attention by one of our readers who recently went on a trip there.
Brian Rogers and his wife went on a trip together and stumbled upon the little town of Nueva Alianza in Guatemala. In their travel blog, they featured this town, their history, and the good coffee that they produce. This incited me to do more research on Nueva Alianza coffee. As it turns out, there is more to this coffee than the beans themselves.
Reading up on the Comunidad Nueva Alianza (I suppose in English this is Nueva Alianza Community), I was impressed at how the families of the community were able to surmount the obstacles that had beset them for generations. They were preyed upon by a landlord and at some point, they banded together to stand up to the unfair practices. Today, the community is owned and ran by the same forty families who withstood the test of time. They are part of a cooperative which grows organic coffee and all the proceeds of their efforts are divided between the community members.
It is really impressive how they reached the point where they are right now. According to Brian Rogers, though, this kind of success is not common. There are countless other coffee farmers who have experienced the same problems and didn’t travel the same road as the Nueva Alianza members. For the Nueva Alianza community, however, their story is something that they would cherish and is something that would touch the rest of the world – through their coffee.
Senseo Coffee Maker Up For Grabs!
Coffee lovers and suckers for freebies – this one is for you! I was looking at blogs that could help me save some money and guess what I found? Someone giving away a free coffee maker! Catherine at Frugal Homemaker Plus posted this entry saying that she did a review on the Senseo Coffee Maker. However, since she and her husband do not really drink coffee that much, she’s giving away hers. Here are the details from her post:
The Winner Will Receive:
• One Senseo coffee maker
• One tin full of coffee pods
• Money saving coupons for new coffee pods
• Two coffee filters- one for one cup brewing and one for two cup brewing. (These are reusable)
• If you have a blog or an online business, I will link it when your name is announced.It’s free to enter, and I will pay all shipping costs!
To enter, simply comment to this entry with a way to get in touch with you. If you’re a blogger, your blog link will be fine. An e-mail address is okay as well. That’s it- you’re in! I will close the contest at noon (central time) February 27th. I will contact the winner via e-mail on Wednesday, Feb 27.
One entry per person, please.
Note: Due to shipping concerns, this contest is open only to those who live in the United States.
The winner is to be announced on the 28th of February so if I were you, I’d head on to her blog now and try to get this coffee maker.
No Coffee For Women?
Translation: “According to The Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice; passing coffee to women is not allowed.
Thanks for your cooperation!”
All I can say is thank God I am not where that sign is. Lallamona posted a couple of pictures in her blog last week and it has been creating quite a stir in the blogosphere – and why not?
I only posted one of the pictures as the other one has nothing to do with coffee (although it is equally atrocious). The sign made me think – why on earth should coffee not be served to women? Is it something about coffee or is it something about women? I may be treading on dangerous ground here, stepping on cultural toes, if you know what I mean. Yet I cannot help but “yelp” about the sign! (I did in fact literally yelp when I read the sign in the blog.)
Are coffee beans evil? Hmm, maybe in a sense – they do something to your system to make you feel better and perkier. Are women to be protected from this “evil”? I think not! I am sure you guys are ready to voice out what you think as well! (By the way, I like the category this post was placed under: Tell the truth and run – now I gotta run!)
Coffee Grounds for the Garden?
Now I would be the first to admit that I do not have a green thumb. Living in an apartment, I don’t really have too many opportunities to try out gardening. I do have several potted plants – oops, make that HAD. For some reason, one of them died, so I am left with two and they do not seem to be in good shape. Anyhow, the point of this is that I ran across a gardening blog detailing the use of coffee grounds for the soil.
If you remember, I wrote an entry on some alternative uses of coffee way back in December. My ideas were quite different from what this blog, Gardening and Yardening, is talking about, though:
For the past ten years, Nancy and I have saved our used coffee grounds each day and when we had a gallon or so, we spread them on the garden someplace. Special attention was given to the acid loving azalea, rhododendrum and tomatoes. In my mind the coffee grounds were not a major soil amendment, but rather a kind of tonic made available from time to time.
