Happiness Tasted

Celebrating? Or re-grouping?

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment
celebrating-or-recovering

cabindoorcoffee.com

Boots here.  Taking a nice little breather from all of life’s various forms of coffee goodness and cabin door delights.  I came across this picture tonight and was trying to remember what possessed me to take such an un-artful picture and whether the clues in this image scream happiness or stress, celebrating or re-grouping.  The moment must have meant something to me, one way or another — otherwise I wouldn’t have felt inclined to capture it on film.  The clues: a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, two wine glasses, some junk mail, a phone that has been turned off, some ripe bananas, a clean stovetop . . .  Hmmmmm.

This past year has been full of change.  Lots of moving from place to place and lots of moving pieces.  For those of you move frequently, you can understand how life sometimes presents many choices — choices that beckon and ask to be your dance partner for the next tune.  For those of you who haven’t moved for 15, 20, or more years, you might not be able to comprehend the impact of all the chaotic transition that moving creates. And I feel a goodly bit of envy for you.  You know where you want to be and you have found it.  This is a rare thing in life and you should feel proud that you have found a place to hang your hat and scrape your boots.

I’ve moved from unrefined one-room cabins to primitive wall tents to fixer-uppers to fancy beach houses . . . and back to rustic cabins.  Cabins with rotting floors to houses with the finest hardwood flooring.  No running water to three (count ’em!) full baths.  Kerosene lamps to the latest and greatest in recessed lighting.

With so much moving, details get muted, memories get slopped together like a North Dakota funeral hotdish, and stuff remains unpacked.  Boy, does it ever.  Items that felt to be so important to you when you were carefully packing them into boxes become forgotten.  Unnecessary.  You learn to make do with what you have.  You realize that one wooden spoon is enough.  Three bath towels are plenty.  You’ve moved so many times that when you are heading home from town you forget to turn left to your new abode and turn right instead toward your old home.  Habits generate your direction.  You realize that you have been operating on autopilot.  A thought takes hold: Maybe that’s why I keep moving so often. 

You start to associate seasons, sunsets, conditions, and wildlife with certain residences.  The house with the Canada geese.  The house with the beautiful birdies.  The house with the deer.  The house with the glorious sunsets.  The house with the stinky water.  The house with the ultra-quiet nights.  The house with the flickering lights.  The house with the orbs.  The house with the scary bat.  The house with the wet firewood.  The house with all of the glorious sunlight.  The house with the smoking stove.  The house with the cranky water pump.  The house with the insane squirrel that kept chewing through the screens.

I am going to make the assumption that this photo op was cause for celebration because I can’t fathom why I would want to visually record a time of stress and duress . . . unless, of course, I was celebrating that I had survived some such mishap . . . which I guess makes stress, ultimately and in the end, a cause for celebration.

Maybe there is some mysterious circuitousness in this image . . . reminding me that even the survival of mishaps deserves some homage.  At the very least a celebration that calls for a bottle of wine and a toast for two.  From where I (temporarily) sit now looking out over the Sound . . . with memories of past dwellings mingling and steeping in this little pot of Now . . . there is this message, sometimes extraordinarily subliminal, that pops into every image: Life Is Good.

And what would life be without a Stetson to hang on the back of the door and a good pair of boots to slip into each morning?   Everyone loves a Stetson and I, in particular, love Ariat boots.  Something about the fit and the cut that make my feet happy.

 

Stetson Men’s Powder River 4X Buffalo Felt Cowboy Hat

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Ariat Women’s Legend Western Cowboy Boot

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Achla Designs BS-03 Boot Scraper

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Our Home State of Happiness

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment
coffee-france

cabindoorcoffee.com

Boots here, your Badass Coffee Babe, hoping that life is treating you in a kindly manner on this very lively Friday morning.

