Goats and beans

Now, I hadn’t the slightest clue about something called Argan oil till I stumbled on this fascinating photo of goats climbing this tree in Morocco, to eat the berries from the Argan tree. The photo came in last weeks Life magazine, accompanying the LA times. It did not say much except for a bit of what you can read on the pic.

Well, a bit of research with Google’s help helped me find this site that provided details.

The place where goats climb trees is called Tamri
Tamri goats climb trees to eat these berries because they are the best food they can find.
It is a tourist attraction and these goats are much photographed
The goats leave behind dung full of undigested kernels of the Aragn berries
The kernels are collected by local women, hopefully washed, and pressed for Argan oil, which is pretty famous.
Apparently it tastes delicious and is very good for the skin
You can also get non-goat Argan oil, but I don’t know how one ensures that.
This site provides all the details for those interested, and here, you can see a video of the same – Also, another interesting picture

Now where else did these goats take me? To Kopi Luwak…sounds intriguing?

Kopi Luwak or Luwak coffee (Kapi) or Civet coffee is the world’s most expensive coffee, available from SE Asia, mainly Indonesia. Well, like the oil above, the coffee berry is eaten by the Civak, a cat like animal, the excreted kernels when ground, make the exotic Luwak coffee, which costs $600 per lb. In Australia, a cup of this coffee can cost $50/-

A couple of interesting articles on the taste of this coffee

Not for me though, I prefer my South Indian filter coffee, from the decoction….