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PProvs Periodical:
Greetings and Happy New Year to all coffee -- and in particular -- 100%
Jamaica Blue Mountain enthusiasts! We at Precious Provisions
sincerely appreciate the patronage our customers have shown us and will
continue to strive to deliver the Rolls Royce of coffees with precision and
courtesy.
We
offer the following to inform and amuse:
·
It has
been claimed that coffee is second to oil in terms of world commodity
trading and that it provides employment for around 20 million people.
·
The coffee
tree is indigenous to Ethiopia, not Arabia, as many tend to think and
belongs to the genus Coffea of the Rubianceae, or Madder, family.
·
The name
coffee may be derived from the Arabic "qahwah" or alternatively may have
arisen due to the connection with the province Kaffa, in Ethiopia.
·
Circa 800
A.D., Africans frequently fueled themselves with protein-rich
coffee-and-animal-fat balls – a form of primitive PowerBars -- and relaxed
with wine made from coffee-berry pulp.
·
A “few”
years later, French diplomat Talleyrand (1754-1838) declared his perfect
recipe for coffee: “Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet
as love.”
·
Across the
Channel, the British took a more, well, British approach to coffee cookery:
Seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys wrote of Londoners larding their
coffee with: butter, mustard, honey, oatmeal, and ale.
·
Frederick
the Great, the Prussian Monarch, often had his coffee made with champagne
instead of water.
·
During the
Wilderness campaign, General Ulysses S. Grant was content to prepare a meal
of a sliced cucumber with vinegar and a cup of potent coffee to be a full
ration.
·
Sir James
Mackintosh, the Scottish philosopher and statesman, claimed that the powers
of a man’s mind were directly proportional to the quantity of coffee he
drank.
·
Napoleon
Bonaparte affirmed: “Strong coffee, and plenty, awakens me. It gives me a
warmth, a pain that is not without pleasure. I would rather suffer than be
senseless!”
And
the PProvs “endorsement” of the month:
·
Voltaire,
the famous French philosopher and author, was said to have consumed over 50
cups daily -- even in his old age. In response to the remark that coffee
was a slow poison, Voltaire retorted: “I think it must be, for I’ve been
drinking it for 65 years and am not dead yet!”
Cheers…and to your health!
PProvs
If you would like to
be added to the PProvs Periodical listserv and be informed of any
promotions, please
e-mail
us with “mailing list” subject.
“PProvs Periodical” is
updated monthly for the entertainment of our web site visitors.
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