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By pigwhisperer, January 30, 2010

We haven’t done a Dog Profile in a while, and the remaining dogs are feeling slighted. So, here’s the Pivot Questionnaire filled out by Negão, our oldest gentleman. We don’t know his exact age—thirteen or fourteen, most likely—because we got him when he was already big. Negão spent his young life chained to a mango tree. So, when we got him, he was prone to biting people. With us he has always been a sweetheart. (I trust him more than I do Oscar.) But with strangers, Negão is a “red-zone dog,” which is what the National Geographic Dog Whisperer guy calls dogs that pose a danger to people and other animals. Because of his temper with everyone outside of our immediate family, we’ve always had to walk Negão on a leash (unlike our other dogs, who roam free) and keep him in a kennel with a dog run. Also, he is Lorenzo’s father! (But they have a strained relationship.)

Full name: Negão
Nick-names: Neguinho, Nego

Pivot questionnaire:
1. What is your favorite word? Walk
2. What is your least favorite word? Oscar
3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? A stranger’s upper arm. My teeth sink in so nicely there.
4. What turns you off? My kennel.
5. What is your favorite curse word? Why curse when I can bite?
6. What sound or noise do you love? The sound of my extendable leash being clipped to my collar.
7. What sound or noise do you hate? The sound of Oscar traipsing around outside my kennel, peeing on my turf.
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Airline pilot. Sushi chef.
9. What profession would you not like to do? Monk. Cosmetologist.
10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? ‘Negão, no more gates or doors or leashes for you. Oscar, on the other hand, is tied up out back.’

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By pigwhisperer, January 17, 2010

What’s in a cup of coffee?

Tasting coffee to understand its flavors and aroma is called “cupping.” At the most basic level, cupping coffee involves putting 2 tablespoons of ground coffee in a 6 oz cup, pouring hot water directly over the sample, and then tasting it. There’s no filtration in cupping. Coffee should be roasted light and several samples should be compared in one cupping session. Here’s a great step-by-step guide on how to cup coffee.

Why do roasters, buyers, and growers, cup coffee? It’s a way to evaluate the merits of one coffee over another, or one roast over another. Cupping helps define a really great coffee. Coffee cuppers are like wine tasters—some have such refined palates they can detect blueberry flavors, cherry notes, anise, molasses, baked apricot, blackberry jam, and other flavors in coffees. As a novice cupper, this kind of specificity intimidates me. I have to take a deep breath and remind myself that, yes, great coffee can be just as complex and exciting as wine, but its basic attributes aren’t hard to understand.

1) Aroma: Most of our sense of taste comes from smell. This is aroma.

2) Acidity: It’s not a bad thing. Actually, it’s pretty good. A good level of acidity in coffee is kind of like the acidity in red wine, or that charged feeling on your tongue when you eat a section of tangerine. Some coffees are called “bright,” which means they have a kick, or a bit of fruity acidity. The darker the roast, the more you lose acidity. Also, espresso is a very concentrated drink, so most roasters and coffee drinkers don’t want a lot of acidity in their shots.

3) Body: This is acidity’s friend and opposite. Usually, the more body a coffee has, the less acidity. What is body? Basically, it’s a coffee’s fat content. It’s the viscosity. What the heck does all this mean? Just how the coffee feels in your mouth. Does it have the thickness of water, or of milk, or of heavy cream?

4) Sweetness: This speaks for itself.

5) Clean cup: Does the coffee taste muddy, dusty, or dirty? Are there any negative flavors that block your perception of how the coffee should taste?

6) Aftertaste: What lingers in your mouth? Professional coffee cuppers spit out their sample after tasting it. What stays after the coffee goes away? Does it linger? Or is it short? Is it a good taste (like chocolate or smoke) or a bad one (like medicine)?

7) Flavor: This is the subjective category. What does the coffee taste like? How do you know? Everyone has different flavor references—what does sour taste like? Salt? Sweet? The more you taste throughout your life, the more you remember that taste and sour it, the more references you have to look back to. So maybe a coffee tastes like the pecan pie you ate as a child, with that molasses-like sweetness? Maybe it has kick to it, and that kick reminds you of a jolly rancher candy? Or maybe it has a weird, bad taste, like sucking on an aspirin? All these flavors are subjective and depend on references unique to the taster. After talking to a few professional cuppers, they’ve told me the best practice for training your taste buds is, simply, eating and drinking a variety of things, and filing away those flavor references in your memory. When you cup coffee, your personal library of flavor references will come in handy.

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By pigwhisperer, January 10, 2010

It’s cashew season! The cashew is a tree in the Anacardiaceae family. The pulp is sweet but very acidic. We drink a lot of cashew juice this time of year, but it’s available year-round in frozen packets in the grocery store. The cashew nut is actually a seed. It’s surrounded by a shell lined with a highly toxic anacardic acid, so you can’t eat the nuts right off the tree. The acid must be burned off first. Some people use the seed’s acid to create home-made tatoos on their skin, but I don’t recommend this. (I have yet to see a really pretty caju-tatoo; they all look like burns.)

We feed the pulpy parts to our pigs and goats, and then collect the seeds. In the past we’ve sold the seeds, but this year we hope to roast them and feed the finished nuts to our pigs. This will, hopefully, give their meat a nice flavor.

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By pigwhisperer, January 3, 2010

“Girder” by Nan Cohen

The simplest of bridges, a promise
that you will go forward,

that you can come back.
So you cross over.

It says you can come back.
So you go forward.

But even if you come back
then you must go forward.

I am always either going back
or coming forward. There is always

something I have to carry,
something I leave behind.

I am a figure in a logic problem,
standing on one shore

with the things I cannot leave,
looking across at what I cannot have.

Antônio Gedeão, Poema de Domingo

Aos domingos as ruas estão desertas
e parecem mais largas.
Ausentaram-se os homens à procura
de outros novos cansaços que os descansem.
Seu livre arbítrio algremente os força
a fazerem o mesmo que fizeram
os outros que foram fazer o que eles fazem.
E assim as ruas ficaram mais largas,
o ar mais limpo, o sol mais descoberto.
Ficaram os bêbados com mais espaço para trocarem as pernas
e espetarem o ventre e alargarem os braços
no amplexo de amor que só eles conhecem.
O olhar aberto às largas perspectivas
difunde-se e trespassa
os sucessivos, transparentes planos.

Um cão vadio sem pressas e sem medos
fareja o contentor tombado no passeio.

É domingo.
E aos domingos as árvores crescem na cidade,
e os pássaros, julgando-se no campo, desfazem-se a cantar empoleirados nelas.
Tudo volta ao princípio.
E ao princípio o lixo do contentor cheira ao estrume das vacas
e o asfalto da rua corre sem sobressaltos por entre as pedras
levando consigo a imagem das flores amarelas do tojo,
enquanto o transeunte,
no deslumbramento do encontro inesperado,
eleva a mão e acena
para o passeio fronteiro onde não vai ninguém.