No Challenge: SBX Confab, Diaper Update & A Monkey at the Door

Last week greenlagirl, Anna C. of www.bringyourown.com and I met with Starbucks local and regional managers for SoCal in a big Fair Trade chat. The meeting went well, and while I had intended to blog extensively about the outcome, I pretty much had my say as a comment to greenlagirl's blog entry. SO, if you care to you may read my longish comment on the meeting, right here.

Suffice to say that, as an old trial lawyer, I was far more gleeful that there had been a commitment to a time certain, and an easy-to-calculate metric agreed to than I was dismayed by the longish time-frame. But that was my take, and it is informed by many many years of impatiently waiting for what should be an obvious and easy change by one company or agency or another. The metric leaves no wiggle room, which means when the newspapers start to pick up the challenge -- say over the spring or summer -- it will be clear if Starbucks passed or failed their own challenge.

Diaper Update or, This Man and A Baby

Starbucks La Verne (@ D St. & Foothill), and BigBoss Paula have proved true to their word and installed a diaper changing table in -- ta da -- the men's room! So far as I can tell, there is no changing table in the ladies room, yet.

Well knock me over with a feather, they did it! Huzzah!

Ms. Hannah will be getting a clean rear-end with dignity and style today. I am kind of bummed (haha pun!) that I can no longer show off my six-second, one handed, on the lap diaper wrangling style. I really enjoyed the part where I threw both hands in the air and the crowd roared it's approval of my . . . oh wait. That last didn't happen.

Really.

But the fold-down changing table did! And again I say huzzah!

Monkey at the Door

In this holiday season it is not unusual to see a package or two show up on the door step, but I didn't order anything recently, so I was a little surprised to find a box addressed to me from no one I immediately recognized on the door yesterday. I opened it up and Oh Yes! I had almost forgotten that glg and cityhippy had awarded me a cool prize for, er, something Starbucks challenge-y, and here it was -- a big package of certified, Fair Trade, Organic coffee from Monkey & Son . . . cool.

Since it was beans, I ate a couple, and they were quite nice; a little dry, but nice. They should make fine coffee . . . now, how to grind them? Should I dig out the old electric spice and alleged coffee grinder, or use the wedding-gift Magic Bullet (and in JUST 6 SECONDS have FRESH GROUND COFFEE)? They both work, but they both really chop the beans, and I have had gourmet types sniff deprecatingly at "chopped coffee."

We have a hand turned grain mill, that grinds wheat between two little mill-stones. No, really, we do. But I think it would be wrecked for flour-milling if I ground coffee in it.

We also have a hand cranked coffee grinder, which I think uses a more traditional grinding technique, but it is not currently mounted (it clamps to the the counter or bolts to the wall), so I can drag it out this afternoon for a cup.

Although I DO have a mortar and pestle -- but I try to reserve that for crushing eggshells for the worms and compost. (Grin; confused? Tune into my Easy Green blog next weekend (URL below) for the low down on bein' a worm farmer in the city.)

I think its the hand-cranked, wall-mounted coffee grinder after all.

Meanwhile -- Thank you greenlagirl, cityhippy, and, of course Monkey & Son! (Ironic that I am sitting here in LaVerne, blogging live from Starbucks no less, mere blocks away from Monkey & Son's operation. Ah technology!)

[UPDATE: See how the Coffee got ground, read Clean Coffee, Extreme]

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Amused by the Starbucks Challenge? Me too. Now come see my real mission in the blogosphere: Easy Green and its companion journal, Observations, and such: Notes on the Kitchen Calendar