we took a field trip to logan, utah, to visit caffe ibis.  i was seriously impressed by their commitment to sustainability, fair trade, and making a positive difference on the environment.  seriously.  took a tour around the roasting facilities and then had a mini cupping.  the cupping was interesting, kinda obviously done for our benefit, which is to say, toned down quite a bit…by toned down, i mean, he (randy, the guy that runs ibis) said that when they’re doing a real cupping, they’ll do it with 5 different beans from the same country to figure out which is best, or try to decide which roast is best by roasting 5 different ways.  the first cup we tasted, he said “the unique feature of this coffee is the blueberry.”  i took a sip, just coffee.  i took another and let it sit in my mouth a second and, holy crap! blueberry!  i wanted more of that when we were doing the cupping, unique features to look for that my palette is too dull and untrained enough to notice without help, but he really just described brightness and body and didn’t talk on the specific coffees we were tasting.

the really impressive thing about ibis was learning about their triple certification.  they are certified organic, and fair trade certified, but also smithsonian certified.  smithsonian?  isn’t that like a museum or something? it’s a lot of things, it’s a research institute and being smithsonian certified means that the coffee plantations support migratory birds and native wildlife by now plowing down the rainforests and leaving the trees and natural vegetation intact.  which is pretty much awesome from an environmental standpoint, but it also fosters higher quality beans and more sustainable agrigulture since they don’t have to pollute the soil with fertilizer which ultimately ends in the land no longer being able to sustain vegetation.  you can learn more about natural shade grown coffee and smithsonian certification, it’s interesting.

so, i just checked my wp analytics and the last post, new topic: cheese is my top post and most active.  so, um, i guess i should talk about food more.  ha.

which really makes the ubergeeky theme for the site somewhat unrelated.  so yeah, it’s on the list…

the big boss came (regional pres) today and arrived last night. so everyone’s running around like chickens with heads cut off freaking out about making the store look pretty.  I threw the cheese load as fast as humanly possible, faced up the tea, and then started cutting cheese to fill the holes and…by the time i left he still hadn’t shown up yet.  figures…

i’m excited because i got my login stuff set up so i can officially start talking to vendors and ordering chocolate.  i sent an email today to amano to set up a wholesale account for our team.  i’m excited to bring their product into the store and give it a push.  i’m also trying to set up a field trip to visit the factory.  i’ve never been into a factory, let alone a chocolate factory — even though i lived within walking distance from the see’s factory in south city.

my specialty team is also heading out to logan to visit caffe ibis next week.  that’s exciting, too, cuz, you know, coffee.  and they’re cool and their coffee is the best we sell in the store (though i’m still bummed that we can’t get salt lake roasting company coffee in to sell).  also, the awesome power of sampling was able to sell some of the cowgirl creamery MT TAM i blogged about the other day which we have at exorbitant cost due to not being able to get it from cali.  still, it’s probably the best triple cream we have (it’s my current favorite, anyway), so it’s kinda worth it.

in other news, my decision re: the mac is to keep it at Tiger.  it works, i can use the iSight, it actually opens Photoshop files now and so long as i don’t install any updates at all it should continue to do so, so it does everything i really need it to do.

(posted from a mac)