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.

There are lots of people in Syracuse thinking the same thing about their neighborhoods, too.  Look at the websites that have sprouted just this winter (disclaimer – I’m the webmaster of the last two):

• Syracuse Grows “…is a grassroots network cultivating a just foodscape in the City of Syracuse. Syracuse Grows provides coordination, programming, education, and resources to support equitable local food production, distribution and consumption through community gardening and urban agriculture.”
• Community Supported Agriculture of Central New York “Since 1998, CSA-CNY has been bringing people together to safeguard, promote, make available, and enjoy locally grown organic foods.”
• Slow Food CNY is a new chapter in the Slow Food USA network. Slow Food is “a global, grassroots movement with thousands of members around the world that links the pleasure of food with a commitment to community and the environment.”

With this flowering of organizations interested in very local food, it doesn’t seem quite so daunting a task to imagine the kinds of food we can grow in Eastwood. It’s the last day of February, high time I got some seeds and started them in the sunny southern window. My first shopping stop will be the Seed Savers Exchange. Why not just shop the Burpee catalogue or Lowes for seeds? Well, we’re losing biodiversity at a tremendous rate and I feel I can just as easily do my part to help maintain it, for the sake of my kids and grandson.

If you’re growing a garden this year, let us know what you’ll be planting and how you’ll cook it.  I could use a little inspiration. For instance, I just learned that I don’t have to go to the trouble of breading and frying eggplant – it can easily be cut up and roasted with some olive oil and the fresh rosemary from the garden. So let us know what your favorite preparations are for the veggies you’ll be growing!

Here’s what my compost pile looked like today. The sun shone through the slats and melted only some of the snow:

Dave’s riggies were plentiful and on the spicy side, exactly to his liking. The sauce, made with sherry, was fresh and delicious, with none of the tell-tale sweetness that bottled sauces have. The pasta was done just right, too. The saltimbuca (usually spelled saltimbocca – jumps-in-the-mouth) lived up to its name. “Chicken and prosciutto sautéed with baby bellas topped with provolone finished in a white wine lemon butter sauce over greens” … was all that and more. Garlic, for one thing, and some herbs I couldn’t place. Chef isn’t skimping on anything in this dish. It was magnificent, and flavorful to the extreme. I couldn’t believe I was eating food that exciting while sitting in my own living room. You’d easily pay twice as much, too, for a dinner like this in any other restaurant.

The menu is amazingly complete with starters, homemade soups, salads, sandwiches and subs, a la carte pasta dishes and sides. But to do this place any justice, you have to give this a try sometime:

Before you leave to pick up your dinner, set the table, get the candles ready, set out the wine, turn on the soft music, and stick the good china in a warm oven. Order one of the stellar dinners – maybe a N.Y. strip steak or a shrimp scampi – rush them home and and serve those babies on the hot plates. You’ll think a little piece of heaven dropped into your dining room.