Part 2 (1/2)
CHAPTER V
COCOA AND COFFEE
The next morning Filippa's mother refreshed us all with a cup of fragrant cocoa, so that we might begin the day in good spirits. As I was sipping it, the Padre remarked in good humor:
”Did you Americans seize the Philippines merely for a cup of cocoa?”
I replied laughingly: ”This cup of cocoa is so good, that I certainly would try to seize the Philippines for it.”
Filippa's mother and father both bowed and said I was complimentary, like a diplomat.
Then I continued: ”I am glad the Philippines are now ours, and yours too, because our money can help to develop the wonderful tropical products which do not grow in our colder America. I wish you would explain something about cocoa and coffee, which we prize very much and which we send our s.h.i.+ps a long way to secure.”
Fil's father, who was a planter of wide acres, replied:
”The cocoa bean and the coconut are two very different plants. Do not confuse them. The cocoa bean, out of which you grind cocoa powder and chocolate for a drink, for bonbons, and for puddings, comes out of a fruit shaped like a large red cuc.u.mber. This fruit grows on a tender bush, which must be shaded by a thick banana palm. In each fruit are twenty of these seeds, or cocoa beans.
”They have hard skins, and are very bitter and stimulating. When eaten, they excite the heart, and thus make a person feel active and alive. Soldiers and athletes eat them, to relieve fatigue. As soon as the fruit is gathered, the beans must be dried in the sun, or be roasted. The cocoa bean is very oily. To make cocoa, the oil is extracted, when the beans are ground into a paste. To make chocolate, the oil is not extracted.”
”I never ate a cocoa bean which was sweet; but a chocolate-drop is sweet,” said Filippa, who had bought chocolate-drops in the candy stores.
Her father explained: ”We add sugar and vanilla, to the brown cocoa bean paste.”
”Just think of practically growing chocolate bonbons on a tree, beneath the window of your nipa huts, in these wonderful Philippine Islands,”
I added, and every one smiled.
”It is really true, when one adds the sugar,” remarked the Padre.
”Now tell me please about coffee, also,” I begged.
Fil's father continued:
”The coffee comes from another low bush. You choose a hillside, for, although the plant likes our heavy rains in the Philippines, it does not like to keep its roots long in water. It wants to drain them and to feel the warm sun. The leaves are long and glossy; the blossoms are waxy white. The fragrance is richer than rose sweetened with sugar. The fruit is like a scarlet cherry; each contains two seeds. These two seeds are the coffee bean of commerce and of the breakfast table. They are ground in a small mill, as you know.”
”How were the beans first discovered?” I inquired.
Fil's father smiled and told this story: ”One day a shepherd noticed that his goats, which had eaten the cherries off a coffee bush, danced about in high excitement as though they, instead of their master, were going to a fiesta. Then the shepherd ate the berries, too, and felt stimulated himself. That is how coffee in time came to our breakfast table. Instead of eating the berry, we grind it and steep it, and drink the liquor.”
”But, father, the seeds are light colored, and not deep brown, when you open the fruit,” said Fil.
”I know,” replied Fil's father. ”We roast the seeds in an oven, to get rid of the moisture and to preserve and ripen the stimulating oils.”
”Thank you all;” I exclaimed, ”now I will behold a whole tropical story of geography and commerce, every time I look into a grocer's window at home.”
CHAPTER VI