tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12417804971987222152024-03-05T00:54:54.832-08:00rooting for fruitUnearthing the origins of our foods: on tasting locally while thinking globallyjennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-89374691312585107332009-07-08T17:52:00.001-07:002009-07-08T17:52:58.141-07:00New Site: http://rootingforfruit.comIf you came here through http://rootingforfruit.blogspot.com, please go to the new <a href="http://rootingforfruit.com">Rooting for Fruit </a>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-60315541299832425472009-04-22T00:00:00.000-07:002009-04-23T12:49:27.548-07:00Bob Marley's kind of mintEarth Day in New York was, like, really cool back in the 70’s, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/04/27/090427taco_talk_kolbert">Elizabeth Kolbert wistfully tells us in this week’s New Yorker</a>. Cool enough for politicians to be riding their bikes, dead fish to be flung across the streets, soil to be shared among strangers, and the Nixon Administration to take notice and actually <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> something in response: create the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act. The 2009 equivalent to today’s environmental buzz across the land? The Obamas tune in, and appropriately plant some kale in response.<br /><br />Of course, I love kale and the publicity of this year’s White House vegetable garden is nothing to sneer at. But the truth is, Kolbert’s right. I mean, how did I celebrate Earth Day this year? I bought herbs. Not even Herbs, like the kind a really cool 20-something would have gotten happy with back on Earth Day ’70 but culinary herbs, for garnish.<br /><br />After weeks of dithering and spending the last of my singles at the farmer’s market on a sixth basket of Camarosa strawberries for the week, I saved my dollars for the herb man peddling plastic pots. Choosing only three was excruciating, as I had to put back the oregano, the chives, the rosemary, and the baby chili pepper plant (not an herb, but zany nonetheless). I finally exchanged the lemon thyme for silver culinary thyme, which promises to be more potent. And I put the chocolate mint back—not nearly versatile enough, as tempting as adding chocolate flavor to everything savory is—in favor of the Bob Marley mint. The latter originated in Jamaica and was grown by Marley himself on his stoop for his morning herbal infusion, of sorts. Obviously, I’m a sucker for a plant with a story. And I finally chose the purple basil over your everyday <span style="font-style: italic;">trattoria</span> basil, which just seemed so trite at the time (though of course I’ll still be buying bunches of the stuff when my little purple plant is only giving me a pretty little leaf every now and then). Like my friends Abigail and Emma, who have managed to create an entire vegetable garden--radishes included--from these pots on their stoop the size of a Manhattan fire escape, I’m going back, for tarragon and more.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlsG32vdUWLCVXq1WZErKGzXcx7Ea2aBn-AI_7ZFAhq8PHvsRjiZQhnh_kJwj7PgVY79I_gFvQKRP2kHfBYT0Mfi5Pt7GeaA5hn4MxUzu1gcxi2S3JQaZbVqAtKPtJ9cb3D-WbqoJ4w2BP/s1600-h/mint+plant.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlsG32vdUWLCVXq1WZErKGzXcx7Ea2aBn-AI_7ZFAhq8PHvsRjiZQhnh_kJwj7PgVY79I_gFvQKRP2kHfBYT0Mfi5Pt7GeaA5hn4MxUzu1gcxi2S3JQaZbVqAtKPtJ9cb3D-WbqoJ4w2BP/s400/mint+plant.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327976117719196370" border="0" /></a><br />I’ve also begun a new sourdough starter with Earth Day still on my mind and with enough emotional distance from <a href="http://www.rootingforfruit.com/2008/10/fresh-starter.html">my last failed attempt</a> to be really optimistic about this one’s ability to leaven my dough. I remember hearing once that really old barns make for the best wineries because there are so many generations of wild yeasts hiding out in the woodwork that the wine rarely needs to be inoculated with foreign strains. My 1922 wood-beamed apartment might have the same effect. In fact, the wild yeasts already seem to be churning out a bubbling mess in their jar—so much so that I’ve resigned myself to feeding those damn yeasts once, even twice a day (more coffee for me, a fistful of flour for them). I’d also like to think that my antique brass front door handle, which is stamped with “J.G. Wilson Co., 3 West 29th St, New York, Jan. 20 1890” transported some of those almighty wild yeasts here from back east. Hopefully, from New York’s cooler days.<br /><br />These are all quiet activisms, though I’m sure many who still practice the throw-a-fish-at-Congress kind of activism would beg to differ. Those who load up on local strawberries, who garden, who bike to work probably don’t think of these acts as a kind of activism at all, except on Earth Day when we’re given a nice excuse to pick up some starters of oregano, chives and rosemary. These little acts have become freed, in some sense, from their attachment to the radicalism of the past. Of course, they don’t speak nearly as loudly as pro-environment uprisings <span style="font-style: italic;">en masse</span>. But they somehow seem more <span>'sustainable'</span> in the most rudimentary sense of the word, which is, of course, what the environmental connotation of sustainable is founded upon: to keep up or to keep going, as an action or process; to supply with nourishment; to keep in existence. Radical Earth Day acts could never promise to do so much.<br /><br />So maybe what Kolbert is tapping into is not environmental complacency <span style="font-style: italic;">per se</span>, but a moment of contentment. We got our president. Alice got her garden. I’ve got Marley's mint to muddle for mojitos all summer long. Perhaps we<span style="font-style: italic;"> have</span> lost our edge when it comes to Earth Day. But so many of us have taken to dwelling closer to the earth in tiny yet not insignificant ways. I’m not sure what else to say to that, aside from that however we express it, the earth still matters. On Earth Day and everyday.<br /><br />And on that pun-intended note, I will be starting a new column next month called “Earth Matters.” Not on my own website, but elsewhere—stay posted. Happy Earth Day.jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-61804512814393878482009-03-20T00:00:00.000-07:002009-03-20T09:13:16.636-07:00a smidge of a recipe<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Out of eggs, three days until the farmer’s market egg stand, and an un-satiable 10pm desire to bake a cake. Not so much a desire to eat cake, mind you, but to beat sugar and butter together and smooth batter with a spatula. But of </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">course, once the cake is sitting there all elegantly cracked on top and cooling, the nub end of the loaf (this is a cake-bread) becomes a mandatory taste-test.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I rarely gravitate towards recipes calling for bananas, I think because I am too diligent about eating them while still tinged with green in an everyday-snack sort of way. Banana creations are always calling for those mushy, over-ripe things; banana bread has hence never been in my repertoire. Sweet potatoes, however, hover around my counter far longer than bananas. A crop nativ</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">e to the tropics, these things stick awkwardly out of the fruit bowl looking well-positioned for long storage but deceivingly so: they start to turn brown long before I usually get inspired to render them edible.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Coconut, liberally. I keep a medium-sized jar of shredded unsweetened coconut on my counter, between the big jar for sugar and the little one for salt. The coconut jar has its own steel spoon.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />The last potent nutmeg kernel. I bought it at a spice farm in Zanzibar last August; this farm will remain indulgently in my mind as a big-person’s Candy </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Land. Now that I'm out, I’m just pretending that nutmeg has gone out of <span style="font-style: italic;">season</span>, like persimmons, rather than admit I will have to travel 8000 miles to return to the spice farm where I bought it to find more. Nutmeg, though we rarely realize it, is the pit of an un-appealingly yellow fruit. Embracing the pit is a lacy pink membrane that is referred to on the spice rack as mace; I wish I had thought to ask the spice farmers what they do with the flesh of the fruit. I grated my entire last darn brainy-looking mass into the batter, and immediately wished there were spice farms in Los Angeles. </span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje2jaJAiCAYOCZEpuxVzhjSdUZEB2_uecJtxhOY8wr1Tu859iy2H0njzjTy3uXS5C6v4O_5eMolQ26-P7H9fQoZxUx-OsOUFrW8XOGoxgPrduaCrqHax2-1R2w_RXz2qzXpJsHhA3nSxp-/s1600-h/DSC_0179.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje2jaJAiCAYOCZEpuxVzhjSdUZEB2_uecJtxhOY8wr1Tu859iy2H0njzjTy3uXS5C6v4O_5eMolQ26-P7H9fQoZxUx-OsOUFrW8XOGoxgPrduaCrqHax2-1R2w_RXz2qzXpJsHhA3nSxp-/s400/DSC_0179.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315147687441061266" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Sometimes I find the circumstances that produce our foods</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> so much more interesting than the recipes. How I ende</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">d up creating a recipe for an eggless cake-bread borne of the tropics,</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> yet so temperate climate end-of-winter f</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">eeling, </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">is purely based on circu</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">mstance.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">But I’ve also included a formal recipe here, though with a smidge of hesitation. I can’t help but feel that there are so many recipes circulating out there in this virtual space and that mine isn’t necessarily better than all the rest. And I will probably be setting out into uncharted baking territory by the time I’m posting this up. I transcribe it now, however, justified as a kind of archival practice and </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">perhaps the first of a few recipe jottings on this site</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">. Haven’t we all had that serendipitous kitchen creation, only to be befuddled a year later over what <span style="font-style: italic;">exactly</span> went into that spicy thai soup that made it so much zestier than the next? Or which recipe for fresh ginger cake did we follow, the one with molasses or the one with none? Index card recipes are so the grandmother I never had. I suppose I’m suggesting that sometimes our taste-memory isn’t quite sufficient enough, that cookbooks don't always provide us with the most personal instructions, and that perhaps I might capture these recipes—let’s refer to them as happenings, rather than objects—in case, just in case, we should desire an encore. I also intend these jottings as inspiration for your own happenstance recipes. Thank you as well to Steph, who graciously accepted half of the loaf this morning, and allowed me to make more room on my cooling rack.</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /><br />Out-of-Eggs Sweet Potato-Coconut Bread</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />Inspired by a banana bread recipe from <a href="http://orangette.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Orangette</span></a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Preheat oven to 350˚. Butter a standard-size loaf pan.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />1 stick of butter, softened</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">¾ cup brown sugar [I don’t keep brown sugar around but instead mash a bit molasses into white sugar—it’s so much moister than brown sugar from a bag, but I’m fussy]</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">1 ½ cups sweet potato puree from about 2 roasted whole sweet potatoes/yams</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />2 cups flour [any all-purpose or pastry flour will do]</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />¾ tsp baking soda</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />1/8 tsp salt</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />¼ tsp distilled white vinegar</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />½ tsp vanilla or almond extract, optional</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">sugar for sprinkling</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />Mash the roasted, skinless sweet potato until its nearly free of lumps (a food processor does this job well), and measure out 1 ½ cup.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in vinegar and extract.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">In separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg. </span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />Alternate additions of puree and flour mixture, beginning with puree, to butter mixture approximately ½ cup at a time. Mix until all of the flour is just combined; do not over-mix.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />Spread batter (it’s thick) in loaf pan, smoothing out the top with a spatula. Sprinkle liberally with sugar—I like to keep a jar of vanilla bean-infused white sugar for opportunities like these, but any sugar will give the loaf a nice crust.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />Bake 60 minutes, or until toothpick (or wooden chopstick in my case) inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from pan and cool on rack. Eat nub end while still warm, but cake is best a few hours after it's baked.</span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-56976764357918031352009-03-11T22:48:00.000-07:002009-03-12T23:07:29.171-07:00filaments from China<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">It’s been a while since I’ve been here. Long enough for the meyer lemons at the market to have eclipsed pale yellow and waxed into orange, ripening beyond tart. Long enough to have nearly forgotten what it was like to have a lesser president, to have forgotten the times when NPR didn’t wake me up in the morning with a reminder that the world is crashing down around us. Enough, even, for an entire academic quarter to have passed, shifting from blissfully free (I can write for fun all the time!) to preoccupied (I would write for fun, but I’ve really got to think about that paper due in five weeks) to currently inundated (those papers, due next week, don’t have a sentence to their titles). This last frantic phase, however, is also the coziest nook from which to write. Indeed, to write for fun.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I’ve also moved since I’ve last been here, to a city within a city where the 10 freeway unravels itself into the Pacific—Santa Monica—and I’ve been dutifully filling the extra bit of space in my now-roomier freezer with a winter’s worth of lumpy leftover scones and the remnants of multi-day chocolate chip cookie experiments. And I’ve been squinting one eye at the dwindling stack of vintage jarred stone fruit in the corner of my open pantry shelves, staving off fret with a solemn intuition that the stack will be built again soon. Berry jams and all that.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I had a craving for first-of-the-season strawberries the other day, and though chilly nights are lingering on for now, the jasmine is in fragrant bloom here and root vegetables no longer feel obligatory. And it’s just about the only time of year when the rain clouds lazily drift on in once each week or so, carrying with them on their way east the particulate matter typically suspended in the air over this corner of Los Angeles. I don’t really know where the matter goes from here, however sorry I am to whomever has to receive it. But I’m pretty sure of the fact that some of this matter begins its life as filaments spewed from factories in China. We are well-reminded when the air clears of these Chinese imports that Southern California has mountains in its midst (no, definitely not hills), still crowned with white, that seem to rise where Wilshire traffic drives off into the vanishing point. Of course, everyone knows that Wilshire actually ends at the Pacific and doesn’t nearly reach these mountains. But for a brief moment, when my morning bus pauses at the stop sign to cross Ocean Park Boulevard (which also ends in the Pacific), I can turn my head quick enough from west to east to see both the ocean and the suspended snowy mountains that float as if part of a backdrop for a Nepalese film. This Janus-inspired view anchors my small-town neighborhood to the sprawling metropolis that sometimes feels like an endless abstraction to me when I can’t see the mountains that form the farthest boundaries of this urban locality, and that allow the next <span style="font-style: italic;">terra cognita</span> to begin.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">How does one remain attentive to the global within the local economy? Darra Goldstein, editor of the chicly erudite journal <span style="font-style: italic;">Gastronomica</span>, offered this question at the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tasting Histories</span> conference I was attending last week (<a href="http://civileats.com/2009/03/12/the-politics-of-ethical-consumption/#more-2569">I have some more thoughts on this here, at Civil Eats</a>). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Having spent nearly every weekend in college taking the NYC subways to the ends of the outer boroughs, on a perpetual scavenger hunt for the most obscure ethnic hole-in-the-walls, my life now by comparison could hardly <span style="font-style: italic;">be</span> more local. Food from elsewhere (or eaten elsewhere) is a rare indulgence; nearly everyone who sells me what I eat I’ve greeted the week before. I walk to all of my food markets. The beans in my near-daily meal of dollied-up rice and beans are grown in Napa by Rancho Gordo; the indulgently sweet brown rice, by Lundberg Family Farm, also in Northern California. My yogurt and milk? Marin County. Every frilly green cabbage, golden beet, bunch of cilantro, and blood orange that’s taken up temporary residence in my refrigerator this winter? All local, by nearly anyone’s definition. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I’m not intending this grocery list as a point from which to gloat (though that is perhaps unavoidable by those of us who live in California during the otherwise cruelest months), but to raise the question of “so what?” Or less cynically, “now what?” Have I, after years of tweaking, finally found a lifestyle that affords me every opportunity to eat locally that I could ever want? If I’m supposed to feel rather self-satisfied, or satiated, I don’t really—I want to know what’s next. Sure there’s so much more work to be done, around Los Angeles even, if I thought everyone should be aspiring to the local food lifestyle that I seem to have nailed down (though I’m not entirely sure I think that). And I still have edibles in mind that might grow nicely on my property this summer, basil and lemongrass to beat out my farmer’s market’s herbs in food blocks. But I’m also interested in what life is like <span style="font-style: italic;">post</span>-local, given that the “local” has been co-opted by the food authorities as a stand-in for the benevolent eating life, and is on its way to being applaud-worthy national rhetoric. But can we find a way to act globally in our local economies, and should we? Is there a benevolent global here in my neighborhood that doesn’t recall the particulate matter from China, that we don’t necessarily feel we have to resist with our proudly-purchased local roots and fruits? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">One of my students sent me this note about two months ago, via email, after a class on industrial food systems and my closing rant on the importance of knowing where your food comes from. The timing of the comment now seems uncannily apropos, invoking hardship in a way that is no longer being tried on by the mainstream for show. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >“Hello Ms. Jennifer:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >A late thought that occurred to me after the discussion today: in some cultures, at least in my hometown (Cerritos, CA), which is predominantly Asian, it's normal for one to choose gifts for others that are imported from far-away places. I.e. It would be best to buy someone a packaged pear from Korea or Japan as opposed to buying one from California. I think the idea that the item came from a long distance away means that you care enough to give the receiver something that went out of its way to get here, and that you have enough status or are financially successful enough to afford and give away such an item. Giving domestically produced items as gifts may indicate financial hardship or apathy.