Category Archives: Coffee, Tea, Drinks

Old Slang and Disdain for Tea

Here’s a long list of old slang words which the Art of Manliness bloggers think are “beyond awesome,” but still not appropriate or applicable enough to include in their book. (Thanks to SB for the link.) Words like these:

Muckender or sneezer: a handkerchief

“An idle and useless person is often told that he is only fit to lead the Blind Monkeys to evacuate.”

Barking-Iron or barker: a pistol

Bunch Of fives: a fist

Earth bath: a grave

Scandal-water: tea, meaning gossip is often discussed with busybodies over tea.

Wait, I have to look this up. Google has a dictionary of slang, jargon, and cant, edited by Albert Barrère and Charles Godfrey Leland, published 1890.

Scandal-water, according to this dictionary, is a derogatory word for tea devised by heavy drinkers who thought it was effeminate. It comes from the days “when it was fashionable to get drunk, when ‘drunk as a lord’ was a proverbial expression, when a man was accounted the best in a convivial company who first fell senseless from his chair by excess of liquor, and ‘a three-bottle man’ was considered a king of good fellows.” Barrère and Leland write, “the vulgar bacchanals exerted all the ingenuity they possessed to invent feebly contemptuous names for [tea], among others ‘cat-lap,’ ‘scandal broth,’ ‘water bewitched,’ ‘tattle water,’ ‘kettle-brandy.'”

Honest Coffee Lovers of the U.S., Unite!

This is what browsing the InterWebs will do for you: introduce you to a vintage advertisement demanding high quality of coffee in America in 1960. “The time has come to take a stand!” insists the League of Honest Coffee Lovers. “More coffee in our coffee or fight!”

The Pan American Coffee Bureau (PACB) was soliciting citizens to insist on pure or purer coffee from the coffee growers of the world, and I gather coffee growers wanted to comply if it weren’t for dropping global prices. Farmers in Africa and Latin America were straining to make ends meet, so they didn’t mind U.S. drinkers having weaker brew while paying the same price, but the PACB wouldn’t have it. They urged Life magazine readers and others to insist on a standard coffee measure for their coffee.

The campaign went nowhere except to be fodder for Mad Magazine writers who published a satire for the fictitious League of Frightened Coffee Growers, who had “java jitters” over the impending coffee drinker crusade.

(Source: Uncommon Grounds: the History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World By Mark Pendergrast)

Manly Breakfasts

5 Hearty Winter Breakfasts to Fill Your Belly from The Art of Manliness

  1. Cajun Breakfast Casserole
  2. Apple-Pecan Baked Oatmeal
  3. Green Chili Breakfast Burrito Casserole
  4. Nutty Buckwheat Buttermilk Pancakes
  5. Biscuits and Gravy

Raise a Dram for Tolkien Tomorrow

On January 3rd, 1892, J.R.R.Tolkien was born. Today, fans around the world toast him on his birthday with a beverage of their choice. Read the details and leave a comment with your toast to the professor on the Tolkien Society website.

Kathryn Darden of Atlanta has a brief bio and analysis of his writing on the great author, pictured below from 1956.

John Tolkien

Glorious, American Food

Jerry Weinberger writes about American food culture in City Journal, saying:

But Julia taught us how to master French cooking, not American. American food had to be invented before it could be mastered. And the inventor was another Great Woman, this one on the opposite coast. In 1971, Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. This was the great transformative event in American culinary history. Chez Panisse grew out of Waters’s experience not with the butter and fat of Parisian haute cuisine, but with the foods of Mediterranean Provence (based on olive oil, the fresh fruits of the earth and sea, and the general habit of going to the market with a string bag every day). The principle of Chez Panisse was that food—both animal and vegetable—should be absolutely fresh, and that meant absolutely local. So it’s not quite right to say that Waters had to invent American food; what she did was rediscover and then elaborate on pre-canned, pre-supermarket, pre-tomatoes-all-year-round regional American food.

There’s a good bit in this article showing the need for gospel in our country, from a lack of respect at dinner parties to the layered problems evident in Weinberger’s comments on obesity. Feel free to comment here on anything you read there.

The Face of Taster’s Choice

Do you remember the label on Taster’s Choice instant coffee? It’s of a man enjoying his cup of scoop-n-stir joe. Apparently, the man in that photo didn’t know his face made the cut back in the 1980s, because a few years ago someone said, “Dude, you look like that dude on that coffee stuff, you know?” And when he checked the jar, he saw for first time that his was the face of Taster’s Choice.

So he sued, and you’d think that the man whose face became an international logo would be owed a lot of money, unless he signed it away in the beginning. But no, the company just ran with the image without getting back to him, avoiding payment and violating their contract.

Now, the courts are asking whether the man still has the opportunity to sue, because it’s been awhile since all this happened.

All About the Food

Jeffrey Overstreet talks about food in film in light of the recent movie, Julie & Julia.

In Mostly Martha, the main character runs her restaurant kitchen as if she were a general at war, with no room for mistakes. But when she ends up caring for her orphaned niece, and makes room in her life for a chef with unconventional ideas, their days — and meals — together help her discover a richer way to live. (Watch the original. Avoid the cheap American imitation — No Reservations.)

. . .

For this moviegoer, there is no cinematic meal more beautiful and profound than Gabriel Axel’s movie Babette’s Feast. . . . Babette is quietly fighting the Gnostic lie that the spiritual life is separate from physical experience. She is revealing the glory of God to them through food. She shows them that food, like all of God’s great gifts, is meant to be celebrated and shared with vigor, reverence, and gratitude. It might even have the power to make friends out of enemies.

Coffee & Heresy

Loren Easton told me about this comment thread on a post criticizing The All-American Coffee Drinker, and kudos to you, Loren, for roasting your own beans. I don’t do it, probably won’t do it, but I appreciate it nonetheless.

Jars of Clay on Love for Coffee

Charlie Lowell of the band Jars of Clay talks about coffee (shout out to Crema in Nashville) and a little about the band’s mission work, Blood:Water.

Q: You guys do a lot of work in Africa with Blood:Water. Do you ever think about how some of the coffees you drink, obviously the ones from Africa, are impacted by the work you do getting clean water wells and HIV medication to a lot of those villages that include coffee farmers?

CL: Yes, that’s quite a connection. We watched the documentary “Black Gold” a couple years ago on our bus, and it was crazy how things trickle down- little decisions we make day in and out do affect others around the globe. It is simply amazing to see how village/community life changes with the addition of a clean-water well. Kids are in school instead of fetching dirty water, women can work on micro-finance, and general health is improved greatly.

Starbucks Begins A Locale Blending Plan

Little Girl Eating Ice Cream on a ConeStarbucks, which some people call “Fourbucks” because of the prices, will remove it’s name from one of its Seattle stores in an effort to appeal to the budget-minded coffee drinker. The well-established store will be labeled 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea and will soon offer beer and wine along with coffee and tea. I assume the prices will be the same, but maybe, just maybe, they will drop a bit.

In other vital news, July is National Ice Cream Month and this Sunday is National Ice Cream Day. So tell me, do you like floats, shakes, or malts? What are your preferences? I love shakes more than the others, though an icy Coke float with vanilla can be a nice, different treat. I don’t like malt enough to enjoy malts or malt balls, but I can make them. I have special training.