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

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“PProvs Periodical” is updated monthly for the entertainment of our web site visitors.