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I still don’t miss those filaments from China when they’re absent, nor will I let South American strawberries rid me of a craving that will only truly be contained by the impending arrival of the smallest, sweetest berries from Ventura. But I do like to recall this comment every now and then, especially when the mountains surface in the distance and my head turns to the ocean that crashes here where I dwell and I know that it's also crashing in someone else’s locality, very far away.</span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-32119008579413086592008-12-30T19:47:00.000-08:002008-12-30T20:56:20.123-08:00filling stations<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">“This is the kind of place where you realize Americans like</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> to feel full, quick,” muses Verlyn Klinkenborg in </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/opinion/30tue4.html">this week’s New York Times, on the most ordinary of places,</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> another American highway rest stop. It’s the type of place known best for its placelessness, a mere pause for 18-wheelers and station wagons to load up and get on the road again, where McDonald’s and Starbucks and Mobile Mart exude extraordinary ordinariness. </span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />The particular place Klinkenborg, who writes the occasional treat of a Time</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">s editorial on farming and the rural life, muddles over spending the night in happens to be a node on California’s spine. Those of us who like to think of ourselves as cosmopolitan conduits between San Francisco and Los Angeles know the spine</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> well. The 101, the 5, even the 99, which I have never adventured onto but I’m sure is thrilling nonetheless: they all run the length of California's spine and they all, at some point, slice through the solemn heart of the state’s agricultural industry, the Central Valley. The Central Valley is a bit of a paradoxical landscape to me. At once both industrial, pumped with chemicals and unjust labor, and the underdog in America’s agricultural wars, it's not the demonized target that Farm Bill activists and food geeks from the coasts have made out of the Midwestern</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> corn-scape. It can’t be—the Central Valley actually gives us edibles. The largest domestic supplier of almonds, grapes and tom</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">atoes, virtually anything non-tropical can be planted along the 400-mile long stretch and it will take root and yield fruit.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />The most recent version of the federal Farm Bill passed by Congress finally allotted fruit, vegetable, and nut growers a portion of the subsidies traditionally handed over to the corn, soy, rice, wheat and cotton producers of the big square states. So it was that I went to San Francisco a few weeks ago with America’s freshly subsidized fruit basket at my side, in an airpla</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ne drawing a path parallel to Interstate</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> 5. </span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />The interstate was my anchor for knowing, vaguely, where we were on a map and as the dry mountains north of LA flattened out into the agricultural plain of the Central Valley, the landscape became etched with boxes and lines. The fruit and nut orchards are anonymous from above though the work of human hand and machine on the land is still visible, however dwarfed by its geologic context. Whatever land can be planted with crops and irrigated to an artificial green in the valley, is—except for where crops have been uprooted and replaced wit</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">h solar panels. Solar panels? I doubted my eyes at first, but the reflective blocks nestled among fields of brown and green were unmi</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">stakable. Lucky for California's dwindling water reserves, they don't need to be irrigated.<br /><br />Adding paradox to land-use paradox, can our thirst for fuel exist harmoniously with our desire for full bellies?</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />These solar panels add social and environmental texture to the Central Valley, a third di</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">mension to the two-dimensional carpet of an agricultural cornucopia. They flickered opaquely, reminding me of the dozens of ‘golden’ lakes throughout Ethiopia’s southern Rift Valley that gleam under the spell of some naturally-occurring metallic compounds. The Rift Valley‘s food and fuel chain is sim</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ple and synergistic, with herds</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> of goats, cattle, and sheep weaving back and forth across the single road in search of the freshest grass. Trees provide campfire fuel for the shepherds trailing their animals. There are no gas stations along the Ethiopian road, nothing to snack on if you’re not a cow, and cruising speeds are unobtainable due to frequent animal crossings. Yet I drove through this flat valley for hours and never fel</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">t deprived. Here, even the ordinary</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> enchants.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg-jXCohILYtosgJemEJKSt75YsOAoFvtXYofKRO39gfjLzQMeKRqWj-92LajdLubC3ho3AkFIvVdQPOYOS9C4yJ42k0F0dS_kbNrN2TIJCyOGn9XfG9Tumk2OuIJkMnDblhGtF-jIu-Gu/s1600-h/ethiopian+lake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg-jXCohILYtosgJemEJKSt75YsOAoFvtXYofKRO39gfjLzQMeKRqWj-92LajdLubC3ho3AkFIvVdQPOYOS9C4yJ42k0F0dS_kbNrN2TIJCyOGn9XfG9Tumk2OuIJkMnDblhGtF-jIu-Gu/s400/ethiopian+lake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285797419445464706" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /></span> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiQtsKxWQ9FY-YzwoP5OF8d1qixbQZ9tnh08OaeK-yn5g_xcsTYkcKYAhqWud_kv5iGycuKaIsXQknUFXnWfXfK8CftR_l_zInJ8BTsS-BwwnF652mWFVm_qAcBpVtSv5UQ6jYLryd2UGW/s1600-h/ethiopian+cows.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiQtsKxWQ9FY-YzwoP5OF8d1qixbQZ9tnh08OaeK-yn5g_xcsTYkcKYAhqWud_kv5iGycuKaIsXQknUFXnWfXfK8CftR_l_zInJ8BTsS-BwwnF652mWFVm_qAcBpVtSv5UQ6jYLryd2UGW/s400/ethiopian+cows.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285796967149058098" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I found myself in yet another window seat on my return to LA from th</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">e east coast a few days ago, next to a young woman returning home to southwest China after her first semester at college in the Northeast. Her trip to Massachusetts (she’s a Mt. Holyoke student</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">) back in September was her first ever to the United States. She clutched a treatise on </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Wittgenstein, placed her slang perfectly in speech, had spent Christmas with her new best friend in Greenwich, CT and proclaimed that the only thing she missed about China was the food. She was a bit full in the face, and I was struck by how at ease she seemed to be with the transnational life she's embarked on. The woman to her left, a computer programmer for the air force, asked her if she ever eats dog. The Chinese girl made a gagging sound. I rolled my eyes. They don’t eat dog where she is from, she explained with patience, though some people in China do, she never does. Mostly she misses the simplicity of rice and vegetables and all the little dishes cohering into a meal. I asked her how the food was at Mt. Holyoke. So good, she told me, but there is so much of it! She asked if there was dessert at every meal at my college. Of course, I replied, we used to eat cornflakes with vanilla soft-serve at weekend brunch after sampling all the pastries. </span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />“I’m afraid my family won’t recognize me,” she said, “you know, there is the freshman 15 but I gained more than 15.” There was no remorse in her voice over this, just a hint of incredulity. Just then, as I was about to offer unsolicited advice (which is what seatmates in the air are for, no?) on how moving off-campus to an apartment with a kitchen is always a healthier option, a floating pool of light appeared out of the blackness to our right. Oh look, I told her instead, there’s Vegas. </span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />“How do you know that’s Vegas?” asked the air force programmer. How did I know? No matter what direction you approach Vegas from--southeast, northwest, or above--you just know. Vegas requires no highway marker or GPS coordinates, no billboard announcing its presence. It arises ahead out of dust as a veritable Oz in the desert, a most anticipated filling station en route to the sea, or the big square states.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Tonight it shone like an oblique Lite-Brite board, a fine-grained orange glow unhumbled by its context, a singular dimension of black.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />We were an hour from touching down at LAX as Las Vegas drifted off to our right and finally out of sight, into the abyss of as-yet unlit, still frontier. What remained in sight was the city’s electrical tether, one thin illuminated line punctuated by crosshatching that stretched from the southern limits of this embodied civilization all the way under our plane and beyond. If one could dip a hand down from the air and slice through this thread with a fingernail, the city might fly away like a kite freed from its string. Until someone scrambled to plug it back into the outlet of infinite power, that is. Then the whole thing would rise from the earth again.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />Happy New Year.</span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-59500448611667987522008-11-25T00:00:00.000-08:002008-12-02T20:55:55.476-08:00if the mad hatter drank coffee<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Stumptown Coffee Roasters is known as a purveyor of some of the best coffee in the world and yet when I arrived at their roastery in S</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">eattle last week they didn’t offer me coffee. </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">They poured me <span style="font-style: italic;">kishr</span>. Or <span style="font-style: italic;">qishr</span>, depending on h</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ow you take your spelling of this byzantine beverage. It was amber and translucent, easily mist</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">aken for an oolong tea, and tasted and sme</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">lled strangely reminiscent of an herbaceous and pr</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">une-y tisane though I couldn’t identify exactly wh</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">at kind. And oh yes, it tasted a bit like coffee.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAUla8g-mU47UegfqdZBOfQDUHd8KI-QH9OPgIncYiceaO-C9U7cO30_nTGbgPOYfs4QxwcRbaunYY7xPba6scFE2tE8SQMUywiLeD9GC9_UiKEw-PGzcRi8KvO5qMXWVR1bosG_heMo4h/s1600-h/kishr+in+cup.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 321px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAUla8g-mU47UegfqdZBOfQDUHd8KI-QH9OPgIncYiceaO-C9U7cO30_nTGbgPOYfs4QxwcRbaunYY7xPba6scFE2tE8SQMUywiLeD9GC9_UiKEw-PGzcRi8KvO5qMXWVR1bosG_heMo4h/s400/kishr+in+cup.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272446846156546786" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Only because <a href="http://www.rootingforfruit.com/2008/06/ripe-cherry-is-only-solution.html">I traveled with Aleco, Stumptown’s coffee buyer, in the hinterlands of Rwanda this summer</a> and made it home alive did I trust accepting a cup from him before knowing what it was. Call it <span style="font-style: italic;">kishr</span>, call it coffee-tea if you, like me, don’t really know how to pronounce much in Arabic: it’s the dried coffee husk steeped in water. Originating in Yemen circa 1100, I imagine it traveled the world on spice trading routes before falling out of fashion with a newly café-ed Western Europe for its deceitful simplicity. <span style="font-style: italic;">Kishr</span> isn't hefty</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> like coffee, and certainly wouldn’t stand up to milk. And it has a faint citrusy flavor that might be cooling on a thick Yemeni summer day</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> and little out of place in a Viennese coffee shop. I joined the group of men wearing skinny pants in deeply inhaling<span style="font-style: italic;"> kishr</span> steam from little cups; huddled down the stairs from Stumptown’s main shop and plotting <span style="font-style: italic;">kishr</span>’s comeback in hushed voices, I felt for a moment that I was on coffee's avant-garde. </span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />What is old is new again… though exotica from the colonies always ran the risk of becoming bourgeois, didn’t it.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I had come to Stumptown to sample some El Salvadorian coffees and hear the grower of that coffee speak, but <span style="font-style: italic;">kishr</span> stole the show. Our dried coffee husks were indeed from one of the coffee farms in Western El Salvador owned by Aida Batlle, a wonderful woman whom I wrote about in a post on <a href="http://civileats.com/2008/11/25/stumptown-coffee-brings-the-producer-to-you/">the Civil Eats website</a> today. With an experimental spirit, sh</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">e left coffee cherries to dry on the trees before being harvested and then dried them again on clay patios for four days. Some of her nimble-fingered workers picked the husk off of the coffee bean. It’s the coffee equivalent of a late-harvest Riesling or Muscato and she bagged only 250 pounds of it this year. Pittance. If the Seattle underground doesn’t drink it all firs</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">t, I think you can order it directly from Stumpt</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">own for $6 or $7 per pound</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, a downright 19th century price.<br /><br /></span> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP6bfHDQesVW2AooDHvkNTzDXRis6z6uRSlIPxnEFXYI9e2aHD5RIdJDApZllixFEkDx90g-NOd5d8v-VlEAn05qe0Ya3aShN9LKeFsRBx5N8kqeE9efALoXXcxs3iFuUBWckBIpT54B3W/s1600-h/kishr+in+pot_Nov+25.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 247px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP6bfHDQesVW2AooDHvkNTzDXRis6z6uRSlIPxnEFXYI9e2aHD5RIdJDApZllixFEkDx90g-NOd5d8v-VlEAn05qe0Ya3aShN9LKeFsRBx5N8kqeE9efALoXXcxs3iFuUBWckBIpT54B3W/s400/kishr+in+pot_Nov+25.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272446220722608194" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The best description I’ve found of <span style="font-style: italic;">kishr</span>, as if dredged up from a sunken Indian Ocean t</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">rading ship, is from <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C00E2DA123FE63BBC4B52DFB366838C669FDE">this article in <span style="font-style: italic;">The New York Times</span></a> dated May 13, 1877. Right, 1877, and you can read it right here on the internet. They recommend adding “a few bruized cardamoms or a little dry cinnamon or ginger” and simmering for half an hour to yield a “most agreeable b</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">everage.” Most agreeable, and also most caffeinated. The fruit of the coffee cherry (the coffee bean itself, as you probably know, is the seed of the fruit) retains more caffeine than the bean does; shocking that energy drink companies aren’t engineering coffee husk extractions (are they?). Coffee is brewed on the island of Zanzibar with nutmeg, clove and cardamom and I’ve been meaning to make a version of this concoction with <span style="font-style: italic;">kishr</span>. There will have to be a <span style="font-style: italic;">kishr</span> ceremony of course, like the Ethiopian coffee ceremony or a Japanese tea ritual; I’m open to suggestions of what this will entail. My most Mad Hatter of friends will be invited to the <span style="font-style: italic;">kishr</span> ceremony and also a smattering of pirates, but only the ones who thieve fresh cinnamon in lieu of grenade launchers. I know, pirates are wrecking serious havoc these days and it's not funny business. But, by no small coincidence, they do their craftiest work just off the shores of Yemen.</span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-63450480684201406582008-11-22T22:33:00.000-08:002008-11-23T17:20:43.442-08:00edible art<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-style: italic;">'Life is one continuous mistake,’ Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, the founder of San Francisco Zen Center, used to remind his students. When he shopped he sought out the rattiest vegetables at market, all the discarded and maimed culls, a</span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-style: italic;">n</span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-style: italic;">d his me</span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-style: italic;">ditation grew strong, nourished by the continuous mistakes of human life.</span> --Wendy Johnson, <span style="font-style: italic;">Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate</span></span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />Buried in <span style="font-style: italic;">The New York Times</span> last week was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/world/europe/13food.html?scp=1&sq=EU%20vegetables&st=cse">a write-up about a victory for vegetables</a>. Two weeks ago the European Union pitched “overly curved, extra knobby, or oddly shaped produce” into the grocery store’s waste bin; now they let</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> them stand proud in the grocery store next to </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">all their perfect relatives. It’s a real high-five for </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">the previously “discarded and maimed culls,” the twisted and misshapen vegetables and also a few fruits. Irregular tomatoes, apples and p</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">eaches are still banned, unfortunately, while carrots, peas (have you ever had a run-in with a deformed pea?) and a few dozen others are no longer. It must be a case of political discrimination. Where I think the real achievement lies though is in the acceptance of </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">misshapen root vegetables, always the most macabre o</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">f the produce section. Any edible pulled from the earth wears scars of its life underground and if <a href="http://www.craphound.com/images/goreytribbles.jpg">Edward Gorey</a> had written a Thanksgiving tale, it would have been a tale of these misshapen root vegetables.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSpHZmigbqotCeRjqbVFfCBG-QV9RJRzzg7BYb3uw9r2G1AO_xfYBvAgfpmW0cnkm2waO3MOBhZ3RsJ0ocemf5eIgJgXcUZunXgvOKsI5fwUhFg8ChJ2GqrRuqARZg0TwawBmWQRiHIhSp/s1600-h/scraggly+beets_Nov22.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSpHZmigbqotCeRjqbVFfCBG-QV9RJRzzg7BYb3uw9r2G1AO_xfYBvAgfpmW0cnkm2waO3MOBhZ3RsJ0ocemf5eIgJgXcUZunXgvOKsI5fwUhFg8ChJ2GqrRuqARZg0TwawBmWQRiHIhSp/s400/scraggly+beets_Nov22.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5271745093260820434" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">But farmer’s markets have never been discriminatory against ugly produce in the way that grocery chai</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ns have (sites of industrial agriculture that they are) and yet I realized that I always search out the most aesthetically perfect fruits and vegetables, h</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">owever subconscious this practice may be. Inspired, I made a game out of looking for th</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">e most imperfect produce as I toured the Ballard farmer’s market in Seattle with my friend Michelle last Sunday. A truly good friend rarely questions one’s ill-justified pursuits and so Michelle didn’t press me on why I was attracted to the farmer’s market’s least-wanted. We found piles and bins: she pointed out twisted carrots and stood patiently while I took some photos of strangely curved beets, soft-edged cabbages an</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">d irregularly shaped Asian pears, three-pronged carrots and purple potatoes with pink splotches. Misshapen edibles were all over the Ballard market but rarely were they broken. No, these were not mistakes wrought by a human hand but by ecology itself: the beet that grows its sweet root down and hits a rock perhaps, or the apple that didn’t quite get enough sun </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">on one of its halves and so shows its mis-proportioned growth. I don’t really know the why of the knobs and lumps and funny colors, but finding the</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">m all in plain view made me think about the why of caring what fruits and vegetables <span style="font-style: italic;">look</span> like. So long as a fresh food isn’t showing signs of rot and thus danger, does visuality matter if we ultimately perceive qua</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">lity through its flavor? Is the visual any reliable indication of the tas</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">te?