Coffee Beany

so sue me for running with a theme....but give me some credit for switching up the type of bean.

i’m not one of those people who depend on my daily cup of coffee.  i don’t need it, but oddly enough i admire those addicts who get more jazzed over a fine caffeine rich brew than i get over just about anything these days (yes, im bored and jaded with nicaragua, couldn't you tell)...but I certainly do love to savor a bitter cup, black, when the mood strikes. And after living in coffee country for the past two years, i know more about the little bean than i ever thought possible.  The department of Jinotega produces some of Nicaragua’s highest quality coffee beans (if you like Peet’s Coffee, you might be familiar) and it is BIG business.  November-March is harvest time and people will literally drop everything to participate, uprooting families and transplanting from coffee farm to coffee farm across northern Nicaragua.  Money rains down from the mountains.  Coffee is a big deal.

And we all love coffee.  We all drink coffee.  And we’re all left with coffee grounds.  My mom always throws it out onto the flowers in front of our house in NY and I knew for this reason it works great as a fertilizer.  But within used coffee grounds lies a wealth of practical and valuable applications.

My favorite: I take a big scoop out of the bottom of my French press and scrub that lovely caffeine filled grime all over my face.  FACIAL SCRUB.  Smoothes, softens, and revitalized my sun-torched skin. 

Use them in brown hair too, to give it a lovely deep coffee sheen. Just be careful and try to catch the grounds before they go down the drain, large quantities of coffee grounds will clog it!