This is off the charts. We are having the event this Thursday evening at their space in Midtown and they are making all sorts of crazy delicious food for us to snack on which is amazing but today they kicked things up a notch. Just read this description of the coffee they are roasting up just for the event…

Ethiopia Natural “Koratie”
Region – Sidamo, near town of Dilla.
Certifications – Shade-grown/Organic
Elevation – 6,069ft – 6,889ft
Plant varietals – Ethiopia Heirloom
Processing – Hand picked & cherries dried on raised beds.

Another spectacular coffee from the Sidamo region! This time we have the Koratie, a natural process coffee that is in the Dara region of Sidamo, just north of the Yirgacheffe area. Grown by small farm-holders near the town of Dilla at about 6,500ft elevation.

A higher price has been paid for this crop in assurance that only the perfectly ripe cherries would be harvested, not the green unripe ones.

This is a natural processed coffee which means the perfectly ripe cherries are directly laid out onto raised drying beds. The grades of this particular lot are a notch above the normal, Grade 4 or 5, this lot is Grade 3.

Lots like this is extremely hard to come by and Old Soul Co. roasters are completely humbled by this coffee’s presence.

In The Cup: Overwhelmingly aromatic! The nose of this coffee will have you chomping your chops for just a sip! Super berry (blueberry) with a maple syrup sweetness. Sweet ripe pineapples cool into a luscious low-toned fruit cocktail.

I saw this on a blog the other day and I am stealing it. It’s called the Kyoto Oven and it quite possibly could change the landscape of Africa. The thing that I find interesting about these types of inventions is that they will require a change in habits. I mentioned this oven to a friend who is familiar with African culture and practices (she’s been there and lived it) and she thought, ” Yeah, its great but what about cooking at night?”. I have to admit the solar oven might have some issue there, but you could change the way you do things. 1) Precook your dinner before the sun went down. 2) Boil lots of water while the sun is shining and store it in a cool place. 3) Make a couple of them yourself and sell them.

In order to make the serious changes we are going to have to make in the world to sustain the current inhabitants and bring everyone’s quality of life up, we are going to have to change habits.  I think we have used this one before, the same thinking that got us where we are isn’t going to get us to where we need to be.  I think everyone in the world should read, at least, the first chapter of Thomas Freidman’s book Hot, Flat, and Crowded to get a little perspective twist on how we all live and how much we need to change.  Or there is a talk he gave on it that I haven’t watched yet.

Micah Baginski

Another good thing that came out of the neighborhood meeting on Monday night was meeting Harry. He lives nearby on E Street and is starting up a community garden of sorts along the side of his apartment complex. He already has an area mulched and has space for several more gardeners to join in! If you live over at Harriet Lane, RiversSide, Metro Place or even Good and would be interested give Harry a call at 821-5748. It’s always fun meeting people who are jumping a little outside the norm and working to bring some changes (and good food) to the neighborhood around them!

Steve

Now here is a good idea for making good use of your garden…Bill Maynard with the Sacramento Area Community Garden Coalition is putting together a Crop Swap. The idea is as simple as it sounds you bring your excess crops from your garden and trade them for something else. It does not get much easier than that.

The group is putting together a few meetings to discuss forming neighborhood crop swaps that will be held Tuesday, March 3, 2009 and Tuesday, April 7, 2009 at 6:30 pm at the Sheppard Garden and Arts Center located at 3330 McKinley Ave.

You can contact Bill at sacgc@ulink.net or by phone at (916) 508-6025 for more information.

We have been talking about putting together a class where we can learn a little about what plants grow well in Sacramento and when to plant them. It’s getting to be that time of year to do it…..Come back for more info on when we are going to host that.

Levi Benkert

I somehow missed this article when it was in the Bee last week, but when I finally did read it I was rolling on the floor laughing. Blair Robertson is the new Bee food critic and is doing a very good job. Blair actually did a write up on LJ Urban several months back so I got a chance to meet him and he is a really neat guy. He told me all about his sourdough bread recipe and how he always has a starter on his kitchen counter for his next loaf. Anyway, you have to go over and read this article he published about Mortons Steak House. It’s incredible.

In fact I am going to repost it here just in case the link goes sour on the Bee site. (As they tend to to sometimes).

