2010:365:188 Coffee book.

I love this book.  The pages are creamy and the print coffee coloured so it is not only interesting but it also looks good!  According to the "blurb" it is "... the ultimate book for coffee lovers."  That would be me then!

Among the hundreds of recipes there are other gems: Balzac drank litres of black coffee to keep him alert on his writing sprees.  Voltaire consumed fifty cups of coffee per day.  Did this shorten his life?  Apparently not - he lived into his nineties!

In the "Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock" TS Eliot (after whom my dog is named) writes:

     ... For I have known them all already, known them all:—
      Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
     I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
     I know the voices dying with a dying fall
     Beneath the music from a farther room.
     So how should I presume? ... 

If the book is accurate then Beethoven counted out sixty beans for every pot so the coffee tasted the same each time.  Bach wrote a "Coffee Cantata" in praise of the beverage and Bob Dylan's song, "One more cup of coffee for the road" is a more contemporary eulogy for this wonderful drink!

I must add my delight that the movement to ban women from drinking coffee did not succeed!  

Cappuccino (Monk's Coffee) is named after its colour.  The Capuchin monks work habits of a similar shade.  This particular type of coffee (the one that most frequently I drink in cafés) is made from espresso added to steamed milk and topped with the foam onto which is added chocolate or cinnamon.  Delicious. 

A cappuccino maker will therefore have a nozzle for steam that heats the milk and creates the froth.  

"The Coffee Club" serves a great cappuccino and, sitting in the warm sunshine today with Eliot at my feet I enjoyed one of the best cups that I've had in a long time!  There it is served with a home-made biscotti.  With reference to these, Pliny the Elder (first century AD) said that they would be edible for centuries!  

We've not exhausted the coffee theme yet - tomorrow will bring another chapter!

The Lord is my light and my salvation;

whom then shall I fear?

The Lord is the strength of my life;

of whom then shall I be afraid?

Wait for the Lord;

be strong and he shall comfort your heart;

wait patiently for the Lord.

Book of Common Prayer

Psalm 27 verses 1 and 17