Summer fun food and drink - Bottomless in Australia · Sunday July 27, 2008 by colin newell
As a Canadian, I have fun with the Australians. I mean, we are a lot alike. Canadians and Aussies love coffee. But currently, the Aussies have one up on us here in North America…
Click on photo at left for the zippy view
Their culture is espresso-centric.
That means that everything is based on espresso coffee. Everything is built upon it.
In Canada, we are less focused… and anything goes. That means coffee shops that pride themselves on their espresso, their drip coffee, their mud, their latte art, their French press and their Clover… and so on. And so on. And so on.
Oh yea. Forgot one. Our Tim Horton’s.
In Australia, the coffee experience springs from a point source and that point source is espresso coffee. And from an esoteric point of view, this allows a people (the Aussies) and a culture (being Australian) to be the absolute best that anyone can be at something (espresso culture).
Representing this wave is Crema Magazine in Australia – they have been around for a few years documenting the ascent of coffee greatness… I mean, espresso greatness. I have been fortunate enough to have a few pictures published in Crema magazine – which is cool… And I would love to do more… If they would let me. So. Hats off to the great people at Crema Magazine!
Oh yea – Photo above is of the single boiler Innova espresso – modified and sold by Geir Oglend of the Drumroaster Cafe on Vancouver Island – to be reviewed on CoffeeCrew.Com real soon.
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Summer fun food and drink - Great coffee in Panama - a downside · Sunday July 27, 2008 by colin newell
Panama’s gourmet coffees fetch record prices for their prized flavors – and I know all too well just how wonderful Panama La Hacienda Esmeralda Geisha tastes – but the increasing demand has convinced some growers to clear land illegally… and plant in one of the country’s few protected highland forests.
Here are some facts. Coffee employs 12 to 15 million people World-wide, many of them complete families… all ages. And many of them live in a cycle of poverty. The average coffee bean changes hands over 100 times on its way from the coffee bush to your cup – often by people who never actually see the often – who live a World away from the environment that actually produces coffee.
The internet, on various levels, has changed some of that – for at least a some of these hard working folks: Online auctions and farm to roaster direct purchases have put the money where it belongs – in the hands of the farms (fincas) and the farmers and their community.
The upside is, the average family has gone from earning pennies on the pound to several dollars for a pound of green coffee – coffee you and I regularly pay 10 to 15$ a pound for roasted. This means food, health care, shelter (for the farmers) and an education for the children – and great coffee for you.
For Panama, having small tracts of incredible coffee that has been yielding upwards of $130/pound in the marketplace, the temptation to exploit this has been irresistible . Panama’s Environmental Protection Agency has uncovered rogue tracts of land in the Volcan Baru National Park, raising concerns that more park land could be endangered as the demand increases.
The nature preserve is ringed with coffee farms growing the country’s “geisha” beans, often described as the champagne of coffee for their subtle jasmine-like taste highly sought after by boutique roasters from North America, Europe and Japan. I have had this coffee. The descriptions do not do it justice – and if you do a google search, you will see that the net has been sprouting new Geisha sites every week.
And now, an insatiable demand for geisha beans have lured some growers well inside the park’s boundaries. It is ironic, but not surprising considering the kind of hardship coffee farmers have lived with.
The point of all of this? Get to know your coffee when you are drinking it. Get to know the farmers, the processes and the economy of coffee – look beyond the rim of your coffee cup and get the big picture.
Summer fun food and drink - Let`s name the babies - that would be fun · Saturday July 26, 2008 by colin newell
A family court judge in New Zealand has had enough with parents giving their children bizarre names and did something about it.
Ok. Let’s get into it shall we.
I am, for all intents and purposes the product of the seventies. And for those of you, just joining us (quite literally… in the last twenty years or so…) let me just explain what I mean.
I think my mother and father are two of the World’s oldest hippies. And I dig that. I really do. They had the good sense to name me Colin… at a time when the name Colin was totally cool. And I am still good with that name. Like, totally.
But what the heck is with parents who have 3 sons and they name them Caelin, Coban and Calum? Hello. The last time I checked, there were more than one or two letters in the alphabet. And what is with this Celtic name shit anyway? My great grandparents, I think, were from Cork, Ireland – my folks and their folks grew up in Eastern Canada so I think I earned the right to have a cool Irish name… So go ahead, challenge my logic. I dare you.
Anyway. Anyone, I mean any two parents… so fuzzy brained to have 3 boys and give them all imaginary pseudo-Celtic names (starting with the letter C no less) need to have my Tony Lama encased leather boot firmly up their ass. Grr. Are we having summer fun yet?
Back to the lead story. People that name their children Sun Flower or God is my Judge (actual name from the seventies…) need to get off the Ganja and get with the program. Thankfully when most of us become adults, we can legally change our names to something that we really like – sadly, when we are kids (and we are generally merciless to each other between the ages of 4 to 16…) the damage is generally done.
So. I am Colin. And I am pretty well balanced. And I have never spent more than a few hundred dollars on therapy (in the 80’s… I mean who wasn’t!?) Who knows what that bill would have been if I had been named Amber Rose Tamara, Saffron Sahara or Tallulah Pine (Simon Le Bon spawn…), Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches Honeyblossom and Pixie (Poli-Eco-Idiot Bob Geldof) and the all time worse picks – Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan, Moon Unit and Diva Muffin from music loon Frank Zappa.
Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad. You freaking old hippies rock! Thank-you!
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Summer fun food and drink - Let`s have babies - that would be fun · Friday July 25, 2008 by colin newell
Romanian immigrant Livia Ionce has broken a British Columbia record — she’s the province’s most fecund woman in 20 years.
Livia and hubby Alexandru became new parents of their 18th baby, Abigail, on Tuesday. The Abbotsford couple’s 17 other children range in age from 20 months to 23 years old. Wow.
Photo above – In Romania, in the sixties, a woman’s ability to produce many strong offspring was measured in her ability to levitate mice deer – This phenomenon, known as the Flippening was demonstrated at an early age with Livia with her ability to levitate transport trucks… 3 at a time…
Abigail adds to a current line-up of 9 girls and 8 boys… uhm – making 10 girls and 8 boys. A youthful 44 year old Livia muses, “The girls in the house said they are happy that they continue to outnumber the boys, but it may not be the end of the story.” And concluding – “Maybe it’s the last, but I’m not sure.”
In the Ionce family, Mother’s Day is obviously more like Christmas than the traditional hallmark moment normally reserved for less prolific women. And when you do the math, it equates to a household birthday party, on average, every 2 and 1/2 weeks. More hallmark moments, more presents. You might say the giving never ends in this family.
Andrea and I are big fans of Jon and Kate makes Eight on TLC (The future of video entertainment – TV cameras in every house…) but these numbers are staggering.
My mother actually had a girlfriend (growing up in Montreal) who was one of 12 kids – Her mother was 40 when she had her last child – and there might have been more but her husband was tragically run over by a truck driven by a mysterious and never-identified woman – Hmmm. Makes you think doesn’t it?
Oh well – for all the thousands of couples (like us) that eschew a contribution to the gene pool, there are hundreds of families like the Ionce`s that fill in the gaps. Bless their hearts – all 20 of them.
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