Levi

Lots of beef – for a bunch of lettuce
Morton’s fare is basic and good – but too big and way overpriced

Published: Sunday, Jan. 18, 2009 | Page 8
Overall: 1 1/2 stars
Service: 2 1/2 stars
Ambience: 2 stars
Food: 2 1/2 stars
Value: 1 star

Noteworthy: Of all the steaks, the Cajun ribeye is the most interesting. The wine list is massive. Morton’s still does a solid martini. I am about to show you how to have the “Morton’s experience” and save $200.

Go to the back wall of your local grocery store. Look over the steaks. Avoid the ones that appear to be an appropriate size for a healthy adult. Grab one that is excessively large – stupid large is ideal. You will pay $14. If you pay $16, you are showing off and probably getting gouged. Both of those things are also part of the Morton’s experience. Grab a bottle of Pellegrino sparkling water for $1.49. At Morton’s, the same vintage is $9. [Read more →]

Found this guy today and spent some time poking around his site, now I am starting to get some ideas running around in my head…. Anyone want to plan a midnight attack with me?

I like when good things get better, sort of like the when the iPhone 3G was released or even better when Toyota announced the totally redone Prius for 09′. It’s great, something that is very good already gets tweaked and rethought to make it more efficient and even better.

When we started getting ready for phase 2 of the Good project we decided it was time to do a little upgrading ourselves. So without any further ado….. its with great pleasure that I introduce to you Good, the 09′ models.

We spent the last several months listening to comments and talking with engineers about areas we can push the limits of sustainability. We tweaked everything we could, added more storage and took an already efficient design and made it even more efficient. Some of the changes are big, and some are just little touches to make the homes more user-friendly, many you would never even know about unless you were digging behind the cabinets or peeling back the drywall. (which we do not encourage). All in all Good just got better and we are darn proud of it.

• Solar – We love solar power, its clean efficient and here in Northern California we have sun light-a-plenty. So why not use it to generate your own electricity, right? The problem is the solar array costs so much to install you won’t start getting a return on your investment for several years. We think we have found the answer! We like what the folks over at Sun Run are doing. What they do is install the system at their cost and all you do is pay them for the electricity at a very discounted rate. So you get good clean power without paying the big bucks! Simple, efficient, clean, it’s sort of a theme for us.

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Take a step outside the world you know with me for a second and try to dream of a place where things are better. What kind of better comes to mind? Here is what my better place looks like.

I see progress but not the kind that we have seen before, instead this progress raises the poor and the rich at the same time. It’s a place where everything for sale is like the shoes that Tom sells where every pair you buy also means that someone who is in need is given a pair. A place where opportunity to help others becomes as abundant as opportunity for greed is today. A place deciding to rise from the pit of extortion and take on the challenge of the worlds poor becoming a people who are not any longer just absorbed with our self interest but also that of others.

What I see is a people who decide that no longer can we move through life building our own separate lives full of third world produced trinkets and our oh-so-important personal freedoms because there is a better way.
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Thanks to Jason Brown for sending me a few of these WWII pictures.  The one I posted yesterday was from him as well.

It’s one of those things that cities don’t think is really “normal” so they often resist and rarely  if ever think up on their own. So that means you might have to fight for this one.

I believe every neighborhood needs a community garden and there is a good chance if you want one that you will have to be the person that puts it there.
They don’t have to be big or even all that elaborate. There does not need to be an automatic watering system or even grand tool storage systems. In fact you may be better of without them. You see gardens serve a very different role in our communities than parks or civic spaces. Gardens bring us together and make us work side by side, they tear down the social walls that we normally put around ourselves in public spaces and breathe life into community.

But not all garden communities need to have gardens. In New Orleans 7th ward you will find many vacant lots left after the devastation from hurricane Katrina. But there is one lot in particular that was vacant long before the rest of them, and although it’s only grass, it serves the same purpose for the community as a community garden would. The residents call it simply “The Corner”. Long ago it was a run down apartment building and its owner scraped it thinking one day she would build a community garden but instead the neighborhood took to it vacant and planted grass. They started to use it as a gathering space and it quickly evolved into the center of the neighborhood where people would meet and hang out, they would sit and watch the sun go down in the evenings together on the corner after work and if someone in the neighborhood needed help they would get up and do what needed to be done. You see the concept of a garden is not about the vegetables or even about the aesthetics its about the people. A community garden with no community is nothing at all, but a vacant lot with a community can become the lifeblood and soul of the people living nearby.

Every neighborhood needs a corner or a community garden.

Are there any “Corners” in your neighborhood?