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New Book…Looks Like Fun
Killing trees with coffee, I think, is an acceptable trade-off. Especially if you use recycled trees or fake plastic trees, and if you recycle your used coffee grounds into your compost bin.
Now comes this from, fittingly, a Berkeley publisher: What appears to be a fun new book in the super-macro-food-pics mold that is all the rage today, complete with a delectable line-up of deliciously done drinks.
The book is entitled, Coffee Drinks, by one Michael Turback, and, at 112 colorful caffeinated pages, is a bargain at under $15.
Let’s Keep It Rollin’
Piggybacking on Jason’s last post about sustainability, I was reading today about a new book raising lots of interestingly difficult issues about our (humans’) presence on this earth.
The book is called The World Without Us, by a fellow name Alan Weisman, and it is, as the title implies, a work of educated speculation about what the world would be like at some distant point in the future, uh, without us. It’s basically the usual humdrumage of self-promotion wrapped in “thought provoking” attire, complete with their current New York Times ranking on the best-sellers’ list. (Ah yes, the New York Times. The paper of record, of course. Now it’s officially a good book.) It also has some cool interactive pieces that give you a visual of the stunningly shameful way we have impacted our environment. I had to remind myself it was a book they are selling, after all, and not a enviro-religio fatwa to pack up and move to the mountains to get off the proverbial grid. 40 years ago it was, “Our planet is becoming overpopulated. There are almost one billion people here now.” 30 years ago it was, “The earth is cooling rapidly. We’re heading into another ice age.” Recently that was replaced with, “Uh-oh, the earth isn’t cooling; it’s actually warming up!” Today, it’s, “Plastics will be around for a stinking loooong time and eventually little tiny microbes will be all that’s left on the planet; but it’s okay, they’ll figure out how to eat plastics.” That’s the summary of the book, as best as I can tell from the web site’s synopses and preview clips.
Anyways, at this point in this blog post, if you’re still with me, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with coffee. Not much. Except…except to say that we are guilty of our own environmental foibles as an industry, despite all our window dressing to the contrary. We need to fess up to the fact that many of our retail stores don’t have separate receptacles for plastic, newspapers, aluminum and glass. Or that we are still just realizing that paper cups don’t biodegrade so well in sealed landfills but ceramic uses the equivalent resources to make as some 35,000 paper cups. (A good tradeoff?) Or that we waste electricity by leaving our espresso machines on overnight because we don’t want to have to get to the shop that much earlier in the morning to let it warm up.
And so forth. My point is not to cast aspersions on us as an industry. I’m just saying skimming through this book’s website got me thinking a little bit about doing my part to reduce the size of my environmental footprint in the industry in which I work.
Here’s a YouTube teaser:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBpWHHZ2eME]
Let’s Keep It Rollin’
Piggybacking on Jason’s last post about sustainability, I was reading today about a new book raising lots of interestingly difficult issues about our (humans’) presence on this earth.
The book is called The World Without Us, by a fellow name Alan Weisman, and it is, as the title implies, a work of educated speculation about what the world would be like at some distant point in the future, uh, without us. It’s basically the usual humdrumage of self-promotion wrapped in “thought provoking” attire, complete with their current New York Times ranking on the best-sellers’ list. (Ah yes, the New York Times. The paper of record, of course. Now it’s officially a good book.) It also has some cool interactive pieces that give you a visual of the stunningly shameful way we have impacted our environment. I had to remind myself it was a book they are selling, after all, and not a enviro-religio fatwa to pack up and move to the mountains to get off the proverbial grid. 40 years ago it was, “Our planet is becoming overpopulated. There are almost one billion people here now.” 30 years ago it was, “The earth is cooling rapidly. We’re heading into another ice age.” Recently that was replaced with, “Uh-oh, the earth isn’t cooling; it’s actually warming up!” Today, it’s, “Plastics will be around for a stinking loooong time and eventually little tiny microbes will be all that’s left on the planet; but it’s okay, they’ll figure out how to eat plastics.” That’s the summary of the book, as best as I can tell from the web site’s synopses and preview clips.
