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Gluten Problems??????????

Thursday, March 7th, 2013

copyright 2013 Bettina Network, inc. for Marceline Donaldson

Many years ago I worked for The Pillsbury Company – for a brief time – with a long following law suit – which is the stuff of legend around my neighborhood. I offer that fact to you in the interest of full disclosure.

One, of the many things that upset me, happened when I was moved to International Marketing with one of my responsibilities being over the Silos.  It wasn’t something I actually did, it was an old hangover from another time, but the job description was never amended.

In the process of this tenure, I received a telephone call from the real manager of the Silos, the one who had been at Pillsbury for many years and who did the day to day managing of the Silos.  He informed me there was an infestation of bugs in the Silos and asked what he should do about it.

My immediate response was – throw out the flour in the Silos – you can’t sell flour to people which is or has been full of bugs.

He thanked me and hung-up.

Shortly thereafter my boss came along and said “Marceline, we can’t throw out the flour.  He wasn’t calling to actually get input from you on what to do, he has been doing this job for many years and knew what to do.  With your new job description he needs your signature and go ahead to proceed.”

Well, what did that mean!

It means his procedure, set up by who knows, was to spray the flour in the Silos with pesticides to kill the bugs.

Being confused, I asked my boss how did they get the pesticides out of the flour and how did they make the flour clean again from bug feces, etc.

He told me they didn’t.   The FDA said the pesticides were not enough to negatively affect human health and by the time the flour was packaged and reached the grocery store shelves no one ever questioned what those little black specs were or where they came from.

Being really mind blown, I checked around the industry and discovered that was common practice and why did I have a problem with it?  It was normal – everybody did it – and given that fact, they wouldn’t do such if it was problematical or would cause the public health problems.

Well, I didn’t sign off on it – the job description was finally adjusted and we all settled down to a very uncomfortable co-existence.

From that time onward, whenever I go to the store for flour I buy organic whole wheat or organic some other kind of flour whichever has minimum processing of the flour.  That has been my practice since that time in early 1970.  And given the fact that I bake quite a bit, it is possible to make extremely delicious breads, cakes, etc. using only organic whole wheat flour.  All those recipes and comments from Chefs which say you have to add White Flour or your baking won’t come out right are a lot of baloney.  Most recipes, which call for White overly processed flour translate on a one to one basis – they were probably translated from the organic whole wheat lightly milled flour to what we have today. – who said “Without a knowledge of history, we are really seriously handicapped in the way we live.”

We have had several people for breakfast lately who’ve said they don’t eat wheat because their doctor said they were ‘sensitive’.  They didn’t have celiac disease – full blown- according to them, but their ‘sensitivity’ to wheat made them – on their doctors’ advice – eliminate wheat from their diet.

It has occurred to me to question if they are ‘sensitive’ to wheat or if they are ‘sensitive’ to and/or ‘allergic’ to the chemicals used to debug the flour.

I’ve raised the issue, but this pesticide treatment of flour has been a closely guarded secret of the flour processing companies for decades.

There was not this ‘sensitivity’ to flour when I was growing up.  Its only recent that we are running into people who refuse to eat wheat because of it.

Since their doctors have no idea what’s in the wheat – they, I am sure, as well as everybody else  have no clue as to this treatment of wheat.  So, why would they test their patients for a sensitivity to the pesticides sprayed on the wheat before it is packed and shipped.  Why would they look at whether their patients are allergic to the bugs and bug droppings in the wheat when they don’t know that such exists.

It really should be investigate to determine its real affect on humans and investigated by scientists other than those related to the flour industry.

This is one of many stories I have about what happens to our flour.  We all need to be vigilant and on our toes about the food we eat, especially the food which has been processed.  The FDA doesn’t seem to have done such a great job.  But then, maybe I am confused as to whose interest they are protecting!

If you’ve stayed in our home you know some of the other stories about the wheat and the FDA – especially the strawberry story.  I won’t bore you with repeating them.

Good eating!!!  And stay responsible for your health and therefore your diet.  What you eat determines who you are and your present and future health.  Exercise is fine, but it is only about 10 percent of the equation – and – is it so highly touted to be the red herring to throw you off looking at the real problems.

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Ultra-Pasteurized = Ultra-Junk-Milk

Friday, November 2nd, 2012

copyright Bettina Network 2012

Today is very discouraging.  I spent yesterday looking for organic milk and am discovering the good milk is being replaced all over the city by the ‘ultra-pasteurized’.  It is as though stores are saying ‘we will carry organic milk, but we don’t think it will sell so we will stock the ‘ultra’ kind and therefore it will last for years on the shelf waiting for buyers.’

