roadside shopping

Shopping in Burundi can be a very stress-full experience. There is a way to minimize it though, just take the road to Bugarama on your way to the coffee hills and let the vegetables come to you. While it’s not an entirely relaxing experience to have twenty people shouting at your window with their produce …

Brew Guide: Chemex

It’s a thing of beauty. So beautiful in fact, that over 70 years ago it was added to the collection by the Museum of Modern Art. It can also be found in the Smithsonian and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A science experiment and a piece of art all at once, the Chemex is a type of pour over drip …

I Drink a Lot of Coffee

4:45 am.  Neo wakes up and starts laughing, talking loudly, singing,etc. 5:00 am.  Neo’s noise has woken Myles.  Myles proceeds to get Neo out of his cot (crib for you Americans). 5:05 am.  Coffee Guy stumbles into the lounge before two little boys can destroy anything more. 5:06 am.  Espresso machine is turned on. I …

Are You Drinking Ethically Sourced Coffee?

This morning I am sipping a double espresso from Gatare, a washing station in the Kayanza district of Burundi that is producing amazing coffee. All this coffee sipping got me thinking about you. I starting thinking… What are YOU drinking? This as a sort of follow up to my What’s in Your Cup? thoughts. I know …

Yogurt Making and Our Milkman

  Let me mention that I am aware, someplace in my brain, that “hooray” as in “let’s jump for joy” is not spelled (or is it spelt) with two ‘r’s and one ‘o’. But in this afternoon’s heatwave, which was a doo-zee, I lost all my senses and spelt or spelled or spell-did-dit wrong. I’m …

What’s in your cup?

Whats in your cup? My parents blast through freshly ground coffee in their Bunn Automatic.  12 cups in just over a minute.  While some snobbier coffee specialists may scoff at such heresy, I find myself every second year or so happily slurping down my second cup before registering that I’m fully awake and in the …