Sue Who?

When I go to the grocery store to buy my coffee, I don't buy it based on where it is grown, or whether it's a dark roast or medium,  or whether it's ground or whole bean. I do not have a discerning palette when it comes to coffee. I have only three criteria when making a purchase:

1) it's on sale
2) it's not Tim Horton's.

I recently bought some whole bean President's Choice coffee. It really wakes me up in the morning, but that's only because my coffee grinder sounds like a pinata full of Skittles being beaten by rattle wielding toddlers. It's....umm...noisy. I have no idea if my coffee grinder gives me a coarse ground or a fine ground. It gives me coffee so that's all I care.

I bought two bags of coffee. One is from Colombia. I don't know much about Columbia other than they're noted for their coffee and their cocaine (not mixed together). I've only ever known two people from Colombia. A man called Juan Valdez who made his fortune as a coffee magnate and then expanded his empire to include ocean-going oil tankers. He was eventually bought out by Exxon and things up north turned south after that. The other Colombian with whom I'm acquainted is Olga Cruz. I'm quite convinced that she's descended from the Chibcha 'Indians' and that she would have become a high priestess had the Europeans not come over and ruined everything (soccer, Christianity, pay-per-view television, small pox, etc.).

My other bag of coffee was called Sumatran. I know nothing about Sumatra, but this brings me to criterion three (you thought I made a mistake earlier, didn't you?):

3) it better be packaged in a pretty colour that suits the aesthetic of both my mind and my cupboard.

As you can see from today's image, the coffee was bagged in the family colour...orange. I'd buy wasabi coated egg salad energy balls if they were packaged in more eye pleasing wrapping.

So, I know nothing about Sumatra so let's do a little research. I'd like to introduce you to Wikipedia in case you've never heard of it....

Sumatra (Indonesian: Sumatera) is an island in western Indonesia and part of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island that is entirely in Indonesia (two larger islands, Borneo and New Guinea, are shared between Indonesia and other countries) and the sixth largest island in the world at 480,847.74 km² (including adjacent islands such as the Riau Islands and Bangga Belitung Islands), with a current population of over 50 million (54 million administratively, as Riau Islandsand Bangka–Belitung Islands are included). Its biggest city is Medan which has over 4,300,000 people in its metropolitan area. *Note: all this Sumatra stuff is courtesy of Wikipedia.

Medan? A city of 4.3 million. Bigger than Toronto, yet I've never heard of it. Gawd, I live in a bubble. In my own defence, they don't have an NFL or NHL franchise in Medan, so why do I even need to know about it?

So, have you noticed that I like to begin sentences with the word 'so'? It usually precedes a profound statement.  I digress. So, my Sumatran coffee tastes different from my Colombian coffee. Profound, I know! Please don't ask me to explain the difference. They cost the same so there's basically no difference other than the pretty orange bag and the taste. Given that Sumatra is roughly 87% Muslim, I doubt that my coffee beans were harvested by men like Juan Valdez. More likely they were picked by Muhammed Abdul Muhammed...or his wife and kids. This just proves that I still know little or nothing about Sumatra.

My coffee is now cold, in emulation of my blog.