I went on a training bike trip yesterday with my entire crew of co-workers from my job, Old Town Outfitters.  On this little h bike trip, we all rode mountain bikes with nice shocks, bouncing around on the cobblestones and hopping up on church sculptures (ha). We biked to a coffee plantation called De La Gente, or As Green As It Gets. The farmer gave us a tour of the cooperatively run farm, where they grow coffee alongside avacado trees, and in the early stages of the bushes’s growth they plant beans to fix nitrogen to the soil, carrots, beets, cilantro. Then we walked back the  farmer’s house where his wife and children helped to prepare a delicious lunch of a typical Guatemalan dish called Pepian, which is similar to Mexican mole: lots of toasted nuts and seeds and chiles, served with chicken, rice, and hand made tortillas. The farmer’s wife roasted some green coffee beans from the farm (hand-picked, hand-sorted, washed, fermented) on a ceramic comal over a fire.She roasted them nice and dark, toasty, smoky, just the way I like them. Then she ground them on a traditional stone mortar, and brewed one of the best cups I’ve ever had.