Who had the pleasure of drinking the very first cup of coffee? Who first delighted in the deep, rich aroma that fills the air while it is brewing?
baby goats, wikimedia commons
A legend from Ethiopia talks about the possible beginnings of coffee as a beverage. It says a goat herder noticed that his goats had trouble sleeping after eating a certain type of berries. Instead of taking these berries and brewing a drink from them for himself, he took them to the local monastery and told those there what he had noticed. The monks in this monastery, if this legend is true, brewed a drink from and were the first ones to drink coffee. I wonder if they drank it black or with cream or with cream and sugar.
Anyway, from there this hot beverage, called the favorite drink of the civilized world by Thomas Jefferson, spread all over the world. In my opinion, coffee is wonderful, but there really are people who don’t enjoy it.
What about your characters? Do all of them enjoy drinking coffee? Do some of them not like this beverage?
cup of coffee on coffee beans, free stock photos.biz
Is one of your characters picky about what kind of coffee he drinks? Does he believe that if the coffee is flavored, it isn’t “real” coffee? Does his coffee have to be ground from beans right in front of him before it is brewed?
The ones who do enjoy coffee, what kind do they drink? I’m not talking about brand but flavor. Do they drink regular black coffee? Do they drink Hazelnut or French Vanilla coffee? Maybe they drink a more exotically flavored coffee, such as Fool’s Caramel Nut.
Do they drink it with cream and/or sweetener added? I can drink it black or with just cream added, but I don’t like it with just sweetener added. I find it hard to believe that there are those who drink it sweetened without cream.
nutpods non-dairy coffee creamer, www.nutpods.com
If your character happens to have diabetes but likes to drink coffee with cream and sugar, how can this be done? This character could use stevia to sweeten the coffee and nutpods non-dairy creamer for the cream.
If your character isn’t allowed to have caffeine but still loves coffee, caffeine-free coffee would have to be the beverage of choice. Decaffeinated coffee is also available black or in different flavors.
Some swear that they can immediately tell if the coffee they are drinking has caffeine or not. My dad was such a person, so my mom and I decided to test what he said. One morning, I made a pot of decaffeinated coffee and served to him. He said it was the best coffee he’d ever had, so I guess maybe he could tell a difference, just not the difference he expected. Did we tell him what we had done? No. We just let him enjoy the coffee.
coffee, flickr
We did discover that he needed the caffeine in order to stay awake. He dozed off and napped so many times that day that we decided to make regular coffee for him from then on. But we did have a laugh over his opinion of the decaffeinated coffee I had made him.
How often do your characters indulge in this habit? Do they love to wake up each morning to the smell of freshly brewed coffee? Or do they wait until they are up to brew the coffee? Do they go through an entire pot of coffee each morning or only half a pot? Maybe they only drink one cup each morning.
It is possible that one or more of your characters drinks coffee all day long. Maybe one of them looks forward to coffee with dinner. And there are people who are not affected by the caffeine in coffee. If this is the case with your character, maybe he likes to drink it right before going to bed.
coffee and writing, flickr
Writing Prompts:
Write a story about how and where the very first cup of coffee was brewed and enjoyed.
You could write a mystery about something hidden in a package of coffee beans, something that some very bad people wanted to get hold of. What does the person who finds it do? Does this person realize that some not very nice people are looking for it?
What if coffee beans were on the verge of becoming extinct? What if your character was the one who possessed the last shrub that grew coffee beans? The price of a cup of coffee would be very expensive; this shrub would be priceless.
What if your character loves coffee so much that he decides to open a coffee shop? Is this shop located in a small town or a large city? Is his shop successful? What kind of people are most often in his shop? What if it becomes the local hangout? Does his coffee shop serve things besides coffee?