It is amazing to me that any store would carry ultra-pasteurized.  People who are into the organic movement, or are concerned about their health and want to maximize the nutrients they take in are those who know a lot about food. Very few of us will buy anything off the shelf without first reading its ingredients.  And many of us subscribe to that new adage, if you can’t pronounce one or more of the ingredients leave it on that shelf.

So why would anyone replace organic milk with organic ultra-pasteurized?  That is a contradiction in terms.  I would never spend my very hard earned money on such a product and neither would anyone I know.

So – take that stuff off the shelf.  Complain about it wherever you see it and demand that store owners/managers/buyers get real and start producing quality organic products for the money they charge.

I will pay – but not for junk-milk or junk anything else, organic or otherwise.  Hope you are with me and let it be known that you will not tolerate being asked to buy junk-food.  Hmmmmm!  That ultra-pasteurized milk would go well with hamburgers made of pink slime, —-on buns made with white flour left in silos and then sprayed with pesticides to kill the bugs and then sold without either removing the pesticides or the bugs (they decay – every notice the little black/brown specs in your white flour?) and without noting the pesticides on the list of ingredients in the flour, ——–french fries soaked in beef stock and sold as a vegetarian product ——and etc. etc. etc.

We are putting “ULTRA PASTEURIZED MILK’ in Bettina’s Box of Shame.

Get out there – be vigilant – protect our food supply.

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The “Perfect” Storm

Sunday, October 28th, 2012

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2012

How does a Bettina home survive a storm which threatens to down power lines, flood areas and generally disrupt life as we are accustomed to living it with all that we take for granted?

To give you an idea of how we do it, what follows are a few tips from a couple of Bettina Families:

1)  We discourage your buying water in those plastic water bottles, for all the reasons articulated many places.  We notice when you go to the store,  just before a storm, the aisles are full of boxes of those water bottles, just waiting for you to come and spend a small fortune stocking up.

What to use instead?  Try natural, organic, unadulterated coconut water.  It is good for dehydration, will give you a small amount of nutrients and keeps your thirst quenched longer than plastic water and it won’t add chemicals to your system, which the plastic bottles can do by leeching out some of their troublesome chemicals into the water.  That happens especially when the plastic bottles of water are stored in warehouses at too high a temperature, which facilitates their  discharging a bit of their plastic into the water and you don’t know which are or were not so stored.

2)  For food – try the simple things, which your parents and grandparents probably knew by instinct.  Buy several dozen organic eggs (without the ‘Omega 3 added’ label.  Just plain organic eggs from cage free chickens which roam around in the sun pecking as chickens do.  Hard boil a dozen or so, depending upon the number of people in your home during the storm and put them aside in case you need nourishment without electricity.

3)  Try wild canned sardines in olive oil.  Several cans with great organic crackers as a treat.  You can also add dry organic cereal – lots of fruit – organic nuts, raisins, dried cranberries and other such foods, which are good to eat after and don’t introduce problems into your body which you will regret after the storm passes.

Hope these few tips help you prepare for the storms coming up.

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A Fantastic Diet for Good Health!

Friday, September 21st, 2012

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2012

We have discovered, through many conversations with guests, an incredible diet to end all diets.  We have put this together as we gleaned information a little at a time and experimented to make sure this is workable.

It does work for a couple of us, but we aren’t guaranteeing, advising, or anything else, just reporting on what we’ve observed and experienced.

We started to hear about limes when a guest from India talked about her need to have limes in the afternoon because it was advised by her nutritionist who she absolutely trusted.  So we found a source for organic limes for her and every afternoon she would squeeze four limes into a cup and drink the juice.

We knew about having an organic lemon squeezed into a cup of warm water and drinking that first thing in the morning to get your day started on the right foot and your body regulated – through a regular morning trip to the bathroom.  We didn’t know anything about limes except for the jokes about the English ‘Limeys’.

Later came others who looked for lemons and limes – never organic – but we added that to what they were doing and suggested that might be a better way than just ordinary limes and lemons that you didn’t know what was sprayed, dug into the dirt, washed into the fruit and that would show up in later years affecting your health in bad ways.  And they would thank us, take their lemons and limes in various ways and on different time tables to be able to travel and live without a sluggishness which brought them to their regimen with the lemons and limes in the first place.

We began to notice something amazing as we tried to do the same thing – varying it with every guests’ different usage to test for ourselves.

