 The start of summer has the Peace Crew longing for local produce, so in this issue we're celebrating nature's bounty. First, we sample the wares at several local farmers' markets. Next, you'll meet Mel's new chicken friends, Yeti and Kandinsky. We're also musing about reinventing our food system after attending a sold-out screening of the film Fresh: New Thinking About What We're Eating. In the Crafty Corner, Angelica shows off a terrific messenger-style burlap bag. And in the Roaster's Corner, Keith sings the praises of cold press and our yeti blend. Summer's here! Grab an iced Peace Coffee, chill out and read on...   We've already mentioned that it's summer in Minneapolis, and, now that the lilacs are done, that has us thinking about the next warm weather thing -- farmers' markets! In Minneapolis, we're lucky to have a variety of markets scattered throughout the city, and each market, like so much local food is a sample of the unique flavor of the place. Last Saturday, Peace Coffee visited three very different markets throughout Minneapolis.Our first stop was the Midtown Farmers Market, just blocks from our warehouse--truly our neighborhood market! Our first plan was to visit one of our newest customers, the Magic Bus Cafe, whose big purple bus was one of the first things visible as we locked up our bikes on a grey, surprisingly chilly June morning. The bus is huge (well, school bus-sized, really) and painted purple with a sky blue bumper. We're quickly seated at a miniature diner booth, one of two tucked behind the driver's seat, and even more quickly, we have hot cups of our Ethiopian coffee steaming in our hands. The bus is a perfect little diner, booths to seat 8, and a fully functional commercial kitchen -- a perfect yet diminutive stove complete with grill and hood, a three-compartment sink, and everything else you'd need to take a food service business on the road. Every spare surface inside the magic bus is covered with magnets -- the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, peace signs and all the trappings of '70s alternative lifestyle. The decor all makes sense once the owners of this van, Chrissy, Cathy and Chris, tell you they spent 10 years of their life touring with the Grateful Dead. Read more... (Back to Headlines)   By Melanee Meegan, Peace Coffee Marketing Manager  There are now two Yetis in my life that I love dearly. My first love affair with the Yeti began three years ago when our roasting team created a coffee exclusively for making iced coffee. This incredibly smooth, rich and chocolaty coffee concentrate can be added to smoothies, mixed with vodka, and even made into a highly caffeinated popsicle. This special blend needed a name that captured the pleasantness of its taste and also implied that it was best served chilled. I had recently read about a yeti footprint discovery on Mount Everest and I thought that the mysterious and seemingly mild-mannered persona of a Yeti captured the essence of this new coffee blend. Some of the Peace Coffee crew had hesitations about the name, but luckily for me the name has grown on them and the Yeti has actually become a mascot of sorts at work. (A miniature fair trade yeti ornament is almost always stuffed in people's travel luggage and appears in many photos from around the world including a recent trip back to her homeland in Nepal! To see photos from Yeti’s travels go to fairtradeyeti.com.)Now enters Yeti, the rooster, into my life. No, I didn’t name this one Yeti; he came to me with that name already. This Yeti is a beautiful, large, fluffy, and loud-mouthed, white-feathered Japanese silky rooster (the picture of him says it all). Yeti and a hen named Kandinsy (the egg layer) are living in my backyard. The two chickens were acquired through the Chicken Run Rescue. This organization takes chickens that have been neglected, abused, abandoned or intended for fighting. Some are also the discarded outcome of "nature lessons" for children or after a hobby that no longer holds interest. Read on... (Back to Headlines)   Earlier this month, Peace Coffee attended a sold-out screening of the documentary Fresh: New Thinking About What We’re Eating. This film, directed by ana Sofia joanes, celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are reinventing our food system. One of the main characters in this film is Will Allen, founder of the organization Growing Power, based in Milwaukee, WI. Growing Power is an amazing urban agriculture project that grows vegetables and fruit in greenhouses and raises goats, ducks, bees, turkeys and even Great Lake Perch and tilapia! This bounty of food provides healthy alternatives for folks in Milwaukee, who would otherwise have few options for finding groceries with real nutritional value. They live in neighborhoods that are devoid of full-service grocery stores but instead lined with fast-food joints, liquor stores and convenience stores. These areas are frequently referred to as "food deserts." Growing Power is leading the way for a more just food system for all and are committed to training people on how to do it in their own communities. Each year Will and his staff open their greenhouses and share their model with thousands of people from across the world. In fact, just recently, Tracy Singleton, owner of the Birchwood Cafe, took a trip to Growing Power and she’s promised to share with us what she learned in our next newsletter! Here in the Twin Cities there are already lots of folks doing terrific work to bring healthy, sustainably produced and locally grown foods to the folks that need it most. Both the Food to Backpack Project in St. Paul and Home Grown Minneapolis are just two examples of such work.Just as Peace Coffee supports small farmers in the coffee lands, we're also a proud supporter of the local food grown by ecologically centered, small-scale producers right here at home. If you’d like to support local food in your community, you can host your own screening of the movie Fresh. Click here to order a copy of the film. (Back to Headlines)  Since this stylish messenger-esque bag arrived in our mailbox at work, Angelica, our events coordinator, has been using it every day. The industrious folks from It’s Our Earth, in Wheaton, Illinois, created this bag. They currently make burlap bag totes out of our coffee sacks. This past year they've been testing out new burlap bag designs. The bag they mailed us is one of their most recent prototypes. Angelica has sent them a few recommendations that would improve the usability of the bag, such as buttons or buckles to keep the top flap closed but overall she loves the bag, especially the reused seatbelt strap and all the pockets for keeping her "junk" organized inside the bag.
Be on the look out on our order page this fall; we just might have some of these bags and other past crafty corner bags (like the pot holders and toiletry bags) available for those of us who'd rather support crafters than learn to sew things ourselves. |
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