What's in your breakfast?

Today, I spent a substantial amount of time in the office, taught my first grade and worked out.

I'm still working on the book The Devil's Cup about the history of coffee. Here was one of my favorite parts from today:

"After the Turks were defeated, it became the Viennese custom to serve Wender's little crescent roll, called the pfizer, with morning coffee. And there it would have ended except that a century later a seventeen-year-old Viennese princess named Marie Antoinette moved to Paris to marry Louis XVI, king of France. Homesick, she insisted that the French bakers learn to make pfizer for her breakfast. The bakers added butter and yeast, and since it would have been unthinkable for a queen of France to eat anything but "French" pastry, they renamed it le croissant,  which means crescent in French.



So was born the most politically loaded meal in the world--the Continental breakfast of coffee stolen from the Turks and pastry shaped to mock their flag. But when hundreds of millions of Europeans begin their day with the combo, they are doing more than unwittingly commemorating the Turkish defeat at Vienna. They are participating in a rite that lies at the heart of the most profound pharmacological revolution in European history." (Allen, p.125)



And thus, your cup of brew and pastry gained more meaning. Oh, history. Oh, mankind. You silly little thing you ;). Talking about brew, they're opening another Starbucks closer to us...this is NOT good for resistance!

 Statue of some unknown (to me) lady in Guangzhou last week

The same tea market I spoke of before--this is the tea furniture portion

This is a giant cake of tea (real or not, I'm not sure) from 2004 on display for tourists I assume. It must have been at least 10ftx10ft and 1.5ft tall at least. Lotsa tea!