<br /><br /></span> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj28PT6o4vaYz8vAScDInu7vfTY-rZlCsewXtyOV1TkZ5sGvDUSl9FtQ9LgavUUZszuSUu9e7Upro6IMuOTIEvXKvTRqhFBQEngPGx25PGfkmHZA33lAPm75NJ2U8-E8TnDqcl8fQpc2Yca/s1600-h/orange+carrots_Nov22.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj28PT6o4vaYz8vAScDInu7vfTY-rZlCsewXtyOV1TkZ5sGvDUSl9FtQ9LgavUUZszuSUu9e7Upro6IMuOTIEvXKvTRqhFBQEngPGx25PGfkmHZA33lAPm75NJ2U8-E8TnDqcl8fQpc2Yca/s400/orange+carrots_Nov22.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5271744268356854818" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We’ve long privil</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">eged vision and hearing over the other senses, with taste often falling to the bottom </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">of the philosopher’s hierarchy. It was co</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">nsidered to be a bodily and therefore primitive sense by Aristotle, who favored the cognitive senses, seeing and hearing, that al</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">lowed for objective rationality and thus the production of knowledge. Taste, as a gustatory pursuit, was too subjective to contribute to that. So what does the European Union’s turn away from using vision to judge produce quality suggest? Ironically, one would think that those cultures with deeply rooted peasant cuisines, the French and Italian being chief among them, would have always privileged the flavor of a vegetable or the succulence of a fruit over the item’s physical appearance. After all, those who grow what they put on their own dinner table could ha</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">rdly dismiss a deformed peach or stunted carrot as a parent wouldn’t cast away an ugly baby. Unless, of course, the compost pile neede</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">d beefing up.<br /><br /></span> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm67WI4EPsvPtQ4q2ZJR-IUN7F53gaJ1HSm0VKCP4On3dTX8o0rrt2Kpl-b3I4CqLZraWH62c7Rcs3HD2dY9BzOPvEpnYsGcc0xydfK1YOhdROoVWdGzaN9PEHY8OTJDkJJdAu6iigj9Fb/s1600-h/beets_Nov22.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 266px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm67WI4EPsvPtQ4q2ZJR-IUN7F53gaJ1HSm0VKCP4On3dTX8o0rrt2Kpl-b3I4CqLZraWH62c7Rcs3HD2dY9BzOPvEpnYsGcc0xydfK1YOhdROoVWdGzaN9PEHY8OTJDkJJdAu6iigj9Fb/s400/beets_Nov22.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5271743491534816050" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I didn’t allow myself the luxury of searching out imperfect produce at the Sa</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">nta Monica farmer’s market this morning, though it did occur to me that there seems to be less of it in Los Angeles than in Seattle. It was back to the usual market business instead, sizing up the availability of apples (the ladies with the Gold Rush variety were there!) and economizing on lettuce, four small red leaf heads for three dollars. My splurge, as I was retreating from the market’s dead-end where the row of stalls threatens to lead you into the Pacific, was on persimmons. A strange and whimsical fruit, if only because my tour guests told me so when I chatted them up around the vineyard and garden in Napa when I worked there: how can a tree lose its leaves and leave the fruit hanging, they would ask as I led them past Frog’s Leap winery’s two <span style="font-style: italic;">Fuyu</span> persimmon trees. Or more commonly, what <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> that orange thing, they’d exclaim, can we eat it? And inevitably a tall man would reach up and pluck one for his wife, who never had the audacity to bite into a strange fruit in front of the crowd. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Fuyu</span> variety, squat like a pumpkin-colored tomato, remains hard even as its insides become sticky with sugars so I’d tell her it was safe for transport inside her purse. </span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />The practicality of these <span style="font-style: italic;">Fuyus</span> means I usually prefer them to their cousin, the <span style="font-style: italic;">Hachiya</span>, which are only sweet when they’re soft enough to scoop with a spoon. Until then, they remain stoically firm, a powerhouse of bitterness that rivals that of the uncured olive (which occasionally a winery tour guest would grab from the tree, chew, appear to be poisoned, and promptly gulp down his, and his wife’s, glass of red). But feeling whimsical myself today, I dropped $4 for three <span style="font-style: italic;">Hachiyas</span>, curious how different they’d actually taste from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Fuyus</span>. They were like little tapered bowling balls and the man who took my dollars told me that they’d take six or eight weeks to ripen. I almost asked for my money back.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />“Think of them as edible art,” said the persimmon peddler. “Put them in a bowl to look at, check them a few times a week or so and then one day you’ll be surprised-- they’ll be ready to eat.” So it is that I have a display of pretty persimmons sitting dormant on my table, perfect to the eye... but not to the palate.</span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-38617593313605013342008-11-11T21:34:00.000-08:002008-12-30T20:18:53.175-08:00bringing sexy back down to earth<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">For all the seduction surrounding food these days, the earth that gives us such a bounty gets remarkably short shrift. Sure, small farmers are basking in all sorts of glory if you know where to look, and <span style="font-style: italic;">terroir</span> has always been a sexy topic among certain connoisseurs. But how do we rally the troops, as we’ve started to around glaci</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ers in the Arctic or forests in the Amazon, and convince the masses that soil is important, <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> important? What will persuade us to pay</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> attention to the quality of our soil as the eleme</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">nt of our <span style="font-style: italic;">kosmos</span> that offers up nutrition, flavor, and ultimately oxygen for us all but is often referenced by its pejorative nickname, <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">dirt</span>? <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/mann-text/1">This recent <span style="font-style: italic;">National Geographic</span> article</a> and the accompanying photographs did a pretty good job at illuminating soil (though I expect as much from them). But the author describes unsexy subjects such as this in terms of MEGO: my eyes glaze over. It’s true. What could possibly make soil, as a subject, sexy? If there’s anything out there that does it for you, I want to know about it.</span></div><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">While I continue to mull this task over, a lifetime’s work of a self-proclaimed ethnopedologist (one who studies the cultural dimensions of soil, I didn’t make it up), I want to share with you some of my favorite characters who’ve grabbed my</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> attention and thrown it back to earth. Believe it or not, they aren’t chefs and farmers glamorizing vegetables and the ecologies that yie</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ld them (though a remarkable job of calling attention to agriculture these foodies do). They also aren’t scientists who write persuasively about the demise of our soils around the globe. Here instead are a photographer, an historian, and a Buddhist gardener who all have a creative way of reminding us how valuable our soil is. I call upon their work whenever I’m forgetting.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">One of my favorite modern photographers is one who has </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">taken planes into the sky and lingered over fields of toxic waste. And Los Angeles sprawl. And cozied up to canisters of human remains. Mostly I like th</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">e toxic waste series, for its vibrant aerial depiction of abandoned strip mines, evaporated lake beds--sites in the western United States where culture and nature collide and erupt into gaseous form. The photographer, David Maisel (whose work I will refrain from unethically posting on my blog and instead send you to <a href="http://www.davidmaisel.com/default.asp">his website here</a>), spoke to a seminar I was taking around this time last year on his interest in images that </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">blur aesthetics and ethics. His photographs are undeniably compelling, most would say beautiful, though his subjects are often places where the earth’s surface has been contaminated and degraded beyond habitation, or cultivation. Can, or rather should, the toxic be depicted as beautiful? Does the beauty of his images obscure the fact that these are indelible scars of human action and inaction on the land, or does it jumble the all-too-persistent dichotomy in which nature=good and people=evil? Maisel claimed not to have an explicit environmental message in mind when he shot these </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">series, but it’s hard not to imbue them with your own. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">A more recent find was the book <span style="font-style: italic;">Dust</span> by Carolyn Steedman, also suggested for a class, on the history of, and created by, the archive. It’s an irreverent treatise on why historians do what they do, which is create a present out of a past that is mostly empty until they come to find it and piece it together. Steedman speaks her piece thro</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ugh the perils of book dust (which used to pass along anthrax spores to unsuspecting archive-dwellers) and the pleasures of tearing apart a narrative constructed outside of the archive, as such is the 19th century’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Middlemarch</span>. But towards the end, when few passages had yet been deserving of ink underlining and stars in the margins, I was roused by this: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >‘This is what Dust is about: this is what Dust</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> is</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >, what it means and what it is. It is not about rubbish, nor about the discarded; it is not about a surplu</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >s, left over from something else; </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">it is not about Waste</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >. I</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >ndeed, Dust is the opposite thing to Waste, or at least, the opposite principle to Waste. It is about circularity, the impossibility of things disappearing, or going away, or being gone. Nothing </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">can be</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" > destroyed.’</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">She, of course, is referring to the concept of the narr</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ative, of the inscription of history. But the soil is also a record of history, and can be read both scientifically and culturally to understand our history and the planet’s. This, I think, is what ethnopedologists do. And soil too is Dust, the opposite of Waste, at least until it becomes degraded to the point of no restoration and hung framed in a photography gallery. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Wendy Johnson has a book called <span style="font-style: italic;">Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate</span> and I must warn you, if you read it, she might have you convinced that moving into a Zen monastery is the best way to spend the rest of your life. She’s no proselytizer, but she does have a way with words that renders the mundane transcendental. Johnson was the ma</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ster gardener at Green Gulch Zen Center in Marin County for many years and she weaves accounts of her daily routine at GGZC with dharma (‘the way’ as practiced through Buddhism) passed along from her Zen teachers. Toiling closer to the land that produces our food than the others I’ve mentioned here, the humility surrounding her knowledge of gardening’s produce makes me feel ever boastful of my cooking endeavors; her wisdom falls from her prose in pieces that I want to snatch and keep on my nightstand, like the seashells I’ve swiped from the sea. Because it’s getting late and I must return to </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">reading about soil fertility and undernutrition in Rwanda, I leave you with only this brief quote of hers. For the moment, it’s keeping my e</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">yes from glazing over, even more so than coffee.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >‘Composed of clouds of countless, invisible microorganisms digesting the land and running it through their intestines, soil is feces, and within t</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >he body of soil, all beings garden.’<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLoE6N5VqEl5ycWrsvfF-DEhjXGdfgzBmXezhozUlojpbtMoON_hMpzRfCTtqwb07KQIDZkWQtHjBEkVd99_nQXadsZ0_pyAn7BlPbqn10D3rFLnQpIpgV3NE2Ch6vsTrOERybvMcybxDe/s1600-h/purple+plant"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLoE6N5VqEl5ycWrsvfF-DEhjXGdfgzBmXezhozUlojpbtMoON_hMpzRfCTtqwb07KQIDZkWQtHjBEkVd99_nQXadsZ0_pyAn7BlPbqn10D3rFLnQpIpgV3NE2Ch6vsTrOERybvMcybxDe/s400/purple+plant" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5267678399301584978" border="0" /></a>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-44089297600528715732008-11-02T13:39:00.002-08:002008-11-11T21:40:34.540-08:00citizen eaters<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Sometimes, stirring bread flour into my sourdough starter or dolloping jam into jars feels like an indulgence. I devote time, and subject my debit card, to the pursuit of food for pleasure on a near daily basis. Should I really have made another pot of fruit preserves? Will the dozen cups of flour I’ve devoted to sourdough starter ever manifest into something edible… and did four more cups really need to be tossed into yet another batch of pumpkin-based baked goods? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I’ve learned to let go of thinking too much about what constitutes luxury versus necessity, and nutritious or practical versus indulgence, when it comes to my personal food decisions. But what I have a harder time contextualizing is how I can spend time stirring a pot of mulberry jam in between reading article after article on the recent violence in eastern Congo, near to where I spent most of last summer and where few people are able to make dinner for their families right now. The violence has kept aid workers from even distributing nutrient bars. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I know, it’s the old refrain: “You have to finish everything on your plate because there are children starving in Africa.” I cringe thinking that anyone should be forced to eat all that lies in front of them as children with protruding bellies look over their metaphorical shoulder. This, after all, exemplifies a treacherous global paradox in which half the world stuffs themselves while the other half starves (to paraphrase activist/writer Raj Patel). But nevertheless, I’m not beyond being able to reconcile my brimming pantry with the information that people in a place I’ve visited have nothing to eat today. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">A dairy farmer at a grass-fed livestock conference I was at once proclaimed to me that “producers” must be referred to as farmers. And “consumers,” the other half of the food chain dichotomy, I asked? “Consumers are citizens!” said the dairy farmer.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">But those who have managed to return to their farm plots in eastern Congo as the fighting subsided this weekend are not citizens, at least not as we define citizens. They often struggle for the right to be even consumers, picking up each other’s scraps of unripe banana and papaya as they wander along footpaths, wondering where they’ll lead their families to sleep that night. In a region perpetually destabilized by bloodshed, the inhabitants of eastern Congo are subjects of a pawn game played out in a power vacuum by various armies. A messy arrangement of rebels hawking ethnic affiliations, UN peacekeepers, and a ragtag Congolese national army that is better equipped to rape and pillage than protect can hardly be considered governance. Congolese haven’t elected any of these groups to power and yet all of the armies strip the people of eastern Congo of their basic rights to food, shelter, and safety. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">When any one of the rebel groups stirs from hibernation, hundreds of thousands of Congolese scramble to escape, flee, scatter. Whatever verb best describes it, it’s a routine that involves putting down their hoes, packing up their houses, and uprooting their families for an uncertain amount of time. This past week, droves of Congolese fled Goma, a city on the northern edge of Lake Kivu and on the border of Rwanda, in advance of an encroaching rebel line. The fact that these particular rebels (who are accused of being propped up by Rwanda’s government) were threatening to take Goma surprised even the most battle-hardened journalists stationed in the area. Goma has long been considered a safety zone for UN aid workers and also for tourists from Rwanda stepping cautiously, rebelliously, over the border. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">There’s been a cease-fire in effect for the past few days and according to <span style="font-style: italic;">The New York Times</span> life has all but returned to normal in Goma this weekend. The headlines on this particular spat of violence couldn’t have faded from the news any faster. But I haven’t been able to get this whole story to fade from my mind. I spent a weekend in Gisenyi this past July, at the nicest hotel in Rwanda that is a mere 15 minute walk from the Congo border. This violence thus seems all the more real, and also more surreal. The hotel shares a beach with Goma’s hotels; the single connecting road has been a lifeline for refugees from both countries. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I briefly contemplated paying the $50 visa fee to walk across the border and take a few photos in Goma but my companion at the time, James, had already made a few visits there. I resigned myself to watching the subdued scene from the passenger seat of James’s jeep, munching on Trader Joe’s Asian rice crackers while James renewed his car permit at the border. A blue-helmeted African UN peacekeeper peered into the jeep and squinted at the sight of all the road-trip snacks we had in the car. The Congolese soldiers milling around projected the authority of Tappan Zee Bridge toll collectors. Everyone was stroking their guns, and yawning.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Later that night we drove to a high point in Gisenyi to see the spooky red glow of Goma’s active volcano, which spewed ash all over the region in 2003 and baked Goma’s crop fields to dust. Its stirrings are as unpredictable as the activity of the rebels. What is predictable in eastern Congo right now is the rainy season, which has just commenced. I imagine it’s both a blessing and a curse, having made sleep miserable for those who spent this week on the run but also bringing life to fields of potential food. </span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/01/world/africa/01congo.html?pagewanted=2&ref=africa"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">This <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times </span><span>article</span></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> from the other day titled “With Tense Calm in Congo, Time to Assess the Damage” ended with: </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Rebel soldiers were working with village elders on Friday to assess the damage caused by the departing government forces, who residents said had picked clean dozens of homes and robbed the local bank, cracking open the safe and stealing the villagers’ savings. But Mr. Nkunda’s troops may have committed similar abuses. “These guys are bad, too,” one man whispered in Kibumba.