A new East Coast Sea Salt, and Ethical Coffee
Monday Discoveries
This Monday, we discover a new East Coast Sea Salt, plus the Ethical First approach of a Co Clare Coffee Roaster. But first, a new addition to the Monday Irish Stew, where each week, we share a piece of writing that has inspired us – Extract.
Extract:
Fossil fuel executives have known since the 1970s that burning oil, coal and gas would cause escalating climate catastrophes and worldwide suffering. Yet they lied, sacrificed our safety for their greed and just unleashed an apocalypse on my hometown. Their actions will condemn children today to a planet that’s more hell than Earth by the end of the century if we don’t stop them. It isn’t just a tragedy; it’s a crime against humanity.
What’s happening in North Carolina doesn’t feel real. I have no emotional framework for this, no story to help me. Right now, what I desperately need are authentic stories that help us figure out how to be human in this changing world, to face this overwhelming crisis with bravery. Stories that help us navigate our very understandable fear, anxiety, grief, despair, uncertainty and anger in a way that allows us to feel seen. Stories that make us laugh — not in ignoring our reality, but in the midst of it — and stories that remind us there’s still so much beauty here to fight for. That capture how, in the living nightmare of climate disasters, people demonstrate extraordinary kindness and creativity, as they’re doing in Asheville and Black Mountain at this very moment. And we need stories that expose the guilt of the fossil fuel industry.
Anna Jane Joyner, climate writer, in The LA Times
Wexford Sea Salt
It’s a brave dude who will stand up and speak up for the benefits of salt, in an age when the stuff has been demonised by every health body in the world.
But to hear Kevin and Jack rhapsodise about the health benefits of their sublime Wexford Sea Salt is to hear another voice in the debate, a voice that is poetic, nature-obsessed, and respectful. “This is healthy salt”, says Jack, and he’s right.
Salt is a basic necessity of the human diet, and the best salt is sea salt from clean sea waters. Kevin and Jack began their salt road journey by collecting sea water in buckets on the shore at Wexford, and evaporating it. They have moved on since then, in the process creating salt ponds and evaporation chambers, and packaging their salts in cute glass jars that boast that there are “1008 hours of sunshine in every crystal.”
Their metier is powerfully poetic: “The Sea. By Wind. By Sun” is says on the crest of the label, and they write of how the creation of natural sea salt crystallises “nature’s artwork unfolding before your eyes… showcasing the breathtaking beauty of salt crystal formations, each containing a wealth of essential minerals.”
Those minerals include magnesium, calcium, iodine, all of which we need, and salt also balances our electrolytes and regulates blood pressure. Of course, the proliferation of cheap rock salt in processed food leaves many people in the Western world with high blood pressure, but we need to recognise that a pure and natural food stuff such as Wexford Sea Salt is actually the caviar of the ocean, and a gift to our tables. Healthy Salt, from the Sunny South East. Don’t be without it.
Anam Coffee – Ethical First
The late and very great James C. Scott, author of several superb books on the social sciences including the extraordinary Seeing Like A State, passed away recently. In an interview with Yascha Mounk, Scott had this to say as he considered his life and work:
“However, if you step back from that, and widen the lens, much more than we have, then all of these states that we admire, mostly Western states—they have gotten where they've gotten by plundering the resources of the world for industrial growth in a way that seems completely unsustainable. The collateral damage of Western economic growth—on resources, the CO2 in the air, forms of bondage in the third world and in mines and plantations, and so on—it's not a pretty picture of, if you like, the substructure or infrastructure of successful capitalist development, even when it's in a political form that is relatively admirable compared to other forms. So when you open the lens that wide, I become a true pessimist, I’m afraid.”
We all know exactly what Scott was talking about, yet we don’t do enough to correct it. But one Irish artisan who is doing something about it is Brian O’Briain, who roasts the superb Anam Coffees, in County Clare.
Brian has always worked with organically grown coffees, however, on a trip to El Salvador, Brian became conscious of the shortcomings in his coffee sourcing. He took part in a course run by Raw Material, a not-for-profit social enterprise that connects growers to roasters and which aims to improve price stability and income distribution along the coffee chain.
The result of this Ethical First approach means Brian now sources from producers who do the right thing for their growers, and the environment. Having organic certification is no longer a deal-breaker. Sustainable development in the country of origin – whether that is Mozambique, Rwanda, Burundi or Nicaragua – is now the driving factor in selecting the beans that end up in your cup.
“Social Sustainability” is what Brian calls it, so we can all enjoy that along with the expertly distilled flavours the next time we order a cup of Anam Coffee.
#StandForSomething
It is a crime not to buy “real” salt, and the taste is so different. I would much rather spend the extra money and get flavour.