Natural Ethiopian Sidamo
If you live in Nevada County, you probably fell asleep last night to the whistle of the wind, and woke up this morning to the same thing. It’s been a stormy winter for sure, and I have loved hearing all the rain/snow/wind. We did have a lovely sunny three day weekend in there–in our family we celebrated by planting bulbs and cleaning up the garden. It was good to be outside digging in the dirt. We discovered that our daffodils are out of the ground already, poking their heads up to see how the year is doing. The cycle of the flowers is affirming: life marches on.
In case you missed it on Instagram, we deal with this cuteness daily. It’s a wonder anything gets done around here!
On Monday I took the kids to play in the snow. It was solely a play day, and they loved it. Today we’re back to pouring rain. According to the National Weather Service, Nevada County is out of the drought. You can see a great graph that YubaNet posted here. I’m also enjoying checking the status of our northern California reservoirs as they steadily rise. I posted this link last year, but I like to check the California water data here. Many of our lakes are above their historical average, so the water situation in California is improving by the day.
On a rainy or snowy day, there’s not much better to have in your hand than a mug of fresh roasted coffee. This week we have our Natural Ethiopian Sidamo for you to sample. These are indigenous beans, grown in a country known as the birthplace of coffee. You can find the story in many different forms, but as legend has it, a goatherd in Ethiopia, Kaldi, noticed his goats dancing after eating some red berries. He tried them and starting dancing too. He took them to the local monastery, where the monks used them to stay awake during prayers.
From there they spread to the Arabian peninsula. It’s not known who first put the beans into a fire, and then brewed them, but for centuries coffee was a carefully guarded secret. Sometime in the 17th century coffee was smuggled into Europe, and from there it spread around the world via the European colonies. You can now find coffee in some form on all of the continents–but it all started with some wild trees in Ethiopia.
These particular Ethiopian beans are a natural, or dry process. This means that the beans are dried with the fruit still in place. The result is a beautiful berry flavor in the cup, with notes of plums and apricots. This coffee was processed by Guji Coffee Export PLC (their website is here), by Grima Edema. According to our broker, here:
“the focus on selection of only ripe cherries that are meticulously dried on raised beds and milled in a vertically integrated operation gives Grima full control of the processing up to the final export stage, resulting in an exceptionally clean and sweet cup profile.”
You can try a cup of this Ethiopian on us this week with the code no drought*. Enjoy the rain, and drink good coffee. Cheers!
–Holly Fike
*Code good for one free 12 ounce cup of Natural Ethiopian Sidamo. Code expires on 1.26.17. Limit one free cup per customer please. Valid only at Carolines Coffee Roasters, 128 S. Auburn Street, Grass Valley, CA. Code/Offer has no cash value.