By Coffee Break and Review…
World coffee consumption, both in producing and exporting countries, is likely to touch 128 million bags (60-kg per bag) in 2008. The exact amount in 2007 was 24.7 million bags, up by 2.9% from 121.1 million bags consumed in 2006. What a tremendous amount. So if current growth continues then “world coffee consumption could increase to around 128 million bags in 2008,” said Nestor Osario, executive director of ICO.
The consumption in India surged to 13.6 lakh bags in 2007 from 11.42 lakh bags in 2003, while Brazil’s consumption increased to 169 lakh bags from 140 lakh bags and consumption in Mexico increased to 20.5 lakh bags from 15 lakh bags. Among importing countries, consumption in Spain increased to 31.98 lakh bags from 27.40 lakh bags in the same period, while the UK’s consumption surged to 28.24 lakh bags from 22.36 lakh bags, while consumption in Netherlands climbed to 23.60 lakh bags from 17.43 lakh bags. Coffee consumption in Canada also increased significantly to 35.35 lakh bags from 21.46 lakh bags.
Among exporting countries, per capita coffee consumption stood high in Brazil with 5.29 kilograms (kgs), followed by Costa Rica at 4.21 kgs, Honduras at 2.43 kgs, Dominican Republic at 2.32 kgs and Haiti at 2.13 kgs. Among importing countries, Luxembourg maintained high per capita consumption at 16.65 kgs, followed by Finland at 12.01 kgs and Norway at 9.85 kgs.
American pastry shops and other suppliers have discovered Chinese moon cakes as a new profit center. For other businesses, the pastries are great networking tools.
Meet the moon cake: China’s version of the Christmas fruitcake–a dense, filled pastry that is sliced and served every year during the Mid-Autumn Festival, a Chinese holiday that honors longevity and family unity on the day the moon is brightest. Though some say moon cakes resemble chewy hockey pucks in shape, weight and flavor, the 700-year-old tradition of gifting and eating moon cakes has stayed firmly lodged in China’s cultural gullet because the unwieldy pastry was the tool of revolutionaries–according to an age-old anecdote.
In the late 1300s, following 97 years of Mongolian rule in Northern China (the Yuan Dynasty), Han Chinese rebels cooked up a last-ditch effort to drive out the invaders. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, the rebels distributed hundreds of moon cakes to local families under the pretense of celebrating the holiday and the longevity of Mongolian rule. The Mongolians didn’t eat moon cakes, so they didn’t get the memo hidden inside the gooey centers: Kill the Mongols on the 15th of the eighth lunar month. On the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, thousands of villagers ate the evidence and rose up to chase the invaders out of China. The rebel leader, Zhu Yuan Zhang, became the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty.
By Joanne Yao
Special correspondent Joanne Yao, a freelance writer based in Beijing, reports on business developments in China and other parts of Asia.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26837474/
This purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between exposure to wheat flour, soya flour and fungal amylase and the development of work-related symptoms and sensitization in bread and cake bakery employees who have regular exposure to these substances. The study populations consisted of 394 bread bakery workers and 77 cake bakery workers whose normal jobs involved the sieving, weighing and mixing of ingredients.
The groups were interviewed with the aim of identifying the prevalence, nature and pattern of any work-related respiratory symptoms. They were also skin-prick tested against the common bakery sensitizing agents, i.e., wheat flour, soya flour, rice flour and fungal amylase. The results of personal sampling for sieving, weighing and mixing operations at the bakeries from which the study groups were taken were collated in order to determine typical exposures to total inhalable dust from the ingredients, expressed as 8 hour time-weighted average exposures. Data from the health surveillance and collated dust measurements were compared with the aim of establishing an exposure-response relationship for sensitization.
The prevalence of work-related symptoms in bread bakery and cake bakery ingredient handlers was 20.4% and 10.4% respectively. However, in a large proportion of those reporting symptoms in connection with work, the symptoms were intermittent and of short duration. It is considered that the aetiology of such symptoms is likely to be due to a non-specific irritant effect of high total dust levels, rather than allergy. None of the cake bakers and only 3.1% of the bread bakers had symptoms which were thought to be due to allergy to baking ingredients. Using skin-prick testing as a marker of sensitization, the prevalence of positive tests to wheat flour was 6% for the bread bakers and 3% for the cake bakers.
Comparable prevalences for soya flour were 7% and 1 % respectively. However, the prevalence of positive skin-prick tests to fungal amylase was 16% amongst the bread baking group with only a single employee (1 %) in the cake baking group having a positive test. Furthermore, this employee had previously worked in a bread bakery. The difference in rates of sensitization to wheat flour between the bread and cake bakers is not statistically significant, whereas the difference for soya flour is at the borderline of statistical significance (p=0.045).