You know how it is with travel.  There’s something about any kind of travel that makes coffee even better.  It looks better, smells better, tastes better when I am away from home — be that out on the trail and listening to some early-morning loon song echoing out over the lake or sitting at some busy sidewalk cafe in France or simply parking it at my favorite coffee bar in my adopted hometown.  It’s all good.

Location is irrelevant.  What is relevant is how travel makes my senses take a second look at something.  And then another.  Do some comparisons.  Scribble down some notes in my Pay Attention Book.  Take the time to just think about what is happening all around me.  All while sipping my favorite beverage.

I sometimes think I don’t take this Better Sense of Newness into account when occupying my Home State.  You know the place . . . we all have a Home State.  It might be your front porch,  your desk that looks out at the bird bath, your office with the funky view of the brick wall of Nash Hall.  It’s your over-sized yellow kitchen table that is tucked into the too-tiny breakfast nook or your kind of messy desk in the loft or your easel with the broken leg that is balancing on an upside down apple crate.  It’s that deck chair that wobbles funny while you are parking your back side.  It’s the long bus ride to work or school.

The places that we call Home State are the comfort food for our senses.  We go to them each day without a lot of thought.  We sit and we think, write, paint, eat, take in the passing view from the car, train, or bus.

One thing all of these Home States have in common?  Our morning Joe.  That Cup of Reverence that gets us up and moving and feeling inspired.

Travel.  I sometimes think that I don’t travel enough.  I explore and I wander, but I don’t go a lot farther than my two feet can take me on any given day on the trail.   I think I have too strong of a predilection for grabbing a mug of Joe and putting my feet up on the porch rail and taking in the view of the dogs sleeping in the sunshine and the cat prowling the woodshed.  I guess I’m not the most sophisticated person in the world.  But I sure do know how to enjoy a moment for what it is.  I pour my second Cup of Reverence and think that life is pretty good in my happy Home State.

Here is some of my Home State reading while imbibing my Cup of Reverence.  These books are inspiring and motivating.

 My FAVORITE!
The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work Hardcover
by Shawn Achor

http://amzn.to/2chV0V6

And another FAVORITE!
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business Paperback
by Charles Duhigg

http://amzn.to/2cGPM3I

And another . . .
The Happiness Project (Revised Edition)
by Gretchen Rubin

http://amzn.to/2c2p7PQ

The Geography of the Coffee Bean: The 3 Main Coffee-Growing Regions

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment
the geography of coffee

Cabin Door Coffee

Coffee. It’s not just a simple plant in any old garden . . . coffee = landscape + climate + elevation.

Attention all Map-of-the-World Lovers!  Boots here, as promised, to talk more about the Geography of Coffee.   And to keep it interesting, I am going to keep it brief.  As our friend Bill Shakespeare said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”  Now I don’t know that my end goal today is Coffee Wit, but I am going to do my best to stir your interest in the geography of coffee.

Coffee is Geography . . . Geography is Coffee  

The 3 main coffee regions of the world:

  1. Latin America: well-balanced; crisp and bright acidity; more consistent quality
  2. Africa/Arabia: exotic; berry, citrusy/grapefruity, and spicy flavors; more unpredictable
  3. Asia/Pacific: full-bodied; spicy, herbally; depth; pairs well with savory
  4. These regions each have unique and distinct, geographically-inspired taste profiles.

All of this base-camp info will ultimately lead to me walking you through a coffee tasting at the end of all this fascinating Geography stuff.   Next?  We will look at how to “taste” coffee and identify the characteristics that help you to identify region.  But in the meantime, I am feeling some camp stories percolating to the surface.  I might have to explore some of those before looking at coffee tasting.

And if you are interested in this kind of stuff — I am! –then you will be surprised that you can not only taste but actually smell the geography of the bean before you even slurp.

So have some fun today just enjoying the flavor of your coffee.  Appreciate how very far those little beans in their burlap sacks had to travel to give you so much pleasure.

