#smith teamaker

[ethereal---spirits]

Beard Papa’s cream puff flavor of the month is Earl Gray. I enjoyed it with a cup of Smith Teamaker’s White Rose tea.

[ccoregonmade-blog]

Happy Canada Day Portland! 

We are preparing to to unwind this holiday weekend with some soothing “Meadow” from Smith Teamaker. And what better way to enjoy our favorite chamomile blend than with a teaspoon of local honey in one of these huge mugs. “Meadow” is a caffeine free blend of chamomile, rooibos, hyssop, and rose petals.

We love to enjoy this with our Bee Local: Cherry Wood Smoked honey. A warm and toasty drink to unwind with at the start of a long weekend. 

The art featured on our mugs is from local artist PAL and shows all of the gorgeous bridges that stretch through Portland! 

[luckyclawdraw-blog]

Holiday card I designed for Smith Teamaker

[acornfeathernosh]

Food Fight! Foodworx 2015.

This last Saturday was the 3rd annual Foodworx: The Future of Food conference, and the first non-comics large-scale event i’ve attended since my “retirement” from the comic book industry. I’ve been to dozens (and dozens) of comic cons, but really had no idea what to expect here. Why Foodworx?… simply put, it grapples with the very ideas i created Acorn Feather Nosh to explore. So i signed up, whipped together a temporary business card, and awoke much much earlier than normal on a grey weekend morning, eager with anticipation.

Rain was falling in a steady downbeat as i arrived at the World Forestry Center, though most arrivals seemed indifferent to the wet welcome. I picked up my badge and meandered through a small sea of total strangers. Having attended comics conventions for fully twenty years and being a relative big dog in that world, on this stage i was feeling truly the small fish in a big pond.

What a rush to be back in the nascent stages of a new interest again! I wondered if i might meet any like-minded folk, as obsessed with food as myself? Would i leave this event more knowledgable, inspired to cook and eat good food, to help facilitate a healthier and more socially just food system? That remained to be seen.

In any case, from the easy and friendly reception picking up my badge, to the proceedings under the large open-beam rotunda of Miller Hall, sunny smiles and an exceptionally upbeat vibe compensated for any adverse weather considerations. Warm and light-filled, the space was comfortable, had great acoustics, and seemed secure enough that during breaks most people were quite o.k. to leave coats and bags staking their seats. Myself included.

Missy Maki emceed the event, and from the get-go had the audience at ease and laughing with her charming manner. As new to the food scene as i am, i’m afraid to say i was unaware of Missy and her work, though her infectious enthusiasm made me an instant fan. She began by listing the ingredients we could expect the idea of “food” at the conference to be matched with over the course of the day: flavor, marketing, film, travel, personal growth, medicine, aging, agriculture and more.

The first panel featured Tony Tellin from Smith Teamaker, and Aaron Baker, from Water Avenue Coffee, both of whom had me swimming in excellent new-to-me knowledge about the Wheres, Whys and Hows of coffee and tea, and salivating for my next cuppa.

Tony had a terrific slide presentation with many photos of the lush locations where they source their tea, and helped me for the very first time wrap my brain around the process by which tea is made. True tea — Camellia sinensis, an evergreen shrub native to Asia — is harvested every seven days, during what is called “flush.” A cup of tea is the result of the “controlled manipulation of water, temperature and oxidation" of the leaves. These affect production to create our four basic tea types: black, green, white, and oolong.

I’ve read much about the health benefits (can you say mega antioxidants?) of white tea, and have become a budding aficionado. It’s a wonderful alternative to coffee, particularly later in the afternoon, when an espresso might lead to a caffeine-fueled sleepless night. Let me step back, “alternative” is maybe not the best word… i love my coffee. I drink a cup every morning, like religion. Let’s instead call tea a fine “companion” to coffee, shall we? I’ll gladly make room in my love of food and libations for both.

Smith Tea collaborates with other Portland-based artisanal vendors, like Salt & Straw, Jacobson Salt Co., and Olympic Provisions. Egads, this is so cool. The very definition of a local, cooperative, small scale, non-corporate, open food system. Swoon…

Here’s a neat short film with Tony talking tea with OPB, and here’s Mr. Smith himself (co-founder of Stash Tea, and founder of Tazo Tea) talking about Smith Tea.

Meanwhile, speaking of coffee, Aaron played up the Portland-centric focus of Water Avenue Coffee, while educating the audience on the socially conscious business model around which they source their coffee. He had himself just two weeks prior been in El Salvador meeting with coffee growers. Like Menéndez Family Farms, who for four generations have grown coffee in Ahuachapán, near the “Cerro las Ranas” (Mountain of Frogs), bordering virgin rainforest.

Coffee leaf rust has devastated many growers in the region as of late, though the Menéndez family has been able to combat it fairly effectively. It’s worth noting how much of a razor’s edge on which small, third world farmers and growers thrive or fail, as Aaron described many farms had been abandoned entirely from leaf rust crop failure. I certainly appreciate my morning cup that much more, knowing the struggles of those who provide it for me.

Aaron described the process that coffee goes through from “cherry” to cup, the difference between arabica (think craft coffee) and robusta beans (think Folgers), that Ethiopia is the ancestral homeland of coffee, and how an enormous amount of the world’s coffee supply can be traced to a single tree. This last nugget of information kind of blew my mind, so i followed up with Aaron to see if he might shed more light on this. A self-professed storyteller with a BA in History, he readily obliged.

"The 90% claim is a bit apocryphal and probably an exaggeration, but it's one I use fairly regularly. The story is that the Dutch were the first European power to get access to viable coffee seeds (via a Sufi named Baba Budan), and when Louis XIV of France found out he wanted some for himself. Louis was obsessed with coffee, and was really one of the first of Europe's ruling elite to adopt the drink. He called in a favor with the Dutch and they got him a seed, which was planted in a greenhouse in Versailles.  

"It's this tree that almost all of Latin America's coffee comes from. Called the Noble Tree, it's seeds were taken to every French colony, and just about anyone they did business with. The only places that grow coffee that aren't descended from this plant are Ethiopia (the homeland of coffee) and the Pacific Rim, who got coffee directly from Baba Budan and the Dutch. I think to be totally accurate, that 90% figure only really applies to Latin America, but that does account for about 65% of the world's coffee production."

Much gratitude, Tony and Aaron! It’s 11:49 a.m. as i write these words, and gosh dang, i’m having a mighty internal struggle… do i get up and make a cup of tea, or a cup of coffee?

Wow, i’ve already written this much, and i just got past the first panel? Clearly i’ll need to parse this mission report about the Foodworx conference in installments. Part 2 coming soon.

[310topetaluma]

Steven Smith.

[endlesslyenraptured]

Afternoon Tea with Steven Smith