The making of coffee in the Creole home has always been more or less a rite, a procedure that called for the utmost care.
The cafeti�re (drip coffee pot) used for preparing the coffee is little short of a family jewel. The making of coffee was so important that in many families, the father did it himself. The coffee pot consisted of two parts' la grecque (the top) in which the ground coffee was placed, and the lower part, which received the brew. Only a small quantity of hot, not boiling water, some authorities say only a tablespoon at a time, was poured into the grounds and allowed to drip very slowly into the bottom container. Nobody was permitted to take any coffee out of the pot until the process was complete.
Everyone in the house drank coffee, from the small children to the oldest folks, the latter usually being inveterate coffee drinkers. Sometimes a lump of sugar was dipped into the black coffee and given to the little ones on a spoon.
When the Creole waked in the morning, the first thing he wanted was a cup of coffee. At breakfast, he drank caf�-au-lait (coffee with milk). During the day, he drank black coffee.
In the former days, the coffee beans were often bought green and roasted at home and ground in a home coffee mill.
The Memere (mother) would go to the coffee store and buy her green coffee. The store would be lined with red and gold bins containing the various types of coffee that was sold and there were smaller bins for the teas.
The labels of the bins, Java, Mocha, Oolong, Orinoco, would bring to mind, far away places with strange sounding names.
The mother would buy the coffee beans and when she returned home, the children would help do the roasting in a large iron skillet over a charcoal furnace in the back yard. As it was stirred with a long handled iron spoon, the roasting coffee sent out a glorious fragrance through the whole neighborhood. The roasted beans were then packed into a tightly sealed container from which only enough was taken for use one day at a time.
The coffee grinder was a small square box with an iron handle. The mother set the screws which governed the size of the ground, and the children were ordered not to tamper with them, but once in a while the children might be tempted to looses the screws, the temptation to grind the coffee quickly was too much for the children, they wanted to go out and play.
Some families bought their coffee already roasted and ground it themselves. When chicory was added, it produced a strong, black brew.
The addition of chicory was always a cause of disagreement in the home, for some didn't like the taste because it made the coffee too strong.. Some Creoles looked upon it as an invention of 'les Americains'.
Coffee was always served piping hot, in simmer as well as in winter, 'hot as hell and black as the devil', as the saying goes.
