Catching Up...

9/01/06 - 6th Day - Afternoon. The last couple of days I have been catch-up days for me. I have been replying to emails, finishing the latest Q&A Friday installment, and today I started on the introduction for The Last Pilgrims book.

I am about to go work with Holga and Pedro since I hope to start milking Holga next week.

Here is how I made the Mesquite Bean Coffee:

I had the children gather a full, large bowl of ripe mesquite pods. Not the ones that have already dried and have become solid, but pods where the beans inside are still a bit gummy and moist. Then I had the children remove the beans from the pods and place them into a bowl. At this point they are quite gummy and they stick together. This is beginning to sound like I had the children do all the work, but what is leadership if it isn't delegation?

Then I had Tracy spread the beans on foil and place them in the solar oven for a couple of hours.

After a few hours they were quite browned and some were blackened. At this point, the beans smell AWESOME. Very much like sugar and cinnamon.

I scraped them into a bowl and then put a couple of good sized handfuls into my coffee grinder. The grinder tends to separate the bean hull from the insides. It powderizes the insides and just splits the hulls. I want both in my coffee because the "roasting" is on the hulls, and all the good healthy stuff is on the inside. So I dumped the whole thing into a camp coffee pot and brought it to a boil. As soon as it began to boil, I turned off the heat and poured it through a coffee filter. The next pot I didn't use the filter at all, I just did it the same way I cook camp coffee. I let it set for a minute, then poured a couple of ounces of cool water over the top and this causes the grounds to settle. Then I poured a full cup.

This is a robust, very flavorful "gourmet" coffee. It does take like real coffee, but with cinnamon and maybe some honey smell to it. I like it alot.

Michael