</span></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" > <br />But he did not want to elaborate.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" > <br />Instead, he slipped away, down a path toward the bright green bean fields. It is planting season now, and many people have said that if they don’t go back to work, soon again there will be nothing to eat.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">On the eve of our own most prominent ritual of citizenship, we’re gearing up to exercise the privilege (or is it a fundamental right?) of choosing those who we will trust to govern us. Few Americans fail to recognize the significance of being able to do so, particularly this election year. But there’s another ritual of citizenship that so often goes unacknowledged, that of feeding ourselves without fear. Whether or not we farm our own food, or even bake our own bread, all of us here eat as citizens, not just consumers. So I’ll keep stirring pumpkin muffin batter and grinding my $17 a pound coffee, wondering if Congo, or Rwanda for that matter, will make the front page headlines tomorrow, and feeling proud and powerless all at the same time.</span><br /><br /></div>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-63641111425706858322008-11-02T12:00:00.000-08:002008-11-02T14:34:20.746-08:00citizen eaters: accompanying photographs<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">To accompany my recent post, "citizen eaters," here are some photographs taken this past summer in the vicinity of the Congo/Rwanda border. Though the soil is just as fertile on the Congo side of the border, ongoing violence prevents enough food from being grown and the UN often trucks food to Congolese refugee camp</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">s from Rwandan markets. Lake Kivu is the back</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">drop common to both areas.</span></span><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8pMhUtYlioIn6epCOKC4lum8QLxpZ1BfaJJOB7hEhWvJxl0_X7B4c7VCsneeHwVih0m5x2oBKThqryO83SjJ7FSMgMLOJNk0ls6pjNSi0u-LoFLhumO_IqnVetRm6oeh52jmWW0pMcKn5/s1600-h/DSC_0766.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8pMhUtYlioIn6epCOKC4lum8QLxpZ1BfaJJOB7hEhWvJxl0_X7B4c7VCsneeHwVih0m5x2oBKThqryO83SjJ7FSMgMLOJNk0ls6pjNSi0u-LoFLhumO_IqnVetRm6oeh52jmWW0pMcKn5/s400/DSC_0766.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264191955432429490" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB0j2hsJv5ZshazEO3LNfF2KCQx2r2RLha0ouSD_wOG7OqtxwHI9eRtnyfp5iUwdlf0fjB8QIaZp_rRlQt7WUwyRRjl6PX19hQ0ueFOzBAFj9g5urLmFzkFcEScM6oXBa35If9SpCzPqDS/s1600-h/DSC_0766.JPG"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48bVZQGCNQE_JFvRV30RXwWyccR5RxR8e8PE7Snz8evuxBuz64mFkEb-_zINvV_6nx4KL7C0jLmVNcxWd3-yhSFBKGYfBah7O6r1q6hxt5U89RMhtRdULUItXIOeor-5sEZLGN7NvgSNd/s1600-h/DSC_0772.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48bVZQGCNQE_JFvRV30RXwWyccR5RxR8e8PE7Snz8evuxBuz64mFkEb-_zINvV_6nx4KL7C0jLmVNcxWd3-yhSFBKGYfBah7O6r1q6hxt5U89RMhtRdULUItXIOeor-5sEZLGN7NvgSNd/s400/DSC_0772.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264189489631815922" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWlGfSFFOsAmR2PX82hKyn7uK0rk9f-WkcNXgmueIsJJEpDyMyRvaXDpRSfU_8VtQBGvOLhQ7oPoDmEQHEJ56CUJJQfeblYYIVnMWBM4g8jFlU_CBFPpU-qvYV4c9k_i3ya2rh-Jm_0r8z/s1600-h/DSC_0759.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 266px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWlGfSFFOsAmR2PX82hKyn7uK0rk9f-WkcNXgmueIsJJEpDyMyRvaXDpRSfU_8VtQBGvOLhQ7oPoDmEQHEJ56CUJJQfeblYYIVnMWBM4g8jFlU_CBFPpU-qvYV4c9k_i3ya2rh-Jm_0r8z/s400/DSC_0759.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264189487837183170" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBjxA58M9TsWFM9RJzhXLahRc2-wmEGhZLyrbT3MDzngMW5eqqLTZJtjiajsvBcQiKCe8jhOvXF-9jR_sM9T9GoER8OGq4eBJ1mJZdEOI5Ir52hMu-7OXK0ejVLuEbrLg1mVbOJGXbw1NY/s1600-h/DSC_0342.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBjxA58M9TsWFM9RJzhXLahRc2-wmEGhZLyrbT3MDzngMW5eqqLTZJtjiajsvBcQiKCe8jhOvXF-9jR_sM9T9GoER8OGq4eBJ1mJZdEOI5Ir52hMu-7OXK0ejVLuEbrLg1mVbOJGXbw1NY/s400/DSC_0342.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264188199535961394" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzHqur4_gRJwWpq9_XUYOsWG43JJskfgfcST_Ehcn4MAO7zULZcwe_-ax2Fn-ga7sXUIiG0XJpko7mjnnLw-Q5bIr6AyfZTlagc5stunSNcZA1OIvc7HL-v5QkjPHE5oXY1nAhXKTNzimw/s1600-h/DSC_0135.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzHqur4_gRJwWpq9_XUYOsWG43JJskfgfcST_Ehcn4MAO7zULZcwe_-ax2Fn-ga7sXUIiG0XJpko7mjnnLw-Q5bIr6AyfZTlagc5stunSNcZA1OIvc7HL-v5QkjPHE5oXY1nAhXKTNzimw/s400/DSC_0135.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264187831026334242" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMuJ3czUb0SPiLf08Xm6BBeLlhbKU1hJLzQFXQ5s1yc1c-B26p7XFvcvlBLQj8F2tVSXYRxHqzB-KvDuvd9EG_m9v-BQfEmgkX8T7_hZO30neT2dGE6ZiaFnKQko6dFGmTonhe-CqxfCvl/s1600-h/DSC_0122.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMuJ3czUb0SPiLf08Xm6BBeLlhbKU1hJLzQFXQ5s1yc1c-B26p7XFvcvlBLQj8F2tVSXYRxHqzB-KvDuvd9EG_m9v-BQfEmgkX8T7_hZO30neT2dGE6ZiaFnKQko6dFGmTonhe-CqxfCvl/s400/DSC_0122.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264187826327831746" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Cq2TKkF1ThHzWiY-D_IKcqjN8U2spp2BXYU19T4O2ZCVSj4Um9E5y8NMbbcaNpxg7QS2anVsxggG-ENQ3amRq832QGIi53NF2HPG-f3c2znNDsepundS6R6yhyyQG82_tmnFr_gFeiYN/s1600-h/DSC_0117.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Cq2TKkF1ThHzWiY-D_IKcqjN8U2spp2BXYU19T4O2ZCVSj4Um9E5y8NMbbcaNpxg7QS2anVsxggG-ENQ3amRq832QGIi53NF2HPG-f3c2znNDsepundS6R6yhyyQG82_tmnFr_gFeiYN/s400/DSC_0117.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264187814285516466" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZUP6kiG0JHIAM8lcptxJB0sW2ocVGBihQCyKS7j6axJ1GP21dxN1Z6zqT8LbbuIZhnecyDy6QPASrZvJRBXxzGTh1826zC5L3pG96GWgM-tQMub7Ri3i3d08zONrQLhd6H4TKFHb8gLAQ/s1600-h/DSC_0098.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZUP6kiG0JHIAM8lcptxJB0sW2ocVGBihQCyKS7j6axJ1GP21dxN1Z6zqT8LbbuIZhnecyDy6QPASrZvJRBXxzGTh1826zC5L3pG96GWgM-tQMub7Ri3i3d08zONrQLhd6H4TKFHb8gLAQ/s400/DSC_0098.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264187813482310002" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br /></span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-85570003468577713892008-10-20T21:51:00.008-07:002008-10-20T22:50:25.415-07:00when life hands you mulberries<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I was caught sticky-handed the other morning, a Santa Monica farmer’s market morning. By 9 o’clock the vegetables were sweating and only t</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">he vendors stood cool, shaded by their tents and offering samples of pistachios and peaches even th</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ough the regulars passing by have had pistachio samples by the dozen and everyone, absolutely everyone, takes more than one piece o</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">f peach. It’s nearly Halloween but you’d never know it from the copious heirloom tomatoes still littering the market stalls and the car thermometer reading a defiant 92°.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The Weiser family farm’s stall is the reliable king of root vegetables at the market, with heaps of potatoes and rainbow-colored carrots standing as a testament to Thanksgiving all year long. But that morning the Weisers, too, were peddling summe</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">r. Farmer-in-chief Alex called me over from behind the potato table just as I was eying a “Last Chance yellow peaches” sign across the way. “Hey, I’ve got your mulberries! They’re melting!” he shouted. From a jumble of empty boxes he produced a tin tray of mostly frozen oblong maroon berries, like an obvious cross between a raspberry and a blackberry. </span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Back in the spring I mentioned to Alex that I’d never tasted a mu</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">lberry and sometime in late June, while I was snapping photos of monkeys in Rwanda, he stashed a bunch in the freezer for me. There must have been ten cups in the tray (I later learn he sold these berries for $25 a pound) and we both let a few dissolve into flavors that are tart, wine-y </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">and woody as he tells me that these Persian mulberries are actually not cousins of the raspberry or blackberry clan. Mulberries grow on trees, famous throughout the Middle East and similarly warm climes for providing shade along the streets. “Wouldn’t it be great if LA had mulberry trees for shade!” he exclaimed. As the deep purple juice stains my fingers and also my tote bag, I try to imagine Angelenos</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> lounging on the sidewalks of Santa Monica, trying to catch falling mulberries in their mouths. Or, more li</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">kely, ridding them with their front windshield wipers.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />Back at home, I’m lost and confused. My trusted <span style="font-style: italic;">Chez Panisse Fruit</span> cookbook lists only two mulberry recipes, both requiring an ice cream maker, and an epicurious.com search turns up nothing at all. I stare down the tray and wonder if I should eat them all plain, or over yogurt perhaps. Or bake a pie? Or stick them back in the freezer and avoid the whole leaking mess? Nope, into the pot with sugar they went. When confronted w</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ith a preciou</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">s summer fruit and the dwindling autumnal heat there’s only one thing to do: make preserves.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj-KTnkRuIjvhqgJrK7HAlVf-8_7QBqaODxAlkwukrqizr2EaGYsPlBelZnZoxgdEkau4RWy-Q5vIbY8Mibsv2LdGrFdR-s_g0qYH9yB5np0GKaquSi81k2UZrhmjRslfAgpftKCA_RLGT/s1600-h/DSC_0029_2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj-KTnkRuIjvhqgJrK7HAlVf-8_7QBqaODxAlkwukrqizr2EaGYsPlBelZnZoxgdEkau4RWy-Q5vIbY8Mibsv2LdGrFdR-s_g0qYH9yB5np0GKaquSi81k2UZrhmjRslfAgpftKCA_RLGT/s400/DSC_0029_2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259466172459398786" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Alex apologized for pushing the flat of mulberries on me the next time I saw him, or rather for the hours I spent mid-week stirring the mulberry po</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">t with a spoon. “I know,” I shook my head, “you think it’d be no time at all, but it always ends up taking the whole day!” I could hardly fault him though--this wasn’t my first preservation project of the past few weeks, nor was it the last. Plum-vanilla bean jam, pickled watermelon rind, roasted red peppers, quince butter… I jarred it all. </span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />It’s been like trying to step simultaneously on a dozen helium balloons, getting all this produce into Bell glass containers while keeping up with graduate school work. Just yesterday I bought eight of the “Last Chance” peaches and with a smudge of </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">guilt spent a good part of my Sunday afternoon cooking them down to mush and sequestering the peach preserves into sterilized half-pints. I have a rather large stash of summer preserved in my kitchen now, as if to say that Southern California won’t yield fruit for the next eight months (never mind that here in LA we’re just weeks away from the first local citrus h</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">arvest). But I’ll be relieved if summer has finally set on the farmer’s </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">markets: I have papers to write and besides, I’ve run out of jars.<br /><br /></span> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGlZsl0xMBk9RXLSdaYlC05-prByTUS863KnPmohZtBG9lYrdMgm0DW0SkWqQmelxYb9-nTsiRXayIwG2KhDY7F8Ekm2D7aD_5Ty9rYkp3Y8kPserWkxdPVqY93g0cyt69d50gP9XBakST/s1600-h/fruit+in+jars.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGlZsl0xMBk9RXLSdaYlC05-prByTUS863KnPmohZtBG9lYrdMgm0DW0SkWqQmelxYb9-nTsiRXayIwG2KhDY7F8Ekm2D7aD_5Ty9rYkp3Y8kPserWkxdPVqY93g0cyt69d50gP9XBakST/s400/fruit+in+jars.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259469611355289586" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Wendell Berry once wrote that “The only thing we have to preserve nature with is culture; the only thing we have to preserve wildness with is domestici</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ty.” Though I can’t say for sure, I like to think he was responding to Thoreau’s earlier declaration: “In wildness is the preservation of the World.” Regardless of whether they were actually in dialogue, wildness has rarely since been captured as wisely in words.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So in domesticity, shall we say, is the preservation of fruit.<br /><br /></span> </div>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-86872789415321398832008-10-13T22:04:00.005-07:002008-10-20T21:57:05.107-07:00fresh start[er]<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The last time I sat with intent to contribute to my small reel on the internet, Rooting for Fruit, I was at a borrowed desk in a friend’s rented house on a dirt road in Butare, Rwanda. The house was palatial, well-tended by a rotating cast of caretakers and the comfortably spartan office looked onto a small rose garden. B</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">eyond, a barbed wire-fringed concrete wall stoo</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">d as a faded war relic. For whatever reason, during that morning back in July as I sat writing about Pimm’s and tree tomato fruits, it felt like home.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Farther from </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >home</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, in minutes and miles, I couldn’t have been. Between that desk and this one I claim 11 separate boarding passes, six new s</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">tamps in my passport, and stays in two other places I also call home: New York and San Francisco. But like it or not, here in Los Angeles, I’ve returned to where I rest my belongings and engrave those cow paths of daily routine. I returned here last month feeling desperate to commit to this place where I reside but have never called home. Short of buying property (a task poorly suited to the times, anyhow), how </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >does</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> one commit to a place and come to call it home?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I suppose the answer to that could be both existential and gravely practical, but I’ve decided on something much more pleasurable: collecting the wild yeasts that inhabit my apartment and turning them into something I can taste. I’ve started a sourdough starter.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjn_jobNuGEhHUZ-OHuxd7cuavYdjUS3JU8pl2t6ZhjN6NfUrJXIPXwB7XC4p1pNbJwY2YyfSJknkfW5RaXhHzATOVLwIdJK30snU4C5e3pr8G4f0WiaJpjGe_PHaKChoiDanmJsAj3YYl/s1600-h/sourdough+starter.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjn_jobNuGEhHUZ-OHuxd7cuavYdjUS3JU8pl2t6ZhjN6NfUrJXIPXwB7XC4p1pNbJwY2YyfSJknkfW5RaXhHzATOVLwIdJK30snU4C5e3pr8G4f0WiaJpjGe_PHaKChoiDanmJsAj3YYl/s400/sourdough+starter.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5257536847372539266" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">By </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The Cheese Board Collective Works</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> cookbook len</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">t by friends Abigail and Emma, I was inspired. Sourdough starter is little more than flour and water left to the elements, fed regularly with more flour--your garden-variety 4th grade science experiment. Yesterday I stirred lukewarm water into rye flour as suggested, with a stainless steel eating apparatus. Already it’s bubbling and emitting cozy odors. Tomorrow I will feed it with more flour (this time white bread flour), and more flour 48 hours after that, and again after that. I’ve vowed to keep my starter alive in the refrigerator through monthly feedings and most importantly, though use. By folding it into breads of all kinds, I’ll be celebrating wild yeasts, the taste of home. With proper care, my sourdough starter will outlive any pet goldfish and potentially even your pet golden retriever.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">In the shadow of a towering parking garage, near the nexus of Wilshire and the 405 freeway and with no soil outside in which to dig a garden of my own, my Los Angeles apartment exists a world away from the wild. And yet. A taste of the wild, this untamed Los Angeles, is arising and being cultivated in (and by) my kitchen.</span></div>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-64886557329423303172008-07-18T09:38:00.009-07:002008-10-13T22:15:58.462-07:00interlude for an apértif<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I haven’t yet developed a taste for Rwanda’s two domestic lagers, Mutzig and Primus, nor can I stomach the banana beer sold in yellow jugs along the country roads. One glass of the Drostdy-Hof South African merlot sold here gave me a 2am headache. Rwanda claims no cocktail of their own, though maybe the ubiquitous Guinness and Coke poured simultaneously into a dark, foamy mess will make its way around the world like the Cuban’s mojito. But hopefully not.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Never fear: a bottle of Pimm’s No. 1 survived unbroken in my carry-on from Nairobi’s duty-free airport shop and for a moment, during the last days of Wimbledon, pouring a Pimm’s Cup for the afternoon was completely apropos. A liquor derived from gin and herbs, reddish in color and British in origin, it’s been the basis for many evening sundowners. When the sun sets at 6pm, every day of the summer, happy hour is pretty much requisite. And at only 18% alcohol, you can take two and still act functional. Croquet, anyone?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The Pimm’s Cup recipe printed on the bottle includes ginger ale or lemon, sometimes cucumber as a garnish. Ginger ale has yet to make it to these parts; Frist tonic water, cold as can be, adds the sparkle instead. Cucumber and lemon are fine, but African fruits are more fun. My favorite juice has become one made from the tree tomato, also called Japanese plum. It’s a tropical fruit native to South America with ruby seeds and an inside flesh that, indeed, resembles a tomato. Eaten plain it can be a bit pithy, but the unsweetened juice concentrate is opaquely purple, a touch tangy and perfectly sweet, reminiscent of peach and pineapple, and pomegranate. We buy ours from an American missionary named Debbie, who makes it in her house in Kigali. She is probably not, however, making the following recipe for her Sunday church gathering.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Rwandan Sunset: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">If you have ice (we don’t) toss some in and pour: </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">One part tree tomato juice concentrate</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">One part Pimm’s No. 1</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Fill with tonic water</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Garnish with lemon or pineapple wedge</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Stir it all together in a wine glass, tea cup, or yellow plastic jug, and repeat before dinner.</span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-22310644583818898112008-07-16T01:31:00.010-07:002008-10-13T22:15:47.189-07:00old world italia meets new world rwanda<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I took a break from coffee cupping one day last week to spend some time at Serge’s dairy farm because, well, I like my coffee with milk. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Serge is the tall tattooed fellow, often decked in orange linen and silver necklaces, who owns one of three restaurants in Kigali I’ve actually been keen to eat at more than once. His Italian place, Papyrus (pronounced around here as papy-rus), is up a curvy cobblestone road in the hills and has a romantically colonial feel, with twinkle lights strung around a thatched-roof veranda, lots of dark hardwood and plants with expansive tropical leaves. The first time I saw the menu, pages of pastas, pizzas, and tilapia prepared seven ways, I instantly created some high expectations that dinner might actually have more flavor than my white bread-boiled egg lunch, but I was also a little disappointed. Can you really be on the other side of the world and find a restaurant that might as well be in Berkeley, with references to a specific farm name bolded and sprinkled throughout the menu? So the farmer-as-god gimmick has made it all the way to Rwanda, I probably smirked in my head right then.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">But of course I gleefully ordered two dishes, so I could try two different Masaka Farms cheeses, and then I got Serge’s number and called him later that week. Because finding good cheese in Rwanda, especially one produced on a local farm and not imported from a Ugandan factory, is a big deal. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Serge didn’t really seem to care how or why I got his number, just genuinely surprised by my interest in visiting his farm. There’s a small shop attached to Papyrus that sells all seven of the dairy products made at Masaka Farms, also owned by Serge, along with bread and fresh pasta made in the restaurant kitchen. A bonafide boulangerie and fromagerie, in a country that prefers its milk powdered rather than fresh. His response when I told him I had already been to the shop and wanted to go to the farm itself? “Ahh… wow.” Not wanting to inconvenience him on a workday, I asked if I might tag along one morning when he had plans to be at the farm, not having any idea of where this farm was exactly. The better part of Rwanda is agricultural land, after all. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I was expecting typical mid-morning restaurant chaos and only a brief acknowledgement from Serge when I got to Papyrus at 10am; what I got instead was an invitation to sit down for coffee and croissants and have a chat. Sure, the coffee still came with powdered milk and for a few seconds I wished I were back in San Francisco having croissant at Tartine rather than crescent-shaped white bread. And Serge was still confused as to why I was interested in his dairy operation, not that I had a compelling reason to give him. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">With English as his fifth language (Swahili and Italian being among the first four), Serge told me that he opened a cheese shop three years ago because an Italian man he met in Kigali had pointed him towards “the way.” This man, “so funny and so, so fat,” had been sleeping at a bar in Kigali when Serge found him, divorced and having spent his life savings on some fun in Brazil. Serge invited the man to stay at his place for a little while. Italian man stayed three years, in the midst of which he had obviously introduced Serge to the virtues of Italian cheese, among other foodstuffs. Serge ended up marrying an Italian woman and spending six months in the Veneto learning the intricacies of cow’s milk cheese (I don’t blame him for the faux-croissant though, no one goes to Italy for croissants). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">When the chance came along to take over a small handicraft shop back in Kigali, Serge and Italian man opened Papyrus with a ‘school’ for Serge to teach baking and cheese-making during the day. Most remarkably, he decided to only hire young people who had been orphaned by the genocide. He trained 22 18-25 year olds that first year, instructing them to knead and stir the milk curds and bake wood-fired pizzas, and eventually to be waiters in the restaurant. He pointed to one skinny guy during our coffee, “That boy is so special to me, so special,” he said. That guy had fled to Congo during the genocide in early 1994, walking 1000 kilometers on foot without his family. When Serge found him a few years later, he was living on the streets in Kigali without shoes. Now, he works six days a week at Papyrus as a waiter and Serge is training him to make cheese at Masaka Farms. “If you give them a chance, they will succeed,” Serge says, “I don’t like to demand too much or they will not trust me.” I must have an incredulous look on my face at this point, realizing that Papyrus probably has the best service of any restaurant in Rwanda. That’s not saying much by American standards, but to take a crop of mostly young men who had never even eaten cheese or bread, Italian style, or visited a restaurant and turn them into the waiters I was watching tidy the dining room… well, Serge must be a lot of things, faithful among them.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Riding on the success of Papyrus, Serge received grant money to begin a similar project just outside Kigali, this one employing ex-child soldiers from the war. From two different enemy groups. Forty young men now working side by side to make pizza, boys who had once aimed to kill each other with machetes during a war that they were probably too young to even understand.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">But what about Masaka Farms, I asked him, who’s working there? This dairy project has only been up and running for the past two months, though Serge started clearing his land for pasture two years ago. Over 100 people worked to do that for six months, cutting brush and planting grasses. Some young people kept showing up to work, even though he couldn’t pay them (he was already paying everyone else $1 per day, a small fortune for Serge). They kept coming back though, hoping for a paying job, and eventually Serge was able to give many of them permanent employment. Last month, he doubled the salary of everyone working for him; one girl had been cleaning Papyrus every day for the past two years, for around $30 per month. “She had the courage to keep coming back,” Serge shook his head in disbelief, “and now I can pay her $60 every month.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We drove out to Masaka Farm in the bright yellow Masaka Farm van, with decals of cheese wheels on the side. Ten minutes from the city center along a heavily pedestrian-ed road lined with mud huts, we pulled up to a gently sloping pasture bordered by a white log fence. Without the banana trees scattered around, it might as well have been summer in Vermont. A few men have been building a brick stable to house his 12 cows, black and white imports from Germany (when I asked him about the variety of cow, having only seen horned African brown cows or Holsteins in Rwanda, the only part of the answer I understood was “German seminal, do you know seminal?”). He feeds his cows chopped up fresh grass from an abutting piece of property when they aren’t out to pasture, though the grass looked more like palm fronds. Tropical grass, native to Cameroon, Serge said. It looked like East Coast grass on steroids. All 12 cows were munching on their colossal grass pieces when I visited them, except for the one-week old calf that was being fed milk from a bottle by a stick-wielding herder (there’s plenty of beef in Rwanda, but veal isn’t on any menus yet). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Over in the dairy house, three men in rubber boots were making mozzarella. One stirred a three-foot wide basin with his hand, swirling the curds. With the other two silent and slim guys, he scooped the curds into large cheese-drainage baskets, letting the water splash on the tiled floor (that explained the rubber boots, but not the lack of floor drains in the building). As the curds dripped, Serge showed me his cheese-aging room-in-progress, where he’s been working with montazio, a semi-hard cow’s milk cheese that he tosses on pizza. A dozen moldy wheels were stacked in his aging room, the air much warmer than cellar temperature; he said one French ex-pat family had ordered an entire wheel from him. He was asking 6,000 francs for the wheel, he told me. About $12. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">He also makes a few hundred cups of yogurt each week, flavored with vanilla and fresh strawberry as a thick and silky alternative to Rwanda’s watery Nyungwe brand, and he makes ice cream. Serge stuck his finger in the crème fraîche dripping from a filter bucket while we waited for the mozzarella to drain, apologizing for not having any yogurt or ice cream there for me to taste. But ah, he said, “we will make some ice cream fresh for tonight!” And with hardly a word spoken, one of his workers filled an empty water bottle with the flowing crème fraîche, which he tossed on the dashboard as we left the pastures in the yellow van.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Serge insisted I come over to Papyrus for a pizza before heading home, though he’s forgotten to bring the fresh mozzarella back to the restaurant. I had watched him twirl elastic sheets of warm mozza into 28 fist-sized balls, plunking them then into a bucket of cold water. He was planning to stock the shop with containers of the stuff, and of course use the rest for pizza that night. But as we sat back at the restaurant, cutting up our nearly-Neopolitan pizza with montazio cheese and smoked ham, his cell rang three times with orders. One for yogurt, the next two for fresh mozzarella. “Eh,” Serge sighed and shook his head as he hung up on Solé Luna, another Italian restaurant in Kigali, “they bought all the mozzarella we made today.” So much for stocking the shop. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Later that night, ending my third meal at Papyrus for the day, another skinny waiter brought my English friend James and I goblets with vanilla ice cream. “Please,” he said. “For you.” Dense and silky, it was proper, old-fashioned ice cream, and James nodded sideways with approval. For many Rwandese though, to whom owning one cow is a luxury to aspire to, Serge’s dairy is not proper but exotic, and Serge himself the lord of the land.</span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-18134736279563696872008-07-10T14:50:00.004-07:002008-10-15T17:23:50.921-07:00dégustation<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >There’s nothing quite like waking up to a fresh brewed mug wafting with the aroma of… raw potato. Now, few of us would run the other direction when faced with a diced Russet, but in your coffee cup? You might euphemistically call such a scent ‘unique’ the first time you encounter it but for the most part, it’s gross.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >This “potato taste,” caused by a toxin-creating bacteria eating a hole in the cellular walls of the coffee cherry, is not only a bizarre addition to the flavor profiles found in coffees from the Great Lakes region of Africa (Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania) but it might just be the downfall of Rwanda’s entire specialty coffee industry. One bad bean can ruin an entire batch, even one otherwise considered the cream of the crop. I flung open the door of the cupping laboratory the other morning to find three cuppers hovered over nine glass cups, frowning. Leticia hands me a stainless spoon, wide brimmed with a steep handle, made specially for coffee cupping. “Taste that,” she points with her chin to the cup on the right. I take a slurp from the spoon. It’s tepid, acidic, and vegetal. I nearly gag. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >It’s been a consistent routine with my friends over in Kigali’s coffee cupping laboratory that they have me taste the defects. I suppose they consider it instructive, although when the first sip of a coffee you have at 8am lingers with asparagus and potato, well, you might start craving a vanilla-mocha frappuccino. This particular round of samples was destined for Intelligentsia Coffee, based in Chicago and Los Angeles, but Intelligentsia would not be shipped one of their three coffees until further sorting and cupping determined the lot to be potato-free.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >While there are pesticides that combat the potato taste-causing bacteria at the root of the problem on the plant itself, distributing pesticides to Rwanda’s thousands of coffee farmers is not the method chosen by the country thus far to prevent potato contamination. Rather, plentiful and cheap labor means over 300 women, and the occasional man, are employed full-time in Kigali’s coffee warehouses sorting out the defective beans from piles on the ground. The country’s fully-washed high-grade coffees, those that have undergone the most sophisticated type of processing from cherry to bean (about 3,000 tons of Rwanda’s total annual production of 40,000 tons), have already been picked over up to three times at the washing station for cherry that is under-ripe, over-ripe, or split open by bacteria. So understandably there is some frustration on the part of the cuppers when they roast samples that emanate aromas of raw potato, or when the often-subtle but unmistakable potato flavor coats their tongues. It’s a problem keeping the specialty coffee industry here on its toes, and creating sorting jobs for those who might otherwise have few employment options.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Misplaced vegetables aside, the cuppers have introduced me to a plethora of aromas and flavors in our mornings’ sampled coffees that have been challenging to detect and also brilliant when identified. During one round this week, a selection of samples from the Kayumbu washing station, found in Gitarama province just west of Kigali, was separated not only by the day of harvest but also by sorted grade: a single day’s harvest separated into grade A and grade B. Over 100 farmers might have contributed to any given day’s harvest making it impossible to identify the location of the coffee beyond the washing station, presuming that the cherry was grown within a ten-kilometer radius or so. Cherry ripening occurs later at higher altitudes; the higher the contrast between daytime and nighttime temperature (as occurs at higher altitudes), the more concentrated the sugars of the coffee plant become and thus produce, at least in theory, more flavor development. Harvesting cherry later in the season also presumes the sugars have had more time to develop, but as with all stages of coffee processing, a few under-ripe or diseased beans could throw off an otherwise fully-ripened, late-harvest batch.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >I’ve learned the protocol for cupping well enough to know that when slurping from the spoon, you must do it loudly. Still though, I’m repeatedly corrected on my poor technique of breaking the crust of the grounds, which allows the aromas to escape. Properly, it involves a circular motion of the spoon reminiscent of the elegantly deliberate way a Japanese tea master cleans his utensils. My way, it involves pushing some of the grounds aside furtively with the back of a spoon and leaning in close enough for the steam to burn my nose. Before the crust of the grounds is broken, the cups look murky enough to be holding a foamy Guinness, or maybe brownie batter. The foam is spooned off after four minutes, un-precisely, and the brew cools down to warm before the cuppers slurp their spoonfuls. Flavors change somewhat dramatically as coffee cools and the hotter it is the more imperfections can be masked. This is a reasonable excuse for the bottomless coffee cup served at diners, which are always in need of hot refreshment.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >But in the cupping lab, all of coffee’s possible imperfections must be unveiled. In today’s line of two dozen samples (with three cups of each sample brewed to taste for consistency), I cup a Kayumbu harvested on May 30th that tastes harsh and tangy on my tongue, lingering like lemon pith. Another Kayumbu from June 9th is chalky and watery, full of tannin and lacking in body… but this I only perceive when I slurp a spoonful of a Kayumbu from May 22nd that is by comparison full-bodied and tastes wholly like, well, coffee. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >I wonder, though, after a personal revelation that the variation in coffee samples are perceptible only through extensive side-by-side tasting, if taste is ever absolute. <a href="http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2008/07/scienceofflavor?currentPage=1">A recent article in Gourmet magazine</a> reported on this topic, explaining how flavor chemists are disproving years of scientific theory that understood the four basic ‘tastes,’ sweet, bitter, salty, and sour, perceived reliably on each individual’s tongue in the same place. This is the flavor equivalent of every human seeing the ocean as the same shade of blue, but the most recent theory in flavor chemistry? It’s that everyone tastes differently. Your shade of blue is not my shade of blue. In the specialty coffee industry, where three cuppers’ scoring a coffee sample above 88, let’s say, translates into a dollar more per pound than that coffee would get if it scored an 82 (or at least this gets the attention of buyers who are willing to pay more per pound), this new understanding of flavor means money. My observation of the cuppers thus far is that they all score samples reliably close to one another. While Leticia might give a sample her highest score of the day at 87, Claire might give the same coffee an 88. In other words, they’re all perceiving samples within the same ranges. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Even more interesting, this Gourmet article touched on the fact that taste might fall along cultural lines, with certain cultural groups tasting things differently from others. Now anyone who has traveled beyond Western Europe would nod in agreement, but how do you teach someone to taste the “heavy body, citric, honey and phosphorus in the mouth,” as Uzziel did while cupping a coffee from the Lake Kivu region of Kibuye? He scored this particular sample an 88, by the way, solid but short of <span style="font-style: italic;">exceptionaire</span>. </span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-23869257660848197962008-07-08T11:25:00.006-07:002008-10-13T22:13:11.080-07:00dégustation: photographs<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDXu0VaNlzifQVndUJuaMeDNy2M5PR5etowybGN19v-LsfdKiSXcpNbAqCSfBsh3oue32HzMfzOv8rtH4r2eJTrjklGDzMMZFzBwKkl4E8sy4h6nYM8ZGN3B1xSKrbhmJH0PJLVxgi9m-X/s1600-h/degustation2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDXu0VaNlzifQVndUJuaMeDNy2M5PR5etowybGN19v-LsfdKiSXcpNbAqCSfBsh3oue32HzMfzOv8rtH4r2eJTrjklGDzMMZFzBwKkl4E8sy4h6nYM8ZGN3B1xSKrbhmJH0PJLVxgi9m-X/s400/degustation2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220720817661168034" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPjHxvQQ_7HVHETwFO1d59eysR3EBwSR4JFc__yj81dKeOo9F02AOTNelbR47jyPFL_HsU3wywjlT2KwlmXQPlEY3zlSZGRHffCQQrjuonLGQj1nBzgc5JHnqj2CAIUw1wwF93hs7UI8Fg/s1600-h/degustation8.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPjHxvQQ_7HVHETwFO1d59eysR3EBwSR4JFc__yj81dKeOo9F02AOTNelbR47jyPFL_HsU3wywjlT2KwlmXQPlEY3zlSZGRHffCQQrjuonLGQj1nBzgc5JHnqj2CAIUw1wwF93hs7UI8Fg/s400/degustation8.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220720816966023266" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9AzEI0DKslB1tTCbg4YuOvvkJWoslCxpnhrPDBBXUjWx1JgirqKy6PTxfVjT78RKc60gEqjnU6xy-KK2KCqtE49l990btlhqPUMXqxJxBqiIKLUPWrA3_46I9HVevn0l1NKcjxEUDWfvu/s1600-h/degustation7.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9AzEI0DKslB1tTCbg4YuOvvkJWoslCxpnhrPDBBXUjWx1JgirqKy6PTxfVjT78RKc60gEqjnU6xy-KK2KCqtE49l990btlhqPUMXqxJxBqiIKLUPWrA3_46I9HVevn0l1NKcjxEUDWfvu/s400/degustation7.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220720502176819490" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYNBGWhlTaxnZPJLHIuKor_ZrZmptqKfNhKBIPIGfWQZATD5gA83XIdoG_qYtmgHD1yeUVpKmgwbmfBOEyucYeg0BwiVTfSrwcjumQK5epLMR4s78RZyUktilk-aYL5O_ekZE0pkkPlYI_/s1600-h/degustation6.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYNBGWhlTaxnZPJLHIuKor_ZrZmptqKfNhKBIPIGfWQZATD5gA83XIdoG_qYtmgHD1yeUVpKmgwbmfBOEyucYeg0BwiVTfSrwcjumQK5epLMR4s78RZyUktilk-aYL5O_ekZE0pkkPlYI_/s400/degustation6.