As we tried all these different regimens and combinations of ways to use lemons and limes, we found our weight dropping even when nothing else in our diet or lifestyle changed. We even had one guest  use a lemon to rub on his face in the mornings after shaving.  He was cute!  We noticed it when he came to breakfast with a couple lemon bits still on his skin.  When we asked what he’d been doing with the lemons – after an initial embarrassment he admitted to using one lemon each morning to smooth over his face to deal with any cuts or etc. that he might accumulate.  Another guest used cut lemons to rub on her elbows and knees.  And there were more!  It has been a great learning for us!!!

What we have taken from all of these possibilities:

First thing in the morning, we have a lemon or lime with the juice squeezed and put into a half-cup of warm water.

Throughout the day we also have lemon or lime juice – organic, of course, – and at very particular times, which we feel is the secret to this ‘diet’.

When we come in from meetings, shopping, working in the garden, doing whatever that has made us ravenously hungry and pushes us to         reach for any and everything we can to satisfy that hunger .- Instead of reaching for those 5 cookies, ice cream, instant whatever that can quench the thirst and hunger, we stop, have one lemon or lime squeezed into a half-glass of warm water and our hunger and thirst is satiated enough that we can think before we reach for those diet disasters and health saboteurs.   We have the time and space to work through putting together a substantial, organic meal or snack before we move on to the next thing.

What we’ve found – not only is our hunger satisfied with that half-cup of freshly squeezed organic juice with warm water – but our energy is revived and we are ready to continue our day.

I’ve found that two or three such lemon/lime pick-me-ups during the day satisfies my needs, but it also has me losing weight.  Not because I am dieting, but because when I have gone longer than I should have without eating, my hunger and thirst don’t lead me to poor choices.  It gives me space to think through what it is I need to eat and time to prepare whatever my choice.  I also look better.  Somehow, there is a shining through from this regimen that is fantastic.  No make-up could do for me what is done to me by those half-cups of juice and warm water.  I use half-cups because it is so sour that is all I can get down at one time.  And no, I don’t want to use those ‘helpers’ that make lemons taste like sugary confections.  Over time, I am becoming more accustomed to the sour taste and my sugar tastes are becoming intolerable of that really sweet stuff.  Before this, nothing was too sweet for me and I could never pass a cookie without picking one or two or three up and carrying them away with me.

A couple other friends, who have tried the same thing, have come back looking better, feeling better and are proselytizing their friends in this new way of taking care of their body’s nutritional needs and staying off the bad stuff.

One organic lemon or lime squeezed using a glass juicer – you know the kind, – non-electric, manual labor needed – with 1/2 cup warm water added and off you go to a new life.

If you have a difficult time finding a glass lemon juicer – we found this one and many more at www.laurelleaffarm.com/pages/kitchen&table/antique-glass-reamer-1909-patent.htm

Photo of old antique glass reamer, orange or lemon juicer w/ 1909 patent date

 

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Bettina’s Tapioca Pudding

Wednesday, August 29th, 2012

copyright 2012 Bettina Network, inc.

A long-known comfort food.   We have hearkened back to memories of childhood when desserts were homemade and not full of so many of the non-food ‘stuff’ they now contain.

Organic Tapioca is the basis for this pudding.  I searched through many recipe books and came to the conclusion that organic tapioca is a necessary – well maybe I also started out with a bias.  However, I came to the conclusion that the tapioca should be organic because of the overwhelming number of recipes which call for cornstarch as the thickening agent in this dish.

At first, I couldn’t understand why one would need a thickening agent in a dish whose core ingredient is itself a thickening agent.  Tapicoa is used in many sweet and savory dishes as a thickening agent and it works very well without changing the taste of the dish.  I realized why all of these recipe’s contained corn starch when we bought several kinds of  Tapioca from Organic to overly processed with a coating of talc to make it look whiter and more matte.  The corn starch was necessary because in the processing of tapioca, which is not organic,  it loses its thickening properties.

The white matte-looking tapioca was incredible.  It was so overly processed that using it made no sense ! – Why was it coated with talc, especially since much of the talc was seen floating in the water or milk that we used to test the tapioca.  It was floating in the liquid but it was incorporating itself into the tapioca pudding so we would be eating tapioca and talc.  That meant to us its use was purely aesthetic.  An aesthetic that gave us a stomach ache since  talc is rumored, and in some experiments has shown itself to be a carcinogen.  At least that is what we have read.  Why especially would you use this kind of overprocessed and staged tapioca in a dish you feed mostly to young children and those longing for their many-years past childhood?

