Category Archives: Real Food

Why I Love Organic Coffee

Here and there, talking with people in person and online, I share why I love organic coffee.  For this, some folks have titled me a ‘coffee snob’ — inaccurate but acceptable — and once you read my reasons I think you’ll understand why I disagree and believe that organic beans are best.

Sure, I can tell you that I’m not a very good morning person, that I like the taste of coffee — all the usual “I like coffee” tag-lines, but that’s aside the point.  I could also get cavalier and tell you how I can drink gallons of it all day — but that’s not true any more.  Yeah, there was a time that I’d have cups throughout the day — now — my limit is 2 … more than that and I don’t even like me.  I can’t even drink it past 5PM or I have problems sleeping … so while I’d love a fresh cup with that slice of pie, I’m going to have to pass.
(Despite all this, I still think that a coffee IV drip / alarm clock is a magnificent concept!)

So let’s get down to why I love organic coffee …

I used to buy the bulk container of inexpensive name-brand coffee grounds.  It was cheap and the flavour was consistent — and with any luck the can came in handy afterwards.

For me, after 5 or 6 months of drinking this stuff, I’d get what felt like a terrible sinus infection.  It felt as though I wanted to climb the wall with my face.  Every time it occurred I thought I was coming down with something … until I remembered.  Apparently some of us — including me — need to take a break from coffee from time to time.  I know what you’re saying, “Oh god, the headaches!!!”  But before we get too much into that, let’s take a look at how mass-produced commercial coffee is grown, and see if we can figure out why people get headaches when they go off coffee.

As I understand it …

Coffee plants are supposed to grow in the shade, so they grow slow.  Big companies often don’t do “slow” — they want a lot and they want it Now … because they want to make a lot of money and fast.  These large food producing companies clear-cut acres upon acres of land to grow coffee — meaning that it is in the full sun where it is also easy to access (none of those pesky trees getting in the way of their harvesting equipment).  Either to compensate for the full-sun issue, or to make more coffee / money / now, they use fertilizers and pesticides.  Later various other not-coffee ‘ingredients’ are used in processing their beans, preservatives and such.

Think about it …
Fertilizers, pesticides, and preservatives are in your mass-produced coffee — and when you go off that coffee you get headaches.  When I go off of organic coffee, I don’t get headaches.  Organic coffee doesn’t use fertilizers, pesticides, and preservatives.  So what do you think it is giving you headaches?  As I can tell … it’s not the coffee, beans, or grounds.

So back when I had the ‘sinus infection’ sensation every 5 to 6 months, how did I get rid of it?  I’d give my body a chance to detox from the stuff.  Stop coffee for 1-2 weeks.  Dealt with a whopper of a headache for 1-2 days.  Drank plenty of water.  Tried to get some simple exercise in like walking.  All things that gave my body — and my aching head and face — and opportunity to flush everything out.

I started getting together with a friend of mine for breakfast once a month.  We both lead busy lives, however she was able to schedule making a substantial breakfast at her place every few weeks.  With that, she would serve coffee that had incredible flavour.  When I asked her about it, she said that it was from freshly ground organic beans.  She said something about it being better for your body, but I didn’t give it much thought at the time — to me, coffee was coffee and this stuff was good!

While that was my introduction to organic coffee, I don’t remember when I switched to buying organic beans and drinking it regularly myself*.  I noticed some changes, and I was pleased…
(*When I launched WIBC, this was one ingredient I insisted upon along with the other quality ingredients I used — and still use — in making my cookies.)

I still get the ‘sinus’ issue — but it is lighter and it occurs further apart.  The detox is easier and shorter — about 5 to 7 days.  When I skip coffee on any given day, no headache (could it be that my body isn’t addicted to any fertilizers, pesticides, or preservatives and I’m not quitting them cold-turkey?).  Something I’ve also noticed is that my coffee doesn’t get acidic after sitting around for a while — not in my pot, and not in my stomach if I’ve delayed getting lunch.  I’ll still have a cup of commercial-bean coffee — I don’t let my organic switch rule my life — if someone offers me coffee I don’t ask if it’s organic and decline if it isn’t.  So I get some commercial product here and there, that doesn’t affect me.  Instead, most of the time, I consume organic coffee and my body is much happier for it.

Is organic coffee for you?  I don’t know — try switching for a while, see what it does for you.  In the process you might also find that you’re consuming a tastier, natural product.

Want to know how to make a great cup of coffee?

Make Your Own Darn Good CookiesThe longest section in my debut recipe book, Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies, explains how to get the most use out of a French press.  This is one of the best ways to make coffee — it takes patience, and it’s worth it.

This book presents over 50 proven recipes — cookies, beverages, breakfast items, and main-course comfort foods.  Read more about my book here on my site, order a copy online, available through most major retailers in e-book format, and ask for it by name through your favourite bookstore and local library.

Beat Your Black Friday Blues

~ The Loved & Loathed BLACK FRIDAY ~
What Are You Doing?

this is linked with shameless self-promotionAre you hitting the Black Friday sales?  Hiding out, staying home, and avoiding the chaos?  Or are you busying yourself with something else today?

