So...I've been reading again :) Today's recommended reading list contains three books, none of which are [directly] about coffee. But my English teacher in ninth grade had a quote by Chief Seattle painted on his wall: "All things are connected like the blood that unites us all." I haven't read the quote in context, so don't know exactly what Chief Seattle was talking about at that point--however, the more I learn about foods, flavors/aromas, etc, the more this quote seems to be true! Hopefully the following will explain:
Book 1 is Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." This is a book to read with a dictionary--but even if you don't have one at hand, it's completely fascinating! It's a chronicle of one year in which Annie Dillard lived by Tinker Creek in Virginia. Every day she went out to observe nature--bringning home praying mantis egg sacs, learning to stalk muskrats, etc. The book is as much about the beauty of nature as it is about its horrors. She spends alot of time on parasites--because they make up the majority of the world's organisms! And she reflects on what it means to live in a world that is both so wonderful and so painful. I learned so much about nature reading this book, I came away wondering how it's so easy to be 'an adult'--to see things mundanely. When in reality, it should be possible to live an entire life with "a child's curiousity" because things are so complex we'll never know it all! Here is a quote from my favorite paragraph in the book, and this is the most obvious way the book connects with coffee :) Annie talks about finding a wounded butterfly in a gas-station parking lot. She coaxes it onto her finger. "The closing of his wings fanned an almost imperceptible redolence at my face, and I leaned closer. I could barely scent a sweetness, I could almost name it...fireflies, sparklers--honey-suckle. He smelled like honeysuckle; I couldn't believe it. I knew that many male butterflies exuded distinctive odors from special scent glands, but I thought that only laboratory instruments could detect those odors compounded of many, many butterflies. I had read a list of the improbable scents of butterflies: sandalwood, chocolate, heliotrope, sweet pea...."
So, maybe you start out thinking, "I want to be able to smell the different aromas in my coffee. To move beyond thinking coffee smells like coffee, tastes like coffee, end of story." And as you start developing your ability to smell and taste subtleties in coffee, you're developing skills that can be used to make your chocolate-consuming, wine-tasting, cigar-smoking...and even your butterfly-holding experiences more rich and complete!
The next two books are about chocolate, but they might have to be kept for a later post. But here is a quote from one, "The Chocolate Connoisseur" by Chloe Doutre-Roussel. This is a woman who has spent admirable amounts of time and money--ever since she was just 13 years old!!--learning to taste chocolate scientifically, recording her observations, etc. Chloe writes, about learning how to smell aromas in chocolate: "Experience the scents of wet weather. If you're in the woods, smell the soil and the leaves. Breathe in the odor of a tree trunk. When you go to the market, take a sniff of each basket of mushrooms, herbs, fruit, and flowers. Do all this and you will rediscover the potential of your sense of smell. We all have the ability, but many of us have forgotten it." See? all those things--the mushrooms, the herbs, the weather, coffee <3 --all help us to enjoy each other! But they're all so different. even a chocolate that tastes like mushrooms...is nothing like eating a mushroom!
Okay, very quickly, the third book is Mort Rosenblum's "Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light." But more on that, and chocolate itself, later. :) Hope you all have a wonderful day! Oh, final question: What are some of your favorite chocolates?
