It's getting to be tea season again for me. The weather is changing, and I like a nice, hot cup of tea now and then.
I have put out the fall décor, including some pumpkins and fall leaves. It kind of calls for a pot of Earl Grey.
Tea has quite a history, but in the 18th Century, it continued to be a favored drink in Britian and Europe, even though coffee houses were starting to spring up everywhere. Of course, as you know, coffee houses became the pre-cursor of the stock exchange, but that's a story for another day.
Then, when tea in America was being enjoyed all over the Colonies, there came a big change! The Colonists revolted against a heavy tax on tea imposed by King George, and the rest is history! The Boston Tea Party helped change Americans into big coffee drinkers. I'm sure Starbucks would say thanks! I say thanks as well. There's just something about coffee. Where tea is a tasty thin brew, coffee is rich, and substantial (at least I think so).
Coffee has its beginnings in Africa, where the Oromo people were supposedly the first to recognize the energizing effects of the little bean! Eventually, it makes its way to Sheikh Omar, a man who supposedly cured the sick through prayer. He was exiled once to Mocha, Yemen where we lived on berries to stave off hunger. He found them bitter, but he tried roasting them, and ahhh! then boiled them, and there you have it!
By the 17th Century the Dutch obtained some of the seedlings, and the plants thrived in Batavia where they were growing them. They soon expanded to Sumatra.
Then, in 1714, the mayor of Amsterdam presented a coffee plant to King Louis XIV of France! The King had it planted in the Royal Botanical Garden in Paris. In 1723, naval officer Gabriel de Clieu obtained a seedling from the King's plant, and took it, not without great trouble and pirate attacks, to Martinique in 1750! Those plants are the ones from which coffee spread throughout the Caribbean, South and Central America!
Now, what'll it be? What'll you have? Tea or coffee!
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