Minta's Bad Dog featured this month

Would you say you’re a snapshot taker, or a pro, or something in between?
trying to make a living at it =)

What kinds of pictures do you enjoy taking?
candids… secretspy type…unposed moments that may have gone unnoticed. I like to flip the perspective of things & make my viewers think about the story behind the foto.

Have you had a chance to share your fame, or your coffee with others?
I have! I gave coopins to my neighbors…shared on facebook, flickr, twitter & when talking to friends.

And last but not least…how do you take your coffee?
With a smooth kickstart.

Where to store these little jewels?

Picture this…..There you are at the bakery. You point to the clerk…”I’d like one of those, and one of those, and one of those.” Just baked, and still just room temperature you run home to throw the perfectly delicious raspberry almond, peach, and strawberry pastries into the freezer so they will stay “fresh” for your afternoon coffee party with friends. You go to the freezer 6 hours later to pull your pastries out to thaw in time for your guests’ arrival. Not only are they hard as a rock, but they now smell like the Dino-Nuggets and fish sticks wedged deep in the freezer 18 months ago. You pretend like this doesn’t bother you, and let the baked goods thaw at room temperature, only to find that when finally thawed, the flaky crust, and chewy center, and fresh fruit have been turned into a soggy, flat and sad excuse for the once amazing baked goods you purchased earlier that day. Sure they still taste pastry-like, but you’ve moved them from a “10” to a “6” at best. Your friends officially think you suck, and would like never to be invited for afternoon coffee at your house again.

So what the does that have to do with coffee besides the fact that it’s coffee hour? Everything. If you are going to buy freshly roasted coffee (I mean freshly roasted, like in the past 1-3 days), and you’re going to be able to drink what you’ve purchased over the next 8-13 days, don’t put it in the freezer. Yes, a pastry’s freshness window is really only about 12 hours, whereas coffee is about 2 weeks, so adjust your imagination accordingly. If you can drink the coffee you have purchased during its freshness window, simply store in an airtight, opaque container and normal room temperature. Enjoy it every day until it’s gone. If your coffee came in a foil coffee bag with a one way degassing valve on it, and can be closed well, that’s also a great way to store it.

If you can’t drink the fresh coffee you’ve purchased within the 2 week freshness window, then here are your options. (Pay attention…none of this matters one bit if you’ve purchased old coffee already.)
1. Don’t care, and know that your coffee’s flavor will deteriorate during the time it takes you to drink it. Keep it all stored at room temp in an airtight container.
2. Try to make it better, and take the portion that you can’t drink in 2 weeks and store it in your freezer in an airtight, opaque container. Enjoy the fresh portion you’ve kept out at room temperature until it’s gone. Once your room-temperature stores have depleted, remove your frozen portion from the freezer, and store and use at room temperature from then on. Know that your frozen coffee’s flavor will be less amazing than the freshly -roasted-never-frozen-version of itself. Don’t expect your coffee to hold on in the freezer for longer than a month.

The most important thing to realize is that making a hybrid version of the above is a terrible idea.….thinking that by just KEEPING your coffee in the freezer day after day, that it will stay better. Not true! We all know that anything we freeze changes in texture and taste. Loaf of bread? That Marlin you caught in Cabo last fall? You get the point.

Think of it this way. You’re a young 15 year old girl has just discovered makeup (ok, hang with me here). You ever-so-slightly apply some mascara and eyeshadow to your eyes to highlight their green color, then brush a little lip gloss onto your perfect little lips to brighten your amazing smile. You go out on a date looking this way, and you’re georgeous. The world acknowledges your undeniable beauty and radiance, and compliments come from every angle. The next day, still enjoying yesterday’s compliments, you think to yourself “if some makeup was that awesome, then I’ll, like, just put more on, and everyone will think I’m INCREDIBLE!”

Nope. Wrong. Now you look like a hooker, and not the “good” kind. Don’t turn your coffee into a street walking train wreck by keeping it stored in the freezer. (You know who you are…you have that half-sealed bag sitting in there right now. Every day it goes in and out of the freezer, forms condensation on the beans, picks up the freezer’s odors, and breaks down the fantastic flavor and aroma characteristics to the point where your coffee just tastes like the old ice cubes on the top shelf behind the sad frozen open bag of broccoli).

The best world scenario is to buy only what you need for 2 weeks, get it fresh, treat it with respect, and enjoy it until it’s gone. Then, buy more fresh coffee and do it all over again. Think of the freezer as an emergency situation that’s only brought in when you get invited on a sudden beach vacation to Baja. When you get back, you’ll still be basking in your sun-tanned look and post Tequila fogginess, so you have a few days to burn up the frozen stuff before your brain kicks in to reality and tells you it’s time to buy more fresh coffee.

A little logo that means so much

Auditors I’ve met in the past usually come clad in suits, and spend most of their lives tediously sorting through papers in locked off areas of offices to which one only goes when one’s manager wants to have a “word”. Today’s visit was luckily different—at least from a fashion point of view. As someone who regularly audits agricultural processing operations like dairies, she seemed happy that she didn’t have to come to this audit wearing her rubber boots, and could instead arrive in her every day comfort-footwear, with not a suit in site. She also happened to be a coffee business owner and roaster herself, which, if anything else, just made me feel like we’d be speaking the same language for the day. Ready to go, our audit started with an inaugural espresso before we took a seat and dug in to the pages of our application.

What is certified organic coffee anyway? Here it is…in plain words: Starting with the grower, coffee is produced without using most conventional pesticides; fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation. Then, after coffee is grown and harvested, certified organic handling standards are met throughout the supply chain to ensure that when coffees arrive at the coffee roasters’ doors, the integrity of the organic quality is maintained. Why then, wouldn’t that be considered certified organic coffee, you might ask? Good question!

If you can imagine a quarterback tossing a perfect spiral throw to the receiver, who then runs it 60 yards toward the end zone…but instead of crossing the line for the touchdown, he stops just a yard short, sits down, and calls “close enough” a “touchdown”. Well, it’s not a touchdown. And at a yard short, it’s not certified organic either.

The coffee roaster – the one responsible for the final yard before reaching you, the customer – must also become a certified organic processor for the coffee to be sold as USDA Certified Organic on the label. It’s a commitment to the organic product, by which the roaster ensures that handling, roasting, and packaging methods are performed per certified organic processing standards.

All of this is for us, the consumer. Can you believe it? The USDA actually cares about us and the validity of the organic product we might choose to purchase. Believe it or not, the use of the term organic is still highly abused within many industries, including the coffee industry. Strict labeling requirements define who, how, & where you can actually use the term “organic”. It seems like it’s a confusing thing to understand, but the good news is that at the consumer level, we don’t need to know all these rules. We can just look for that little round “USDA Organic” logo on the front packaging of a product claiming organic, and know that this is actually what it says it is. The entire supply chain, including the final processor, is certified. It’s just that easy. Thank you great regulators of the world. We like pictures.

So finally, after hours of scouring every one of our policies, practices, forms, and processes (probably topped only by the amount of paper that Brad and Angelina had to file to adopt their soccer team of kids) our auditor left. We’ll had to patiently wait for what we hope to be the good news. And good news it was. We’ve officially been granted our organic processors certification, and are now a certified organic coffee roaster. Now that……..that is a touchdown.