Who doesn’t want a map of the world on the wall? And it’s so inexpensive! I have two maps posted in my cabin: one in the kitchen and one in the little house with the crescent moon cut out of the door.

Rand McNally Signature Map of the World

http://amzn.to/2cu3Ih2

This paperback looks so awesome!  Who doesn’t want to know the secrets to happiness?  I am thinking: I must order this.

Happy: Secrets to Happiness from the Cultures of the World

http://amzn.to/2cu1UVw

Have you heard this music?  It is simply the best in collaboration, talent, creativity, and musicality . . . all from around the world.  

 Songs Around The World (CD + DVD)

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5 Lively Factoids on The Geography of the Coffee Bean

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment
the geography of coffee

Cabin Door Coffee

Coffee . . . it’s not just an attitudinal thing . . . it’s a latitudinal thing.

Attention all Geography Cognoscenti . . . aka Map Lovers!  Boots here, as promised, to talk about the Geography of Coffee.  For all of you who haven’t had their coffee yet or for those of you whose eyes glaze over when they anticipate a pedantic and unsolicited lesson on coffee  . . . well, have no fear.  The thing you don’t know about Boots, the Badass Coffee Babe, is that she wants nothing better than to get back to splitting some kindling for tomorrow’s fire, filling the kerosene lamps while there’s still light in the day, and maybe taking a skinny dip in the lake to feel refreshed after all of the chores.

So, here it is . . . delivered in bullet points so that you can isolate the facts from the minutiae.  This is all good stuff that you can toss out to that cute barista while you’re waiting for your beverage.  S/he will think you are a geographical wonder.  Try it.  You’ll see how attractive knowledge is.

Coffee is Geography . . . Geography is Coffee

  1. Coffee beans carry their own unique geography with them.
  2. Geography IS a coffee profile . . . a flavor.
  3. Coffee is more than an attitudinal thing . . . it’s also a latitudinal thing.  It’s grown in the equatorial band between the two tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.
  4. There are three primary coffee regions in the world. (We’ll get into these soon.  Promise!)
  5. These regions each have unique and distinct geographical profiles. You can train your tongue to identify them . . . which is why when you first smell and then take a sip of black coffee, your palate can tell immediately where those beans were grown.

All of this will ultimately lead to me walking you through a coffee tasting at the end of all this fascinating Geography stuff.  If you are interested in this kind of stuff — I am! –then you will be surprised that you can actually smell the geography of the bean before you even slurp.

So have some fun today just enjoying the flavor of your coffee.  Appreciate how very far those little beans in their burlap sacks had to travel to give you so much pleasure.

Who doesn’t want a map of the world on the wall? And it’s so inexpensive! I have two maps posted in my cabin: one in the kitchen and one in the little house with the crescent moon cut out of the door.

Rand McNally Signature Map of the World

http://amzn.to/2cu3Ih2

This paperback looks so awesome!  Who doesn’t want to know the secrets to happiness?  I am thinking that I must order this.

Happy: Secrets to Happiness from the Cultures of the World

http://amzn.to/2cu1UVw

These mugs might not represent the coffee-growing latitudes . . . but you are going to look super smart when you bring up your newly-learned factoids when someone comments on your mug of the world.

3D Rose mug: Vintage European map of Western Europe Britain UK France Spain Italy etc retro geography travel Ceramic Mug, 15 oz, White

http://amzn.to/2bSv5Tn

3dRose mug_112942_4 Vintage map of the North Pole polar cap Russia Northern America Greenland geography travel theme Two Tone Black Mug, 11 oz, Black/White

http://amzn.to/2cu14YJ

Sunday morning. Nothing better.