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220720509418943458" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil6c54ErnbGNQ7IyDY4I-qUU0BXbHaCJEWH1JucYE9h_e_kdRTkgaTJqxAJWljGkAuNAXXTFyZaeOazZDlHT5s118vk_yQ4RkxTGnmy3jWHDQUE26k7xAUwM4TUzD_XamN_We1VjMaVLFG/s1600-h/degustation5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil6c54ErnbGNQ7IyDY4I-qUU0BXbHaCJEWH1JucYE9h_e_kdRTkgaTJqxAJWljGkAuNAXXTFyZaeOazZDlHT5s118vk_yQ4RkxTGnmy3jWHDQUE26k7xAUwM4TUzD_XamN_We1VjMaVLFG/s400/degustation5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220720138220789090" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSpk4ZeKHFRjgpJcMcVChgtr7J9U7Sx-YZQnXt0WzU9x-hE_x_Iblcovhcb5yarx9_Lvdap4DSxIJzJ67EtFJw-TBQUbJe6zoPW5btT6jHIWSbyxpuwoSzANLPeb4J2W3GYQC53fXjPweU/s1600-h/degustation4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSpk4ZeKHFRjgpJcMcVChgtr7J9U7Sx-YZQnXt0WzU9x-hE_x_Iblcovhcb5yarx9_Lvdap4DSxIJzJ67EtFJw-TBQUbJe6zoPW5btT6jHIWSbyxpuwoSzANLPeb4J2W3GYQC53fXjPweU/s400/degustation4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220720145333264082" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9GQHRqLfqyYOkcR6wvpWIWgfIGyeQiCz5GNdGGEknNDw8pRjq2AI1zHmgJekf2GWYRLQJsYwbb9-gtXH1BC_DLpJN9V0tkcJQBhJplbNL4L26yUjurjjGrVFfQ0cFZQl9z6JZvdtO6279/s1600-h/degustation3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9GQHRqLfqyYOkcR6wvpWIWgfIGyeQiCz5GNdGGEknNDw8pRjq2AI1zHmgJekf2GWYRLQJsYwbb9-gtXH1BC_DLpJN9V0tkcJQBhJplbNL4L26yUjurjjGrVFfQ0cFZQl9z6JZvdtO6279/s400/degustation3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220719803423250914" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxwZ9GJevigNPosuYhawImAAM1k8rj_yWK4oHSILrsy7v0eumW14fC2fBaMo7_XcSU7IxU1tGe9ITSK9Td9YcYczilwYLVR1IjZ47HWz3ziLzdIk87CR0VkgM1kHmmtid1wGxy49mvLoZD/s1600-h/degustation1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxwZ9GJevigNPosuYhawImAAM1k8rj_yWK4oHSILrsy7v0eumW14fC2fBaMo7_XcSU7IxU1tGe9ITSK9Td9YcYczilwYLVR1IjZ47HWz3ziLzdIk87CR0VkgM1kHmmtid1wGxy49mvLoZD/s400/degustation1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220719823328380226" border="0" /></a>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-80297176642265394002008-07-03T14:45:00.014-07:002008-10-15T17:24:14.609-07:00the coffee clinic<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Down a dusty hill from Kigali's coffee offices, inside a cavernous warehouse emblazoned with faded Red Crosses, past rows and rows of fertilizer bags stacked two stories high and printed with ConAgra USA, and through an unmarked doorway at the end is where you’ll find the coffee clinic. Should your beans be defective, diseased, or in need of transformation, this is where you come.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >When I arrived yesterday at 8:30am, Leticia was already consulting Antoine Urimubemshi, director of the Muyongwe coffee cooperative on his recently sampled beans. Symptom: lack of body in mouth feel. Diagnosis: green coffee beans exposed to too much afternoon sun on the drying racks. “These beans were good, very good,” says Leticia. “They are sweet, citrus… but they lack body. It’s because of the drying process.” She sends Antoine out with a list of all of the day-lots harvested in April and May and processed at the Muyongwe washing station, and a corresponding list of scores. Explaining to me after he leaves that “if the beans aren’t dry enough, they can be sent back. If they are too dry, it’s too late… There is no tool to measure moisture content,” Leticia says with a hint of remorse. “The farmers, they just taste the beans!”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Last year, the Muyongwe washing station claimed the number one coffee in Rwanda’s Golden Cup competition, a national award ceremony and auction. During this year’s upcoming Cup of Excellence, an internationally-recognized domestic event showcasing the crème de la crème of Rwandan coffee, Muyongwe is hoping to win big again and get scooped up at the international buying auction for upwards of $25 per pound. But fix their drying problem they must. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >There is no dictionary definition for ‘cupping’ that references coffee even though those in the business drop the word to mean ‘coffee tasting’ with simple regularity. Here at coffee’s source, in-country cupping is more than a matter of gustatory effete. Rwanda’s 30 cuppers are highly trained coffee professionals, many of whom work five days a week at one of four national cupping laboratories. Like Leticia, they are the coffee doctors, offering advice to washing station owners or cooperative directors who come seeking quality quantification and tips on how to improve their beans. They are also the referees, as Leticia said, “like in football,” providing a crucial link between processing and exportation and ultimately, between producers and consumers (or as one unruly dairyman once corrected me, between “farmers and citizens!”). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >“If you don’t know, if you don’t cup,” explained Leticia, “you can’t improve. You can’t change the processing,” referring to the fact that few farmers or washing station owners taste their own coffee. Without tasting, there is no way of knowing a coffee’s value; without knowing the value, quality improvement and the increased income it brings with it, is meaningless. Flavor becomes quantifiable under the cuppers’ noses, and on their taste buds. While not all coffee undergoes such scrutiny as it does in this coffee clinic, this quantifiable flavor is worth paying attention to when you're tasting the second-most valuable traded commodity in the world. Oil is the first.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Leticia, and her boyfriend Abdul, a long-time cupper who started his own cupping consulting business, seemed incredulous that some of the washing station owners have yet to really believe in cupping. “They have to know the value of the cuppers,” Leticia said vigorously with Abdul nodding at her side, “because we make the value.” All coffee is given a grade based on size and density when it leaves the washing stations of A1, A2, or A3. A1 is the most homogeneous in size and has the greatest density (those beans sunk in water tanks). Any coffee buyer looking to get their hands on some decent beans won't consider anything but A1 (Starbucks is in this category as well); the rest is generally fed into blends made by the largest coffee conglomerates like Nestle and Proctor & Gamble for your gas station variety. But among the A1 beans, the producing-country cuppers determine scores out of a 100-point system based on cleanliness, sweetness, acidity, mouth feel, flavor, after taste, and balance. A total score of 80 and above is good, you'd probably taste those and think they taste like, well, a fine cuppa joe. Above 86 is what the smaller roasting companies are after; they will usually highlight these coffees through origin-based labeling. Above 90 is what the cuppers, and buyers, consider <span style="font-style: italic;">exceptionaire</span>, full of unique characteristics and certainly worth a significant price. Whether or not you and me can detect a difference between an 86 and a 92 is a matter for later.<br /><br />It occurs to me some time before we’ve even begun tasting (cupping, I mean) coffee this week that there is so much room for error between when the coffee cherry is harvested and the time it hits the palate. Though similarities to wine are easily drawn, wine is basically complete when it goes into the bottle. Perhaps every now and again a bottle spoils through poor storage, but when the wine leaves the winemaker’s (or more realistically, the cellar manager’s) hands it’s more or less a finished product, left only then to the hands of time for aging. With coffee, by contrast, there are so many more hands to pass through, and no guarantees can be made about quality until it’s poured into the cup. Even after the beans leave the washing station, myriad ways to sort, grade, roast, and brew can bring a coffee bean’s latent flavors and aromas (imagine honey, chocolate and citrus) to life. Or, something can go terribly wrong and cupping will uncover scents and tastes of burnt popcorn, medicinal tar, or the most dreaded, raw potato.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >I can’t think of another fruit, besides the olive, that requires so much human intervention to make it palatable. Up close, the papery skin surrounding the green coffee bean, also known as parchment, slips off like a cicada’s shell, the kind you might find still clinging to a tree trunk but devoid of its inhabitant. The green bean inside is a vaguely translucent grayish-green, a rustic and dwarfed version of its previous life as a bright red, smooth cherry. A tiny seam down the middle contains a bronzy paper remnant of the parchment that remains in tact through roasting; ground, it emerges as the little white specks sometimes visible if the grounds are left coarse. I can’t crack the little pea of a bean with my nail, or my teeth. It doesn’t have much of a flavor when I suck on a few, but a pile of green beans does give off a fragrance that somewhat resembles corn. The real transformation, the alchemy into <span style="font-style: italic;">coffee</span>, occurs during roasting.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Below, some photos of the coffee sorters and roasting machinery. More on that to follow soon.</span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-79271602559156358972008-07-03T14:45:00.012-07:002008-10-13T22:12:53.920-07:00the coffee clinic: photographs<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpETUNICWKOqP_RwX4jmoRvBwMn1-1Hkh_SxZHXOrO25AOPji5nlmeSpYo0jFuPLklx75mhZM9Pm1UfBC5JrIiMKM682eEozSGfo_MCYiHz8Mo61aSKkYMprB8rr8FOTnH4Ssuw_Qxdgz8/s1600-h/old+fashion+ground+coffee.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpETUNICWKOqP_RwX4jmoRvBwMn1-1Hkh_SxZHXOrO25AOPji5nlmeSpYo0jFuPLklx75mhZM9Pm1UfBC5JrIiMKM682eEozSGfo_MCYiHz8Mo61aSKkYMprB8rr8FOTnH4Ssuw_Qxdgz8/s400/old+fashion+ground+coffee.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218917253034958130" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPyk0yiSqQoJQiSeFjT7-DHimDTZKRLL_2EHw95Bzck-8T_jFqlWFwS-aMpOuK0U2ATO3mITiDqPiJ0QWuiZkmFnVHISwnD1Emxo_F4c7GF-jSXwTISdTbzwV7D9ah1IeRoiNXyowdUKpr/s1600-h/sorting+beans+inside.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPyk0yiSqQoJQiSeFjT7-DHimDTZKRLL_2EHw95Bzck-8T_jFqlWFwS-aMpOuK0U2ATO3mITiDqPiJ0QWuiZkmFnVHISwnD1Emxo_F4c7GF-jSXwTISdTbzwV7D9ah1IeRoiNXyowdUKpr/s400/sorting+beans+inside.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218917259661938450" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjShTQ0k68C9i2_4AMtZKJ6lx9eRzGLXnXuDz8HhuRCPAE9rafYnlJfAUqovwT3qjovN3WqLhEFdwhmYdlS-o54zFNqedYM6vBRuxNuKghnR37KYf9OTZ1GD6E1f-0JlW1YozDsQWiWE0RK/s1600-h/sieving+beans.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjShTQ0k68C9i2_4AMtZKJ6lx9eRzGLXnXuDz8HhuRCPAE9rafYnlJfAUqovwT3qjovN3WqLhEFdwhmYdlS-o54zFNqedYM6vBRuxNuKghnR37KYf9OTZ1GD6E1f-0JlW1YozDsQWiWE0RK/s400/sieving+beans.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218912419228790738" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw8NRerhZ33XaYKVOCHcUus0jxIxVGdbh-M0_FBQOuUOormZFqTTZzspchPnEtGlh5Pk9sHMI-lw5_XhBHo8goexX3doaf3Fwb9sa9tDoSGN2pHR629HZ8CMfULMw7rKsQak3YZkV0t3xr/s1600-h/sorting+beans+outside.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw8NRerhZ33XaYKVOCHcUus0jxIxVGdbh-M0_FBQOuUOormZFqTTZzspchPnEtGlh5Pk9sHMI-lw5_XhBHo8goexX3doaf3Fwb9sa9tDoSGN2pHR629HZ8CMfULMw7rKsQak3YZkV0t3xr/s400/sorting+beans+outside.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218912411863183234" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdXCRRHCuTrvq_GCw9aXU_GHONoTTedLGlLWRocImuJFrzqqK_Amqo8oOmNMhMtNsNq9Ht12IGePvUPOBDrTIqpWrQTyqPw60Wv29357J4b0fYu03cZGjnbhPCjhs8HMpQrloECnnN7e0w/s1600-h/leticia+roasting.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdXCRRHCuTrvq_GCw9aXU_GHONoTTedLGlLWRocImuJFrzqqK_Amqo8oOmNMhMtNsNq9Ht12IGePvUPOBDrTIqpWrQTyqPw60Wv29357J4b0fYu03cZGjnbhPCjhs8HMpQrloECnnN7e0w/s400/leticia+roasting.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218911345934081026" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM4GVdqDYjZkNKQWbBcFZ4zvbDSD4BxhTemmQIdYb1udqiR3g2Vzf3pKwroXs1yelWV82VQ_z6f831azealVQ709qnHYkOVgfU6-Po842K82_0YfeWHti6sCs6PJ8Gbx1xUnJDyCryEnv7/s1600-h/green+beans+from+roaster.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM4GVdqDYjZkNKQWbBcFZ4zvbDSD4BxhTemmQIdYb1udqiR3g2Vzf3pKwroXs1yelWV82VQ_z6f831azealVQ709qnHYkOVgfU6-Po842K82_0YfeWHti6sCs6PJ8Gbx1xUnJDyCryEnv7/s400/green+beans+from+roaster.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218911347604026130" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFpefIigZBFiW2RPwDvVKvPAjjlEiMKGJzwM3o-d10JAGs_HbNWfza9jBbTnjzyGfEyx34cZ-PehagdJNTjQwDsnj309w7tTRjBtKkVqtHHdU3Fp-lQ4DOeXNkkggweVzn-QtGh2DER-QJ/s1600-h/leticia+dumping+beans.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFpefIigZBFiW2RPwDvVKvPAjjlEiMKGJzwM3o-d10JAGs_HbNWfza9jBbTnjzyGfEyx34cZ-PehagdJNTjQwDsnj309w7tTRjBtKkVqtHHdU3Fp-lQ4DOeXNkkggweVzn-QtGh2DER-QJ/s400/leticia+dumping+beans.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218911348962625570" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu2wSQruWAOoOBMDHp7c0zxjdVrH3OmNIpWZtd0OyUQlYRJwS-sMuAan8ntCj7pzWGsxtIgkB2PvdfsAcdQwk8fke-ksB3V6Ye1yYqnbjVk0zLkW3sfKH_j7nmas0CRcTyiScViOrBvah8/s1600-h/pan+of+roasted+beans.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu2wSQruWAOoOBMDHp7c0zxjdVrH3OmNIpWZtd0OyUQlYRJwS-sMuAan8ntCj7pzWGsxtIgkB2PvdfsAcdQwk8fke-ksB3V6Ye1yYqnbjVk0zLkW3sfKH_j7nmas0CRcTyiScViOrBvah8/s400/pan+of+roasted+beans.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218910669360394354" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN_Ua4_FZ1rKWrWlpnALTORU_LHKPG_32TFegSofUMIKW3ELPgDbjtOpBTCYOi02bMQ4vAVLxlqUb2PUkLOWbVT5E_WoHbv7HEARIOS3Z_IBXY-0Fkz3ZhA3WGQG_c77IAKjEb6Ua-z8u3/s1600-h/fresh+ground+coffee.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN_Ua4_FZ1rKWrWlpnALTORU_LHKPG_32TFegSofUMIKW3ELPgDbjtOpBTCYOi02bMQ4vAVLxlqUb2PUkLOWbVT5E_WoHbv7HEARIOS3Z_IBXY-0Fkz3ZhA3WGQG_c77IAKjEb6Ua-z8u3/s400/fresh+ground+coffee.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218910670170128450" border="0" /></a>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-39143518397444820602008-06-30T10:52:00.006-07:002008-10-13T22:12:39.474-07:0011th hour deals<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Later that night there were un-chilled Mutzigs, Rwanda’s answer to Amstel, for Aleco, Bosco and I; Fanta orange soda in slim glass bottles for Casper the driver and Alphonse. We waited into the 11 o’clock hour for our platters of goat kebabs (politely called <span style="font-style: italic;">brochettes</span>) and <span style="font-style: italic;">pommes frites</span>, sprinkled with <span style="font-style: italic;">pilipili</span> sauce, made from a searing cousin of the habanero pepper. The best goat brochettes in Rwanda, Aleco had promised me as we bounced around in the jeep on the way back to the village of Cyangugu, stopping three times for policemen with rifles to look us over. I wasn’t really in any position to judge the best goat brochettes in Rwanda; so long as I could chew and swallow a piece in under three minutes, I’d take his word.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Shivering against the chill in the air, I count exactly 16 lights through the barbed wire fence past our concrete dining pavilion. They flicker faintly in the distance, the 16 lights, from the Congo side of Lake Kivu where dense forest obscures rebels and spies. Here on this side, the Rwandan side, there is no forest left to hide in. Nearly all of the land that once provided habitat for thousands of mountain gorillas, save for a few tracts of thin tree groves and the protected national forests, has been tilled under the plow. Or, more likely, felled with a hand hoe and a few ma</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >chetes. Whatever might be done by machine in this country can be completed more cheaply by a person; few rural households can afford to employ animals to pull a plow. The Virunga National Park housing the Rwandan mountain gorillas protects about 400 individuals or so, which the government charges foreigners $500 per hour of close-up photo-op. Few Rwandese ever make the trek to see gorillas.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >While I count lights and tug my thin shirtsleeves over my hands, Aleco and Alphonse make a deal. Alphonse agrees to re-open the Kanzu washing station having closed it in the first place, I now understand, because a nearby competitor offered the farmers $1.80 per kilo for their cherry, more than Alphonse could afford to dole out. There is constant competition among washing stations in this coffee business, where there are rarely a</span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOTV7Ry3uV4sepaVn6pPAT62s_P6c__hDZuISFxU0U15XiRYt8mcYBP65PtsQZoYBCAF3oYRB3zKXojlXMkeOpL07tPB1BH3lF0uwaeaoTdi1IgxXetdBxOP28zRbJFnVdVN0GVHcQCuXi/s1600-h/coffee+bike.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOTV7Ry3uV4sepaVn6pPAT62s_P6c__hDZuISFxU0U15XiRYt8mcYBP65PtsQZoYBCAF3oYRB3zKXojlXMkeOpL07tPB1BH3lF0uwaeaoTdi1IgxXetdBxOP28zRbJFnVdVN0GVHcQCuXi/s200/coffee+bike.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218797650516526610" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >ny guarantees made to anyone for anything. The average Joe farmer around here owns maybe 100 coffee plants on less than an acre of land and is free to choose among washing stations so long as they can reach it within 12 hours on foot. The Bikes to Rwanda project, sponsored by a handful of small American coffee importers, has supplied hundreds of bicycles to coffee farmers through a loan program so they might have a chance at reaching a washing station in fewer hours. And also have more options of whom to sell to, for a better price.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Around 40% of the 100-plus washing stations in Rwanda are owned by cooperatives, the rest privately owned by men like Alphonse. Cooperatives have gained ubiquity in the coffee business, no less so in Rwanda because they are promoted by the government under the theme of reconciliation. There’s a pervading belief among coffee consuming countries as well that cooperatives promote fairness and equality at the production level. We in the States like to associate cooperatives (when we consider the production end of the coffee chain at all, though Fair Trade has brought much attention to that) with perhaps the same ideals embodied by an organic farming cooperative high in the mountains above Santa Cruz where children are raised barefoot on mulberry puree by multiple sets of parents. In other words, coffee farming cooperative means egalitarian agrarian commune. <span style="font-style: italic;">Au contraire</span>, latte-sipper, <span style="font-style: italic;">au contraire</span>. Coffee cooperatives in most of East Africa, particularly in Kenya and Ethiopia, can be notoriously corrupt entities run by community elders who are appointed for political reasons rather than for their financial know-how. In communities that have never before had to handle hard currency, the tens of thousands of dollars that flows into the hands of the co-op at the end of harvest season is rarely managed well enough to last throughout the year. So when hundreds of farmers turn up at the beginning of the following harvest season expecting immediate cash payments for their cherry, in-the-red co-ops sometimes can’t pay them. But farmers are free to sell elsewhere, and many in Rwanda are now looking to the privately-owned washing stations for financial security (the Ministry of Defense, by the way, has invested in dozens of these private washing stations for reasons I haven’t yet figured out). The co-ops in Rwanda haven’t really been in existence long enough to be beguiled by serious corruption but most of them have yet to turn a profit and are, under the radar, weighed down by poor business management.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >I also learn from Aleco that night that most coffee buyers prefer to work with the privately-owned washing stations because deals can be made quick and dirty, like over lager and charred goat kebabs. While the manager of a co-op would need to take the buyer’s offer back to the co-op board for negotiations with a few dozen people, someone like Alphonse can agree to the price right then and there. To an international coffee buyer visiting a producing country for only a few days at a time, consider co-ops a drop of spoiled milk in the cup.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >But the reality of the middlemen in the coffee business is that few companies have buyers such as Aleco employed at all, whose mission it is to search for the best coffee in the world and then offer high relative prices when they find it. As Aleco said on behalf of Stumptown Coffee Roasters, they aren’t looking for the second best coffee or coffee that would tie for the best. They want the best, and because they purchase it in single lots (usually a single day’s production from a solitary washing station) they can afford to offer over 100% more than the current market price--currently hovering around $1.40 per pound--and include a contractual premium within that which will be paid to the farmer directly. The few coffee companies who are taking this approach to coffee buying have bundled coffee quality, price transparency, and the economic and ecological practices of coffee farmers intrinsically in a purchasing process they are calling Direct Trade. Unlike Fair Trade, there is no third party certification involved but there is money guaranteed to the farmer, beyond what they would typically get for their cherry. Through Fair Trade certification, while there is a stable price floor for cherry, the dollars are only traced to the co-op level, which as I’ve already described, certainly doesn’t indicate anything about financial guarantees for the farmers. Farmers might be taking home 30 cents at most per pound, depending on the region, even if they are certified Fair Trade. Aleco told me he believes that while Direct Trade aims for complete price transparency among all players in the coffee supply chain, from the farmer to the washing station, exporter, importer and roaster, it also asks the consumer to have some faith at the end of the chain. In this case, Stumptown’s customers have to trust that the Direct Trade process is actually doing all of this. Depending on what kind of coffee drinker you are, Direct Trade is either putting a <span>de rigueur</span> farmer’s market face on a food commodity chain that stretches longer than the reach of mobile phone service in some producing countries… or it’s just another gimmick encouraging boutique shoppers to pay $20 per pound for a proclaimed origin coffee that may or may not taste better than Dunkin’ Donuts decaf. