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finished a book by AJ Jacob's called "Thanks a Thousand". I'll discuss it more in the December book post but I wanted to share some fun facts from the book here. Basically, the author decided he needed to thank everyone, and I mean everyone who is involved in the process of getting him his morning cup of coffee at his local small coffeeshop. So the book is part the author's exploration of gratitude in general and part a deep dive into the process of making and selling coffee, etc. Fun facts I've learned...

Fun fact #1: Long before the now ubiquitous coffee cup sleeve was invented, ancient civilizations in Turkey and China used extra material (gold, silver, and tortoiseshell among other things) around the outside of their cups used to serve hot beverages to nobles. There's even a name for these: zarf. A great word that's fun to say, can be used to indicate the modern cardboard sleeve and can gain you a ton of points in Scrabble or Words With Friends.

Fun fact #2: NYC (the author's hometown) "consumes" enough water in one day to fill 10 Yankee Stadiums. That's the author's word...I don't know if he means "consumes" as in "imbibes" or "consumes" as in "uses". If he means they drink that much water (in coffee, in tea or just plain), that sounds about right, but if he means they USE that much water--including showering, washing dishes, doing laundry and more--I would think that total is a bit low. Which leads to actually not-so-fun fact #3...

(Not So) Fun fact #3: When searching for a water source for the ever growing NYC, developers decided on lakes in the Catskills due to a low mineral content. But the lakes weren't big enough so they created reservoirs by essentially flooding towns. 13 small towns (and 32 cemeteries) were erased from existence so the city could have enough water. Needless to say, some longtime residents of the Catskills are still a bit salty...

Fun fact #4: we have a British researcher living in London in the 1800s to thank for the safety of the cup of joe purchased at coffee shops. Arthur Hill Hassall was convinced that coffee was the culprit behind several outbreaks of various diseases so he tested 34 cups of coffee from different shops around London. 32 of those cups had "impurities" in them. Among those impurities were such "delicacies" as baked horse liver, waste from a nearby brewery, singed cleaning rags, brick dust, dog biscuits, coal ashes and dirt (plus a variety of things that were actually edible but weren't needed to make a cup of coffee, things like bran, dandelion root, elderberries and more). Lest we Americans gloat about our own coffee, at around the same time, investigators found coffee suppliers in NYC were adding arsenic and lead to low-grade coffee to darken the color and make it seem like a richer brew. Yikes.

Anyways...enjoy your holiday meals and give thanks the next time you have a good, and more importantly SAFE, cup of coffee at Starbucks or your coffeehouse of choice!