For those of you who don’t know its genesis, tapioca is extracted from the cassava.  It is a staple in many areas of the world and is used as a thickening agent in foods.  It is gluten-free.

If you have a difficult time finding organic tapioca we suggest you try www.frontiercoop.com and have it mailed to you.  It is worth the trouble.

We started with:

——— a small light under 3 cups organic milk in a glass pot.

——— as bubbles formed around the edges of the milk we added 1/2 cup organic tapioca

——— and stirred and stirred making sure nothing was sticking to the pan.

——————-We also added  a small amount of himalayan salt to the pan and continued to stir.

———when the milk mixture looked as though it was about to boil we added 1/2 cup sugar

——————-and stirred and stirred and stirred , especially since we did not want the mixture to boil over!!!!!!!

==================We broke two eggs into a mixing bowl and whipped the eggs until they became lighter in color and texture.

==================We added a little of the milk mixture to the eggs very gradually so as to bring the temperature of the eggs up to the

==================temperature of the milk mixture and then added the eggs to the milk mixture

———and stirred and stirred and stirred somemore!!

We continued stirring until the mixture looked like a very good and thick pudding!

We added liquid organic vanilla to the mixture, took it off the heat and stirred until the vanilla was incorporated.

We then poured the mixture into four beautiful stem glasses for serving and put the pudding into the refrigerator.

———If you want more than servings for four – simply double or triple the ingredients!

We let the pudding sit in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes because we like warm, but neither hot nor cold pudding!

When we served this organic tapioca pudding it was excellent and fulfilled every one of our childhood memories.

And when we went to bed that night we stirred and stirred and then stirred the already eaten pudding some more!!

Once you’ve satisfied your longings for tapioca and your childhood you can then add all kind of extra ingredients to create memories for your children unique to their upbringing, but turning back a little to your own:

—————–raisins – coconut – soft nuts or nuts you have crushed – chocolate chips – grated ginger – cinnamon – nutmeg – orange juice -

and the list goes on…………………………

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A Weight Loss Tip!

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2012

Over the breakfast table we heard about cinnamon and weight loss.  We tried it and amazingly it works.  We tried the suggestion which said have a cup of warm milk (whole milk – preferably non-homogenized and non-pasteurized, but if you can’t get that the regular pasteurized milk is fine.  The non-homogenized is available under the “Sky Top” brand available at Whole Foods and possibly other places.

Make sure the cinnamon is the real cinnamon or Ceylon Cinnamon.  After trying it for a couple weeks I am down 6 pounds.

I would suggest you try this for a few weeks and then go off the cinnamon.  The body is an amazing thing – it acclimates to what you are doing very easily so to keep the cinnamon for weight loss viable, give it up after a few weeks and take it up again later.

You might try raspberry ketones as a substitute for the cinnamon in warm milk when you give it up.  We have not tried this, but I heard about it on Dr. Oz.  He said his “medical group” looked into this and found it effective for weight loss.

We also ‘googled’ cinnamon for weight loss and found many articles saying how great it is – so our bed & breakfast guest who talked about this and got everyone excited about the possibilities knew what she was talking about.

We also understand it might be effective against diabetes because of how Ceylon cinnamon acts in the body relative to your blood sugar levels.

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Bettina Having Fun!

Saturday, November 26th, 2011

Our technology knowledge is moving fast.  You will find grapics, videos, music and more on Bettina Network’s Blog.

You will also find information about companiess and reviews of events.  For the company – these are not paid advertisements – we do not take paid advertisements.  These are comments and information from a member of the Bettina Network Community who has used the company’s services and/or products, thinks they are special and wants to share that information with the rest of the Bettina Network Community.

For events – someone from the Bettina Network decides which events we will attend and review.  If we attend an event, that does not mean that attendance will result in a review.  All of that depends upon what we think about what we have seen, heard and experienced.

Hope you enjoy the results – especially now that we have entered the picture age.