The fact that this has been a practice for ten years amazes me – there is so much to find out out there! Here’s more:
Some basic facts: the pH of coffee grounds can range from 3.5 to 5.0, but are not a problem if used is thin layers up to 1/2 inch thick. Fresh used coffee grounds contain about 3% nitrogen, about the same as grass clippings. Earthworms consider coffee grounds to be the ice cream of their diet. Coffee grounds are bite sized for earth worms.
Aha! I may not have the knack for gardening but I do love these little bits of information.
Ugly Is As Ugly Does
You may be wondering what the title has to do with coffee. Well, I was thinking the same thing when first visited Ugly Mug Coffee. I actually heard about it from a reader, Cathy Yingling, who pointed our way to the site. Unbeknownst to me (and maybe some of you as well), Ugly Mug Coffee is a supplier of coffee quite popular in Memphis.
Aside from the name – which is definitely attention-grabbing – what sets Ugly Mug Coffee apart from conventional brands? You can read all about it in their web site but I’d like to post something here which hit a chord within me:
The Life Ugly.
There are those who claim to trade fairly just to fool you into having a clear conscience along with your cup.
We’re not fooling anybody. Never even try.
It’s not easy, but we select the purest beans in a way that’s 100% fair to growers, not “just enough that we can claim to be fair.” One Hundred Percent. A fair trade price means farmers can feed and clothe their families. It means they receive adequate healthcare, and can give their kids educational opportunities.
Turns out that mission is some huge amount of work. We’re willing to do it. All you have to do is brew a bag now and then.
Life is indeed ugly and some times, when the going gets rough, it is my mug of coffee (which is not ugly by the way) that helps me get going. Then again, knowing that the coffee I am drinking is not harming other people along the way makes it even better, doesn’t it?
Starbucks Doing It Wrong?
My team had a couple of brainstorming sessions last week and to have a change, we all decided to hold the sessions outside of the office. We had two choices – Starbucks (which I was the proponent of) and The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Unfortunately for me, most of the team wanted to go to the latter. This started a whole conversation on which coffee shop was better. Until now, I am not convinced that Starbucks is on the losing end.
However, I ran across some blogs today that seem to be refuting my belief that Starbucks is THE coffee shop. There’s this German IT professional who is now located in California, who shared a story about Starbuck’s poor selling method – making them seem desperate to sell their coffee beans. I was thinking, why should they be desperate if it’s good coffee anyway? Then I read Starsight’s take on how Starbucks is burning their coffee beans. Hmm, now that I read his blog, I seem to recall several times when I thought the coffee tasted a bit on the off side. Or maybe I am just being influenced by Starsight’s post.
Then I read BBC’s feature on why Starbucks’ sales have gone cold. It goes along the lines of Starbucks being too common that it is not cool to be seen with a Venti in your hand anymore. So what’s the deal? Maybe in the business sense they are doing things wrong. The more important thing for me is good coffee. Now I have to run along and get me a café latte and see if they are indeed burning their beans.
How Many Calories In A Cup Of Coffee?
I don’t really want to answer this question, to be honest. I’d rather enjoy my daily cup – or cups, to be more accurate – and not think about how many calories I take in each time I take a sip of this wonderful brew. Yet what can I do? Health is of utmost importance as well. If I am to gain some benefit from my attempts at exercise (as small as they are, I have to day), I have to watch what I take in in terms of calories as well.
So, after some research, here is what I came up with. The good news is that plain black coffee contains zero fat and very few calories. That means I can drink as many cups of black coffee that I want, right? The bad news is that I like more than plain black coffee! I like Coffee Mate (as you might know by now) – 2 heaping tablespoons of it in every cup. How many calories does this add? According to the Mayo Clinic, one tablespoon plain nondairy creamer has 33 calories. That means 66 calories per cup for me! Whew! For other “extras” and their corresponding calories, check out the Mayo Clinic’s data.
How about Starbucks coffee? My favorite is café latte which, according to Diet Bites, has a whopping 260 calories in it! By the way, that is with whole milk in it. Other combinations range from 160 to 210 calories. For more information on other drinks, go here.