In contrast, the difference in fungal amylase sensitization is significant at the 0.1% level. For both bread and cake bakers, the 8 hour time-weighted average exposures for each of the activities showed a wide variation with mixing having the lowest average exposure and sieving the highest. Out of the allergens studied in this investigation, fungal amylase is the principal sensitizer in large scale bread bakeries, with the main source of exposure being the handling of bread improvers. In contrast, the risk of sensitization to wheat flour is low in both bread and cake bakeries. The absence of positive skin-prick tests in the subgroup of cake bakery employees who regularly handle fungal-amylase-containing flour suggests that their levels of exposure are below the threshold for sensitization to amylase.
By T. A. Smith and P. Wastell Smith
Ranks Hovis McDougall Limited King Edward House, 27/30 King Edward Court, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 1TJ, UK
Source: http://occmed.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/48/5/321?ck=nck
Because long bouts of frugality must be tempered with injections of extravagance, we went out to eat again on Sunday. What, twice in one weekend? No, thrice! (I didn’t even mention the triumphant return to Viva Mercado’s on Friday.) This time it was to Mimi’s Cafe.
I didn’t take any pictures. I should have, as we probably won’t be back.
There’s nothing really wrong with Mimi’s Cafe. It’s pretty inside. The fare is light. (And rather slim for vegetarians, considering.) Our waiter was able to rank at just a notch above indifferent, so I can’t really criticize the service with any feeling.
I think the central ill will is with the “signature bread basket.”
Mike got the chicken pasta special plus a $5 serving of French onion soup. For five dollars, he expected a bowl, not a cup, but – okay – it is French onion. It has to be served in something with a narrow mouth so the cheese can be melted just so. The soup comes with a “signature bread basket.”
I got the pasta primavera with a green salad. I was really up for the quiche, but the pasta came with a “signature bread basket,” and a basket of bread sounded very nice. Yes, Mike was getting one with his soup, but we’re both devoted carb grazers, so whatever was left over, we’d take home.
When Mike’s soup and my salad were served (or, “plunked down”), only one bread basket was delivered. Now, I know it was totally upon us to point out what was probably just a simple mistake, but we felt awkward. Asking to have two bread baskets on the table at the same time just felt too foreign, even though we were each entitled to one. Our fault for being less than brave. Blame totally accepted. I figured we could just ask for our second basket when the first one was done. Problem solved.
Then we looked into the “signature bread basket.”
Okay, everyone has to come to Mimi’s a first time, right? This is a suburban chain, not a fancy NY eatery where maybe they can get away with assuming you know their idiosyncrasies from gushy word-of-mouth at cocktail parties. Given that the place was nearly vacant at 8 p.m., I’m figuring that Mimi’s, at least this Mimi’s, gets a lot of first-time customer trade. You know what I’m saying.
So, if your “signature bread basket” is one white roll and three little pieces of cake, you need to say so on the menu. People aren’t going to just know.
This is especially true if you’re promoting the fact, on a special menu, that the pasta primavera comes with “signature bread basket.” I don’t think a lot of people are licking their lips at the idea of penne pasta with asiago cream sauce… and a side of banana bread.
Granted, the signature bread basket was tasty, if small and inappropriate. We didn’t ask for the second basket. Who wants more cake with their pasta? I mean, banana bread? Not me.
What with the misrepresentation of the promised bread experience, the lackluster service, the good-but-unremarkable food, and the uninspired-for-vegetarians menu, this is not the place for us. I wish I’d had the quiche, since few places serve it here that aren’t high-end buffets, but you know what? Quiche is not that hard to make. (Okay, yes, I completely screwed it up last time I made one, but that’s not the point.)
Sorry, Mimi’s Cafe. I can see by your website that you must be really popular. You have lots of locations, after all. But I’m still sighing and walking away, and that hurts because – dang – you’re practically across the street. I thought we’d have this terrific future together of Mike being too tired to cook and me being too lazy, and it would be quiche and salad and muffins every other weekend.
Maybe if you had more than one kind of vegetarian quiche other than same-old cheddar and broccoli? And if you offered a vegetarian soup every day instead of once or twice per week? And if all of the items on your zip-code-specific website menu actually were on your real menu?
And if you were more forthcoming about the precious bizarreness that is your “signature bread basket”?
Maybe. But this is Las Vegas, and now you’re at the back of the queue.
Source: http://www.shari.com/2008/09/failure-at-mimi.html