Image Source
The Many Faces of Coffee
There are so many ways to have your coffee it is mind boggling. Coffee Houses spring up on every corner in major cities, and one major coffee chain has vowed to place its brand right across from its next major competitor in every market possible. -Do we really NEED another coffee shop directly across the street from an existing coffee shop? -Is your life not confusing enough already?
Return for Deposit Disposable Cups?
Image Source
Here in Canada they are considering making the paper take-out cups that they serve coffee, a ‘deposit’ cup! A proposed (and I believe, laughable) bill to make disposable coffee cups returnable for a nickel maybe, to reduce the garbage in landfills…(?) Or, to induce people to drink the beverage in-house instead of take-out. Drink it from a washable ceramic cup and save a tree. Follow the logic here… what do the coffee shops DO with the used paper coffee cup if it were to be returned? Re-use it? I hope not. Recycle it? We could hope! Send it to …a landfill? Hey wait. Don’t they do that anyway? Or am I missing some esoteric point here. Maybe paying a nickel per paper cup more will induce us to throw the cup into a recycling basket instead of onto the sidewalk? I thought this was called "littering" and that there was currently a City Ordinance against littering already in place, supposedly, carrying a fairly stiff penalty?
Okay, -maybe the universe has stopped expanding and visible matter has collided with that hereto-unseen ‘black matter’ out there and everything is beginning to acquiesce to finitety again. –The ‘Big Crunch’ (the anti-‘Big Bang’) is coming! While ‘deposit’ fees on soda & beer bottles and cans has been a good thing, back in the 1980s in New York State under the Governance of Mario Cuomo, we accepted a five-cent deposit fee on cans and (formerly non-deposit) bottles under the auspices of 'pollution reduction.' The new law was sometimes euphemistically referred to as the ‘Cuomo Garbage Law’, and redemption takes place in groceries stores. The same clerks that handle your produce, checkout & bag your purchases are the ones that handle those nasty sticky cans and bottles. Yuck! Let's hope they wash their hands after each time.
Cans and non-deposit bottles accounted for something like 2-3% of the waste found alongside the State’s highways, while soiled baby diapers and McDonald’s wrappers comprised 5-10% of the roadside waste. –Where is the deposit on those things I ask you? But I’m wired on coffee right now, so let’s stick to that.
Weasel Coffee?
These are quality beans, not ferretized Java beans.
Image Source
Wine of the Bean
The word for this drink, “coffee” began in 1598, having originated from the Turkish word “kahve.” This is believed to itself come from the Arabic “qahwa” or the longer “qahkwat-al-bun” which translated as “wine of the bean.”
Islam prohibits alcohol use as a beverage so ‘wine of the bean,’ what we call coffee, was an acceptable alternative.
Coffee. It had gotten me to thinking, -what ever happened to that weirdness of a few short years ago. That specialty coffee made from green coffee beans that passes through the intestinal tract of weasels? Or Civet cats? -Some kind of marmot mammal creature. What was that called, -”Kopi Luwak” coffee? Do you remember this? “Weasel Coffee?” For when just plain ol’ regular French Roast won’t do, there is that $300.00 per pound stimulant (although I think the price has probably doubled since then.) I bet a cup of that would wake you up in the morning. Those that actually drank this crap said that it does have a particular ‘poopie’ smell and flavor to it. -Like d-UH! Oh yeah; -that would bring me back for seconds.
Mammalian feces or that of any other variety of life form for that matter, is not what I want to taste or smell in my steamy hot beverage of choice at 6-AM in the morning thank you very much. A good natural (and preferably organic) coffee would be better by far, any day. Organic coffee would be better for the environment too as organic means no chemicals were used in the growing or for protection against pests. No contamination of the air, ground or water table due to pesticide use. Better for you. Anything with fewer manmade chemicals is better for your health.
Some of the best organic coffees are grown in the mountainous regions of Africa, in volcanic ash soils so they have the virtues of being richer, full of anti-oxidants and they do have higher levels of caffeine. –Bonus! Maybe instead of needing two or three cups to start your day, just one will give the boost that lasts for hours. This might make up for any slightly higher cost at the point of sale, that you would need to drink less of it for the same amount of buzz. You'd need fewer coffee breaks at work, -but let's not tell the boss about that one. It can be our little secret.
How Do They Do that?
Those Nuclear powered particle acceleratoring espresso machines or whatever, you know what I'm talking about. The ones that sneeze live steam into the cup to make that heady foam? Not really appealing for me. I like just plain black coffee, double-sweet.
Image Source
But wow… Weasel Coffee? Can you imagine that? I would be loath to knowingly drink anything that I think a rodent pooped on or worse, known to have been excreted from same. That’s just gross! I used to own a ferret, they don’t NEED to have green coffee beans in their already hyper-wired systems. Not to even mention that it would be cruel and inhumane to allow them or to force-feed coffee beans to them for this nefarious purpose.
This passing through the digestive tract of small mammals is supposed to impart some quintessential fermentation to the indigestible coffee bean, which are then gathered, washed, roasted and sold to coffee lovers of the highest standing. I mean, -how would one even ask your barista for that? "Yes, -I'd like a Café Weasel Poopachino." Okay, -gag me ‘til I puke!
