United States
Victoria Brown is passionately pursuing a career in coffee, journalism, and history. Her work has appeared in History Magazine, two Johns Hopkins University blogs, Barista Magazine, Daily Coffee News and several industry website. She currently works as a freelance writer and marketing consultant.
It's a scene with which many cafe-goers are too familiar: The coffee shop packed with glazed-over faces behind the bluish glow of laptop screens, with fingers clacking away at keyboards and brows f...
Entering Counter Culture's Soho training center, for InterAmerican's Sept. 27 Future of Coffee event, was like being immersed in a warm golden hue. All polished wood and clean, comforting lines, the space, like so many New York City businesses, is long and slim.
"Why study cacao and chocolate?" read the slide. Dr. Carla Martin of the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute (FCCI), who is pioneering specialty guidelines for the chocolate industry, stood in front of the assembled crowd at InterAmerican's Providence office one September evening.
As I set off to write this post, I naively googled "umami." Three whirlwind umami-research days later, I headed to the grocery store to pick up ingredients for a sensory exercise that would revolve around tasting tomato products. You may ask: What is a sensory exercise?
"Perception is dependent on sensation," began Amanda Armbrust-Asselin, InterAmerican Quality Control coordinator, standing beside her hand-draw poster depicting the brain's sensory responses to a person eating a strawberry. "But not all sensations are perceived." So began an evening of taste, trials and triangulations.
As the mercury keeps rising, café customers are seeking reprieve from the heat in iced coffees. With the option of multiple brewing methods to highlight different flavors, finding just the right coffee for your preferred method can be a challenge. So, below are a few ideas for improving your cold brew and flash brewed/Japanese iced coffee methods.
Victoria Brown Research Assistant Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future A puff of red dirt stained my foot as I jumped over the deep crevice gouged into the clay road, hurrying to keep up with the bustling form of Fatuma, my host mother.
Recently, Quality Control (QC) teams and traders from InterAmerican's three offices gathered around their respective cupping tables for a blind calibration exercise. On the tables were a variety of qualities and cup profiles from Guatemala, designed to stretch the comfort zones and palates of all involved.
Victoria Brown Research Assistant Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future Today is World Food Day, a day of action dedicated to achieving Zero Hunger worldwide. So it seems especially appropriate today to consider the predictions concerning the rising population, which may reach 11.2 billion by 2100.
Victoria Brown Research Assistant Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future My host mother Smita, whose name means "ever smiling lady," is handsome with an infectious smile, and she stands amidst the shining metal tins and fragrant spices of her Ahmedabad apartment kitchen rolling out thepla, a Gujarati flatbread.
Becky Ramsing Senior Program Officer, Food Communities & Public Health Program Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future This post was co-authored by Victoria Brown and Becky Ramsing. Meatless Monday as most people know it today began in 2003 with the work of former ad man turned health advocate Sid Lerner and the founder of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, Bob Lawrence.
Victoria Brown Research Assistant Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future "You can't assume that a high price means good working conditions, or that by paying a high price you're paying for environmental sustainability," advises Kim Elena Ionescu, Chief Sustainability Officer for the Specialty Coffee Association.
Victoria Brown Research Assistant Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future On every street corner, small cafes with standing-height countertops serve cappuccino, espresso, thick, pudding-like hot chocolate and more to hundreds of commuting Italians. Each morning, as I joined the crush of commuters on Turin's underground tube station, I looked forward to that first sip of frothy coffee-milk.
Victoria Brown Research Assistant Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future In a quiet corner store off a busy intersection in Arusha, Tanzania, I chose a vibrant cloth package of coffee. On a side street in Rome, I picked up a small, compressed foil packet labeled "Fantasia" off a candy shop shelf.
Editor's Note: This post also appears on the Center for a Livable Future's blog (CLF, based at Johns Hopkins University). Check there often for fresh ideas about a healthy food system...and good writing. The post is part of a series focused on the Meatless Monday initiative, a global effort encourag
Victoria Brown Research Assistant Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future It's almost impossible to imagine now-sheep grazing on the White House lawn, tending their lambs and grass with care. Perhaps just as unfathomable is that this scene was organized and made possible by the First Lady.
Victoria Brown Research Assistant Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future On any given day, more than 500 customers walk bleary-eyed into an average Starbucks store. With more than 24,000 stores globally, that's 12 million people drinking Starbucks each day.
Diet and Cancer: Yet Another Connection Incidence of obesity has reached an all-time high in the United States and continues to rise. In addition to the well known dangers of obesity-hypertension, heart disease, high cholesterol-obesity changes the body on the molecular level. These changes place overweight and obese people at an increased risk for a...
Victoria Brown Research Assistant Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future The Photovoice medium, which some refer to as a form of "citizen science," is an emerging tool being put to good use by food policy councils, government agencies and, most importantly, citizens around the globe.