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The Concord Cheese Shop

Saturday, November 26th, 2011

copyright 2010 by Julie – Traveling Taste Buds

Hours Open: Tue-Fri 10am-5:30pm and Sat 9:30am-5:30pm

web site: www.concordcheeseshop.com
email: peter@concordcheeseshop.com

29 Walden Street
Concord, MA. 01742-2504
978 369 5778

One of Concord’s celebrated establishments, a perennial “Best of Boston,” not to be missed by any visitor to the town center, has lured foodies down Walden Street since 1967. Its current (and third) proprietor, Peter Lovis, has been serving out samples of the 150-200 varieties of domestic and international cheeses since 1976. You will never buy a cheese there that you can’t taste first! But cheese is not the only food for sale at the Cheese Shop. There’s a vast and excellent (including some bargain specials) selection of wines; there are many gourmet items including chocolates, pastries, spices, olive oils, holiday treats, nuts, pickles, jams, and more. The Cheese Shop Deli is famous for its chicken salad, for carrying “Famous Phil’s Subs,” for its terrific charcuterie, coffees, and its many fabulous freshly made preparations. Besides its warmth, the overwhelming attribute of the Cheese Shop is its internationalism: indeed, at one count the shop’s offerings represented 80 different countries!

NOT TO BE MISSED AT THE CHEESE SHOP:  Make a note to spend December 1st in Concord so you can be present at the Cheese Shop’s Cheese Parade.  A 400 pound wheel of cheese is rolled down the red carpet with music and rose petals.  Be there for this fun event!  Missed this year?  Mark your calendars and make your reservations at one of the Bettina Network homes in Concord to be present at next years Cheese Shop’s Cheese Parade.

A special feature offered by the Cheese Shop deli is their “Friday night supper” menu. $75 brings home a three course gourmet dinner for two, including a baguette and a bottle of wine. All you have to do is heat up the entree; often as not you’ll have enough for lunch on Saturday, too. Many Concord couples make this a monthly treat, but a “Friday night supper” could also be ideal for those taking advantage of ‘eating dinner in’ at the Bettina Network Bed and Breakfast where they are staying. The hosts are always happy to lend the service of their oven or microwave. Just remember that the meals are not offered during the holiday season, which is an extra busy time for the Cheese Shop.

In short, any visitor to Concord would enjoy doing what concordians do: take a stroll down Walden Street for a taste trip around the world. As Peter Levis says, “don’t come in a rush!”

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IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES WHEN YOU TRAVEL!!!

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Whole Foods Out of the Box

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2010

October is Non-GMO month and we are acutely aware of those who are working to eliminate food grown with GENETICALLY MODIFIED SEED and those who are the great transgressors. Whole Foods has become a leader in the Non-GMO movement and we commend them on that effort and praise them for making such a timely choice. So we are removing Whole Foods from the Bettina’s Box of Shame.

We noticed several other reasons to take them out of Bettina’s Box of Shame. One of our big concerns, at the time we put them in the Box of Shame, was their frozen spinach, etc. from China, especially since, at the time, melamine was being found in foods from China. We find they no longer stock such frozen spinach, however, their current crop of frozen spinach is from Brussels – some from France. While we think those countries are great, we don’t think stocking frozen foods from outside the United States is so great. We hope they will change that practice. There are too many signs around their stores touting “buy local” for them to continue to engage in the practice of having some of their frozen foods come from other countries with no choice given to those who actually want to buy local – even frozen foods.

On the good and most amazing side at Whole Foods – which started to turn our thinking, – several times this summer we found Whole Foods had organic fruit at a price lower than conventional fruit – strawberries, in particular. That practice needs to spread to other foods. It is cheaper to raise organic foods – eliminating the high cost of Monsanto Seeds, pesticides and other offending crutches some farmers use, should eventually result in the lowering of the cost of organic foods.

We found that lower cost particularly exciting and loaded a cart full of the fruit, sending emails to all we could think of to tell them that news and invited friends and colleagues over for tea with Whole Foods fruit and small labels on the table asking them to notice that the price of the organic fruit they were eating (the strawberries) was $1.00 lower than the price of the conventional fruit – $1.00 higher.

We commend Whole Foods on its leadership in the non-GMO movement and will follow and support their activities in this realm. We hope you will too. CUDOS, Whole Foods, on a job well done. Keep up the good work and stay out of Bettina’s Box of Shame.


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A NEW BREAKFAST HABIT – FRESH COFFEE

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

The Bettina Network, inc.
copyright 2010

We have started a new tradition, thanks to a guest, from Oxford in England, who makes Espresso for himself every morning with a popcorn popper and good, green espresso coffee beans.

It was a fascinating conversation to realize something which I had dismissed as complicated, time-consuming, etc. is being done on a regular, daily basis by a young bed & breakfast guest who has lots of other things to do – a busy life, research, moving his career forward, etc. We tried to get him to write for Bettina’s Blog, but in spite of much begging and pleading, he resisted. Maybe in the future he will relent and write a blog about his morning coffee ritual.

We will have to report this third hand. As you try it, please give us feed back to help us and you refine the process.

