Summer Fun Food and Drink 2009 - Chapter 5 Canada Day Charter rights to be suspended · Sunday June 28, 2009 by colin newell
Want to ride the bus on Canada Day? Plan on leaving your car at home to attend a garden party across town? Hope to bring a couple of bottles of your favorite Pinot Noir or a six-pack of your beloved barley, hops and malt?
Well, be prepared to give it up on Canada Day to B.C. Transit thuggery.
That’s right folks.
The eyes of Canada have been on the Victoria Police department for the last few years as they have suspended civil liberties with bag checks (on buses) and check points on the street corners of the city leading into the downtown core. And now in a cynical move on the part of the folks in blue – B.C. Transit is being employed as a branch of the police in the illegal search of citizens. Your right to ride the bus will be denied if you do not submit to a search. And this is an outrage!
And I beg you. Say no.
In a moment of supreme and mind boggling irony, we are having our Canadian Charter rights suspended on Canada Day – a day we celebrate the founding of our nation – a nation that was built upon fundamental freedoms.
Our grandma’s and granddad’s that gave their limbs and often their life so we could have ours… must be rolling in their graves.
And oddly we know in advance.
When I was 11 years old, I had a neighborhood thug put me in a head lock as he rummaged through my pocket for spare change. He found 11 cents. I was outraged but unharmed – and I promised myself back then, if I ever had advance knowledge of an indignity like this, I would be prepared with countermeasures.
Now I do. Words and knowledge.
If I am crossing town on Wednesday (Canada Day) with my bottle of Pinot, bound for a garden party and some authority figure attempts to pilfer my legally obtained spirits – well, they are going to be in for a surprise.
I know my rights.
So know yours. Please do not shrink and avoid our bus system – if only to avoid confrontation. Step forward and be a Canadian that your ancestors could be proud of.
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Summer Fun Food and Drink - 2009 - Chapter 3 - Coffee Podcast · Wednesday June 17, 2009 by colin newell
Coffeecrew.Com Podcast for June 2009 – a series we call Conversations
We interviewed Poul Mark of Transcend Coffee, Edmonton, Alberta – while he was visiting family and friends here in Victoria.
We met up with him at Habit Coffee & Culture – one of Victoria B.C.‘s finest coffee bars.
Have a listen!
or click here for the mp3 if you cannot see the above widget.
Summer fun food and drink 2009 - Chapter 2 coffee time · Wednesday June 17, 2009 by colin newell
If my colleagues and I were cats…
This is what our daily coffee break would look like.
Draw your own conclusions.
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Summer Fun Food and Drink 2009 - Chapter One - For women only · Sunday June 14, 2009 by colin newell
In over 15 years of serious coffee tasting, I have always followed my own motto: Push the specialty coffee experience to the very edge of the experiential frontier – and then push it a little further.
And in one and a half decades of boutique coffee browsing I have sipped coffee from the most exotic climes; Like beans from far flung places like St. Helena Island – Napoleon Bonaparte, no less, wiled away his final days there. Coffee beans pooped out the tail end of marsupial civets… from three different sources no less! Thai civet coffee, Indonesian Kopi Luwak and Vietnamese farmed civet coffee. I have had Jamaica Blue Mountain coffees from all the major estates on the little Island that gave us some of the most remarkable rums and reggae music. I once held in my hands a 10 pound bag of Panama La Hacienda Esmerelda coffee… worth over $1600. And yea, I got me some!
Some of my favorites java jolts have come from Ethiopia, Yemen, Uganda, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Papua New Guinea and, of all places, Australia and Thailand.
And despite all these varied experiences, nothing could have prepared me recently for my greatest caffeinated challenge to date… Girlie Coffee
Deliciously Girlie comes from Kealakekua on the Big Island of Hawaii – it’s a tranquil little town nestled along a very narrow region of land scarcely a mile wide and 7 to 10 miles long – and 1200 to 1750 feet above Sea level – it shares the strip of weather beaten State highway 11 and a luxurious landscape with town names like Captain Cook.
Deliciously Girlie coffee is 100% Pure Kona coffee that is very lightly roasted – probably as light as you can go – and only produced within the natural environment of the ideal coffee production facility… the farm. And the roaster. That is it. No intermediate steps. No corporate influence. No processing.
What I was fundamentally unprepared for were the consequences of brewing up several pots and presses of coffee actually intended for the exclusive consumption of the fairer sex… that is, the ladies.
In my lab at the University of Victoria, I work with a wide range of folks of both sexes and all ages. And as word went around that there was some newfangled brews to peruse, the buzz for this joe became palpable.
Cups of the Deliciously Girlie coffee were passed around to the crew and much to our surprise, the coffee was… mild and quite Kona like… with light body and very focused lemony notes. Ah. So far so good. Within about 15 minutes however, the guys in our coffee circle became quite blethering… verbose… chatty. Fact was, this lightly roasted coffee packs an immense caffeine wallop – somewhat higher than your typical burnt out Starbucks roast – Deliciously Girlie is at the other end of the roast spectrum and as you might not know: the lighter the roast, the higher the caffeine content.
And one of the reasons why they call this Girlie coffee (and there are lots of reasons on their informative webpage…) is that women are better equipped to deal with the different chemistry of this coffee – like more caffeine, and more complex antioxidants – those delightful little cancer fighters that many natural foods (like coffee) contain.
What of the ladies in the lab and offices around ours that sampled the women only java? They carried on about their day as if this was a normal, but tasty, cup of coffee to enjoy.
The guys? Well, we chatted and chatted and ran over into an elongated coffee break… and chatted some more. Then hugged. And went back to work.
But don’t take my word for it! Deliciously Girlie coffee comes in a remarkable packaging that looks unmistakably Jean Paul Gaultier (the designer!) – and not surprising, the creators of Deliciously Girlie used to work for companies like Prada in New York City.
This blog on Deliciously Girlie Coffee begins yet another season of our beloved series, Summer Fun Food and Drink! I hope you all enjoy reading these stories as much as I enjoy writing them! Can we talk?
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