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment
Sunday morning

Cabin Door Coffee

Boots here.  There is something that is just so satisfying about going through your Sunday morning ritual.  Make coffee. Get paper.  Find crossword puzzle.  Relax.  Proceed with the day’s mind challenge.  Exercise your brain muscles.  It all sounds like so much fun, doesn’t it?

coffee-beans-759024_960_720Are you, too, a Sunday morning crossword person?  The sort of person who subscribes to the local rag just so that you can get your daily (or weekly — depending on the circulation of your paper) dose of crosswording?  And if it’s not crosswording, maybe your Sunday morning is devoted to writing or reading or listening to NPR or watching the dogs sleep or writing in your journal or talking on the phone with family.  Maybe it’s time to pay bills or to sort through the stack of paperwork that has grown throughout the past week.  The one thing all of this Sunday morning fun has in common is coffee.  Good ol’ plain and simple Joe.

Today, enjoy your coffee experience.  Drink it straight up black.  Dress it up with sugar and sprinkles.  Vanilla syrup, lavender syrup, almond syrup.  Nutmeg, cinnamon, or cocoa powder.  Ristretto or long or perfectly-timed shots.  Non-fat, whole, or breve.  No matter how you take your coffee, take some time today to just enjoy the world.  Think about the traveling that your coffee beans had to do to find its way to your kitchen.

Coffee grows all over the world.  Appreciate the geography that has gone into you enjoying your favorite morning drink.  When I think about drinking a beverage made from beans from Sumatra, I simply marvel at the splendor of it all.   This week we are going to be talking about the different parts of the world that grows coffee.

I don’t know about you but I feel pretty lucky that we have the opportunity to partake in such a satisfying morning ritual.  Don’t you agree?  Have a great Sunday!

The New York Times Supersized Book of Sunday Crosswords: 500 Puzzles (New York Times Crossword Puzzles)

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#1 Amazon Best Seller: The New York Times Light and Easy Crossword Puzzles: 130 Fun, Easy Puzzles

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This book on coffee looks fantastic!

Coffee: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry

http://amzn.to/2bO81VQ

Day Parts – Sunday Morning Coffee Music

http://amzn.to/2c2p5bg

It comes from within.

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment
IMG_3097. tranquility

Cabin Door Coffee

Boots here, thinking about the moment.  It seems as if there isn’t a lot of time in any given today to just sit and think.  There have been times in my life when this was not the case and I had plenty of wilderness time to drink in the view and take in the moment.  Life, in its fancy ways, has a way of shaking things up so that we can appreciate what we have when we have it.  There is no real spin on good, better, best . . . it is more a state of mind that says All is good.

I know that Coffee is Queen in this neck of the woods, but so is a good measure of tranquility, quiet, and kindness.  Today . . . tonight . . . tomorrow . . . enjoy your room with a view.  Whatever that view may be, find something to appreciate in the tranquility of this very moment.  You might be surprised what you find, see, and hear when you take a moment to appreciate what you have that is right in front of you.

There’s something about Saturday morning.

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment
oh how i love thee saturday am

Cabin Door Coffee

Greetings, good people.  Boots, your friendly Badass Coffee Babe here.  I am happy to say that there has been a shift in the weather in the high country, and I am just starting to get settled into my late summer routine.  As you, too, have noticed: the days are growing shorter here in the northern hemisphere.  I am beginning to think that it’s time to start some serious wood splitting for the rainy days that are soon to arrive.

And there’s nothing like Saturday morning for getting some pre-fall chores done.  Saturday.  Even if it is a day of some heavy-duty chores, there is always the sense that the previous week has been cleared and it is time to take a deep breath.  Today, think about the joys that that first (and second!) cup of Joe brings to your morning.  Rejoice in the invigorating luxury that this “bean juice” brings to your daily routine.

A tiny coffee fact for you: Did you know that the coffee “bean” is actually the seed inside the coffee cherry?  Yes!  What we call the coffee bean is actually the seed — or the pit– inside what can be thought of as a stone fruit — the coffee cherry.   The reason that people call this seed a “bean” is simply because the seed looks so much like a bean.

