Today I glanced at the old Duralex glasses I’d brought home from the Canary Islands (Spain) some ten years ago, unable to purchase them here. Manufactured in France of tempered glass, they have been used in Europe for decades in cafes and restaurants because of their durability and elegant design.

My earliest memories of these glasses, dating back to 1976, is of the Canarian cortado, so pretty in its tiny glass cup and such a knock-out to drink, once its layers of black espresso and creamy white sweetened condensed milk were mixed with the tiny spoon that came with it.

I did a search on Duralex glasses a couple years ago but none were to be found at any price. Today, lo and behold! I find them- at least the larger tumblers – being sold in the US under the name “Kidishes” – durable glass tumblers and bowls that your kids can use if you’re trying to get away from endocrine-disrupting chemicals BPA, PVC and phthalates. Kidishes can be found at The Soft Landing and ZoeBOrganic.com. You’ll enjoy seeing their other products as well.

Am I so experienced that I was able to actually pick up on all that? Not by a long shot. But I do know that when I taste this coffee and I don’t have to put cream in it, it’s because it’s smooth and bursting with flavors that are too interesting to cover up.

In case you haven’t been reading this blog for awhile, you may have missed the fact that Eastwood boasts one of the best coffee roasters in the Northeast. At one end of our James Street business district, in the Eastwood Plaza, is Cafe Kubal. While the cafe itself is small (okay, it’s tiny!), the taste of the coffees being roasted before your eyes in the 1904 roaster is huge. Matt and Rachel Godard go out of their way to find the best beans, to form business relationships with the growers themselves, and to bring the beans to Syracuse where Matt roasts them expertly.

In the cafe, you always have a choice of light or dark roasts for your cup o’ joe, as well as the usual variety of ways to prepare it. These folks pull a mean shot, equal to the best to be found in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Ithaca. Even if you’re not likely to do it often, try their espresso drinks once in awhile. You’ll never go back to Charbucks.

But if you just want a great cup of coffee at home, pick up a bag of beans. They’ll grind them for you or you can buy them whole for grinding at home. (If you want really great coffee taste, you’ll invest in a grinder and grind seconds before brewing.) Either way, you’ll know the date when the beans were roasted so you can be sure to use them within about ten days, when they’re at their peak of flavor.

Don’t want coffee? Try one of their many teas! In the mood for something to eat? They have an array of cookies, muffins, bagels, desserts – including Purity Ice Cream from Ithaca – as well as soups and other savory items.

Do you live out of town? That’s okay. Cafe Kubal’s internet business is even older than the cafe, and Matt ships his coffee all over this country and internationally. So if you’re originally from Eastwood and want to support a local business, give his coffee a try!

One of the best things about Cafe Kubal, of course, is that it’s located in a “20-minute city” – that is, everyone who lives in Eastwood (formerly a village, now a neighborhood), is within a 20-minute walk of the cafe. A daily walk of about 20 minutes is considered by some to be the minimum amount of exercise for maintaining health. How sweet it is, to combine a walk along Eastwood’s sidewalk-lined streets with a top-notch coffee experience.

Does everyone love Cafe Kubal coffee? Of course not! We’re a big diverse city with lots of people who have a diversity of taste in… well, everything! And that’s great. But if you haven’t tried coffee at Cafe Kubal, you’re missing a treat that can be different every time you go in. They continue to develop new drinks, improve on the old ones, and bring in new beans. Making the leap from the fairly dilute coffee that is typically served at an average Syracuse restaurant to Cafe Kubal’s coffee drinks can be a bit of a stretch. Some of the drinks are quite strongly flavorful while others are considerably more subtle. So when you go in, let them know it’s your first time. Tell them what you normally like to drink, and see what they suggest you try first. If you’re considering brewing their coffee at home, discuss with them the best ways to bring out the flavor of these beans. Sometimes a simple adjustment to you usual method will surprise you with a more pleasurable coffee at home.

Cafe Kubal and its Roasteria and Cupping Lab are both located at the Eastwood Plaza, 3501 James St., Syracuse, NY. The cafe’s summer hours are Mon-Fri 6:30am-6:00pm and Sat 8:00am-2:30pm. The Roasteria is open from 9-5 M-F.

Their newest beverage offering: Iced Shaken Rosemary Latte! They make their own rosemary syrup with real rosemary herb and organic cane juice and prepare it with a tail shaker.

Bean sale: buy one and get one half off. From 6/23-6/28 ONLY! This sale only comes around once in a while, so take advantage while you can.

But the book that continues to inspire me is A Cook’s Tour, and specifically the chapter, “Where Food Comes From“. Read it, and you’ll understand why he says that where our food comes from is not always pretty. But it’s the larger concept behind that chapter that makes me think a lot and sometimes do strange things.

Strange thing #1: I make coffee in a 70-year-old vacuum coffee pot.

This little honey requires that I take 12 minutes every morning to heat the water, grind the beans bought from Cafe Kubal, pour the grinds into the top part of the pot, stir the grinds into the hot water once it’s risen to the top, time it for two minutes and thirty seconds, and remove it from the heat when that time is up. I pour some of the coffee for us and put the rest in an old glass thermos (metal containers make the coffee taste bad). What we get is some of the best-tasting coffee you can make at home. What it gives me is a reassuring ritual with which to start my day and some quiet, meditative time watching the magic of physics as the coffee magically gets sucked back down into the lower chamber.

I like buying from Matt Godard at the cafe because he has a close connection to where coffee beans come from. His latest offering is an Indian Narali bean, roasted dark, that is truly stunning. But it’s the fact that he can email the grower and get that bean behaving the way the grower wants it to behave in the cup that has me feeling somehow connected to the earth on the other side of the world. (More on this bean in a later posting.) Here’s a cup at the cafe:

Strange thing #2: I dry my clothes on the line.

Where do dry clothes come from? Some of us in Eastwood still dry most of our clothes on the line. There’s no shame in that here! In fact, many today might consider it a badge of coolness, an awareness of the grave danger our planet is in, and an attempt to do our part. Call it what you may, hanging clothes on the line is one of my favorite activities. It satisfies my Protestant work ethic while I’m thoroughly enjoying the outdoors. It’s not even hard work, like gardening. It’s just pleasant. Your neighbors say hello to you as they walk by. You might even have a conversation with someone and pick up on some of the latest gossip. Networking at its finest. I save a few bucks in energy costs, I get that righteous feeling that allows me to blog my attempts at minimizing my carbon footprint, and my clothes smell great! What’s not to like?

How about you, my neighbors near and far?

What strange things do you do?

Do you pick your own strawberries? Do you fill jugs from a local spring? Do you buy eggs directly from a local farm that you’ve visited? Maybe you make your own clothes? What do you do that reminds you and/or your kids where things come from?

By the way, Matt and Rachel at Cafe Kubal can send their beans anywhere in the world. They once had an order from Taiwan that they happily filled.

Sheila, Patty and Bill with bag of coffee beans