Good morning. Welcome to Jo Ann’s Virtual Café 2021. Come on in and help yourself to a breakfast beverage. Let’s talk. We have a treat for you today.
We’re featuring pumpkin spice. We have pumpkin spice bagels, bread, cookies, and coffee. Miss Josie is making her famous pumpkin spice lattes. Now let me tell you a little about pumpkin spice.
The interesting fact is it might not contain any pumpkin at all. It is a mixture of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Some places throw pumpkin in, but most do not.
The earliest written mention of pumpkin spice was in a recipe published by the Washington Post for Pumpkin Spice Cake in 1936. The McCormick Company blended those four spices together and labeled it Pumpkin Pie Spice in the 1950s.
The company changed its label to Pumpkin Spice in the 1960s. For you Starbucks lovers, Starbucks began including pumpkin in their pumpkin spice lattes in 2015.
Lord have mercy, when we hear that pumpkin spice lattes are available at Starbucks, we know that it’s football time in Tennessee, filled with tailgating everything that goes with that. We know that the cool mornings of fall are coming.
Are you ready for some football? We have been waiting for this all year. Now I guarantee Miss Josie’s Pumpkin Latte is just as good as Starbucks and a whole lot cheaper. For you pumpkin spice lovers, you’re at the right place today.
Sometimes you don’t always know how good something is until you get older. Today, we are thankful for the beautiful mountains we have here in Eastern Tennessee. When I was young many of us would go back of our house and play in the nearest mountain.
We would run and play tag. We didn’t need any trails up the mountains because we were the ones making them. I think my mom would have had a heart attack if she saw us free climbing up the big rocks and cliffs.
We didn’t think anything about that. We were young and free.
There’s nothing prettier than looking down at Powell Valley from a mountaintop. We must have been natural woodsmen because we never got lost. Nowadays, people are still playing in the mountains.
They hike, camp, and fish, and just explore as we did. There’s nothing better than wading in a cold mountain stream during the heat of a summer day or watching the sunset on an autumn day.
We get a special treat in the fall, watching the colorful fall leaves start their parade down the mountains. In winter, we watch the snow do the same thing.
In spring, we watch the green leaves start their parade up to the mountaintop to start the cycle again. I remember living for a while in Nashville. I quickly realized that something was missing there for me.
Like where are my friends?
When I got on the bus to come back to La Follette, I got excited at the sight of the first tall hill. Then I saw the mountains in the background.
I knew right away what I was missing. I was coming home to my friends what I had missed. The mountains were welcoming me home once again.
So today, take a little hike or just drive up one of our beautiful mountains and feel the peace that they can bring to you. We are Thankful for those mountains that I call home. Having said that, let’s share a breakfast beverage and some Native American Proverbs.
The Proverbs of today go like this,
“Mother Earth provides enough for every man’s needs, but not enough for every man’s greed.”
“Mountains are one place where what used to be still is.”
Thanks for coming! Enjoy your gift of today. Have a great day!