Isn’t it weird how language can create a whole culture around what isn’t exactly so?  In other words, why don’t we go to that cute little coffee shop on the corner and order one pound of coffee seeds, please?   Or one pound of coffee cherry pits ground for an espresso machine, please?  This just sounds wrong.  We have developed and established a culture of bean-ology.

I hope that you all have a fantastic weekend.  I am guessing that we all could use the time to relax and count a few blessings.  Bon weekend!  A little Hoops and Yoyo for you . . .

I love the bean juice!

Click on the images and links below for some #1 Best Seller coffee cherry seeds!

Death Wish Ground Coffee, The World’s Strongest Coffee, Fair Trade and USDA Certified Organic, 16 Ounce

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Lavazza Super Crema Espresso – Whole Bean Coffee, 2.2-Pound Bag

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What brings you joy?

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment
cups and pot. simplest things

cabindoorcoffee.wordpress.com

What brings you joy?  Boots here . . . thinking about what brings me joy.  I can tell you that my morning cup of Joe is a good way to kickstart my day’s sense of appreciation.  And if it’s the simplest things that bring me joy, I love the simplicity of these coffee mugs.  There is something about their rustic beauty that makes my morning feel like it is going to be a good day!  I especially love the oversized, cream-colored, enamel non-travel mug!  My fave!

Life is short. Drink your Joe out of a mug that you love!

Abbott Collection Yellow Enamel Look Cappuccino Cups

http://amzn.to/2brppQL

Hallmark Home Distressed Oversized Enamel Camp Mug, Cream House Non-Travel

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Hallmark Home Distressed Oversized Enamel Camp Mug, Aqua Happy Coffee Beans

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Wild & Wolf Folklore Enamel Mug: Day

http://amzn.to/2bIs4Di

Sunday Morning Coffee

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

coffee. sunday morning. journal. coffee cup

Boots here to wish you a Happy Happy Sunday.  I don’t know about you but there is something special about the leisurely perspective that a Sunday morning has to offer.  Sunday is a day to sleep in, to go back to sleep to resolve a weird dream that has an awkward or disturbing ending, and to make time to stretch before getting into a vertical position.  Sunday is always a great day to join the human race.

It’s a day to get caught up on bills, make out a weekly to-do list, and organize the hodgey-podgey stack of random little notes to myself that have accumulated during the week.  A day to squiggle more notes on my white board on the wall and to micro-erase the things that I did manage to get done in the previous weekdays.  In short, I love Sundays.

And one of my favorite things to do is to grab my journal and doodle some drawings or scribble some words onto the page.

But one thing that is not a leisurely activity on Sunday morning is making my coffee.  I just can’t wait to get my Joe brewed and commence Operation Catch-up.  Sunday Morning Coffee is one of those week-long-awaited luxuries that I just don’t want to mess around with.  I’m not one of those people who starts a load of laundry or empties the dishwasher or sweeps the front porch before I brew my coffee.  No.  Sunday morning is about getting caffeinated and investing some focused attention into my one day of the week that says I can prioritize my preferences — which always feels like a brighter degree of great.

I just ordered one of these planners (click on the image or link below) and it is one heck of a goal organizer.  The best part is that it focuses on breaking down your goals into baby steps so that you can find your way more easily.  Do check it out.  I am really loving mine!

  • NEW & Improved Planner: JULY 2016 to JUNE 2017
  • ❶ Need to Transform Life With Yearly Goals ?
  • ❷ Want to Set Motivating Monthly Goals ?
  • ❸ Ready To Make Every Day Count ?

Tools4Wisdom Planner 2016 2017 Calendar July to June – 4-in-1: Daily Weekly Monthly Yearly Goals Organizer (8.5 x 11 / 200 Pages / Spiral / Academic Year)

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and here’s another one of the covers . . .

http://amzn.to/2aRxnOU

Enjoy life and make some dreams happen by mapping out what you can do and then doing it!  Make each day count!