THE COFFEE BAG.

Putaruru Press, Volume VIII, Issue 342, 12 June 1930, Page 1

THE COFFEE BAG.

Where the British mother bequeathes the family jewels to her daughter, the South American housewife bequeathes her greatest treasure—fully as gratefully received as costly jewels—the family coffee bag. Those who have lived long In South America and appreciate the universally excellent coffee, obtainable alike from the most expensive hotels and restaurants or private homes and the poorest of wayside inns or isolated ranches, generally despise the coffee they are offered on return to the homeland. “ Poor stuff,” they call home-brewed coffee. “ Now, if you were to drink it in Valparaiso . . and you listen to rhapsodies of coffee as it should be made and drunk. Irritated (for privately you were rather proud of your coffee-making), you ask in what way coffee made in South America differs from homebrewed. The male creature invited to offer concrete criticism is soon at a loss. Coffee in South America is of a stronger brew, it seems. Well, that can be adjusted here. The flavour is more pronounced. Probably

! due, you say, to the beans being freshly gathered, and freshly roasted, and not having suffered a journey overi seas. j “ But the taste is so delicious,” and ! here he triumphantly produces his i best (mislaid for the moment) card i “ due to the bag in which the coffee i has been made for several generaj tions.” 1 i Horrified, you ask for particulars. ' | To learn that housewives in South 1 j America make their nectar by plac--1 ’ ing the ground coffee in a bag of na--1 | tive woven material and simmering it ’ in a pot over the fire. The material

i —cotton or linen, your male inforj mant is exasperatingly inexact, as to ; its nature or name—is composed of very fine and tough threads, and lit- ! erally wears for generations, handed down from mother to daughter on the occasions of deathbeds or marriage ■ feasts as the greatest of treasures. 1 Native cooks will refuse to make cofj fee without a-coffee bag, and the more | deeply coloured the material the bet- ’ | ter the resulting coffee, they imagine; , j on the same principle that leads Con- { tinental cooks to regard cleaning ! I (washing) the frying pan as a crime , I of the lowest intelligences.