We try a new spot for our morning croissant and coffee. The croissant is just about acceptable ( 6.8/10) but the coffee is dire beyond words. It makes me wonder what they could possibly do to produce something this bad. Cheap beans ? Malfunctioning machine ?
Seems that coffee is the latest thing we have to worry about. A bad harvest in Brazil and the appearance of weird and wonderful coffee diseases are leading to a shortage. There seems to be one of these scare stories every year. A couple of years ago it was an avocado shortage. Last year it was cocoa beans and chocolate.
Today, the tamarisks that have been planted by the shopping centre car park are looking strangely magical. The morning sun reflects off the dew covered branches creating an effect not unlike a giant flowering candy floss. Sophie finds the scents in the borders to be beyond intriguing so our progress back to the car is on the slow side of glacial.
To the framers with a picture of some tigers bought on-line in a moment of madness. It was painted by an artist who was a close friend of Bracques and was once highly fashionable but now forgotten and therefore affordable. He fought valiantly in the Great War but the carnage addled his mind and he started to paint canvases that were smaller and smaller. In the end he was producing paintings the size of a postage stamp. These, as you might imagine, were not commercially successful.
Back in the village the moor hens are becoming ever more elusive. Today I manage to catch a picture of mother ( right bottom ) and one of three small black chicks ( left bottom center ) hurtling into the safety of the shrubbery. One day they will stay still long enough for a photo of all seven of them.
Life in the village ahead of the court case is becoming ever more fraught. This morning the German billionaires builder stops his van to say hello. The man with anger management issues choses this moment to head off to work in his car. He glares with a look like thunder as he passes. Sometimes you just can't be impartial enough.
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Apparently with global warming they won't be able to move coffee growing to even higher altitudes to get the ideal temperatures and will have to start looking for and commercializing other varieties. There are plenty to choose from, we currently use mainly 2 (Arabica and Robusta). Our office manager got all adventurous and bought some 'bush' coffee to try (variety unknown). The vile stuff tasted like melted plastic smells and smelled like an anaerobic compost heap. The rest of the packet of grounds went into the compost. (Actually it made great compost. It just wasn't even remotely good coffee. Even the most nondescript instant coffee surpasses that stuff.)
Thank you. I shall know to avoid 'Bush' coffee. This mornings undrinkable offering ( it was tipped into the bin ) may well have been this variety !
With global warming speeding up the movement of glaciers, you might soon be in need of a new metaphor to describe Sophie's progress along a scent filled border.
I am curious about "bush" coffee, because Arabica and Robusta look like bushes. When they flower, it looks like it's snowed. Decades ago (in the '70s? early '80s?) there was a bad coffee harvest in Brazil, and that worked out great for Kenya. Farmers were able to buy pickup trucks and build concrete-block houses. By the time I got there in the mid-80s the boom had turned to bust, but the capital investments were still around.
Moving to higher altitudes is complicated by the fact that the next zone up is covered with tea--another cash crop.
Speaking of small art: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/arts/design/leonardo-da-vinci-drawing-sold-christies.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Arts
I've been thinking you might start a sister blog along the lines of RoomRater or We Rate Dogs - maybe "Rate My Croissant." But on second thought, it's not really a visual thing - today's croissant looks perfectly acceptable, at least to me, and presumably the coffee would have as well. I like the painting.
I fear that Inca and I shall shortly be down rating our once excellent croissants - our usual place has found a new (cheaper?) supplier, and last weeks offering was about 4/10!
Bush coffee hasn't made an appearance here yet, but I'll keep well away from it when it does! One of our local supermarkets sells a selection of Starbucks roasts in capsule form, to fit a Nespresso machine, and they seem better than anything else at the moment, so I'm enjoying sampling the different flavours. Arabica and Robusta are said to be the best coffee beans, but not easily available everywhere. I understand that the quality of the water used makes a great deal of difference to the taste of coffee. Years ago we used to buy Swedish coffee and take gallons of Swedish water home to the UK - the difference was amazing. The best coffee we ever had was in Barbados, where they claimed to have the purest water in the world.
Hari OM
Allergic to coffee so not in the least bothered. The threat to bananas holds greater concern for this fruity-gal! (One also wonders at the marketing qualities of such news and justification for inordinate price hikes...)
Just remembered and have pondered whether 'bush' coffee might be another way of saying 'ersatz' (i.e. not coffee at all). In OZ (and, indeed, Africa) one talks of 'going bush' to mean dropping out and not conforming... YAM xx
Very much like your tigers and look forward to seeing them in their finished frame. The car park Tamarisks look very similar to the smoke trees (Cotinus obovatus) we planted in our yard a few years ago...very pretty and exotic. A day started without a good cuppa Joe seems sad indeed.
Blogger up to it's usual tricks today and won't let me sign in, but "unknown" tis I, Camille
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