Now, we all know that coffee hasn't been around forever. There can't have been coffee in the Dark Ages because, if there were, what would people have been so depressed about? Coffee shops are common things now, but in America they're fairly recent.
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| Coffee beans are cherry pits. No, really. |
Kaldi
Kaldi was a goatherd. Like a shepherd, but with better facial hair. He'd let his goats out to pasture, let them graze, and then bring them back at the end of the day.
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| Boogie down |
He noticed that the crazed goats were eating the red fruits of a dark bush. He was so tired and hungry that he decided to join them in their feast, which perked him up quite a bit, and he started dancing with them.
There are several variations on the story. In one, the goats kick the berries into a fire, which roasts them with a delicious smell. In another, a monk comes upon the dancers and decides to take some coffee with him. Either way, I know the question you're all thinking: Why isn't there more dancing in coffee shops? I don't have an answer for you.
The Real Origin of Coffee
As for the reality, no one is quite sure. The coffee plant itself was first widely consumed in what is now Yemen. It's the country on the end of the same peninsula that Saudi Arabia is on. There was widespread consumption there by the 5th century A.D. (or C.E. for you history purists), but coffee was consumed all over the place by the 15th century.
The interesting thing is, the Yemenites (Yemenis, Yemenos, Yemens, you pick) didn't want other people to grow coffee. They wanted all coffee to come from them. Coffee beans are seeds of the coffee plant, and you can see them growing in the photo at the top. But they become infertile if you remove the cherry from around them. So, the Yemenites would remove the beans from the cherries and ship them that way, so that no one could steal the plant.
The next stage in the history of coffee is about how the rest of the world stole coffee from Arabia, because they needed their caffeine fix THAT badly.
Pour Jons regularly carries coffee from Ethiopia, which is right across the Red Sea from Yemen. Come in and try a cup this weekend!
Pour Jons Q&A
Make up a myth or story about the origin of coffee and post it in the comments section. The most creative gets a buy one-get one free coupon! Entries will be accepted until Sunday at midnight.
~Pour Jons
"C'mon Lucy!" shouted her brother Peter.
ReplyDeleteThey were playing hide and seek.
"Where on earth did that little brat get to?" Asked Edmund.
"Now now brothers, she might be lost somewhere in here and the two of you are upset with her?" Admonished Susan.
"Well it's not our fault she wanted to play this stupid game..." said Edmund.
Then all of a sudden the siblings heard a rushing of feet coming down the corridor to them. "Oh Peter! Edmund! Susan! I have something most WONDERFUL to tell you all!" It was, of course, their sister Lucy.
"Where have you been?!" Said the three of them in a chorus.
"Oh come with me! C'mon!"
The energetic sister would not be quieted, and so the Pevensie siblings went back to where she had come from. There, in the back of a room, stood a magnificent wardrobe, unlike any other they had ever seen or heard of.
". . . ummmmm, ok. Now what?" Asked Edmund.
"We go through the wardrobe!" Said Lucy with a big grin on her face.
And so the two brothers, looking skeptically at each other, went inside, followed by the two girls.
As they pushed through, stumbling amongst themselves, they could not help but smell something so sweet. Something that they had never smelled in their life.
"Lucy, what is that heavenly aroma?" Asked Susan.
"Oh, just you wait and see for yourself!" Said Lucy.
And the four of them poured out into a strange land.
It was quite loud, quite loud indeed, and the people there were wearing clothing that was entirely strange indeed.
"Lucy, tell us now: just where in the world are we?"
And their little mischievous sister turned, looked at them, and said with the biggest grin that they had ever seen on her face: "Pour Jons, the land of coffee!"
Upon having a cup of coffee for themselves, they all had huge grins sneaking their ways across the faces of the children, and they all began to dance with their little sister exclaiming "This stuff is jolly good!" "We must take this back with us!" "Why do we not have this stuff back in our time?" "People back then simply MUST have coffee, they simply have GOT to have it!"
And thus, upon returning back to their own time, spread the recipe of coffee to anyone that would take up the experiment, and that is how Coffee found it's way into our world.
However, there are some that would argue that the wardrobe did not lead to a place called Pour Jons at all, but rather to a snowy little area. In that snowy little area Lucy met a rather odd man called Mr. Tumnus, and it may have been he that introduced her to the magical drink known as coffee. But that is a different tale all together.
I wrote something rather clever and the internet made it explode. That's what I get for writing really long comments in the box and not on a word processor first. Good luck to all other contestants! :)
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