Coffee and chicory

We were all tea drinkers in our house when I was a child.  We kids began drinking tea out of our Bunnykins cups at around 4 years of age. 

The only coffee we ever saw was the bottle of coffee essence that came from the grocer.  It was coffee with chicory - Bickfords brand.  Coffee was considered an exotic drink, but there was no art to the brewing - we just stirred the essence with some sugar into hot milk.

Now I have my own pretty flowering coffee bushes growing ...

... and the chicory too.

There are no plans at this stage to process our own coffee.

They're just handsome trees to have around; and the birds enjoy the red berries..

Comments

[tamarika]

I grew up on tea too! But now tea is for comfort during hard times.

Coffee is early in the morning to get me jump-started!

Beautiful flowering bushes ... yum!

[Tjilpi]

We had a coffee bush in the backyard when I was in my early teens. I was surprised when the first red berries appeared. Up until then coffee had been brown!

I converted to drinking coffee at an early age. Tea seemed to have too many connections to English Monarchy, and I was an Australian Republican!

[Lee]

Yes...I remember having the chicory bottle in our cupboard when I was a kid, too. I bought a bottle a few years ago and loved it made on milk. Now that I'm in 'recalling' mode, we had a tin of 'Turk's Head' coffee in our cupboard too...it lasted for years, it seems!
I was always jealous of my older brother because he had the 'Bunnykins' set but I didn't! :(

[IanH]

I have to drive past a few of the coffee farms up on the Tablelands on my way to and from work. It's still a novelty to see the bushes and the clusters of beans. Many of them roast their own and sell it quite cheaply. Love the stuff.

[kerrin]

My Grandmother had the bottles of coffee and made the best coffee cakes. I have a coffee bush that the goats prunned right back when they got in to the front yard 2 weeks ago.