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >In the morning, we’ll taste. But now, I’m still gnawing at my <span style="font-style: italic;">brochette</span> though everyone else has licked their kebab sticks clean. Attempting to eat around the pieces of liver and intestine, soft fat and gristly fat, I give up and distract myself from the goat by eating as many <span style="font-style: italic;">pommes frites</span> dipped in <span style="font-style: italic;">pilipili</span> as I can before the heat makes it painful to eat anymore. Aleco begins propositioning Alphonse. He offers a price for the Kanzu washing station-sourced green coffee beans, the best, he still thinks. Aleco hasn’t even tasted Kanzu yet this year. But after seeing the potential at the Muasa washing station (same state of the art practices as at Kanzu), and with the memory of luscious butter mouth-feel lingering from last year, he takes a chance and offers Alphonse some money. One price is offered, roughly double that of the commodity market price plus a hefty premium to each farmer, if Kanzu scores between 86 and 90 during cupping; another price, almost 150% above market price plus double the premium to the farmer, if it scores above 90. And this is just the first year, with annual opportunity for quality improvement, and more money. “Tell him this is the first year, we’re starting a relationship,” Aleco says urgently.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Bosco takes five minutes to translate all of this into Kinyarwanda. Alphonse pulls a puffy, pointed black hood over his head and crosses his arms. He looks inflated. Aleco is impatient for another round of Mutzig. Then Bosco comes around with some English: “He ask if it’s 86 to 89 score if you give him same price as 90 score.”<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Without hesitation Aleco responds “No. Tell him no one has ever paid him this price before. It’s the first year. We’re starting a relationship, it’s going to make the farmers stronger and they will want to work with him. Tell him that.” He’s obviously practiced this negotiation with first time Direct Trade sellers before. I down half a foamy glass of lager, trying to erase the scorching sensation on my tongue. It’s almost midnight. Aleco wiggles his thumbs back and forth, more Kinyarwanda, and Alphonse leans back in his plastic chair. Then Bosco switches languages.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >“Yes, I explain it’s not a big job to him and he agrees to the price for the two. He’s able to work with you. He say he ship the first coffee in August.” Aleco turns and offers his hand to Alphonse for a vigorous hand shake and slap on the back. </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" ><br />“Bosco, tell him we are looking forward to working with him, and that the premium to the farmers will be on the contract. It’s going to make him stronger, the farmers will bring better and more cherry. And this is just the first year.”<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >“He want to know also if you find buyer for other cherry,” Bosco adds.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >“Look, my job is to differentiate the best quality and pay them a good price for it. It’s not my job to find him another coffee buyer. Tell him I can try, but that’s not my job.” Alphonse throws a toothless grin in my direction. I’ve been staring at him.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >“They will not sell the good coffees to someone else,” Bosco says. “It’s for you.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" > </span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-30272346987285646722008-06-28T04:10:00.010-07:002008-10-13T22:12:13.954-07:00ripe cherry is the only solution<div style="text-align: left; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> “You come… to Cyangugu?” Jambosco Safari asked me with a wide, glinting grin.<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “Come with you? I mean, if it’s not an imposition… or an inconvenience… I’d</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> like to go to Cyangugu. But do you mind if I run to the restroom first?” I tossed my paper napkin onto crusts of a cheese and pineapple <span style="font-style: italic;">‘</span><span style="font-style: italic;">croque madam</span>e' lunch and looked at Aleco, the international coffee buyer for Stumptown Coffee</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Roasters. He tilted his head d</span><span style="font-size:100%;">own and raised his eyebrows only slightly. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “You can come,” he said, in a way that managed to be both an answer and a question. I have no idea where Cyangugu is.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> They give me the back middle seat of the pick-up truck, between Aleco and Pascal, an agronomist with the SPREAD project. Casper, the driver, speaks only Kinyarwanda and has all of the truck mirrors arranged a</span><span style="font-size:100%;">t angles that can’t possibly be useful. With only a thick wad of Rwandan francs, a camera and some</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> spearmint gum in t</span><span style="font-size:100%;">he backpack clutched on my lap, I ask how long it takes to get to Cyangugu (pronounced Chan-gu-gu). We’re leaving from Butare, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">the <span style="font-style: italic;">de facto</span> agricultural capital of Rwanda and home of a major coffee cupping (tasting) laboratory. I’ve gotten a ride here from Kigali this morning and just happened upon Aleco, a coffee nomad based in Portland, Oregon, in the lab. The <span style="font-style: italic;">eau du Rwanda</span>, body odor, is wafting around the back seat; wind from the open windows makes it hard to hear my own voice. Jambosco, Bosco for short, turns around from the front and shouts “Three hours. We go over Nyungwe Forest, near to almost Congo.” H</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e flashes the grin again.<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “Awesome,” I say, and tell Bosco there is a chocolate syrup named after him in the States. We won’t be back to Butare tonight.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"> Casper acc</span><span style="font-size:100%;">elerates to 70 miles an hour as he swerves around children and bicycles strewn along the only paved road between Butare, in the Southern Province and the Western Province, where the Cyangugu region is. Considered by those who live in Kigali as the backwater of Rwanda, Cyangugu is sandwiched between Nyungwe National Forest, inhabited only by police and primates, Lake Kivu, and the Congo border (The Democratic Republic of Congo, that is; Congo as pla</span><span style="font-size:100%;">in-named is its neighbor to the west). Cyangug</span><span style="font-size:100%;">u is also, I learn from Aleco, where Congolese come to purchase food </span><span style="font-size:100%;">by the truck-load because there is none across the border; where Lake Kivu could erupt in a methane gas-embedded natural bomb; where Ex-Rwandan rebels could attack from their hiding posts in the forest just across the lake; where ash could bury the villages if the major volcano across the border erupts, as it did in 2003.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Depending on whom you talk to, any of these random acts of violence could happen today, maybe tomorrow.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Cyangugu is also home to the coffee washing station that produced, according to Aleco, the best coffee he tasted in 2007 in t</span><span style="font-size:100%;">he entire world. “A high-altitude, luscious butter and vanilla, smoo</span><span style="font-size:100%;">th beautiful </span><span style="font-size:100%;">coffee,” he says softly about Kanzu, named after the washing station where 500 farmers deposit coffee cherry to be floated, washed, depulped, and dried before emerging as green coffee beans, also called parchment, and ready for roasting. Aleco tells me that he’s put all of his eggs in this Kanzu basket this year. He means it’s the only R</span><span style="font-size:100%;">wandan coffee he’s really determined to purchase on behalf of Stumptown, the other possibilities for purchase will satisfy him only partially. Today, he wants to visit the Kanzu washing station along with on</span><span style="font-size:100%;">e other.<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “I don’t know if we visit both,” Pascal offers gently to A</span><span style="font-size:100%;">leco from my other side. “Kanzu is far…”<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “No, Pascal, you know what’s far? Portland. Portland is far.”<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “Who was buying Kanzu before this year?” I ask, trying to keep my eyes facing forward as we’re jerked around curves and</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> begin the long climb up to 8,000 f</span><span style="font-size:100%;">eet in the forest. I’m motion-sickness prone.<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “No one,” he replies. “Well, someone was buying it but it </span><span style="font-size:100%;">was just getting mixed into the blends” of low-grade commodity coff</span><span style="font-size:100%;">ee and sold anonymously on the global market. “So no one was tasting it,” Aleco says with plenty of disbelief and a hint of smugness.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> It’s dusk when we reach the home of Alphonse, the owner of the Kanzu washing station. The village of Cyangugu is a few dirt roads lined with low crooked wood shacks, piles of bananas on windowsills, and hordes of children shrieking and trying to touch our truck when they see Aleco’s white face in the window. They don’t get</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> many <span style="font-style: italic;">muzungu</span> tourists. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> After some hand-shaking of introductions and questions as to whether I’m Aleco’s fiancé that last too long, Bosco and I get in the back of Alphonse’s jeep. Aleco’s in the front and immediately asks how the Kanzu cherry harvest is going. Alphonse speaks in Kiny</span><span style="font-size:100%;">arwanda for a minute or two and then Bo</span><span style="font-size:100%;">sco translates. “He say Kanzu closed. Kanzu is closed. Kanzu closed last week.”<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “What do you mean Kanzu closed. Why? Ask him why.”<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “He say because price too high, farmers sell to other washing station.” I don’t understand any of the premise behin</span><span style="font-size:100%;">d thi</span><span style="font-size:100%;">s conversation, though Aleco seems to get it.<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “Well tell him we’re going to offer him a very good price.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> If it samples well again this year, we’ll have a very good price for him. He’s never heard a price like this before.”<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Lake Kivu shines opaquely in the distance as we wind our way through cultivated hills, the forested mountains of Congo as a backdrop behind the lake. It’s almost completely black outside now, and the road has transitioned from hard-packed dirt to rugged, rocky trail. Women carry baskets on their heads from trail to footpath leading into groves of trees, and presumably, homes. We’re at least an hour from Alphonse’s house. My GPS unit </span><span style="font-size:100%;">reads 2°S, 29°E, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">5,328 feet. I have no idea where we are, or where we’re going. The dialogue in Kinyarwanda, English and a bit of French is too hard to hear over the grumbli</span><span style="font-size:100%;">ng of the je</span><span style="font-size:100%;">ep, and I concentrate on preventing my head from hitting the ceiling.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Twenty minutes later, the jeep comes to an abrupt stop on a hill. Bosco says, leaning a little too close in, “We walk now.” But where are we?<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “We’re at Muasa washing station. Alphonse owns it,” says Aleco as we push our way through an accumulating crowd, most shorter t</span><span style="font-size:100%;">han me. Down a small hill and then up a big one, two men holding large white bags on their heads jog past us. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “Cherry!” yells Bosco. Cherry! everyone echoes. The harvested coffee cherry must make it to the washing station within hours or the quality starts to decline; most farmers lug their harvests a few miles to a washing station once or twice a week during the</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> season.<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Someone offers me a flashlight, though it hardly illuminates the deep groves in the trail. This is not a strolling path. “Hey Aleco, how do they</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUbqsV5wx9Phvytw1XVlTvcAe2URKdkRLJKhXAypwpGHvZqho_cd5PSPh007CBliqVUKlX8_hTQVj8-DdFsAX7Ynb4OTFaA4Hm8H3lk-tt4nq_mZqbA6XGL6yhQJHeoAYtKFwpGoe1IW7L/s1600-h/red+cherry.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUbqsV5wx9Phvytw1XVlTvcAe2URKdkRLJKhXAypwpGHvZqho_cd5PSPh007CBliqVUKlX8_hTQVj8-DdFsAX7Ynb4OTFaA4Hm8H3lk-tt4nq_mZqbA6XGL6yhQJHeoAYtKFwpGoe1IW7L/s320/red+cherry.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216897041582493442" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;"> get the coffee beans out of here?” I ask, imagining a jeep bouncing down the trail with pi</span><span style="font-size:100%;">les of parchment spilling out the sides. Or perhaps wheelbarrows.<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “Um… good question,” he responds as we slow to navigate a stream of foul-smelling muddiness. I’m not keeping up with the men ahead, and I’m not sure I want</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> to. There’s a log in front now, longer than me an</span><span style="font-size:100%;">d no wider than eight inches, the only way to the other side of the ravine. I pretend I’m in a video game. It’s the only thing that makes me relax.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Aleco takes the tiny steps built in</span><span style="font-size:100%;">to a hill two at a time, bounding towards the washing station at the top. There is no ligh</span><span style="font-size:100%;">t at the end to illuminate the infrastructure, or the people, mostly men, who have gathered in anticipation of Aleco’s arrival. The generator has gone out, but cherry sorting of the day’s harvest is</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> still underway.<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> I’m standing next to Aleco peering into a pool of bright red, cerise. He picks up a handful and lets them slip through his fingers. “This is no good,” he says. “No good.”<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “What do you mean,” I ask quietly, as if anyone around us might comprehend English and get offended.<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “It’s not fully ripe. There’s green cherry in here, and a </span><span style="font-size:100%;">lot of the red is under-ripe.”</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> I step out of the way and pull out my camera as Aleco does a quick inspection of the rest of the mounds of cherry; boys in sweaty tank tops stand by looking anxious. The crowd migrates to the floating tanks, where the lighter-density green cherry drifts</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> to the top of the pools and is jettisoned out of the mix. From there, they float down </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjLv6UO4erIwdk2hr7pTRWSbWOb1m479Q3SpbGaJ9xdOB0ojA_5LoxytPHxN6SWcatSpBPUFjuB0JHvjFpjVcqrQYy_4JhO_CT6Ym2XwHx7D4YsXSRKvxpoHuX80oOic86rWSQbctmNgr9/s1600-h/floating+tank.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjLv6UO4erIwdk2hr7pTRWSbWOb1m479Q3SpbGaJ9xdOB0ojA_5LoxytPHxN6SWcatSpBPUFjuB0JHvjFpjVcqrQYy_4JhO_CT6Ym2XwHx7D4YsXSRKvxpoHuX80oOic86rWSQbctmNgr9/s200/floating+tank.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216901312068746898" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;">a gutter into a de-pulping machine, hand-cranked, that squeezes the outer now-soggy shell off of the two beans inside. Those beans float down another gutter, into buckets that are dumped on thatched-roof covered drying racks.<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Aleco is smiling now and he points to the thatched roof. “This is state of the art, Kanzu has the same roofs. It encourages air flow for drying, we need air flow. And it protects the beans from sun damage.” Thatched roofing is state of the art? How long do the beans sit out here? Some Kinyarwanda is passed back and forth among the crowd.<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> “Up to twenty days,” Aleco repeats Bosco. But how to the b</span><span style="font-size:100%;">eans get out of here? There used to be a road, but it was washed ou</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrzJfrPTkkivMYZMFY-T90zNkOul_tbywfdgGaWo2Y28Jr8H2OcO9pSgKRCeqDVNwXtjCEBuywXEdc3F-5fZVVZIzaFPmyngBY0ADtQIFF4AIGo3WT_IfKwjMPdlZGgHBJGFuIWLUAiw14/s1600-h/green+beans.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrzJfrPTkkivMYZMFY-T90zNkOul_tbywfdgGaWo2Y28Jr8H2OcO9pSgKRCeqDVNwXtjCEBuywXEdc3F-5fZVVZIzaFPmyngBY0ADtQIFF4AIGo3WT_IfKwjMPdlZGgHBJGFuIWLUAiw14/s200/green+beans.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216901317358970210" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;">t during this year’s rainy season. How are we getting out of here?<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Back by the sorting racks Aleco thanks the crowd and tells</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Alphonse, through Bosco, that he hopes to be back on his next trip. Someone passes us a large gridded notebook</span><span style="font-size:100%;">, the guestbook. Empty, save for two French-sounding names. Aleco prints his, next to Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Portland, Oregon. “Focus on ripe cherry is the only solution,” he adds in block letters, signs under it, and snaps the book shut. I slip a handful of green coffee beans in my pocket and take the steps down, one at a time.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> <br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span></div>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-34576819354265477452008-06-27T09:53:00.004-07:002008-10-13T22:11:47.312-07:00children always wave back<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;">One of the first things anyone notices upon arrival in Rwanda is that there are people everywhere in this speck of a country with the highest population density on the continent. Imagine your pedestrian-city street plopped down in the countryside. On foot, on bicycle, carrying baskets on their heads, holding hands, pushing a toy wheel with a stick: every road (no matter the speed limit or distance from a village center) is lined with Rwandese. It's much more fun to be a pedestrian along side them than to be up on four wheels, particularly so because the little people are always happy to see you. <span style="font-style: italic;">Muzungu</span>, they yell, <span style="font-style: italic;">muuuuzungu!</span> It means white person, and while adults often greet your wave with a stare, the children always wave back.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br />Here, a small selection of recent portraits.<br /><br /></div>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-34059859507275986132008-06-27T08:39:00.017-07:002008-10-13T22:11:29.920-07:00children always wave back: photographs<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9PAKFc1UTAL4sC-NbRLoZN0B7ITEji6xuhH7N1QRmmTJTNv-H2BGemIr1YdlJPNTbmX-fauOgrQg1fji_cF0kaCDhiiSCNoVMptl4o32tTF5UVYfRAkCC97uJ050eQCPsRABjJc_GOJMk/s1600-h/DSC_1120.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9PAKFc1UTAL4sC-NbRLoZN0B7ITEji6xuhH7N1QRmmTJTNv-H2BGemIr1YdlJPNTbmX-fauOgrQg1fji_cF0kaCDhiiSCNoVMptl4o32tTF5UVYfRAkCC97uJ050eQCPsRABjJc_GOJMk/s400/DSC_1120.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216608766408821250" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim4bZWEMCEhPJc0J8Wo3ZWSp8JKuBxkoru2Irr1xhEFAEUq6DjIgeAZFnaXSwJvr50ttp40l0CueUCP9Uy_XKk4QNmKAniSIxexiK6p9Y2uBRY4GRUvNELAghyphenhyphenQ52D1kP9bSvXz3yMdMlz/s1600-h/DSC_0425.