Anyways, at this point in this blog post, if you’re still with me, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with coffee. Not much. Except…except to say that we are guilty of our own environmental foibles as an industry, despite all our window dressing to the contrary. We need to fess up to the fact that many of our retail stores don’t have separate receptacles for plastic, newspapers, aluminum and glass. Or that we are still just realizing that paper cups don’t biodegrade so well in sealed landfills but ceramic uses the equivalent resources to make as some 35,000 paper cups. (A good tradeoff?) Or that we waste electricity by leaving our espresso machines on overnight because we don’t want to have to get to the shop that much earlier in the morning to let it warm up.
And so forth. My point is not to cast aspersions on us as an industry. I’m just saying skimming through this book’s website got me thinking a little bit about doing my part to reduce the size of my environmental footprint in the industry in which I work.
Here’s a YouTube teaser:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBpWHHZ2eME]
Let’s Keep It Rollin’
Piggybacking on Jason’s last post about sustainability, I was reading today about a new book raising lots of interestingly difficult issues about our (humans’) presence on this earth.
The book is called The World Without Us, by a fellow name Alan Weisman, and it is, as the title implies, a work of educated speculation about what the world would be like at some distant point in the future, uh, without us. It’s basically the usual humdrumage of self-promotion wrapped in “thought provoking” attire, complete with their current New York Times ranking on the best-sellers’ list. (Ah yes, the New York Times. The paper of record, of course. Now it’s officially a good book.) It also has some cool interactive pieces that give you a visual of the stunningly shameful way we have impacted our environment. I had to remind myself it was a book they are selling, after all, and not a enviro-religio fatwa to pack up and move to the mountains to get off the proverbial grid. 40 years ago it was, “Our planet is becoming overpopulated. There are almost one billion people here now.” 30 years ago it was, “The earth is cooling rapidly. We’re heading into another ice age.” Recently that was replaced with, “Uh-oh, the earth isn’t cooling; it’s actually warming up!” Today, it’s, “Plastics will be around for a stinking loooong time and eventually little tiny microbes will be all that’s left on the planet; but it’s okay, they’ll figure out how to eat plastics.” That’s the summary of the book, as best as I can tell from the web site’s synopses and preview clips.
Anyways, at this point in this blog post, if you’re still with me, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with coffee. Not much. Except…except to say that we are guilty of our own environmental foibles as an industry, despite all our window dressing to the contrary. We need to fess up to the fact that many of our retail stores don’t have separate receptacles for plastic, newspapers, aluminum and glass. Or that we are still just realizing that paper cups don’t biodegrade so well in sealed landfills but ceramic uses the equivalent resources to make as some 35,000 paper cups. (A good tradeoff?) Or that we waste electricity by leaving our espresso machines on overnight because we don’t want to have to get to the shop that much earlier in the morning to let it warm up.
And so forth. My point is not to cast aspersions on us as an industry. I’m just saying skimming through this book’s website got me thinking a little bit about doing my part to reduce the size of my environmental footprint in the industry in which I work.
Here’s a YouTube teaser:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBpWHHZ2eME]
Browsing
I was at the library yesterday. With two small children, I go often; but yesterday was a special treat. My wife and I decided to skip past the local branch library in favor of San Antonio’s Central Library, the one that was designed by some famous guy from Mexico and that looks, well, like it was designed by some guy from Mexico.
Anyways, one of the (obviously) nice things about large libraries is the sheer volume of books to peruse. Sometimes I get lost in the sea of print, never quite finding on the way out what I went in there for. So I was pleased to stumble serendipitously on two coffee books that many here may or may not have seen.
The first is Coffee, A Dark History, by Antony Wild. [FYI, I usually link to Amazon's site since it often lets you browse a few pages online.] With the compulsory overview of the history of coffee (i.e., Kaldi’s goats, smuggling coffee into new lands, etc.) it is a non-standoutish. But, as the title suggests, Mr. Wild does dabble in some of the, ah, seedier and seamier underbellies of the trade. Some chapters deal with slavery and coffee, hierarchical systems that sprung up around the coffee trade, and of course there is the seemingly obligatory chapter on so-called “Fair Trade.”
The other book I picked up is more of a geographical survey and is entitled, The Birth Of Coffee, by Daniel and Linda Lorenzetti. With some amazing photographs covering every major coffee growing country in the world, this book reads more like a collection of travel essays, the kind that allows the reader to pick up rich resources of information about the coffee world without feeling like one is reading a dry dissertation. Thoughtful and romantic, this book is a beautiful compendium and should at least be browsed if not checked out at your local central library…if not bought outright. I’m happy to have found two such books to keep me occupied for a while. 
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