March 29, 2010
Chris Blain, Executive Chef, Virginia State Capitol

Fair trade, shade grown, bird friendly buzzwords for something you get a buzz from. We know that there are an overwhelming number of choices to make, but Coffee Habitat does a pretty good job of laying out some guidelines for a responsible purchase.    

Last spring I was fortunate enough to visit El Finca de Dos Jefes in Boquete, Panama, where I got to pick and roast coffee on the side of Volcan Baru, and see first hand what some of these terms mean. I met one of the owners in town and he offered to show me around his farm. My trip to the plantation, or Finca, is a whole story in and of itself, but suffice to say I got to see coffee grown right firsthand. The operation was biodiverse, i.e. there were more than just coffee plants, there were lemon and lime trees interspersed with the coffee to provide shade (shade grown), which provided habitat for tons of birds (bird friendly) and the local family that managed the plantation for the owner was paid well above a living wage, as were the pickers employed to harvest it (fair trade). The coffee itself was magical, it tasted of chocolate and the volcano it grew on.   

March 3, 2010
Denise Simmons, Corporate Chef

The buzz word ‘Sustainability’ has been around for some time now.  I sometimes feel that businesses are making up the rules of what’s sustainable, or what sustainability means, as they go along…mostly to sell more of their product or services.

I like to think of the sustainability movement as a desire to go back in time to a simpler era, having gained the knowledge & experience of what it’s like to live post industrial revolution.  Sustainability to me, as corny as it sounds, brings to mind Little House on the Prairie.  Life was simple; you took care of your land, because it took care of you.  You ate what you produced, and canned or dried products when they were in season so that you could have enough food to make it through the long winter months.  I don’t ever recall an episode of the show where they imported peaches from Chile so that they could enjoy a fresh peach in January.  If they had a taste for peaches during the winter, they went to their pantry & opened a jar of peach preserves, grown on their land & canned in their kitchens.