Wednesday, June 21, 2006


all hail sumatra

devoted readers will remember that i've spent much of this spring drinking fantastic new world coffees -- peter g.'s counterculture bolivians, kevin c's gimme el naranjal, scott's amazing batdorf los lirios, everybody's fantastic pico del tucan. and so many more. . .

in that light, it was a nice change to return to an old favorite, don schoenholt's gillies sumatra lintong kuda mas from yesterday. what a wonderful breakfast cup that makes in the cafetiére.

as i've often said, that coffee's like spending an afternoon with your best childhood friend.

and on the coffee front, i was surprised today to receive some coffee from jonathan of joe! thanks so much, j.

it's apparently in response to a side comment i sort of tossed out in that recent article in the post, that jonathan had some good dark roast. he wrote me that actually he was moving away from that roast level a tad, towards a lighter coffee.

in this vein, i'll be very interested in checking out the india mysore, the moka java, and the espresso he so sweetly send my way.

and finally, since i guess i've been talking so much about the csa lately, i got my hot little hands on jay weinstein's ethical gourmet. naturally, i judge a book by its coffee and chocolate.

my first impression -- just flipping thru it without reading it -- is that he blew it on the coffee. while he does mention long-time bccy pals and scaa members like karen c. of elan, he misses out totally on what i think has to be the greenest roaster in the u.s.a. right now, mark inman of taylormaid, with his miracle non-polluting roaster, his super-recyclable cans, and his habit of running even his most personal thoughts on biodiesel.

his list of roasters providing fair-trade and organic coffees is alas laughably small. i think every single member of the roasters guild and certainly all the roasters i link to on my left-hand navigation over there are good for organic and/or fair-trade.

on the chocolate front, however, weinstein did well with my favorite organic chocolate, the dagoba (for example, here). anyway, the recipes are global -- asian inspired, new american (weinstein seems to like bison!), a genre i'm calling al-ital (southern food with an italian twist, think southern fried catfish with broccoli rabe!), and even new-oz inspired.

so i'll add this to my cookbook pile. like marge simpson, i read recipes in bed. . .more on this book later when i've had a chance to give it a fair read. . .

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