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Mushrooms - Love em or Hate em

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  Mushrooms – Love em or Hate em? An often-under-appreciated food, mushrooms have been eaten and used as medicine for thousands of years. All varieties of mushrooms are low in calories and fat and contain modest amounts of fiber and various nutrients. Due to the presence of an amino acid called glutamate, mushrooms are also recognized for their ability to create umami flavour. Umami is considered the fifth basic taste, alongside sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. It is a savory flavour which can enhance low-sodium foods, reducing the need for added salt. Although considered a vegetable, mushrooms are neither a plant nor animal based food. They are a type of fungus that contains a substance called ergosterol, similar in structure to cholesterol in animals. Mushrooms vary in appearance with more than 10,000 known types, but generally they are distinguished by a stem, fleshy rounded cap, and gills underneath the cap. Because some wild mushrooms can be Poisonous and hard to identify, you sh
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What is Coffee

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  What is Coffee? This is going to be my final post about coffee. I’m going to talk about the plant itself, the various drinks and wrap up with some interesting facts about coffee.     The coffee you enjoy each day has taken a long journey to arrive in your cup. The quality and flavor of your coffee is not only determined by your favorite brewing process, but by the country and origin of the coffee, the variety of bean, the roast, and the texture of your grind. It has taken a long journey from Planting, Harvesting, Processing, Drying, Milling, Exporting, Grading, Roasting, Grinding and finally Brewing to reach you.   Coffee is personal - the right way to make it is how you like it best. Everyone recognizes a roasted coffee bean, but you might not recognize an actual coffee plant. Depending on the variety, it will take approximately 3 to 4 years for the newly planted coffee trees to bear fruit. The fruit, called the coffee cherry, grow along the branches, and turns a bright, deep
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By any other name, Coffee!

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  Mmm! Coffee. A most satisfying, uplifting drink. In previous blogs I talked about the discovery of coffee and several attempts to ban it. We looked at Coffeehouses throughout history and current day. But what about Coffee, the drink itself. What has brought us to our current plethora of coffee blends and drink variations that has made coffee the 2 nd most traded commodity on earth. To start let’s look at a few milestones in the history of coffee. 1000 First known literature describing Coffee. 1100 First Coffee plantations established in Yemen with coffee from Ethiopia. 1200 Turkey becomes the first place where coffee  beans are roasted. 1438 A spice grinder is invented, which is used to  grind   roasted  coffee beans 1600 Arabia & Muslim Africa Monopolize Coffee, however, Bada Budan smuggles fertile beans back to India breaking the Arab monopoly on coffee production. 1668 Little known factoid. Coffee overtakes beer as New York City’s favourite beverage for breakfast. 1727
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Coffee Houses

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  Coffeehouses I spent several years of my working career overseeing construction and opening of multiple Coffee Culture® locations throughout Ontario and a Java Café ® in China, but are they coffeehouses? If so, what makes them a “Coffeehouse”? Merriam-Webster.com defines a coffeehouse as: “a business that sells coffee and usually other refreshments and that often serves as an informal club for its regular customers”.  Based on this both are coffeehouses, as are many other establishments, both independent and chain, throughout the world. Guelph has many coffeehouses, some independent, like Planet Bean, Red Brick Café, and Lost Aviator Coffee as well as all the usual chain coffeehouses, Starbucks, Tim Hortons, Williams. Many of the independent coffeehouse’s specialty roast their own beans. The chains as well have coffee beans roasted especially for them, thereby making them each truly unique coffee experiences.   Where do you like to meet for Coffee? Let me know in the comments and rea
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