All my life I have loved the smell and taste off all things coffee, with the exception of coffee flavoured ice cream. Which is odd considering I love both coffee and ice cream, but the two together do not appeal to me. Anyhoo, living in British Columbia had a major affect on my lifestyle... I became a coffee snob. That is right, living in the land of Whole Foods, Quality Greens Farm Market, Choices Market I switched a large portion of the regular food I purchase over to organically grown/produced and boy did I notice a difference.
However, today is all about the coffee. Oh organic coffee, fair trade, shade grown coffee, what would I do without you? I equate my new found coffee snobbery to people who develop a palette for various wine. (OK, that happened to me too in BC.) Once you try the “good stuff” you just cannot go back! But I will save that for another entry as well.
In the Okanagan Valley, where I lived pre YK, there were free trade, organic coffee shops on every street corner. And they all were AMAZING. You can taste the purity of a good coffee. You will pay more money, however in my opinion it is worth it knowing that the workers were fairly paid and treated in the production of the beans. If you can swing it, try it out! When you go back to “the other” trust me, you notice the difference. The chemical, metallic taste will seemingly appear out of no where and then there is the most horrible of reactions, the effect on the ol’ tum. Ohhh, it just hurts.
But, that’s just me and since I was missing my wonderful BC coffee shops, I felt the need to share. Especially once I read this, a great blog entry where our resident money coach discusses the economics of latte addiction:
http://nancyzimmerman.com/2009/03/23/personal-praxis-i-now-buy-a-latte-each-day-bite-me/
I will freely admit that I do save a fortune NOT buying my $6/day latte anymore. But as Nancy said, it sure is/was worth it.
I encourage you all to do a little research and find out for yourself the benefits of drinking fair trade, organic coffee. You all have Google and if you are interested, check it out!
Vive les coffee snobs! Wahoo!
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5 comments:
hahaha Nat I just spent like 20 minutes reading these blogs. Your hilarious. I love it. :) keep them coming. miss you two
Erin! We miss you too so much! Thanks for reading my silly blog! :-)
Good for you for making the sustainable coffee choice. Fortunately even those of us at the (northern) ends of the earth can get great sustainable coffees, for pretty much the same price as people in the south. In fact I ordered a Cup of Excellence Coffee today from Transcend Coffee with free shipping. My regular coffee supplier is Equator.ca which offers free shipping for recurring orders (My favourite is the Ethiopian Yergecheffe).
A great resource for coffee and the environment issues is Coffee and Habitat, written by a good friend of mine Julie Craves. It can be found at http://coffeehabitat.com
Thank you! I will certainly check out those links.
I must have been in need of a nap yesterday when I left my comment. Julie's blog is called "Coffee and Conservation" The URL is correct though.
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