Tag Archives: Breakfast Drinks

Coffee, the Morning Picker Upper

Coffee is a morning staple in many households. Roughly 64% of Americans consume coffee every single day, adding to its intense popularity. In recent times, coffee menus have become extensive and elaborate, offering customers a bewildering range of options like Cafe Latte, Cappuccino, Macchiato, Con Panna, and much more. 

History of Coffee

Coffee is believed to have been discovered in Ethiopia. The most popular story of the discovery of coffee dates back to 700 AD. Kaldi, an Ethiopian goat herder, came across his goats prancing around, looking very hyperactive. He deciphered that the cause of their behavior was consumption of these red cherries, the coffee fruit.

Coffee is a natural stimulant due to its caffeine content and is still used as a morning booster to date.

What is Coffee?

Coffee is among the three most popular beverages in the world, including water and tea. It is essentially a beverage brewed from roasted and ground beans of the coffee plant. The coffee tree, known as Coffea, is an evergreen that grows in tropical regions like Africa, The Middle East, Asia, and parts of Central and South America, collectively known as the ‘Bean Belt.’ The coffee bean is actually a seed that develops inside the coffee cherry growing on the coffee plant.  

How Is It Made?

Harvesting

Typically, it takes a coffee plant 3-4 years to bear fruit. The cherries are picked when they reach the right level of ripeness. The pits of the coffee cherries are referred to as coffee beans.

Processing

Coffee beans are then processed mainly through two methods: the wet method, which yields mild flavored coffee and the dry method which yields rich flavored coffee.

Tasting

The taster, or cupper, assesses the coffee’s aromatic quality and taste.

Roasting

This is a complex process where heat is used to transform green coffee into familiar roasted, dark brown coffee beans. Coffee is then packaged and sold to various grocery stores and restaurants to be consumed in many different forms and flavors, including as a morning java or a recreational, fine-tasting beverage. The café culture has gradually become common all around the world, and continues to serve as an avenue for social interaction today.

Author: Amita Vadlamudi

The Popular Drink Tea


Tea, the second-most consumed drink in the world, comes from a versatile plant Camellia sinensis. All types of teas including Black, Green, Oolong, White, and Pu’erh are extracted from a sub-tropical, evergreen plant. The plant that produces tea is native to Asia, but is now grown in many parts of the world. The tea plant properly grows in loose, deep soil at high altitudes, and in sub-tropical climates.

Tea is popularly consumed all over the world, but China is considered to be the largest consumer of tea, at 1.6 billion pounds a year. India, United States, Turkey, Ireland, and the United Kingdom are also high tea consuming countries. A study shows that the world’s tea consumption has annually elevated by 4.5% to 5.5 million tons over the past few decades.

The first time that tea was ever mentioned in writing was in Chinese documents about 4700 years ago. Today, the tea bush grows in various parts of the world including India, Sri Lanka, China, and Africa. History tells us that tea was probably first invented in China in 2737 B.C.E. The discovery of tea was accidentally made by the Emperor Shen Nong – an intelligent ruler and scientist. Once tea became a household name in China, a Japanese Buddhist monk – Saicho introduced tea in Japan. From there, tea eventually was introduced in the West and it wasn’t until the 17th century that people started enjoying the hot beverage.

By the early 1700s, the East Indian Company settled in India as a trading power and began selling tea. In this way, tea became accustomed to the natives of India and gradually became their favorite beverage.

Though not high in nutritional value, tea contains good amounts of magnesium and potassium. It has lower amount of caffeine than does coffee. Both green and black teas are high in antioxidants which help prevent the growth of cancer cells in the body.

The author of this article Amita Vadlamudi is an avid reader and a blogger on many varied and interesting subjects. Amita Vadlamudi’s other articles on food and nutrition may be found at her Wix website.