So, will this affect my coffee intake? Maybe I’ll lessen my Starbucks visits. Maybe I’ll put 1 tablespoon of creamer instead of 2. What I know for sure is I’ll still have a cup or two – or even three, a day.
Coffee @ National Geographic
You know me, anything about coffee, I find interesting. Another thing that you may not know about me is this – I just adore National Geographic. I suppose growing up reading old and new issues of the magazine just left an imprint in me that I can never get rid off. So anyway, when I discovered National Geographic’s feature on coffee, I was way beyond excited.
Obviously, I cannot share everything in their feature here in this post, so I just picked out some of the most interesting tidbits I found. You can read the rest of the feature for yourself.
Ever heard of Kaldi? He’s the legendary Ethiopian goatherd who supposedly discovered coffee. According to the legend, he saw his goats munching on some coffee beans and followed suit. Pretty soon, he was skipping and hopping – thanks to the caffeine, I suppose.
How about Baba Budan? He is credited with the feat of smuggling fertile coffee beans out of Mecca. Supposedly, he strapped the beans onto his belly and introduced coffee to European colonies.
Did you know that Louis XIV was given a coffee tree as a gift by the Dutch? This was coveted by Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, a young naval officer from Martinique. So he asked the King for some clippings – only to have his request denied. Not to be deterred, he went on a midnight adventure to get a clipping from the tree – and succeeded.
Who ever thought that coffee’s history would be this interesting, huh? Head on over to Nat Geo’s web site for more treats.
Coffee Fest in Washington DC
Here’s a piece of news for (professional) coffee lovers out there. I discovered this through Chris O’Brien’s blog, Bean Activist.
From February 15 to February 17, the Washington DC Coffee Fest will be held in the Convention Center. Mind you, before you get too excited, Chris was quick to point out that the event is targeted towards “coffee professionals and not just casual coffee drinkers.” Hmm, I don’t think I can qualify.
Still, there are quite a lot of free informational classes that I think would be interesting – at least from a professional’s point of view. You never know, you just might want to open a coffee shop of your own! Tickets come at $30 a piece and will entitle you to enter the trade show premises wherein you will find a hundred exhibits featuring all sorts of tea and coffee – even hot chocolate! Of course, as it’s a trade show, you’ll find a lot of commercial machinery and supplies as well as trade magazines.
From the Coffee Fest web site itself:
Coffee Fest is dedicated to the growth and proliferation of the specialty coffee, gourmet tea and alternative beverage industries. With a strong emphasis on independent retail, Coffee Fest features a complete industry wide trade show, invaluable educational programming, Free-Pour Latte Art Competition, New Product Showcase, Opening Night Reception, incredible Special Attractions and tremendous Networking Opportunities.
I think the competition alone would be worth a visit. Shall we go?
The Perfect Cup of Brewed Coffee
How do you make the perfect cup of brewed coffee? Mind you, I am not talking about espresso but purely brewed coffee. According to George Howell of Terroir Coffee, “Coffee has never been a noble beverage because the means to perfectly produce it haven’t existed.” Oh yeah? Well, he followed that statement with good news, though. With the advances in technology, we are now in that age where perfect extraction is attainable – at least many experts believe.
So how do you get the perfect cup of brewed coffee? Buy yourself a siphon bar or a Clover. Of course, if you do not have $11,000 handy (that’s for the Clover. You need $20,00 for the siphon bar from Japan), then you may just want to look for coffee shops which make use of these machines. In fact, the Clover has been around for about two years and there are only about 200 units around the world. At the price they are asking for the machine, it is no wonder that not many coffee shops have one.
Here’s great news for us – Starbucks just bought Clover machines! I am not so sure just how many they got but I am sure that they would not be having these machines in ALL of their branches at once. Boston coffee lovers would be delighted to know that three Boston Starbucks will be launching their Clover machines on February 11.
I still haven’t had a taste of coffee brewed on Clover but I am sure the chance will arrive. For those of you who have had a taste, let us know – is it really the perfect cup of brewed coffee?
