Yesterday, a friend of mine asked me if I was interested in taking a trip to New Orleans. I couldn’t type, “YES!!!” fast enough. I started making a list of all the cool stuff we could do and see. I ran through half a dozen things and spouted out “Cafe du Monde eating beignets and drinking um… that coffee”. I couldn’t remember what kind of coffee it was. I was busy so I didn’t look it up at the time. When I got home, I mentioned it to Thom and he knew, Chicory. He told me an interesting story that I wanted to look up, so here I am and it seems he is right but there is more to it.
Without going into the history of coffee, (It was rare and very special in Paris until a sultan visited in 1669 and brought tons of the stuff over.) In the late 1700′s, revolutions in coffee producing nations that supplied the cheapest beans, (Haiti and Santo Domingo) cut the coffee supply off and France imported the pricier beans from Arabia but cut it with chicory to ‘stretch’ the coffee.
Coffee replaced tea in America because of the Stamp Act, which subsequently caused the Boston Tea Party.
The practice of cutting the coffee with chicory was used again in the civil war. It was especially prevalent in the south after the Union blockades. Again during WW1 and WW2 chicory was used to make the coffee supply last.
So now, not only do I remember that it was ‘chicory’ coffee, but now I learned why they serve it there.
I really hope this trip happens. I’d like to get a picture of one of the tombs that I can’t get out of my head. I saw it but we didn’t have a camera with us. They say the cemeteries are prime mugging territories. It’s a tomb with an angel slumped over a pedestal like she is grieving. I have a crystal clear image of it in my head and I love it!
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