K-cup Seed Starter

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A pix of the fillable and reusable k-type cup that I use.

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Local roasted is a win-win situation. You're helping the local economy and have the option for bulk purchasing. We get local roasted and can bring our own bag.

Green Mountain is a local roaster. I can almost smell the roasting occurring right now. They roast, grind, and then fill the plastic K-cups right here in the south Puget sound.
 
Local is great but negated by the excess and unnecessary packaging. It's like having your local farmer pack a mouthful of cherries in lots of separate plastic packages.

Looks like the Sumner Green Mountain roasterie is mostly for the Tully brand coffee. Do they also pack Keurig packs there?
 
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My daughter has a French press coffee maker ... bulk beans that she grinds and then brews:)
 
Looks like the Sumner Green Mountain roasterie is mostly for the Tully brand coffee. Do they also pack Keurig packs there?

Yes, they pack the k-cups in Sumner. The tully's brand is what I've acquired but I can't say whether they do others as well. I've had a factory tour and there are lots of specialized machines.

Dillanos is another Sumner roasterie. I even brought my kids to that factory which is way closer to what I think you would consider "local". Small batches, no k-cups. They big floor that they spread the green beans out on for cleaning is especially cool. They have a pile of all of the metal things like coins, nuts, chunks of metal, that have been pulled out of the sacks of beans before roasting.
 

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My daughter has a French press coffee maker ... bulk beans that she grinds and then brews:)
That is what we use too. Only one problem, unfiltered coffee raises my cholesterol due the the terpines in it (cafestol), so now I drink more tea than coffee.
 
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That is what we use too. Only one problem, unfiltered coffee raises my cholesterol due the the terpines in it (cafesterol), so now I drink more tea than coffee.

On this cholesterol thing, must you use a paper filter to remove terpines? I use a wire mesh filter for my pot a day habit and I want to maintain a low cholesterol level. I ask because you could convince me to switch back to paper.
 
A paper filter does much better than a wire mesh filter at trapping terpines, but even that is not perfect. There are several articles online. I found them after suddenly getting a dramatic drop in my cholesterol levels when I went a month without coffee or alcohol. A subsequent test a year later also was low, even though alcohol was back in the picture.

Your results may vary. I have genetically high cholesterol on both sides of the family so I am a poster child for statins. It doesn't take much to spike my numbers. I have tried everything and my diet is very good, no meat but lean chicken and fish, no hydrogenated fats, etc.. but even with good diet my numbers were only so-so till I dropped coffee. Bummer of it is, I love the stuff and it has good properties too.

http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/what-is-it-about-coffee
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070614162223.htm
 
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I've heard of two uses of caffeine that I thought were interesting... Daughter is a teacher currently subbing in our district. For one child with ADHD, rather than prescribing Ritalin or similar for treatment, the child is on a coffee regime X number of times a day. A little slow getting his coffee one day and she was able to see the change in behaviour ;hm

A friend who suffers from migraine headaches was advised by her specialist to drink a cup of coffee along with her pain reliever. Apparently a 40% increase in effectiveness when used in combination. http://www.webmd.com/migraines-headaches/guide/triggers-caffeine
 
I've heard of two uses of caffeine that I thought were interesting... Daughter is a teacher currently subbing in our district. For one child with ADHD, rather than prescribing Ritalin or similar for treatment, the child is on a coffee regime X number of times a day. A little slow getting his coffee one day and she was able to see the change in behaviour ;hm

A friend who suffers from migraine headaches was advised by her specialist to drink a cup of coffee along with her pain reliever. Apparently a 40% increase in effectiveness when used in combination. http://www.webmd.com/migraines-headaches/guide/triggers-caffeine

I switch to 12 cups of decaf after my first cup of caffeinated coffee each day. Really don't like being dependent on the drug and a single cup of day is not so much to cause withdrawal symptoms for me.
 
My wife is prone to getting headaches if she has no coffee. Excedrin is aspirin, acetaminophen, and caffeine.
 
One of my brothers was even more hyper than the rest of us growing up, although never diagnosed with an attention or activity disorder. My parents gave coffee a try and it seemed to help. Caffeine is known to help not just with alertness, but also with concentration, and in people who are hyperactive, seems actually able to calm. The effect has even been studied in rats - rats with hyperactivity disorder (yes, they can have it, too) learn better when given coffee than without coffee, but rats without a hyperactivity disorder don't seem to show a difference.

If a person can function adequately with a coffee than with Ritalin, which has more complex and potentially more serious side effects (although like most approved medications, serious side effects are relatively rare), that seems like a good reason to try it first.

