#FairTradeFriday

Coffee. It's more a verb than a noun these days. In fact, the other day I had coffee with a friend...we both had tea drinks! But we still referred to it as "having coffee."

Coffee: a brief history, how it gets to your cup (and what do those labels mean?)

The facts say that 125 million people worldwide depend on coffee for their livelihood - and no wonder! Here's the top 10 countries in the world that consume the most coffee....nope the United States doesn't land in the top 10, but doesn't it feel like our nation drinks truckloads of coffee each day?!

Anyway, it's safe to say the world loves its coffee. But I think we might all love it a little more if we knew that 125 million people working to bring us the coffee were getting fair treatment, fair wages, fair working environment. At least I know the coffee I drink tastes better when I know that everyone involved in making sure I get that cup of coffee was treated with dignity and equality.

So today while you are, most likely, sipping your hot coffee or slurping your iced coffee think about the journey that bean took to get to you. Love your coffee? Love people more.

5 Reasons You Should ONLY Buy Fair-Trade, Organic Coffee
What is Fair Trade Coffee, and Should You Buy It?

So what to do?

“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” (unknown)

Here's a few ideas:

(there's a few "best of" lists but if you compare all the lists and note that a brand or two show up on more than one list I would say that one is definitely worth trying!)

Our Guide to Buying Ethical Coffee

Taste Test Reviews

15 of the best fair trade coffee brands

Top 10: Best Organic Coffee Brands For Coffee Connoisseurs

14 Fair Trade Coffee Brands Worth Waking Up For

Comments

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

A dime a dozen

"It's said that in the year 1796, the first U.S. dimes were produced for circulation. Hence, it would make sense for this phrase to originate sometime after." Read more here . Today the phrase carries the meaning that something is cheap or without value if it can be lumped in with other similar or exactly-like things. It's more of an insult than anything.

Life according to van Gogh...sort of

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing. Vincent van Gogh in a l etter to Theo van Gogh, April 1882 Life is a little bit like today's quote from van Gogh. Some of us live life focusing on the drawing - the details - and have very little color. Others of us go for the color and forsake, to a degree, the drawing - the details. Unlike painting, according to van Gogh, one is not wrong over the other but somewhere in between the two would be the best I would think. If you look at some of van Gogh's paintings I feel like you can see where he might have struggled between the "how to do it" and the " how not to do it" (as he admittedly loved color so much but knew he had to focus more on the drawing) and that seems to be reflected in his life as well. In the end he wasn't able to find the ...

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