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim4bZWEMCEhPJc0J8Wo3ZWSp8JKuBxkoru2Irr1xhEFAEUq6DjIgeAZFnaXSwJvr50ttp40l0CueUCP9Uy_XKk4QNmKAniSIxexiK6p9Y2uBRY4GRUvNELAghyphenhyphenQ52D1kP9bSvXz3yMdMlz/s400/DSC_0425.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216604342432206322" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb93lERE40MFAW7jSVHhIkHCduxIzZwGqO6KfyI0m10fI0pR8r5FrmLUlYCTbwlsJLEVWTBGX8ihux-IfDxRirCcL6Xc5Ip4TpZCFJMf_4t6OA27bCaEnXekAE7igs-JP83EfPW7dET1D2/s1600-h/DSC_0249.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb93lERE40MFAW7jSVHhIkHCduxIzZwGqO6KfyI0m10fI0pR8r5FrmLUlYCTbwlsJLEVWTBGX8ihux-IfDxRirCcL6Xc5Ip4TpZCFJMf_4t6OA27bCaEnXekAE7igs-JP83EfPW7dET1D2/s400/DSC_0249.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216604371366922306" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG2Do-tf2DlFI7t5ALjD4dWm2SvWrvaW2ZG36JaeP5n5Ow5oA5LIu-ellvPQcQf9DDox2yHeOweiVsBGOfOhg24K9PAEbAe8Qa8KFZ1HXSnkah3MyAiwLXRr8eISg3rwk3_RFuG1lgo4Fr/s1600-h/DSC_1111.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG2Do-tf2DlFI7t5ALjD4dWm2SvWrvaW2ZG36JaeP5n5Ow5oA5LIu-ellvPQcQf9DDox2yHeOweiVsBGOfOhg24K9PAEbAe8Qa8KFZ1HXSnkah3MyAiwLXRr8eISg3rwk3_RFuG1lgo4Fr/s400/DSC_1111.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216604391720744882" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOVW_aEpuZTY9Sz1n6eMGytNQPlfaleURlnsTsU6wzcxdLPg7ms9tgzafs_J9CrCWM0WMI8gTw-qT-uxG2RpvqDYKzwN6YnHaw24vQN_j69RgwULnx93MiCpW9xlvbasvDr9vGE-TlIkDW/s1600-h/DSC_0204.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; 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float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIp6zImnROXqVeKcBgheds2_2RrfriYuMd9xqEKv71GY5eEfhQPuQSxo8HxgD55EbFDE7PILBZesll8QDsImxDtFwGfowZtdnno1Jq_ZvbWvGCD7s9U7lVQ8uAPIk2ECMHKmwWVi4ipt-j/s400/DSC_0180.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216600971467785426" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo1jBKdRaaWcvalExp0uhrvR4uxurA_vJma5Mlu8nbgB9mRgZNtDzscT7-7RnyR8RTFRbClWYjUpywShQeIIGoQiLuiVQc49lU-yDjtO0UeRUMsQL83rJp9DY6mZ5XKqZq3jq6270m7u2-/s1600-h/DSC_0185.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo1jBKdRaaWcvalExp0uhrvR4uxurA_vJma5Mlu8nbgB9mRgZNtDzscT7-7RnyR8RTFRbClWYjUpywShQeIIGoQiLuiVQc49lU-yDjtO0UeRUMsQL83rJp9DY6mZ5XKqZq3jq6270m7u2-/s400/DSC_0185.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216600036554799730" border="0" /></a></div><span style="font-family:courier new;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-68736751670431337012008-06-22T07:54:00.011-07:002008-10-13T22:11:10.587-07:00the ecology of dollars<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >In July of 1864, Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his six-cent poll tax, an act of resistance against the war the United States had provoked with Mexico under the conceit of ‘manifest destiny.’ Handcuffed by the Middlesex County police one thick afternoon, he spent all of a night in jail only to be bailed out the next morning by his sister the following morning, who greeted her surely starving brother with steaming hot chocolate. The productivity and pacifism of Thoreau’s act has been pondered by scholars and activists over the years, as Paul Hawken explains in his most recent book <span style="font-style: italic;">Blessed Unrest</span>. In whatever ways Thoreau's refusal to pay made ripples, the basic and simple realization he had that July was this: everything is interconnected. In the same way that his teacher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, had laid out principles of ecology and interconnectedness within the natural world, Thoreau took the meaning of ecology to heart and saw it within the social world as well. His gesture, radical in its intention for the time, pointed out that the financing of an unjust war and exploitation of humans in a land far south of Massachusetts was somehow supported by his tax cents. Thoreau’s doctrine on social interconnectedness lives on in <span style="font-style: italic;">Civil Disobedience</span>, and also in the power of our dollars. Though the power of the dollar, even one dollar, may not be revelatory to us today, we still need the Thoreaus of the world to help us understand exactly where our money is going.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Fifty percent of Rwanda’s $1.2 billion national budget is coming from international aid money this year, donated by NGOs or other governments directly, and that’s just the aid money channeled through Rwanda's government. Large-scale internationally-based projects such as InterHealth, the Elizabeth Glasser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the Clinton Foundation are all providing health-based services for hundreds of thousands of Rwandese in need of the basics that we generally take for granted. Organizations such as these spend billions each year creating a current that hopes to raise all boats, so to speak, and I have no doubt that they act as a crucial mechanism for distributing money and services to millions (billions, even) around the world living in poverty. But on a micro level the connections between, say, a donor to a major charitable foundation and the recipient of an aid project become a bit muddled. Most often, proof that the money was well-spent turns up in the form of statistics published in annual reports and proof that the money was donated at all shows up as a charitable tax deduction on the donor’s tax return. But the ease of this transaction comes with other costs. These dollars will never have a face, of the individuals benefiting from donation, nor will they be siphoned into projects that aren't, among other things, sexy.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Aveh Umurerwa</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >, loosely translated as a Center for Handicapped Children, is one small project that remains unaffiliated and unfunded. Located in Bugasera District of the Eastern Province of Rwanda, ten minutes down a newly paved road from a Catholic Church in which over 10,000 women and children were murdered in a single day in April of 1994, this center houses 15 young people who have been cast out of their families and communities because of mental or physical disabilities. It began with the initiative of one woman, Cecile, who brought a few children to live in this two-room hut next to her small pharmacy and enlisted a few community adults to play with the children, h</span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmaxXgfBO9dzyIIscXpslg81j8_ua3BTeXCneteAZVew00G74yTxLJj02HQoy7ZHUs5KKbwq-BZbi0kSYi4SXFHp4YAz9qzMu6ZYDoeM4cUNez-CVs9Xd7gJfYBbgmdV3_P7yRtUtRJYXr/s1600-h/aveh+two.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmaxXgfBO9dzyIIscXpslg81j8_ua3BTeXCneteAZVew00G74yTxLJj02HQoy7ZHUs5KKbwq-BZbi0kSYi4SXFHp4YAz9qzMu6ZYDoeM4cUNez-CVs9Xd7gJfYBbgmdV3_P7yRtUtRJYXr/s320/aveh+two.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214753170521731090" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >elp them brush their teeth, and see that they receive at least one meal a day. While all of the children at </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Aveh Umurerwa</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >benefit tremendously from this much needed dose of love, each is also in need of medical care that the center simply doesn’t have the money or know-how to provide. I visited here last Friday, with Katie and an Orthodox Jewish doctor from Long Island named Rick, who has practiced medicine in Ethiopia for over 20 years. In a matter of minutes, Rick was able to diagnose the syndrome (multiple, in some cases) and prescribe a typical course of treatment. For two four-year olds strapped into strollers, both might have a chance of walking if they practiced an hour or two of physical therapy each day. For another with a spinal deformity, a relatively simple surgery would prevent further degeneration. The children with hearing disabilities could lead semi-normal lives if they were taught alternative communication skills.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >But talk of such specialized medical care probably dissolved as soon as we drove away. A few families have given $5 or $6 a month to help pay for their child to live here, but Cecile’s profits from her pharmacy next door hardly make up the remainder of the operating costs. With a few additional dollars a day, each child might eat three meals instead of two. With an extra hundred dollars or so, they might purchase some chickens and a handful of rabbits to breed and sell, a small farm that could in turn generate revenue over the long-term. With $10,000 they would build a new structure with space for each child to have a bed, maybe even raising overall occupancy. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Aveh Umurerwa</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" > has received donations of toys, clothes, and strollers but what they really need is the cash for daily ex</span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl14p2nzUdSsQj8AmepQuR04onfJlOLQc766mhZm_OimqIPXJU6LlawQAfoVxK6oNF2qqxfwKbKjcyvFV_DqJ7F_AivzYaBpAXc0el62vHWcF4c7flW5j2kR4YFj_vW2S__OLjpaZ_V2Mm/s1600-h/aveh+one.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl14p2nzUdSsQj8AmepQuR04onfJlOLQc766mhZm_OimqIPXJU6LlawQAfoVxK6oNF2qqxfwKbKjcyvFV_DqJ7F_AivzYaBpAXc0el62vHWcF4c7flW5j2kR4YFj_vW2S__OLjpaZ_V2Mm/s320/aveh+one.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214752179820311730" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >penses. And they need a face.<br /><br />It isn't purely by chance that Katie has helped create a small pool of donors for this project that otherwise would be flying completely under the radar of the international aid community. <span style="font-style: italic;">Aveh Umurerwa</span> isn't sustainable in the way that development organizations like to talk about sustainability: few if any of the children raised here will turn out to be productive members of society, hence any money given to them doesn't really benefit Rwanda as a whole, or even their local community. It just helps keep them nourished, protected and loved, and the significance of those simple yet tedious acts didn't go unnoticed to Katie and and a few colleagues who have seen many other projects where children are neglected or opportunities to help children dealt a similar life hand have been squandered. But donating cash to <span style="font-style: italic;">Aveh Umurerwa</span> isn't convenient (checks have been made out to Katie, who delivers the money in person, and gifts are not tax-deductible), it isn't going towards the most glamorous of charities, and perhaps most frustrating of all, it is only helping 15 children. But despite all of this, they are slowly gaining a face. Because Katie knows exactly where the money is going, trusts that it will continue to be utilized appropriately, and has been able to share the story of the project with friends and family at home in the US a few thousand dollars have already been donated for daily costs. Perhaps a few thousand more will be given later this summer, through a wedding registry set up by Katie's boyfriend Dave's sister and her fiancé.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Projects like </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Aveh Umurerwa</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" > will probably never be taken under the wing of large international NGOs and too rarely will they receive as much funding as they truly need. But giving children, such as the ones I've photographed above, the chance for a slightly better life isn't impossible, even if it doesn't always make sense to do so. It requires on-the-ground knowledge, the benevolence of donors to give without personal benefit, and intention to give dollars a face, to recognize where they're ending up. However small the group of people, the dollar amount, or the locality, mechanisms can be created globally to make this happen. </span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-49113082252394008672008-06-19T10:25:00.002-07:002008-10-13T22:09:50.440-07:00bougainvillea grows through barbed wire<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >My good friends Katie and Dave live on what I thought was the Upper East Side of Kigali. The topography is more like that of San Francisco, though with the German Embassy around the corner, President Kegame’s house a few blocks away, and the upscale Hotel des Mille Collines, formerly known as Hotel Rwanda, up a long hill and around the bend I quickly assumed this is Kigali living at its largest. They say the neighborhood was inhabited by the wealthiest class in Rwanda before the war but many of them have left for larger, newer homes on the outskirts of town; these older houses are now occupied primarily by NGOs and their employees. (Hotel Rwanda, by the way, is based on genocide-related events of 1994 at the Hotel des Mille Collines, but it was actually filmed in South Africa). A few of the surrounding roads remain unpaved but new construction abounds: I walked past more than one hotel project in the works, and a few vacant lots filled with laborers and their shovels. All houses in this neighborhood surround themselves with tin gates, brick walls, and the inevitable gatekeeper, more a relic of the messy past than reflective of a present need for tough security. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Across town, however, it might as well be the Hamptons. As Ian, Katie’s gregarious driver, steered me up a hill past ramshackle homes, nearly grazing a steady stream of water-toting pedestrians on the roadside, he gave me the first lesson in real estate: location, location, location. “Up at the top, where the views are very good, that’s where the rich people live now, the very rich.” Indeed, the crowds thinned as we neared the top and the McMansions appeared. This area has only been developed in the last two years, and the majority of the houses (gigantic by most American standards), still had scaffolding around them. It seemed almost implausible that, given the context, these structures were being built for a single family. They house the businessmen, the ex-patriot developers, the government ministers, the diplomats. As part of the government’s broad development plan, Vision 2020, they’ve also built neighborhoods nearby that might be considered more middle-class, smaller than the mansions but huge by Rwandan standards and still largely unoccupied. Another 2,500 of these houses are in the works for the next few years. Accompanying these houses are the stores and schools where they can buy a cell phone, do the grocery shopping, and drop their children at the playground all within one complex. This neighborhood didn’t strike me as luxurious, exactly; it seems the people building them are after size more than anything else. “It’s like a competition,” Ian said, “one man will buy a Hummer and the next will want a limousine and a bigger house.” Keeping up with the Joneses knows no boundaries. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >The horrific war of 1994, when over a million people were slaughtered across Rwanda in a matter of months, is rarely spoken of around here. This genocide is referenced in a similar way to which we speak of September 11th: a marker in time from which to look forward, the post-war or post-94 state of things, rather than a recalling of the events themselves. Considerations of ethnicity, a long-attributed cause of tension, hatred and war have been all but eliminated by the current government, headed by President Kegame. The ethnic distinctions of Hutu and Tutsi actually have socio-economic origins: when the Belgians took over Rwanda in a 1923 mandate from the League of Nations, they handed a Tutsi identity card to any household owning more than 10 cattle, and a Hutu card to those who owned fewer. The ensuing creation of race from class is obviously complex, and probably not my job to detail here. But these days its all about reconciliation, of country and culture, and any project that supports this receives fervent approval from the government. Rwanda very much feels like a country in transition; the faded signs for old restaurants and <span style="font-style: italic;">les bureaux de changes</span> are mostly in French, new billboards for cell phones and the first annual East African investment conference, in English. Rwanda had been the recipient of substantial foreign aid, of food and money, following the war but the government has begun turning down aid in favor of economic investment and various loan arrangements. It hasn’t exactly been an easy transition, as Katie remarked shrewdly, “It’s hard to give people something for free one year and expect them to pay for it the next.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >Coffee is emerging in many ways as a source of national pride and unity. Ian told me that President Kegame visited the United States and realized that it’s easier for Americans to find roasted Rwandan coffee than it is for Rwandans. Kegame returned from his trip and promptly arranged for two branches of the Bourbon Coffee Café to open in Kigali, each costing over $1 million (overseas investors composing the bulk of that). The one nearest Katie and Dave’s house would compete with the best of NYC’s coffee shops, a warm and glossy lounge space with serious mahogany furniture and a palatial view of the surrounding hills. Rwandans have set up shop with laptops and friends here this afternoon, though I’m the only one within sight drinking Maraba cooperative coffee from a French Press (a $2 steal!); most of the people around me are sipping blended, whipped cream-topped $6 things, or Coke. Coffee is always an acquired taste, isn’t it, and Rwanda has never been much of a coffee drinking country (they have long preferred tea) in spite of having some of the most prized Bourbon Arabica coffee plants in the world. But perhaps this is their moment to become acquainted with coffee, and develop a café culture to accompany it. Before Bourbon Coffee Café, there existed no obvious place in Kigali to ‘meet for coffee’ or hold court in a privately-owned public space. Parisian coffee consumption probably increased tremendously when it became fashionable for the literati to sit at Café de Flore <span style="font-style: italic;">with un petit café crème</span> and watch their fellow citizens with the eye of <span style="font-style: italic;">un flaneûr</span>. Unlike in Paris, however, this café can proudly dress its servers in American Apparel t-shirts embracing the slogan ‘naturally crop to cup’ while they watch the bourgeoisie settle in.</span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1241780497198722215.post-849525740242683502008-06-18T00:57:00.002-07:002008-10-13T22:10:24.990-07:00our first global president?<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:courier new;" >When arriving in Nairobi after the second red-eye in a row, the last thing you want to hear from a taut ticket agent is that the next flight you have a ticket for doesn't exist. Not delayed, not overbooked, but "doesn't exist." In fact, Flight 3118 on Kenya Airways has never existed in the history of the airline, despite the fact that I am holding a ticket printed with my name and Kenya Air #3118, Nairobi to Kigali, 9:15am. I've just missed the 8am flight to Kigali, #474, and the next flight to Rwanda is at 6pm, on a different airline entirely. If this sounds like the beginning to a long day in a second-rate airport, well, I wish I had a wittier answer but a long day is exactly what it was.<br /><br />I'll save you from reading the minute-by-minute account of how I spent the next 10 hours at Jomo Kenyatta airport, except to say that the time between 3pm and 4:30pm was allotted to wine shopping at the duty free stores. Three bottles of red Burgundy, one semillion, a South African merlot, and a large bottle of Pimm's later, my new friend and mediocre-wine salesman extraordinaire, Chebii, sent me to my gate with a shopping cart.<br /><br />Sometime after attempting to get into the British Airways executive platinum lounge and then retreating to the Java coffee shop for a shredded cheddar cheese sandwich, Obama arrived. The morning flights having already departed, and the next flights still half a day away, it seemed I was the only guest in the coffee shop, maybe even the whole airport. CNN kept me awake if only because Al Gore was giving his self-congratulatory endorsement of Barack, and was attracting quite the crowd. A group of five young Kenyans fixing the air conditioning put their tools aside to watch. Three other men from behind the counter emerged with an intent for television reserved only for soccer, catastrophe, and now everyone's favorite presidential candidate as well. All stood transfixed; whispers of "Ba-rack O-ba-ma," a few bobbing heads. At one point I turned and asked mundanely "How do you feel about Obama?" to anyone in general. From atop of his ladder, one slouching guy in a florescent yellow vest looked down at me and grinned broadly. "We are very proud of him," he said. "He is one of us!"<br /></span>jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06653773689842885676noreply@blogger.com0