The guest referred us to a web site – www.sweetmarias.com. We went all over the site and learned much, which we are trying to put into practice.

First, we had to find the right popcorn popper – mainly because the coffee roasters we found are way up in the hundreds of dollars and only last, according to what we’ve read, about two years. So the popcorn popper is our beginning. Who would have thought you could have really fresh coffee made with beans roasted in a popcorn popper. But who knows, if we become really good at this we can spin off a Bettina coffee roasting company. You can have your coffee beans shipped overnight mail so you can have really fresh coffee in the morning – Bettina style. I suspect some Bettina host families might put up a fuss if we started to require all homes have fresh coffee in the mornings, but stranger things have happened.

I learned, right before the guest left, that the popcorn popper we had would not work. His advice was to get one with holes in the sides of the well where one would normally put the un-popped corn. The hot-air popcorn popper we have has a screen over the hole in the bottom of the well, but no holes in the sides of the well. The holes in the side are needed to keep the coffee beans rotating. They won’t roast and pop out of the popper the way corn does – they will crack and the outer shells coming off the beans as they crack, will fly out of the popcorn popper the way the corn does. For lack of a more professional word – I call that flying stuff ‘shaft’.

We found the right kind at a second hand store for about $3.50. So off we went with our green coffee beans. We had no idea about quality in coffee beans, but since this was a trial, it didn’t matter.

The beans went into the hot air popcorn popper, plugged it in, put a glass bowl where one normally puts one to catch the popped corn which comes out of the popper and out came ‘shaft’ – after the first crack.

Oh, I forgot the cracks! One must wait, while the beans roast, with an incredible smell filling the house until you hear the beans ‘crack’. After this first ‘crack’ the ‘shaft’ – or what I think is the outside covering of the coffee bean – will come out of the popper since it is light and the hot air just blows it into the glass bowl. The directions from our guest says wait until almost the second crack and your beans are done. I had no idea when the second crack would come to be able to anticipate and take the beans out of the popper at that point so I waited a minute or two after the first crack and took out the beans.

The next direction was to make sure you cool the beans by using two pans and pouring the beans from one to the other until the beans cool down or they will continue to roast as long as there is heat and you have lost control of the roasting process.

I stood in the kitchen, pouring the beans from one sifter to the other thinking I had really lost it in my search for perfect breakfast foods and had I gone too far this time? There are perfectly good organic coffees – ground and whole beans, which I could grind – on the market. What was I doing messing up the kitchen and destroying this popcorn popper trying to do what? I didn’t even know if I had good beans or not.

After cooling, I continued to follow the guests directions and let the coffee beans sit overnight. I’m not sure why, but I follow directions pretty good. I don’t deviate until I have tried the prescribed directions and they don’t work and then – all bets are off.

This morning, I am sitting in my office having the best cup of coffee I have ever had in life. Its like the difference in quality between buying a bag of popcorn which was popped probably a month ago, packaged and stored in a too hot warehouse and popping the corn in your kitchen in a kettle popper, eating it fresh and hot out of the popper.

The coffee is incredible. Remarkable!

Now – I am going to try again. This time after reading a bit about coffee beans, learning something about differences in quality of the beans and refining my roasting and grinding technique. I might even buy a coffee grinder, instead of using the grinder we use for nuts to grind the coffee beans.

Growing up, my great-grandmother made her coffee from green beans every morning. She had a wood burning stove in the kitchen and once that stove was fired up, she roasted coffee beans and had a coffee grinder screwed to the wall – a glass jar contraption – and into that grinder she put her coffee beans and had really fresh coffee daily. It was normal! That was just a part of her morning ritual!!! No one considered that strange or special or anything, that was just how you made coffee.

How far we have come from such basics. – Today we have ‘decaf’ coffee which, if you spill on the flame it lets out an incredible stench and the smell of burning ‘decaf’ coffee grounds is a horrible, horrible odor. It always amazes me when guests ask for ‘decaf’. I wonder if they know the process and if they have ever spilled any of their ‘decaf’ coffee grounds on the stove in the flame or electric element.

All the ways we have coffee. Is it because we’ve lost touch with simply roasting your beans, grinding them and making your coffee in a small french press? That is an exquisite way to start your day.

This is going to be quite special, discovering different coffee beans, filling the house with the smell of freshly roasting coffee beans. The one consistency, which ties back to everything else – ALL THE BEANS WE EXPLORE WILL HAVE TO BE ORGANICALLY GROWN! I’m sure you’ve guessed that.


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