Aside from drinking coffee and enjoying some leftover Thanksgiving PIE, I’m at home working on a few future-book-projects. For the past week+, while the e-book file of my current recipe book is getting reviewed for me, I’ve kept myself busy making progress on a few future book projects. One of these calls for me to create some NEW COOKIE RECIPES — which couldn’t have me More Pleased! Black Friday

I enjoy the creative process of imagining new baked goods and bringing them to fruition — it puts me in my element.  Get an idea, figure out how maybe to make it, give it a go, possibly fail, try again, and then … finally … FIND IT!  For the book I am chiefly working towards, I want recipes with finished baked goods with serious visual and taste-bud POP.  Cookies that delight the eye, that the hand can’t resist picking up, and makes a mouth smile from a promise fulfilled.  If a cookie could have the electric ambiance of a rock concert, THAT would be THESE COOKIES Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies available on AmazonBlack Friday

As you know from my first book — Make Your Darn Good Cookies, published last month on Amazon — I gratefully accept recipe submissions.  If you have a cookie recipe you’d like to submit for possible publication in one of my future books — and in this case a recipe that to you looks and tastes like ROCK’n’ROLL — please run-don’t-walk to e-mail your submission to me.

Can cookies be Rock’n’Roll?
OH YEAH!  I think so…

Do you want to do some experimenting, too?  Download my FOUR FREE COOKIE RECIPES from my recent book, go get in your kitchen, and have some FUN!

Expiration Dates and Food Waste

Being a small business that has produced food I am full aware of how expiration dates work.  In my experience everything in the following video is accurate.

I am aware of and I have written on the topics of food quality and hunger.  One of the other things that Adam touches on in the video is food waste.  According to the USDA food waste in the United States “is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply”.  In 2010 this amounted to “approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food”.

This is perfectly good food that could feed the poor, hungry, and homeless.  A high percentage of this is food is never seen by the public but instead goes directly into landfills.  This makes added loss of land, water, labor, energy, and other resources diverting this food to dumps according to the EPA.  This could be beneficial to society but instead contributes to pollution.

The USDA reports on “How much food waste is there in the United States and why does it matter

The EPA’s report on food waste being the largest component of municipal landfills

Further reading in an article by TheAtlantic.com

Fed Up

PS to “Ingredients – Who’s Your Farmer?” on 21February2016

I might – scratch that, WOULD – also add “Fed Up” to this list.  Something about the style of delivery in this documentary strikes me as ‘commercial’, regardless I still found thought provoking.

Fed Up at IMDB

Fed Up – movie home page

Fed Up at Wikipedia.org

(NOTE – This started as a small PS and grew as I found more & more important things to share.)

The more I watch this documentary the more I come to believe it is important.  As I watch, I find myself additionally reflecting on what I (too) have done with my WIBC products.  A big part of this video focuses on sugar and processed foods.  Let’s be very clear about a few things with respects to my company & products:

  • WIBC is (presently) licensed as a Food Processing Plant (emphasis added).  I understand this as a general purpose title given by the Washington State Department of Agriculture.  When the name of this license is put beside the term “processed foods” it may give the suggestion that what WIBC makes is ‘processed’.  I didn’t choose the title of the license, and this assumption or confusion should not be made.
  • I consider WIBC to be a part of the Local Food or Real Food movement.   I did not set out to do this, it is merely that how I make food falls within this idea.  I make baked goods like a person would at home, just on a commercial scale.  In frank terms, if you look at a food product ingredient label and read ingredients you have at home (eggs, butter, sugar, flour, etc) then you are essentially holding real food; if the ingredients read like a cross between Greek, Pig Latin, and Medical Terminology in unpronounceable syllables, then you’re dealing with a processed food (substance of some sort).
  • WIBC products do include various sugars.  I have never denied this, I have never hidden it in any way – in fact, my ingredients have been a part of my company’s transparency and I have very gladly talked about the ingredients used in my products.  To this end, the sugars used in my products comprise of white and brown sugar; other sugars come from fruit juice, molasses, white and chocolate chips, and M&Ms (unless there are any other ingredients I am not thinking of off the top of my head).  When you read the ingredients of a product that include these, (I suggest that) the only one that may not read so straight-forward is one that includes M&Ms.  The not-so-pronounceable ingredients to these are preservatives in the M&M food colouring.  Further …
  • What WIBC (AKA I) does not add to its products are stand-alone ingredients you cannot pronounce, strange flavour enhancers, or dubious preservatives.  As said, I make baked goods like a person would at home.  As a result my baked goods have a short shelf life & are meant to be consumed soon after preparation, and should be considered ‘Real Food’.
  • Maybe if you can’t pronounce something on a food ingredient label, don’t eat it.  If you ask a company that produces & markets food items, and they won’t talk with you or all they give you is prepared spin, maybe don’t eat what they’re offering.  If you do ask a food company about their products and their ingredients and they’re happy to talk with you about them and speak in straight-forward terms, and you understand and believe in their ingredients, that’s probably a better bet.  If you go to a grocery store or a farmers market and you know that a vegetable is a vegetable, an egg is an egg, and a loaf of bread is a loaf of bread (etc), then it’s probably a much better bet.

Well, it seems this is a pretty important PS for me.

Fed Up – movie home page

Ingredients – Who’s Your Farmer?

This film is all about the development of the local food movement.  The food we eat is no better than the quality of the ingredients that go into them.  More and more farmers are growing real food.  More and more restaurants and food companies (as I did with WIBC) are moving to work with no less than real ingredients.  The local food movement takes root.  Find farm-to-restaurant venues & patronize them.  Cooking is a joy, not drudgery – go to your farmers markets and buy local.

You’re a real person – eat real food!
Enjoy, Don

Ingredients at IMDB

CargoFilm-Releasing.com – Ingredients – Whos Your Farmer

Ingredients – Who’s Your Farmer