A coffee farmer shared with me that the most injury prone job picking coffee involves climbing. When one hand is holding the tree and the other a machete--what are you left with to swat the bugs?
Last March I traveled to a coffee plantation in Nicaragua to help run a volunteer medical and dental clinic for the workers, their families, and the villagers. The team set up shop in an open-air church and saw 1,200 patients in a week. Babies with distended bellies from parasites, respiratory infections, decayed teeth, dehydration. Patients lined up. Machete wounds were common. One involved a bee.
I was overwhelmed by the emotion of it--watching some brave person getting teeth pulled, barely betraying their pain. I would walk out to the rainforest and indulge in a good cry. I expected the week to be hard--what surprised me was the joy. Despite the intense emotions, I also laughed harder that week than I could remember doing for a long time. (Sometimes because the very earnest nurses were so bad at Spanish. Also there was a broken toilet seat incident.) It's no secret. Volunteering feeds the soul.
I'm obsessed with wine bars. Or I guess I should say, finding the perfect wine bar. Every trip we take usually revolves around this odd quirk. However, it was not a priority on this excursion to Chicago. We only had one day in the city and I initially had other plans. Plus, the places I wanted to go were too far away from our hotel. Or so I thought. Traffic ruined my morning itinerary, so we ended up grabbing a quick snack and then just walking along Michigan Avenue window shopping, trying to overcome the minor hangover from the night before. With no thought of wine on my mind what do we come upon? 
The email was very cryptic: “The Blindfold Dinner, April 24, 2012, at Osteria Mamma”. There wasn’t even a time, let alone an explanation. But still, how could we resist? After all, Osteria Mamma is our favorite Italian restaurant and the email is from Filippo, one of Mamma’s two sons who I became friends with first while taking an Italian Wine Specialist course and then from endless dinners at their restaurant. I hit the “reply” key on the email and write “Peggy and I will be there. What time?”
Mojitos make a great summer cocktail – refreshing citrus and mint hit the spot on a hot summer day. I always have a ton of mint growing in pots (it spreads like crazy), and this is a perfect way to use it up.
