A friend of mine recently visited New Orleans and posted pictures on Facebook at a famous coffeehouse there.  Her selfie showed her enjoying a beignet and a cup of café au lait – not just any coffee, but chicory coffee.  That same day I was walking our dogs in northwest Vacaville along the bike path looking at all the chicory.  The city workers had mowed the area next to the path down to a stubble a couple of weeks earlier.  The grass looked dead, but the chicory had bounced right back.

Records of chicory have been found in ancient Egypt, and it has been growing in Europe at least since the 1700s. The resourceful Dutch were the first to mix chicory root with coffee sometime in the 1700s.  During the American Civil War, when the Union Navy cut off the Port of New Orleans, Louisianans, to stretch their coffee supplies, began cutting their ground coffee with roasted and ground chicory root, beets, even acorns.  Some people skipped the coffee grounds and just consumed the ground roasted chicory root “coffee”.  Roasted chicory root was considered the closest to coffee in flavor (though it has no caffeine).  Commercial chicory is now grown in France, and the coffee served today in the famous Big Easy coffeehouse is a ground coffee and ground, roasted chicory root combination imported from France.

Chicory is actually in the dandelion family, an herbaceous perennial found throughout much of the US today.  It often grows in less than optimal soil and each plant usually lasts two years, but can live up to five years.  Flowers bloom and close each day.  It has a long taproot – the part that is roasted and ground.  The plant has been used as animal and human (herbal) medicine since the Egyptians found it growing along the Nile River.  The leaves are served as part of vegetable dishes in Greece and throughout the Middle East.  Parts of the US consider it to be an invasive plant.  Some ranchers have used it for forage.  I would think the City considers chicory a weed to be whacked.  But, I like chicory.  I like its cheery, perky, periwinkle flowers, and I like its resilience. Even when mowed down to the ground, it regrows and then blooms all summer seemingly without any rain.