Coffee doesn't seem to help my headaches, but some headaches are related to low blood pressure, and coffee raises blood pressure.
 
One of my brothers was even more hyper than the rest of us growing up, although never diagnosed with an attention or activity disorder. My parents gave coffee a try and it seemed to help.
Glad your folks were way ahead of the curve on ADHD research ;) I am not such a huge fan of Ritalin because they are finding structural brain changes with long-term follow up. While medications can be life-saving, many side effects are only found in the larger clinical trial of being on the market. I still see no information that radioactive iodine (I131 to treat hyperthyroid) can damage the parathyroids (calcium metabolism) long-term due to the radiation. They are now finding 15-20 years later that it can result in hyperparathyroid... and many endocrinologists are unaware. Just ask me how I know ... 3 of the 4 were bad;hm

Sorry ... way off topic!
 
Back to k-cups. What do they cost per cup of coffee? I just saw a local grocery store ad that had some @ 12 for $7.99!! Is that possible?
 
Likewise.
 
Coffee, whether from k-cups or any other source, will remain an enjoyable part of my day.

If my memory is right, k-cups from Costco are in the $0.30-0.40 range. My wife and guests use those, I use refillables. I usually drink two 12-oz cups in the morning, the second being a re-use of the grounds from the first cup. I tend to sip on coffee more or less continuously during meetings. On driving trips I like to sip on coffee, maybe because I think it keeps me more alert, but I think my alertness has more to do with the physical action of picking up and setting down the coffee cup. At times I lose my taste for coffee and have none for days or weeks at a time, and I do not notice any effect at all from not having the coffee. Also, I rarely notice any hyper feeling from coffee.

As to cholesterol, I am active to very active in physical activity and my HDL always has been very high and LDL low, with triglyceride on the high side of the normal range, but total cholesterol above the normal range. My doctor says no concern due to the very high HDL. And in 2013 and after heavy training for my bicycle ride around Lake Superior, HDL shot up even higher, LDL went even lower, and triglyceride went down. Serious physical activity appears to have very positive impacts on keeping cholesterol low. Needless to say, I take no statins.

For my age of nearly 69, the guidelines indicate my maximum heart rate is 151 and for exercise the target level for heart rate should not exceed 80% of that, or 121. At 121 I'm not even starting to work out, and a rate of 140-144 is very comfortable for an extended workout (1 hour and longer) with breathing not beginning to get a little labored until heart rate hits about 148. For psychological reasons mostly I think, I do not push my heart rate much above 155, and I am working pretty hard at that rate anyway.

As to perceived mal-effects vs benefits from coffee/caffeine, I listen to my body. That first cup of morning coffee, sun not up yet, everything quiet and peaceful, and writing stuff like this on Hearth.com, all means life is good. C-est la vie!
 
Without a strong cup at 6-7pm, I'd never make it to the gym at 8-9pm after the kiddos go to bed. So for me, the coffee allows me to be healthier because I have the energy to workout.
 
When I want a single cup of coffee this is what I use. Filter and coffee go into the compost. Great for camping too.
http://www.amazon.com/Melitta-Ready-Single-Coffee-Brewer/dp/B0014CVEH6

Have you ever tried these for camping? Hubby used to get them for the overnight canoe trips with the kids ... Wondering if they would also trap the cafestol? $0.22 each for the convenience and the Keurig won't work in that camping situation;lol
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Maxwell-House-Instant-Bags-19-Ct-Coffee-Singles-3-oz/10292616
 
No I haven't. We just pack some ground coffee and the Melita + some filters or tea bags which are lighter and simpler.
 
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I use the single cup coffee "tea" bags on backpacking and bicycle road trips. Nothing better than waking up pre-dawn, firing up the alcohol stove to heat a cup of water to boiling, then two coffee bags to make a strong wake-up brew, and a walk to view sunrise. Weight is near zero. Enjoyment is near 100%.
 
Approaching 2050? Wow. That is sure a stretch. I love how a snapshot in time is grabbed to set off the environmental alarms.

It's good to extrapolate data, but come on...so much changes in the materials/plastics industries that we have no idea what we will be using 20 years from now, let alone 34 years.

The problem with plastic in our waterways is that people are trashy! People need to stop trashing the areas they live. Urban areas seem to be the worst. Not one piece of trash on the road where I live, past the burbs.
That's interesting. My experience is the opposite. Per capita, rural areas are much worse for trash than urban or suburban areas. Maybe that's just rural areas in Illinois and Indiana, where I tend to travel most.
 
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