It's January! Time to shake off the holiday season and get back to work! In the next few weeks we'll be introducing a new menu, one that will include our Herbed Mac & Cheese, as well as quiche. We're also excited about having more specials. We've never had so many ideas! Keep an eye on kavarna.com for up to the minute info on our soups and specials (if you're up on RSS technology, you can subscribe to our Soup and Specials Feed).

—Linda and Alex Galt

The Third Annual Winterfest on Broadway will occur on Saturday, January 28th. If it's anything like the previous two, it will be an event worth attending. There will be ice sculpting, cookie decorating, Eskimo games, beer barrel racing, celebrity dunk tanking, and a fiercely contested Chili Cook-off. The details and ice sculpting registration forms can be found on the On Broadway, Inc. website.

Since we're a restaurant, we'll be primarily concerned with the Chili Cook-off, which we've failed to win two years in a row. Either we're paranoid, or there just may be a bias against chili that doesn't contain meat. If you've had our Black Bean and Chipotlé Chili, you know that we deserve to win... even if there is no meat in our chili. So come down to Broadway on the 28th, bring your kids, and help us improve our odds! The event will raise money for On Broadway, Inc.; an organization that is indispensable to our neighborhood and city.

You may have noticed that we stopped selling Kavarna Roast recently. Well, as if we needed to be reminded that the economy is global, it seems they had a terrible growing season down in Bolivia. The coffee that has been Kavarna Roast was an organically grown Bolivian coffee that's now been wiped out for the next 9 months or so. This must be a terrible time for the coffee growers of Bolivia. That's the bad news.

The good news is that our search for a new coffee to call 'Kavarna Roast' is over and we are very pleased with our new discovery. Like its predecessor, the new Kavarna Roast is an organic, fair-trade certified coffee roasted by Equal Exchange. So, come on in and try it... it's a medium roast, very smooth, but a little complicated (just like us).

And there's even more good news about our coffee. The company that roasts our espresso beans, Freedom Coffee (which is really just this guy named Joel), was recently bought out by a larger roaster. So, Joel's packing up his equipment and heading out to Denver, Colorado. How will this effect Kavarna? The larger company has a relationship with an organic coffee farmer who's growing the same coffee that Joel's been using; so now Kavarna's espresso will be certified organic.

From now until the end of January, Kavarna will be holding a sale on our broad selection of Republic of Tea. All Republic of Tea products will be "steeply" (ha ha) discounted by 15%. If you're not familiar with Republic of Tea, they produce a variety of excellent black teas, green teas, and rooiboses (rooibi?); so now's the time to stock up for the year!

Here are a few random items of interest:

• » If you live in Green Bay's 9th or 7th district, each of the candidates for alderman will be given an opportunity to speak for five minutes at the Fort Howard Apartments on Thursday, January 12th at 6:30 pm. Kavarna will be supplying coffee, as well as rooting for Al Buch, who is running for the 9th district.
• » We're hoping to have an evening of ukulele entertainment at Kavarna in February (the date hasn't been nailed down yet). We're still looking for more performers, so if you play the ukulele, or know someone who plays the ukulele, and would be interested in playing in a quiet and supportive environment, please let us know. We're not necessarily looking for professionals, just enthusiasts!
• » An retrospective exhibit of Tony Galt's photography will be held at Kavarna from February 6th through March 11th. Tony was an avid photographer throughout his lifetime; concentrating on landscape and nature photography. Personally, I'm excited that we'll have the opportunity to share this aspect of his life with a broader audience. An opening reception will be held on February 10th at 7 pm.
• » Green Bay Green Drinks will be held at Kavarna on January 19th, from 6 till 9 pm. Green Bay Green Drinks is an opportunity for members of the community who are interested in the environment and ecology to gather in an informal setting. More info is here.

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